I got an email this morning that started me thinking. Among other things, it said:

Will you ever do a follow up to "To Visit The Queen?" I love those books!

Well, I love them too -- I've always had a soft spot for those characters. After a few moments I wrote back:

Though I had a third book planned, the first two have never sold very well on either side of the Atlantic, so there is (unfortunately) zero chance that any publisher will buy a third one. I have occasionally considered writing the book and self-publishing it -- but again, there's no guarantee that enough people would ever buy the self-published book to repay the investment in time and money that it would take me to write and publish it. For the time being, at least, it seems that I'm going to have to concentrate on the "mainstream" YW books.

But thanks for your interest!

And then I started to get up and go make some tea.

And then I sat down again.

The outline for the third book, The Big Meow, was completed in 1998. The series' then-editor at Warner read it and liked it, but after consulting with the sales staff -- as editors must -- she passed on it: what we both knew at that point was that the first two books weren't selling anything like strongly enough to justify taking the gamble of publishing the third one. So I sighed and put the outline away. (For those who're curious, it completes the trilogy, and -- like the second book -- has a strong time-travel component: but this one's set in just-post-WWII Los Angeles. Those who remember the film Cast a Deadly Spell will immediately catch something of the intended atmosphere.)

Every now and then I'd get another of these emails, and send out a response more or less like the one you see above...and then I'd sigh. Because it's a book it would be a lot of fun to write. And of course every now and then a fan will say, "You should just go ahead and write it!" And I sigh some more. Though I absolutely do my work because I love doing it, I'm also running a business here. And I have a lot of calls on my time. Right now there are about six other projects cooking along on the top of my creative cooktop (...yes indeed, she's going into food idiom again...this is what happens when I blog before breakfast...) and in each of those cases, people have put it in writing that they're going to give me money when I turn the work in. I therefore know that, when the dust settles, my cats (and husband) will eat. And that's a good thing.

This situation, though, would be much different. I would be taking something of a leap of faith -- itself not so terrible a thing: I do that every time I sit down at the computer to write something. But this leap -- essentially writing a book "on spec", something I have not done since my first novel twenty-five years ago -- would involve putting in months of labor (which at this point in my career translates into a pretty hefty pile of cash) for a very, very uncertain return. I might never see even a reasonable percentage of that investment returned...which I would find extremely annoying. Time is too damn precious to waste.

So now I turn to the readership and ask you/them to give me some data to work with.

The obvious solution to this problem is publication on demand (POD). I don't mind doing that. But you have to understand that it ain't cheap at the reader's end. Without dragging you all through the math -- which would take me a while, and I have enough trouble with math after the caffeine hits, let alone before it -- let's just say that a "trade paperback" perfect-bound copy of The Big Meow is going to cost you hardcover prices, not paperback. If I'm to make any money at all on the deal (by which I mean, at least recoup my publishing and labor expenses), you're going to be paying $20-25 for a copy of this book.

Would you?

If you would, drop me an email at this address: (now decommissioned for this purpose)

I'd also ask those of you who read this blog and frequent LiveJournal or other communities where there might be interested parties to please forward the contents of this message to them in whatever ways seem most appropriate...

...The ball's in your court(s) now. Let's see what you have to say.