GGBP have got two new books on their website to be published in March/April:

Prefects at Vivians by Patricia Caldwell
Chalet Girls in Camp

I'm glad they're printing 'Camp', becuase I've been wishing they would do some more of the Tyrol books, but it's a relativly short book. I know that I'm going to buy it, but I also know that I'll be annoyed at paying their price for such a thin book.

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... Anna made up her mind for once and all that there must be something about the Chalet School that affected all concerned with it with mild insanity!

Does anyone know when the fill-ins are to be published? I believe some of the writers are on here - Caroline I know is - and I am waiting for some of the 8 promised extra books to be published!

What are the 8 fill ins, Margaret?

I think they've averaged at one per year so far.

A Difficult Term for the CS - Lisa Townsend
Diera and the CS - Caroline German
The CS and the Muellers - Katherine Bruce
The Year In Between - Pat Willmott
A CS Partnaship - Lesley Green
A Chinese Adventure - Ray
Joey and Robin in India (to be published by GGB)
More New Beginnings - Heather Paisley
Jack of the CS.

You know having typed all that out two things have struck me, the first is that I can't count, there being 9 in the list.

Secondly I could simply have said that it is all in Miss Dene's Office under EBD's Books.

Thanks, Margaret. I appreciate your listing them here.

They won't all be GGB titles so hopefull that will speed things up.

I can't spell today - have made several attempts at "economic". I haven't had to count yet today.

Yes, but Difficult Term, Diera, Chinese Adventure and More New Beginnings probably will, and Joey and Robin in India - all these are either "To be published by GGB soon" or "in 2009" or, like More New Beginnings, a sequel to one already published by them. Oh well, patience is a virtue and all that.

Don't hold your breath for mine! Guernsey is nowhere near ready! Where did 'The year in between' come from? I haven't really got a title for it yet, just that it's the time spent on Guernsey. At the moment it's from the escape of everyone else from Austria to arriving ar Plas Howells, but it need heaps of editing/additions. And it doesn't all take place on Guernsey either!

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Kernow bys vykken! (Cornwall forever!)
http://www.middlescommonroom.co.uk

And there's me getting all excited! It's called "The Year In Between" in the list of fill-ins under EBD's books. Not 2010 then??? That, and Diera and A Difficult term are the three titles which most grab me. No pressure of course!

Ooh, lots to look forward to I am glad about Camp. I've never read the hard back of it, so it will be nice to get the full story!

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Wishes the land of Merlin and magic was real

Am I wrong or has GGBP not actually signed any contracts for all of those?

Ah, yes, about that... It will get written, I promise, I've written about a third of it so far. It's just that some other writing job keeps getting in the way...

A CS Partnership will be a reality one day - just not quite sure when.

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Lime Green Musing http://www.annersley.co.uk
New RCS started on Lime Green Musing

Lisa's Difficult Term or rather Difficult Term by Lisa MAY be due in 2010. She thinks. It's been on GGBP's back burner whilst Lise got her PhD written AND I think GGBP tend to publish in the order they accept the MS's...but I know Ruth and Lisa have been working on it and there's been some fairly big changes but it's been in the pipeline for 5 years now but she had to try and fit in the GGBP required elements. It's definitely worth the wait though.

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Some people get right up my nose. I have one up each nostril right this minute!

"Nothing happens unless first a dream." Carl Sandburg

We must not project modern ideas onto our ancestors, nor make them fight our battles

They don't normally get to the contract stage until the serious stuff of editing starts... Just as, these days, they don't confirm any publications until the end of the editing process is in sight.

I believe that Ruth is working with Lisa_T at the moment, so I suspect Difficult Term will be next, but given that Guides was published last November, I wouldn't expect to see the next book before next November at the earliest. It's a long loooong process...

I submitted the first draft of Deira well over a year ago now, and haven't heard much since, and I don't know where KB is up to on Muellers - she was further on than me at one point, but I don't know if or when she submitted it to GGBP. Given that Lesley and Pat say they haven't submitted anything yet, I would guess either KB or I would be after Lisa...

GGBP do like to do things in order of submission if the authors can commit at the appropriate time - Lisa submitted Difficult Term before I submitted Juliet, I think, but with her PhD and everything, she had to defer the editing for a while.

But I don't know anything about the other titles, other than that they exist, so one of those may be ahead of me / KB in the list.

I'm going to have a 'mare working on Deira when the time comes, by the way!! After writing Robin and Juliet and Deira straight after each other, while immersed in the CS, I've now read practically no Chalet since I submitted Deira... Could be interesting!

Wow, Caroline thanks for that insight to the process, really interesting!!

BTW does anyone know where "muellers" is positioned within the series?

I can't see that GGB will accept mine. It's not set in a term at all, and won't fit their criteria, apart from the fact that Librarian wasn't one of theirs! So it'll be another Matador publication when it gets that far.

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Kernow bys vykken! (Cornwall forever!)
http://www.middlescommonroom.co.uk

A few people have mentioned GGBP's "criteria" - can anyone explain what this would entail?

I think that that would be better coming from someone who has gone through the process. All their books so far have been in the school, and I understand that there has to be certain elements there. i may be wrong though.

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Kernow bys vykken! (Cornwall forever!)
http://www.middlescommonroom.co.uk

Well, please let us know when it comes out, whoever publishes it, won't you?

Well, generally speaking, I would say that the books GGBP accept tend to be those which are attempting to be as authentically EBDish as possible in ethos, setting, structure, length, language, plotlines, character developments, etc. So, usually covering one term, usually set at the school, usually with a girl / girls as the main character(s), written in the third person, with authentic-as-possible style / language for the period (so, my Robin had a different set of slag etc. from my Juliet, for instance) and not covering plot points that EBD wouldn't have covered (for instance, I was asked to remove or rewrite a whole chapter about Bill's sad home life, as at the Juliet part of the series, it was felt that EBD wouldn't have discussed the background of any of the staff - or not in much detail, anyway. If my book had been set later in the series, this might have been more acceptable) (and KB was, I think, asked to think again about a section of Peace which was set in Australia - Con Stewart's POV, I think it was, and I seem to remember it became a letter).

When I wrote Juliet, they were also keen for the book to be about the right length for an EBD story (so, 60K-80K words) split into about the right number of chapters (20ish), each of those being of about the right length... Robin, being an earlier title, they weren't quite so rigorous, but I think any comments on EBDisms and non-EBDish content from readers of the various fill ins have been noted and have led them to get progressively more thorough in maintaining as much EBDishness as possible.

All just my opinion, of course. And it's not like there's a list of things that have to be included. And there are exceptions - just as EBD had exceptions, with her holiday stories and with New Mistress. But again, there are commonalities between EBD's holiday CS books and the non-school fill in (Bettanys) - they feature the core family as the main characters, for instance....

Muellers, by the way, fits in the Easter term between Jo Returns and New, I think.

Hope that all helps!