Writing Pilgrimage to Heresy...

What do you do when a name enters your head and it will not go away? Well, you research it, of course. Priscillian of Avila became as real as any person as any I was working with on a day-to-day basis. And what do you do when your research turns up information so fascinating that it seems to take over your life? You write a book about it!

And that is just what I did when I wrote Pilgrimage to Heresy. What I didn’t expect was that other people would be just as interested, so much so that Alicia Gonzales-Sterling of the Madrid literary agency BOOKBANK would write back to me and say, “Of course I want to be your agent”.

All that was almost a year ago and the result was that Begoña Fuente, editor of the newly created division BOVEDA publishers would write back almost immediately upon reading the book and make an offer to translate and publish the book in Spanish.

Really, it was beyond my wildest dreams!

Last Wednesday, my book went on sale in all major bookshops in Spain and online in Spanish as well as in English as Pilgrimage to Heresy at Amazon.com. When I first received a copy I was truly overwhelmed, first at the very evocative and dramatic cover and later, as I got “stuck into it” at the amazing and accurate translation by Lorenzo Luengo, a person who must know this book every bit as well as I do and whom I am yet to meet: an occasion I am very much looking forward to.

I am certain that I can say that all writers who have their books translated into another language must have the same feeling as I did upon first seeing their book in – in this case Spanish – otra idioma! Peregrinos de la Herejía is truly “awesome”! I sat down the first night to read it and imagine my discomposure when I had to get the original off the bookshelf to find out what I had written. It is faultless. My Spanish isn’t fluent but I manage quite well having lived now in Spain for 13 years and the first thing that struck me was how elegant and descriptive my words had become. As I read on I became aware of a strange feeling: it was as if it had been originally written in Spanish and I, somehow, had translated it into English!

I received an e-mail from Alicia my very persistent agent yesterday. It said simply: “Here we go!”

Here we go......

See www.pilgrimagetoheresy.com which is to be translated into Spanish as soon as possible and www.editorialboveda.com
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