It’s been just over 10 years since ‘Exile’ was published and, to celebrate, I’ve produced a second, improved edition of the book!
The revised edition has a number of useful new features. Most obviously, it has got a new and improved cover. In fact, all the books now do. I couldn’t be more thrilled with them! I particularly love the new cover of book 3, ‘Island-Pilgrim’, as it now sits harmoniously on the shelf with its siblings.
To ‘Exile’, I’ve now added a comprehensive list of Cast of Characters. Over the years, readers have asked how to pronounce the books’ Old Irish and Old Welsh personal and place names (which, for the sake of authenticity and out of a love for those languages, I didn’t fully anglicize), and so, starting with the second book, I began to add Casts of Characters—but ‘Exile’ didn’t have one yet. As the theatre for the series gets ever bigger and the cast of characters continues to blossom (we’re on to Orkney next!), this should help keep everything straight.
‘Exile’ also sports gorgeous new maps! All the books do, in fact. These are a significant upgrade from my hand-drawn ones which, while they had a Tolkeinesque aesthetic that I adored, could not quite encompass everything the books needed them to do. For them, I must wholeheartedly thank and indeed praise Victoria Hamilton who has been helping me so brilliantly with the social- and marketing outreach for the series this past year-and-a-half. (If you’ve been enjoying my increased social media presence, it is thanks to her!) To get the maps just right, it is no exaggeration to say that she spent weeks and weeks courageously manipulating a very finicky ‘Illustrator’ program while simultaneously appeasing a very exacting author. The maps are not only as informative as they need to be, they are full of a wonderful artistry and energy. I love them!
The new edition also gave me the fantastic opportunity to go back and re-read all the books with an eye to how I might rewrite them. This is something artists rarely get to do, especially writers. But, as we continue to write, we continue to perfect our craft and to grow as people, which means that we can read something we’ve written and know that we’d now go about it differently. In this way, eagle-eyed readers will note that the Preface and first two chapters of ‘Exile’ have been slightly streamlined in order to adjust their ‘psychic distance’. (If you’re interested in the mechanics of this aspect of how narrative is constructed, please see my next blog post.) While rewriting, I also cleaned up typos and fixed the location of (or ‘retconned’, as we say in the business) a couple of the Pictish provinces since, thanks to recent scholarship, we now know where they are, but the rest of the narrative is unchanged.
The updated books are now available on Amazon – visit my Linktree to discover them. But most importantly—and this is super exciting!—these new editions are now accessible to major retail bookstores. The series could always be stocked by independent booksellers, but major retailers were not able to buy them. Now they can. The books are print-on-demand and will take about two weeks to arrive, but you can go into your favourite bookstore and request them now. This is a huge step for the series!
Finally, in honour of you, my beloved long-time readers: if you send me a photo of your copy of the original edition of ‘Exile’ (print or digital), I’ll forward you a link for a free e-book of the new, revised 2nd edition! Send your photo here: paula@pauladefougerolles.com.
To end, I’d like to send out a heart-felt thank you to all of you. Your love for these characters and their world has been inspiring. It is enormously rewarding to hear from you and, as the books become more widely available, I am in no doubt that exciting times are ahead!
Paula de Fougerolles' 'The Chronicles of Iona' 