Bad news (and a little bit of good news)

I'm afraid I have some bad news. As you might have heard, Torquere Press - my publisher - is going under. It happened about a year after the original owners sold Torquere to new owners.

It has been a bit of a long process, starting last summer when the royalties stopped being paid (and yes, that means that if you've bought any of my books during the last nine months, I haven't seen a penny of that money). It was also a bit of an ugly process (publishers going under often are). At first, we heard a lot of news from the owner about her being sick - very sick, very often. The author forums were filled with concern and well wishes and understanding - after all, not being paid is nothing compared to being critically ill, so we all were very understanding. Then suddenly a link showed up revealing that the owner hadn't actually been in the hospital yet another time as claimed, but in jail - for not paying an author.

So basically, we have no idea whether the owner really has been sick or merely lying all the time. I must say, personally, that I find it very hard to trust anybody who lied to me like that. Not least because I find it outrageous that we still aren't being paid. The owner is hoping to avoid an "expensive" bankruptcy case - but if "expensive" means "paying what I owe people", then I have a hard time supporting that wish. I want to be paid for my work; it's not okay that the owner has taken all the money I've earned for the last nine months and simply put it in her own pocket. Especially since the math isn't hard; when you as a publisher get your income from Amazon or any other seller, you don't touch half of it. Because it's not your money. It belongs to the authors. If that concept is too hard for you, then you probably shouldn't be a publisher at all. Well, they aren't; not for long anyway.

The really miserable thing wasn't so much the authors fighting among each other (the name calling wasn't pretty), but the fact that the owner stopped communicating - and we weren't given back our rights. That meant that the owner could keep selling our books, taking the money for herself, and none of us could do anything, because no other publisher will touch a book if it's sold by somebody else (doh). That left us all in a terrible situation: Somebody else had basically stolen our works, and we were helpless to do anything about it, since neither emails nor snail mail were answered.

Fortunately, that has changed, at least for me; I've been given back my rights on December 17 2016, and the publisher now has 30 days from that date to take down my books. It hasn't happened yet; I guess she's trying to get as much money out of it as possible (and yes, that also makes me mad; is it really such a foreign subject that you do not steal from people?). I'm angry, and I'm also sad; I was really happy with Torquere under the old owners. "Everybody deserves a happy ending" was such a beautiful motto. Alas, that's gone now.

What happens now: As soon as the books are taken down, I can start looking for a new publisher; I already have one in my sights. If they bite, you'll be able to buy my books again - I'm not sure how long that's going to take, but I will make sure to update my website as soon as I know it.

The good news (and yes, there is one good thing about this): I've started writing again and I'm currently putting the finishing touches on another book featuring the world's grumpiest Russian bear and the universe's most stubborn pain pig/art historian/karate geek. I've never had so much fun writing a book (or blushed so much. Those guys take any chance they can to get kinky). But I'll tell you more about that in another and more upbeat blog post. For now I need to keep Mischa from killing his wedding guests and Tom from killing Mischa.