Honor At Stake, the Book that will not Die

Honor At Stake was pulled from Amazon this week. But don't worry, it's going to come back.

To start with, My work with Damnation / Eternal, / Caliburn press is done. That's it. Game over. Why? In part, I don't know. It was a bit of an accident.

I did ask to have my books back. I was expecting at least a conversation. I would have said that they might want to keep Honor at Stake, perhaps the Matthew Kovach novel Summer Death Camp, and we'd work on it from there.

But, nope. I asked, they removed everything from the servers, and gone so fast, it made my head spin.

And, of course, I couldn't even get my original file. So the ARC PDF had to be made into a document, the corrections had to be re-imputed, everything with Damnation / Caliburn had to be ripped out, then turned back into a PDF.

So, yeah, this has been fun.

For the record, the upcoming schedule looks like this.

Sometime in the next 24 hours, I will be submitting the entire Love at First Bite series thus far to Castalia House.  Yes, surprise, I finally have a name to the series. It's only been on my computer for 10 years, and published for 9 months. But whatever, right?

Anyway. Why am I dropping everything on Castalia House? Because I hadn't thought that I might make it anywhere with this series. And now that I have, I might actually like someone like a publisher to help me out with it.  But, I'm not waiting for them. Why? Because, simply put, Honor At Stake has already been picked up by one publishing company. It's been published. It's out there. If Castalia has a problem with it being published already, nothing will change that -- including self publishing it via Createspace.

Also, I'm assuming rejection. Why? Because if I plan for ONLY success, Murphy's law dictates that it's going to screw me over. But, if I have everything ready to go when I'm rejected, then I might have a shot.

Yes, welcome to the inside of my brain. It's dark in there.

Now, Set to Kill, if it's rejected, will be rejected in the next week or so. So as it's coming back to me, Love at First Bite #1-3 will be headed in their direction.  They have a guaranteed one month turn around time on books. So by the time I have Set to Kill up and running with no problems, I should have confirmation that Love at First Bite is rejected, and I'm ready to hit publish on book two.

So, the schedule, barring acceptance by Castalia, looks like this....

Honor At Stake, first week in June.
Tearful Puppies Bite Back and Set to Kill, second or third week in June.
Murphy's Law of Vampires, First or second week in July.
Live and Let Bite, probably September.or so.

Obviously, there are a number of factors that go along with this. Castalia, is, of course, the big factor here. if they decide they want the books, it may take months for them to be available.

So if you want them fast, hope Castalia doesn't want them. If you want them done well, you're probably going to have to wait.

Another thing to worry about is the art. The cover art for Honor at Stake is being put together over a series of days. I spent all day yesterday taking photos at Mount Olivet cemetery in Maspeth, just to get something that could be used for the cover.

So yeah, this is going to be fun. The art can be done in record time, but that depends on if my artist has other things to do. Unlike me, she has a life. I just have my books.

Yup. I'm Pathetic. I just have my novels. Oh well.

Look at it this way, next year, I'll at least have three novels to be considered next year for Sad Puppies. Perhaps even Rabid Puppies, if Castalia likes me.

Who knows? Though at this minute, who cares? I need a nap.  Sorry to cut this one short, but damn, I'm tired.

Be well, all, and God bless.

Catholic Conspiracies II: Revenge of the Vatican Ninjas.

Last week, I mentioned that the vast, massive conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church amuse me. I discussed some specific issues and theories, but I find them all funny, almost no matter the details. Why?
Dear God in Heaven, where do I start?

The theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.

SECRET SOCIETIES

One running theme of most of the conspiracy theories is that there is a “conspiracy of silence” running around within the Vatican, the hierarchy, an order, pick one or all. This pops up in almost any fiction where a Catholic priest appears.

Given the news of the last decade, anyone should see an immediate problem. Not only does the Church of Rome write everything down, they never throw anything out. This is a bureaucracy that has held onto the divorce petition from Henry VIII of England, written in the early 16th century.  We've held onto it for nearly five hundred years, and we haven't thrown it out yet.

If there were a conspiracy in the church, there will likely be paperwork to document it, and they'd hold onto it with their dying breath. Bad habit for a conspiracy.

But, the way I look at it, the Vatican is essentially the world's biggest marble office building, complete with Dilberts and the occasional pointy-haired boss … or pointy-hatted boss.

In the current day and age, any bureaucracy can keep a secret for a few years. But two thousand? Really?