The third book in the Raymond series,
Raymond's Secret, is scheduled for release at the end of December. If you have been following the series, you might be interested in some trivia pertaining to it. These are details that have not been mentioned in any of the books so far, plus some 'behind the scenes' minutiae.
- Raymond signs himself 'R.D.V.S.': 'Raymond Dimitry Van Stelte'.
- Raymond speaks three languages: Romanian is his first language, English his second, and he also speaks Italian.
- Wilson has mentioned that he doesn't know why people call him 'Wilson' instead of 'Toby'. You may notice that the adults in his life — his parents, Sandra, teachers — call him 'Toby', but his peers, enemies, classmates and friends all call him 'Wilson'. The extradiegetic or 'out of universe' reason — also called, fittingly, the Doylist reason! — for this is that I chose the name 'Wilson' for its similarity to 'Watson': Toby Wilson is to Raymond Van Stelte what John Watson is to Sherlock Holmes. As for the intradiegetic, or Watsonian, reason, it is as much a mystery to me as it is to Wilson!
- The first Raymond book was inspired by a wikiHow article titled something like 'How To Act Like A Modern-Day Vampire'. The article itself no longer seems to exist in the form it had when I read it, but this article is close to it. I stumbled across the article late one night, was intrigued that someone would write such an article and that people might be interested in its content; and then started wondering how such a pretence would play out in real life, and why someone would choose to engage in it long-term. Within days, I was writing Raymond. Raymond cites this article as the inspiration for his game; Doylistically, it is the inspiration for Raymond's existence.
- In Raymond, Wilson thinks to himself that vampires are based on
the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III of Wallachia) —
"that gross guy in Transylvania". This is, in fact, a fallacy: we now know that Bram Stoker, the writer of the seminal novel Dracula,
knew very little about Vlad the Impaler: he borrowed his appellation,
'Dracula', which meant 'son of the dragon', and that is quite possibly the only
genuine link between Vlad the Impaler and Dracula the vampire. I don't
generally like to include misinformation in my stories, but it is a very
widespread misconception and I believe that Wilson, not having
personally done any research into vampires, would believe it.
- In all the Raymond books, many of the details of school years and classes have been glossed over, for the sake of not bogging down the story or burdening the poor beleaguered author with yet more research into nitty-gritty worldbuilding. I nearly put a disclaimer at the front of the books: something like, The author frankly admits that while some research has been done into certain details contained in this story, very little research into school terms, classes, et cetera, has been done for the purposes of this book, the author deeming it simply too complicated and largely irrelevant for a short novella such as this. The author begs the reader’s indulgence and understanding.
- As recounted in this blog post, Raymond
was written at lightning speed by my usual standards: twenty-one pages
in three days. It also preferred to be written in darkness: when I tried
to write in daylight, the words would not come.
- I did not intend to write a sequel to Raymond; I thought it would be a single story. However, less than two weeks after finishing it, I found myself writing Raymond's Nemesis.
It took a few weeks to complete, and after it was finished, I was sure
that there would be no further Raymond stories ... but, a few months
later, I was writing Raymond's Secret. The latter is the longest and most complex of the Raymond stories thus far, and it took two years to finish.
Pre-orders for
Raymond's Secret are now open at
Barnes & Noble,
Kobo, and
iBooks. You can also view the book's
page
at Smashwords, though pre-orders won't be available there (but you will
be able to buy the book there when it is released). The pre-order price
is
US$0.99, which is about $1.57 in New Zealand dollars as I type this.
However, a couple of days after the book is released the price will go
up to US$2.99, so it's worth pre-ordering!
