Tag: mahjong

This week I received a package from Hodder Education in the post. It contained my complimentary copies of Teach Yourself Mahjong (Third Edition) by David Pritchard. And me. (ISBN-13: 978-0-340-92726-7, ISBN-10: 0-340-92726-7.)

While I’ve probably blogged this before it’s probably worth repeating that the reason I came to update the third edition was that the original author, David Pritchard, died suddenly in December 2005.

As I’d done some consultancy work for Hodder earlier in the year they approached me to write the update, following Mr Pritchard’s original update plan. The copyright of his work remains with his family, I believe, who also receive any royalties, while I get the copyright for the portions that I wrote:

I provided around 70 updates on the second edition and two new chapters, one on Chinese Official International Rules and another on mahjong on computers and the internet, which is one of the most comprehensive accounts of this subject in any mahjong book today. It was a lot of fun to write, and a lot of hard work and discipline, but certainly worth it.

Among the pile of free copies that Hodder kindly sent me is one marked “correx” in which I’ve to scribble any corrections for the next reprint. I’ve spotted a few already. If only I’d a copy of Teach Yourself Publishing and Teach Yourself Proof-reading to help me.

Teach Yourself Mahjong is available at all good bookstores, including Amazon UK.

At last, I’m done — and I’m fairly done in too! — the book manuscript is finished and awaiting posting.

For those of you who may not know, since May I’ve been working on writing an update to the Hodder Education book Teach Yourself Mahjong. The original author, Mr David Pritchard, sadly died at the end of last year, and Hodder approached me in the Spring to work on the proposed 3rd edition.

Having read through the last edition, and thoroughly absorbed Mr Pritchard’s wishes for the revised edition, I set about compiling a list of all the updates and edits that I felt needed to be made. In the end my list contained 77 required edits, which meant anything from simple requests like “change the words ‘Chapter 11’ to ‘Chaper 12′” to “that illustration is upside down, please turn it the right way round” to writing completely new chapters.

I’ve written two new chapters: one on the new (as of 1998, which is fairly new in the context of a game that is around 130 years old) Chinese Official International Rules and mahjong on computers and the internet.

And all I need to do now is post the lot (all 1.7 Kg) to the publisher. As well as the original manuscript, which I’ve marked-up, there are also print-outs of the two new chapters, plus a print-out of the new manuscript (edits and all) as well as a CD-ROM with the whole shebang in electronic format.

And then I wait to see if what I wrote was good enough / will be included / isn’t littered with errors* (*delete as applicable). In the meantime, can I have my life back now please…?