Torrents Update #3

June 2018, Update # 3, Book Contract,

Another occasional update on my journey writing Torrents As Yet Unknown: Exploring Earth’s Great River Gorges. I’m happy to report that Torrents has found a home! I have a contract with Steerforth Press and we are shooting for publication late in 2020 (which means my deadline for the completed manuscript is end 2019). Steerforth is small, independent, and high quality; I’m looking forward to working with them and my editor there, Chip Fleischer.

I believe it was Duke Ellington who said of composing “I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.” This project has suddenly become a lot more real, and I’ll now be juggling researching upcoming chapters, writing a current chapter, going back-and-forth with Chip editing completed drafts, and, swelp me, developing a “marketing platform”. It’s going to be an exciting few years.

I just sent off the first chapter to Steerforth to begin learning the editing process. It’s the story of what I believe was the first major whitewater expedition in the Himalayas: Bus and Don Hatch of Hatch River Expeditions rafting on the Indus, Hunza and Gilgit Rivers in 1956 at the behest of Lowell Thomas as part of a movie spectacle. Now working on the story of Mike Jones, the British kayaker who pioneered expedition kayaking in the 1970s in Africa, South America and the Himalayas.

All best, and keep it pointed downstream,
Wick