New books

The new year has started exceedingly well for me and I'm celebrating with this new author blog. My big news is that I've just signed a contract with Bradt Travel Guides. They will publish a global edition of A Glimpse of Eternal Snows in the Autumn so my Nepal memoir will travel to North America for the first time and it'll be distributed properly in Britain too. This fresh incarnation is part of a new series of travel writing to be launched by Bradt later this year.

Bookshops in the Antipodes classified me as a Women Against the Odds and the beautiful Australian edition of Glimpse, sold well in the southern hemisphere. This was despite the challenges of promoting a book from the other side of the world. Now it is exciting to be working with Bradt on a British/northern hemisphere edition. It is especially good to be working with a publisher whom I know and trust - authors can be treated like disposable commodities sometimes - and also one with a social conscience too.

Founder Hilary Bradt is a friend - we have trekked together in Nepal - and Bradt Travel Guide's commissioning editor happens to be the lovely lady who was editorial director at Cadogan Guides all those years ago when I first signed up with them to write Bugs Bites & Bowels. I'm sure it wasn't in Rachel's job description but she ended up holding my one-month-old baby while I spoke at Stanford's Travel Book Shop in Covent Garden, London when we launched the first edition.

Currently we are discussing what changes we'll make to the text of Glimpse, whether we'll be able to use more Nepali script (perhaps as chapter headers), whether my drawings of Tharu designs will be used (see bottom of my web pages) and which colour photographs will be included. I'm also looking forward to seeing what the final version of the new cover will look like; this time it will be artwork rather than a photo. Giving birth to another edition of the book that means most to me is an exciting process, and I'm especially enjoying delving into our collection of thousands of photographs of Nepal to select those that best conjure up our years amongst the himals. It'll be hard selecting what to put in the book but it has given me the opportunity to post more in my photo gallery at http://www.wilson-howarth.com/.

This photo by Quentin Stafford-Fraser features Jane and her books plus Walden Writers magazines at Cambridge Central Library in December

In addition to this news about my Nepal travel narrative, I've also signed a new contract with Cadogan/New Holland publishers so that they can launch an e-version of The Essential Guide to Travel Health (aka Bugs Bites & Bowels) though when this will appear I do not yet know.

Author discussion panel chaired by James Nicol
at Cambridge Central Library in December: Clare Mulley (second left), Midge Gillies and Jane Wilson-Howarth; photo by Quentin Stafford-Fraser