Jeepers, Creepers, ’Tis The Cover Of The Reapers

John Connolly is at it again, being modest and effacing and generally annoying the hell out of all those self-aggrandising writers who have barely a tenth of his talent and none of his self-restraint (say, for example, CAP Grand Vizier Declan Burke). The occasion? He’s just sent THE REAPERS off to his editors (it’s due on May 15th) and is concerned that the future multi-million-seller isn’t quite up to scratch. Quoth John over at his bloggathummy:

“I always experience a vague sense of unease at this point, a nagging suspicion that the book may not be very good and my editor is, at this very moment, struggling to find a diplomatic way to tell me, one that won’t send me off the deep end and have me looking longingly at high cliffs, jars of pills, or razor blades and bathtubs. I don’t want to deliver a bad book, and I don’t think that I have, but, then again, I’m a very poor judge of my own work. I keep waiting to be caught out, to be branded a fraud. Like a lot of writers, I think, I’m always alert to the knock on the door from someone who has been sent to inform me that a terrible mistake has been made by my publishers and, as I have always suspected, the people who hated my work were right. At that point, my furniture will be seized, my house repossessed, and proceedings set in train to get back all of the money that has been paid to me in error. I tried to explain some of these fears to my editor when last she was in Dublin. They’re pretty constant, although they’re not crippling. Nevertheless, they may contribute to the fact that my pleasure at completing and dispatching a novel never lasts very long. Relief is a feeling that dissipates quickly.”

Hmmmm. We have a little prayer we say every night, it runs like this:

‘Dear Lord, please take away all John Connolly’s talent, discipline, charm and good looks, and give them to us. Amen.’

Think we’re muppets, just because it hasn’t happened yet? Ha! It only has to work once, people …