Back in my younger days, when I was more immature and tended toward hero worship, I was quite the military historian. I read the works of all the great leaders and military philosophers, and have even led many an army on the conquest of a tabletop. One of the great military thinkers and writers of the Napoleonic Era was a Prussian martinet named Carl von Clausewitz. He used the term "Friction" to describe those inconvenient real-world events that conspire to make you abandon your carefully crafted plan and turn to improvisation. I think that describes perfectly the situation I find myself in now.
I am going to attempt to word this very carefully. I am not upset with anyone, I do not seek a fight, nor do I make accusations. The only emotion I am feeling toward the situation I describe here is a great, cloying sense of frustration. A brief timeline, for those just joining me:
November 2013: I publish Beyond the Rails with CreateSpace, and promise a sequel within a year.
January 2014: I go down with a flu-initiated illness that lays me low for four months.
May or June 2014: I encounter a professional artist, and contract for a cover. Based on the time I had lost, I give her a completion deadline of February 2015.
December 2014: Riding a series of favorable events, I finish Beyond the Rails II. I inform my artist, who asks if she should bump my project up in the queue. I decline, opting to stick with the February deadline, as that gives her more time to get everything right, and me more time to edit and proofread.
February 2015: I receive a notification from her, telling me that she is battling the flu, is virtually incapacitated, and can do very little work. My reply is for her to take care and get well; I'm pretty sure no one is more sympathetic to flu complications than I am!
So that brings me to now. February has come and gone, and we're coming up on Paddy's Day. In the month, give or take, since I received her notice (which came in on my blog contact notification feed, oddly enough), her website has recorded the completion of two covers for other clients, a promotion package for one, a wallpaper sheet for someone's web page, and participation in a convention far enough from home to require a hotel stay. Now I have to make this clear in bold italicized caps: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE! I do not know what factors are impacting her situation, but I do know and understand that life makes a habit of throwing high speed curveballs. I do not feel swindled, victimized, used, or any other similar condition, and should anyone feel compelled to pass this story on, I will thank you in advance for not putting words in my mouth that I'm not going to say.
What I do know with complete certainty is my own situation. I have a year-and-a-half old novel whose sales have petered out to virtually nothing, and whose ranking is in free-fall. It is in desperate need of support from its promised sequel. Said sequel has been complete and languishing in a .pdf file, doing no one any good, for three-and-a-half months. Some friends and coworkers who bought (or were given) the original book have forgotten scenes and dialogue that were written to set up and support the sequel. The bottom line is that I cannot wait any longer on this one aspect that I don't control. Accordingly, I am reverting to my original cover plan, and publishing within the next week; that .pdf file is not going to reach four months old. I will announce here when the book is available, and somewhere down the line, if the professional cover shows up, I can always do a second edition.
So there you are. Sometimes you have to make a decision, and that's mine. I hope it is the right one, but I suppose I'll know that sometime around next Fall. In any case, I'll announce here when the book is available, and I hope you find it to be worth the wait. Meanwhile, play nice, look out for one another, and I'll see you next week with the big announcement!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIDRA. DADDY LOVES YOU!!
I am going to attempt to word this very carefully. I am not upset with anyone, I do not seek a fight, nor do I make accusations. The only emotion I am feeling toward the situation I describe here is a great, cloying sense of frustration. A brief timeline, for those just joining me:
November 2013: I publish Beyond the Rails with CreateSpace, and promise a sequel within a year.
January 2014: I go down with a flu-initiated illness that lays me low for four months.
May or June 2014: I encounter a professional artist, and contract for a cover. Based on the time I had lost, I give her a completion deadline of February 2015.
December 2014: Riding a series of favorable events, I finish Beyond the Rails II. I inform my artist, who asks if she should bump my project up in the queue. I decline, opting to stick with the February deadline, as that gives her more time to get everything right, and me more time to edit and proofread.
February 2015: I receive a notification from her, telling me that she is battling the flu, is virtually incapacitated, and can do very little work. My reply is for her to take care and get well; I'm pretty sure no one is more sympathetic to flu complications than I am!
So that brings me to now. February has come and gone, and we're coming up on Paddy's Day. In the month, give or take, since I received her notice (which came in on my blog contact notification feed, oddly enough), her website has recorded the completion of two covers for other clients, a promotion package for one, a wallpaper sheet for someone's web page, and participation in a convention far enough from home to require a hotel stay. Now I have to make this clear in bold italicized caps: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE! I do not know what factors are impacting her situation, but I do know and understand that life makes a habit of throwing high speed curveballs. I do not feel swindled, victimized, used, or any other similar condition, and should anyone feel compelled to pass this story on, I will thank you in advance for not putting words in my mouth that I'm not going to say.
What I do know with complete certainty is my own situation. I have a year-and-a-half old novel whose sales have petered out to virtually nothing, and whose ranking is in free-fall. It is in desperate need of support from its promised sequel. Said sequel has been complete and languishing in a .pdf file, doing no one any good, for three-and-a-half months. Some friends and coworkers who bought (or were given) the original book have forgotten scenes and dialogue that were written to set up and support the sequel. The bottom line is that I cannot wait any longer on this one aspect that I don't control. Accordingly, I am reverting to my original cover plan, and publishing within the next week; that .pdf file is not going to reach four months old. I will announce here when the book is available, and somewhere down the line, if the professional cover shows up, I can always do a second edition.
So there you are. Sometimes you have to make a decision, and that's mine. I hope it is the right one, but I suppose I'll know that sometime around next Fall. In any case, I'll announce here when the book is available, and I hope you find it to be worth the wait. Meanwhile, play nice, look out for one another, and I'll see you next week with the big announcement!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIDRA. DADDY LOVES YOU!!