Friday’s WSJ article wondering where Dan Brown‘s next book is set off another round of enquiry and speculation on the other side of the Atlantic. The Sunday Times of London quotes John Sutherland‘s suggestion that Brown might be suffering “[the] equivalent of stage fright,” while other, unnamed sources muse “he may be obsessed with avoiding the factual errors that were uncovered in The Da Vinci Code, or that he may have become bogged down in a doomed effort to avert widespread criticism that he is not a very good writer.”
(via Meg Gardiner, who quite properly calls BS on a statement from Brown’s UK publisher that “there is never any clause from publisher to a novelist that they have to deliver at a certain time. We would not impose such a thing on a contract.” Maybe that’s not how they do things at Transworld, and of course quite a few other houses would be willing to make exceptions for literary darlings, but contractually specified delivery dates are quite standard in the industry.)