I shouldn’t admit this, but I am always a little surprised when an author meets a due date. Being a good writer requires a lot of thinking and planning, and those acts are often indistinguishable from their unruly stepcousin procrastination. So it should be no surprise that writers are late with their work sometimes.
When China Miéville delivered the manuscript to his newest novel, entitled The City & The City, I was much more than a little surprised. In fact, I was flabbergasted. First of all, I had no idea that he had been writing it. And secondly, he had just delivered a different manuscript—the one I had been expecting—the day before.
His reasons for doing so were simple, and they had nothing to do with proving that he was superhuman. China’s mother, who was terminally ill at the time, had always loved police procedurals—so China set out to write one as a kind of gift to her. But knowing that his reputation is as a fantasy writer, he wasn’t sure what his publishers or his audience would make of his attempt. He studied up by reading as much as he could in the mystery and thriller genre, and then he wrote the book during breaks from writing the fantasy that I was expecting from him. It’s an amazing feat by anyone’s standards.
