Authors: Hans-Ake Lilja
(12) The mass-market editions. As I have mentioned, I provide a new brief for the jacket, new copy, new prelims, new adverts and end matter, and look for new opportunities with retailers.
Lilja:
How much influence do you have on him? Does he just accept your suggestions or is it a “fight”?
Philippa Pride:
Stephen King is probably the most professional and also personable author anyone could ever be lucky enough to work with. He truly
knows
about publishing—and as an expert, he helps the publisher to do the best job they can by supporting the publisher he has chosen for his books. The few times he has ever said—so gently—that he isn’t bowled over by, for example, a jacket, we will always willingly change it—why “fight” when there will always be a third and probably much better option which will please both our Sales team and Stephen King; we can have both a happy author and a happy publishing company. At the end of the day, we are publishing his books, and we are batting on the same team.
In general, with authors and editing notes, I would say that authors are invited by editors only to use those notes, which they themselves consider to be of value (and then the authors often use them as a springboard for changes, rather than following the editor’s exact solutions). The book will always ultimately be only the author’s—because he will choose who or what to respond to.
I really appreciate feedback from colleagues on blurbs, etc.—it gives me options.
Lilja:
How big of an influence do you have on the finished result compared to the U.S. editor?
Philippa Pride:
The Hodder edition of the book is different from the Scribner edition of the book—as we are tailoring to a different market. We usually have a different jacket, different design. The author understands there have to be local requirements.
As a rule of thumb, with British authors the U.K. editor is the primary editor. With American authors, the American editor is the primary editor. I add my feedback to the mix, and work closely with the American publisher, to share our copy-editing and proofreading notes in time for them to be sorted in one go.
I don’t change the U.S. spellings—there is plenty of dialect within the dialogue of Stephen King’s work, and he also uses words which are his own, not found in any dictionary, but fit the context perfectly in a way no existing dictionary word could. However, for the British reader, we do make some small typographical changes.
Lilja:
Has there ever been a thing you wanted him to change that has had a big impact on the book’s general plot, and if so, did he make the change?
Philippa Pride:
I’m of the school that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Lilja:
So, what’s up next for you when it comes to Stephen King?
Philippa Pride
: This week, we are publishing
Blaze
by Richard Bachman. It was written in the early 70s, and has been edited and updated by Stephen King. We are producing new editions of the paperbacks
The Regulators
,
The Bachman Books
and
Thinner
alongside it, in our new Stephen King livery, but with distinctive black backgrounds.
Blaze
was lost among Stephen King’s papers and only found last year—what a find. A dream come true for all Bachman fans around the world. A delightful novel reminiscent of
Of Mice and Men
with the chill of
Fargo
.
In July, we are publishing
Lisey’s Story
in mass-market paperback. We have a stunning new cover on it (in the
Cell
paperback style), excellent quotes on the cover and prelim pages (‘King is the greatest popular novelist of our day…A consummate and compassionate novel—one of King’s very best.’—Guardian) and an extract from
Blaze
features in the back, taken from the original pages the author typed on his Olivetti typewriter.
As I mentioned, we are also producing reissues of the entire backlist in the stunning
Cell
/
Lisey’s Story
mass-market livery—see www.stephenking.co.uk
Film News: In August (as above), we have the tie-in of the film
1408
—from
Everything’s Eventual
—starring Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack. And, we are waiting for news on the films of
Cell
and
The Mist
(from
Skeleton Crew
).
The Mist
will be directed by Frank Darabont, of
The Shawshank Redemption
and
The Green Mile
fame. We’ll do a tie-in of the books, and of the unabridged audio for
Cell
, read by Campbell Scott.
We have provisionally scheduled
Duma Key
, Stephen King’s brand-new book, for January 2008, in hardcover—global publication.
Lilja:
If there is anything new from King , can you tell us something about it?
Philippa Pride:
In an interview with Paris Review, Stephen King says
Duma Key
is “about a guy named Edgar Freemantle who has an accident and loses an arm. So right away I’m thinking maybe there’s some paranormal symptomatology with missing limbs. I knew that people who lose limbs have phantom sensations long after the accident.”
The story is about friendship, about the bond between a father and his daughter. And about memory, truth and art. It is also a metaphor for the life and inspiration of a writer, and an exploration of the nature, power and influence of fiction.
It combines the narrative drive of
Cell
with some of the fascinating themes of
Lisey’s Story
, and will appeal to everyone who loved
Bag of Bones
and
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
.
Lilja:
With that I want to thank Philippa for this very interesting interview.
