At last the story can be told...

I've always taken the decision not to snark in public at other industry people, but now that Noble Romance have decided to leave the industry, I'd like to say a little about my experiences with "Sand" in the anthology "Last Gasp". Now, if you're thinking, "Never heard of either of those!" I'm not surprised. Noble did very little to get the book sold and once we saw the way the wind was blowing, we authors took our feet off the gas.

Anybody remember the original print version? Once it emerged (behind schedule and after much nagging from us) it was the size of a house brick. Somewhere between publisher and printer something had gone wrong, words per page were reduced and the thing was twice the size it should have been. Now, that sort of thing can happen to anyone, but it was just one thing among many. The number of times they got the royalty report/payment wrong was staggering. Such royalties/sales as there were - the only thing I have to compare it with is Speak Its Name, which is another anthology of historical shorts, in which both myself and Erastes appear. Speak Its Name sales have continually outstripped those of Last Gasp.

So, what next? I'm considering sprucing up "Sand" and self publishing it. Not done that before and this seems the right time to dip my toes in the water.

Talking of sand (Radio 2 link!), here are some more holiday piccies.