Where's the postman? John the postman usually pushes bills and junk mail through our letterbox. However, today will be different. According to our editor, copies of the latest levels in the second edition of face2face should arrive this morning. So Dave the dog and I eagerly await John's delivery. And when it arrives John is met with unusual enthusiasm – and not just from Dave! After all, it's quite something to finally get to hold a book that has consumed the last two years of your life.
How did it all begin? A lot of people are surprised to learn that course books take that long to get from first draft manuscript to publication, but they really do! Anyway, how and when did all this start? Are you sitting comfortably, Dave? Then I'll begin. Long ago, before you were born … I began teaching EFL in 1973. Back then there were very few course books around and it was common practice for teachers to write their own materials. It was also common for teachers to share and adapt each other's materials, which
was great because initial ideas improved and the resulting lessons got better. I guess this was really the spawning ground of what I now do full time.
Getting published So how did I actually get into writing for publishers? In 1994, teaching colleagues of mine asked if I'd be interested in writing the teachers' books and workbooks for a course they were working on. So it was just a case of me being in the right place at the right time – with the right mates! But I was still teaching at the time, so the writing had to be done during the evenings, weekends and holidays. Yes, Dave, in my free time!
Writing face2face Then, in 2002, a commissioning editor I'd worked with before was looking for writers for a new general English course to be published by Cambridge University Press. She asked me and other teacher/writers to put in book proposals and sample units. From these she would choose her authors. The proposal basically meant trying to come up with USPs (unique selling points) which would differentiate Cambridge's new series from its competitors'. The
sample unit was to show how our new idea might work in practice. Obviously, it
was also showing that we could write and to a deadline. In the end, it came down to Chris and I. That's when the face2face series was born and I began writing full time. The rest, as they say, is history. What that particular history involved will have to wait till next time, Dave. Come on, time for your walk. Watch the video to find out more about face2face 2nd edition here cambridge.org/face2face2