****
Jae Lee
Posted: October 5, 2007
Lilja:
Hi Jae. First, let me thank you for doing this interview. I know how hectic your schedule is. For those of us who aren’t that familiar with the world of comics, can you tell me a little about yourself and what you have done before
The Dark Tower
?
Jae Lee:
I’ve been drawing comics for seventeen years. I started at the age of eighteen with a book called
Marvel Comics Presents
. I’ve worked on books such as
Spiderman
,
Batman
,
Uncanny X-Men
,
The Inhumans
,
Fantastic Four
and my own creation,
Hellshock,
which I also wrote.
Lilja:
How did you get involved with
The Dark Tower
comic?
Jae Lee:
Joe Quesada called me out of the blue. I never thought it would actually happen though. He told me not to get my hopes up too high. There were a lot of variables. The biggest hurdle, of course, was that Stephen would have to approve of me as the artist. If he didn’t like my work, I probably would have quit comics. How would I recover from having missed out on getting a job like that?
Lilja:
How does it work? Do you get a script from Robin that you then illustrate? And how does that script look? Is it a text manuscript, rough drawings or something else?
Jae Lee:
Robin sends me a plot that’s broken down into scenes. I then determine how many pages each scene will be. A standard comic is twenty-two pages. Most of the issues of
Gunslinger Born
ended up being well over that. Issue one was thirty-one pages and issue seven was thirty-five pages. If some scenes need room to breathe, I ask my editor if I could have some extra pages in that issue to do the story justice. When I do the layouts, sometimes I’ll come up with a visual approach that’s very different from what’s in the plot. If that happens, I trade emails with Robin and Peter with suggestions. It’s a very cool working process where everyone is working together to create the best story possible. Once I finish the art, it’s sent to Peter to script and to Richard for color.
Lilja:
When you send the pencils off to Richard, who colors them? Do you work together on the pencils and coloring or do you strictly keep to your own work?
Jae Lee:
The line art is done by me, and Richard does the colors. When I send Richard the finished black-and-white illustrations, I provide certain notes. Time of day, what the mood should be, etc. Usually just story-specific things. Then Richard works his magic.
Lilja:
Do you get requests from Richard to change things, and if so, what can those changes be?
Jae Lee:
Yes. Sometimes as the deadline approaches, I may not have drawn something very well. If it’s poorly drawn, it makes Richard’s job harder. So, he’ll call me up to change this horse or that face. It’s great to have a second opinion, because if something really sucks, he’ll tell me.
Lilja:
Do you ever feel that the coloring is all wrong and ask Richard to change things?
Jae Lee:
We can be honest with each other. If there’s something I don’t like, I tell him and he ignores me. [:-)]
Lilja:
I read that you originally wanted two versions of the comic: one as it is today and one with your pencils. Tell me about that.
Jae Lee:
Joe Quesada wanted Richard to color over my pencils. I had never worked that way before and I didn’t really want to. I had never worked with Richard before, except on a cover ten years ago. I wanted to ink it and have traditional comic coloring, so we were going to do two versions and show both to Stephen. But when Richard sent me the first page where he colored over the pencils, I called him up and said, “This is it. It’s not going to get better than this. I don’t even want to do the other version.” So we never did.
Lilja:
Were you a fan of Stephen King and
The Dark Tower
before you got attached to this?
Jae Lee:
Huge fan. This really is the best project I’ve ever been on. I feel so incredibly lucky that I was the one who Joe called to do this. Thanks Joe.
Lilja:
Do you feel you need to be a fan and have a lot of knowledge about
The Dark Tower
to do the pencils? Or is the manuscript so good that you don’t need that?
Jae Lee:
You really do need to know this stuff inside and out. I read all the novels and like to think of myself as knowledgeable about the material, but how am I supposed to know Gabrielle’s eye color? Simple. I look it up in Robin’s excellent
Dark Tower Concordances
. And if it’s not in there, I can ask her.
Lilja:
How nervous were you about working on
The Dark Tower
? After all, it’s King’s masterpiece.
Jae Lee:
Very nervous. Very, very. He’s lived with these characters for most of his life. I had no idea how he’d feel about seeing them.
Lilja:
These first issues were pretty much a direct adaptation of King’s book, and I guess you got a lot of guidance from the books. But how about when it comes to the new material for the second story arc. Do you find that to be much harder? Are you nervous about how the fans will react?
Jae Lee:
The new stuff is actually much more liberating. It reads better as a story because it was written for these comics, whereas the
Gunslinger Born
was an adaptation, so we had to cut so much out. I’m very nervous about the fans’ reactions. I hope we can live up to their expectations.
Lilja:
I understand that King has the last word on everything. Has he asked you to change anything so far, and if so, can you tell me what?