Canongate

Canongate is the publisher and editorial home credited with helping shape the novel. Its contribution was both practical and creative: editor Francis Bickmore challenged the opening and helped the author control how the story’s strangeness enters, while Jamie Byng and the publishing house provided support the author remembers with deep gratitude.

Editorial Role

The author describes this as a story that needed an editor more than any other he had written, and singles out Francis Bickmore at Canongate as a wise guide. Bickmore questioned beginning with a board meeting in outer space, prompting the author to reconsider how the book should introduce its unusual premise. His advice, drawing on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was to let the weirdness seep in gradually rather than present it all at once.

The editing was not simply a process of cutting. The author valued Bickmore’s willingness to recommend restoring material as often as removing it. That exchange helped the story retain its imaginative scope while finding a more measured path into its strangeness.

Publishing Support

The author credits Jamie Byng and Canongate with providing the kind of passionate support a writer could hope for. His thanks place the publisher’s contribution alongside the close editorial work: the book was not only revised under Bickmore’s guidance but supported by a publishing house the author regarded as deeply committed to its writers.

Significance

Canongate’s role, as the author describes it, lies in the partnership between editorial judgment and sustained encouragement. Bickmore’s suggestions altered the novel’s approach to its opening and pacing, while the wider support associated with Byng and the publisher helped make that demanding revision process a valued collaboration.