01.31.00

January 31, 2000

Posted in General at 6:27 PM by Jack Chalker

THE SEA IS FULL OF STARS is still in bookstores and online stores; better act fast. There is a good deal of evidence that they sent out NO review copies and that they printed only what they had to. If anybody doubts that nobody at the publisher is even looking at these titles, note that they didn’t even bother to update my URL and even left in the date on my intro for the book that shows that it wsa done exactly THREE YEARS ago. Still, it’s an interesting book that goes some new places in Well World mythology and has, I think, a really bang-up ending.

Now out (or so they tell me—I have not yet seen copies so they might be switching things around again) in the “How Fast Can We Get the Chalker Backlog Out of Here” department is The Moreau Factor. This book has gotten a good deal of prepublication notice, both from reviewers outside the SF field and from non-US publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I just hope they print enough, for a change, on THIS side of the ocean. Please note that you will need Adobe Acrobat 4.x to open and read these samples (Windows, Mac, Unix, doesn’t matter). If you don’t have 4.x, click on the Acrobat logo on the site map and you’ll be taken to where you can get it as a free download. I will keep the file on the site until the end of February, when we’ll go on to the next one to come up. Again, act fast. I do not think Del Rey will print many of ANY of these books and is taking even the ones still earning money and forcing them out of print.

PLEASE! If you have a web site, put a link to mine on it with some good words and tell your friends to go out and buy the books as they appear. And, after me, then do it for your other favorite authors, too, and not just the ones who write science fiction and fantasy. I am convinced that the present and future of fiction in North America and probably elsewhere is being killed and there’s little we who write it can do about it.

At last report it was possible to order and get Priam’s Lens again. If you missed it, please check it out. It is a stand-alone book. No word yet on Balshazzar’s Serpent’s pub date from Baen, but it’s in and they processed things so fast that I have to think it’s a mid-2000 book. Del Rey has scheduled Ghost of the Well of Souls (not my title) for April, which will be the second novel tying up the loose ends and answering all the questions that didn’t get covered in SEA IS FULL OF STARS. Please note, however, that while the books should be read in the order published, they actually both stand on their own. SEA isn’t a “to be continued” type of book.

No personal appearances scheduled yet. We will also be at Balticon in Baltimore over Easter weekend, Midwestcon in Cincinatti the end of June, the last Rivercon in Louisville, KY the end of July, and the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago Labor Day weekend. Beyond those, who knows? No GoH gigs or similar invitations for any time in 2000.

I still owe two more books yet to Baen in a new trilogy (three stand-alones in the same universe, not actually a serial) and expect to finish them this year, although I think only one will be a 2000 title. I also owe one more to Del Rey. No new deals, so after that I have no idea….

Folks keep asking the same questions, so newcomers to the site would do well to read the OLDNEWS (click the link below) and also the info at the start of the bibliography. The most asked question still is when will the sixth Dancing Gods book be out, which shows nobody’s been taking seriously or reading my account that absolutely no publisher is interested in it. These are tough times for 95% of the people who’ve made a living writing fiction in the past, not just me. Case in point: my readers are still buying every copy of my work that they print, but they have cut the print runs and refuse to reprint. Kind of hard to rebuild, huh?

Thanks for your good words, encouragement, and support. If you have a web site, put a link on there to mine. If you like my work, recommend me to others. I’ll try and keep everybody up to date here. jlc

Permalink