These days, they happen

Well, since I have the official announcement in hand, the story was leaked two days ago, and most of the people who read this blog either read about this elsewhere, asked me about it, found out from me or were the ones who told me about it in the first place, I figure I'm safe to talk about this.

My publisher, Solaris, has put itself up for sale. Games Workshop has decided to focus on its core strengths, namely the Black Library imprint, and so is shopping Solaris around. The imprint has done well, just not as well as BL. Understandable. And from a purely business perspective, it's the right thing for them to do.

Personally? I woke up Monday morning thinking I was days away from negotiating a deal on book two. Maybe even a multi-book deal. Tuesday morning I woke up without a contract, and unsure how this would effect the drop of the debut I've been building towards for five years. So these haven't been my best couple days.

All I can say is that I'm uncertain. How will this effect the marketing of HoV? How willing will the buyers at the various chains be to pick up a debut novel from a relative unknown from a house that isn't going to be around in six months? If Solaris ends up folding, will another publisher be willing to pick up the Veridon series at book two? For that matter, will the sale effect my raw sales numbers, for a variety of reasons? I'm uncertain.

Beyond that, I'm disappointed I won't be working with Mark, Christian and George any more on this project. We worked well together. I have no idea where I'm going from here, and who I'll be dealing with.

I'm a little angry, too. That's natural. But that's business for you.

So I'm moving forward. I don't know if this will be the last Veridon novel. I'd like to do more in the world. I've obviously given it all a lot of thought. But this opens possibilities. In some ways I'm back where I was three years ago, when I first wrote a scene about an airship crashing into a waterfall, and the strange events that sprang from that disaster. I don't have a next book, but I have ideas. I don't have any guarantees, but I have faith in my abilities. And I don't know how anything's going to turn out, but I look forward to getting there.