So at the end of last year I had a kind of miraculous writer’s week, one of those damn-I’m-actually-doing-great moments, and in the span of about three days two different editors emailed me expressing interest in publishing two very different books of mine. One of those books was Infinity Mathing at the Shore & Other Disruptions, which lovingly came to life with the help of Sam Richard at WeirdPunk Books earlier this year. Sam is great, and the experience has been nothing short of wonderful.

However! There was that other editor and book! How did that particular venture go?

Well, let’s discuss the book itself. The novella is a queer splatterpunk western that’s essentially a very melodramatic way for me to confront my dead parents – it’s got necromancers and a giant meat city – all the good stuff. I’ve been trying to find a home for it for about a year and a half now, and when unnamed editor of unnamed publishing house said they were interested, I was delighted. I signed a contract committing my book to a publication date with them in 2025, and celebrated my New Year in very high spirits.

Now a couple of months ago I discovered that the unnamed editor deleted their social media, then basically did the same for unnamed publishing house’s social media – trashing old posts and leaving accounts barren. The website for unnamed publishing house was also deleted, its content wiped clean.

Not great omens.

I have contacted unnamed editor about the deletion, and the status of my book. No response. Numerous authors have apparently done so, with equally fruitless results. The lack of response is very disheartening, to say the least. It’s also unprofessional, and unfortunately a trend in indie publishing these days that frustrates the hell out of me. I don’t care if your company goes under, you need to release your authors from their contracts so they can continue to seek publication deals. Authors depend on these deals in order to survive, career-wise: at least let your authors know that they are free.

So anyway now I have a splatterpunk western novella that still needs a home, but is in contract limbo: a kind of writer’s purgatory, if you will. I’m consulting colleagues and friends about how to proceed, but for now, the book exists only in legend. And on my hard drive.

Detours like this in publishing can make me feel a bit lost, but that’s okay. Sometimes getting lost gives us an opportunity to pause and look at the scenery. Smell the fresh air. Get out of the car and scream at the tires. Hurl our cell phones into the woods and sob wildly while rocking in a fetal position. A variety of diverting activities!

With one potential book parked on the bench all season, my line-up has been looking pretty picked over, so I’ve been working on projects again. That’s right – I couldn’t pick just one to focus on – so there are THREE big projects sitting on my roster at the moment, equally ambitious in scope and design (how polyamorous of me). I will be referring to them as SLASHER, CYBERNOIR, and ZOMBIE STORY. SLASHER is a fun queer retrowave architectural horror romp a la CHOPPING MALL (1986), and will probably be novella-length. CYBERNOIR is a novel that’s been pickling in the brain barrels for over a decade now – it’s a queer cyberpunk detective story – think BLADE RUNNER (1982) but queer, pro sex work, i.e. actually fucking cool. ZOMBIE STORY is a serious novel – a horror story that lingers within the psychological and emotional realms of its characters – I don’t want to talk too much about it yet but it’s depressing as hell and I hope that you love it.