It’s cold and Miss Pixie has taken to climbing inside my jacket while I’m playing games. Look at that satisfied face.
July Update
CapriCon
I’m booked to attend Capri Con in Rockhampton as a guest! I’ll be there all day on Saturday August 29th. I won’t have many books as I still haven’t had any new copies of ‘Dark Heavens’ printed, but I will be able to share my experience and answer any questions. I’ve never been to Rockhampton before so I’m really looking forward to meeting the Central Queensland fans!
No Books
I have very few copies of the Harper-Collins ‘Dark Heavens’ books remaining, and as the rights have been returned to me, they can’t print any more, and I can’t obtain any more author copies. I won’t have the new editions done and released (in between everything else) until next year. I think I have about five copies of ‘White Tiger’ left.
If you’re thinking of rushing to purchase a ‘first edition’ – don’t bother. The new ones will be revised, updated, better written and will have much better updated covers. I’ll be making hardcovers and special foiled editions with sprayed edges – because I can.
I am starting to receive emails asking me where the first trilogy books are. The answer is: they’re down. You can’t buy them anywhere.
I’m honestly considering posting on social media requesting that everyone stop buying the second trilogy as well so that Harper-Collins are forced to give me the rights back.
New Releases
You’ve probably noticed that I’m relatively quiet on social media right now: this is because I am absolutely flat-out with basically two jobs right now.
The main one is fixing everything ready for big releases next year. I am:
- Reformatting all of ‘Dark Heavens’ and revising the text
- Typesetting all of these books so that I can create new print versions – a ‘twentieth anniversary edition’ with entirely new covers
- Writing a Jade spinoff, about her two husbands (currently being read by Patrons on Patreon) – did you know that if you come up to me at a con and suggest a story that you’d like to read, I may go ahead and do it? This story is a direct result of a fan request.
- Writing the next book after ‘Serpent Princess’ called ‘Queen of Hell’ (Patrons are reading that one too)
- Revising Katie’s edits of the second ‘Council of AIs’ novel, ‘Bodies of Stone and Water’. This one is ready to revise and typeset. Fun fact: Throughout this editing process, Katie referred to the book as ‘Bonesaw’ from the initials ‘BOSAW’.
The second job is Essential Self-Publishing, which is basically funding all of this. Here’s my most recent assisted release, ‘My Eyebrows Jumped Ship’ by Patrizia Smrekar:
This is a wise, hilarious, and deeply relatable narrative on the displeasures of aging. Patrizia is an absolute hoot and was a lovely person to work with. The cover illustration is by local Gold Coast artist Liv Lorkin.
With Essential, I take advantage of my experience with self-publishing all of my books to assist others. I take their Word documents and covers and create the books to sell across all the self-publishing platforms, then give them their accounts back. It’s incredibly rewarding!
(Oh yeah I need to add this one to ‘my books’. I’ve been so busy with <waves hands> that I haven’t updated that website.)
Legal Challenge
You might recall that I’m attempting to gain all of the rights to all my books back. The rights setup is complicated, mostly because I made some novice mistakes twenty years ago.
I saw my (expensive big firm) lawyer this week, and to be honest his expression as I recounted my situation has been one of disbelief. ‘They don’t even reply to you??’
As it stands:
- I have the first trilogy (Dark Heavens) back for all world regions. I’m hard at work revising them to create a twentieth-anniversary revised edition. The cover artist has me in her queue and will be working on the cover in August. Itta from TAFE is doing some flyleaf illustrations (and posters) for the special edition that I’m sharing in the Patreon-only newsletter.
- I have the Australian rights back for the second trilogy (Journey to Wudang) but Harper-Collins UK own the world rights (everywhere outside Australia) and they won’t give them back – after fifteen years of ignoring me – because ‘books are still selling’. The lawyer is honestly horrified at this attitude.
- I have the Australian rights back for the final trilogy (Celestial Battle) but Harper-Collins US (not UK, and the reason for the two different companies owning the rights is both stupid and complicated) own the rest of the world.They don’t respond to emails at all, and don’t answer their phone. The lawyer went from horrified to flabbergasted.
Note that through this, Harper-Collins Australia have been responsive, understanding and supportive. I think they’re as gobsmacked by the other companies’ behaviour as we are.
The lawyer is writing me a (mind-blowingly expensive) letter on Scary Letterhead ™ and we’ll see how they respond.
Putting all the stuff together for the lawyer has effectively been Job Number Three for me.
Currently Playing:
I don’t have much time for it, but when Pixie is safely cuddled inside my jacket I’m playing a little gem of a game on Steam called ‘Shrodinger’s Cat Burglar’ by a local Brisbane studio. This quantum puzzle game is just the right level of challenging and Pixie was absolutely no help at all in solving the puzzles.