Tag: milkweed triptych

Yesterday, I received the pretty-close-but-not-quite-final cover art for the mass market paperback edition of Bitter Seeds and the hardcover/ebook edition of The Coldest War. 

At long last!  I’ve been waiting a long time for this!  Felt like I’d been waiting forever to see the new package.  (I learned about the repackaging in August of last year; I wrote a long blog post about it here.   All of the information in that post about the original cover art, bookseller reaction to it, and the decision to revamp the marketing approach is still relevant.  The projected publication dates in that post, however, are no longer up to date, as has also been chronicled in excruciating detail.)

It was worth the wait.  WELL worth the wait.

Below the cut, feast your eyes on major awesomeness from the superb Chris McGrath.

A nice surprise that came clear out of the blue today:  I’ve seen the new covers for the mass market paperback edition of Bitter Seeds and the hardcover/ebook edition of The Coldest War.

It’s too early to unveil them yet.  But I will say this: Wowsers!

I just can’t wait to have framed prints hanging in my house.  Can’t.  Wait.  They’re gorgeous.  Absolutely gorgeous.   And, when seen together, they’re clearly part of the same series– that elusive “package” has finally materialized!  And it is good.  It is very good.

Happy Birthday, little book!  You’re one year old today.

You’ve aged so quickly.  How is it possible?  It seems like only yesterday you were nothing but a vague, faintly naive idea.

I remember how thrilled I was when I took you home from the hospital first saw you in a bookstore.   I thought you were the cutest book ever.  I still do.  But not  everybody agrees, and that’s why your mommy and daddy your publisher and author are working hard to make new clothing devise new cover art for you

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post for a couple of weeks. 

There are two reasons for the difficulty.  First and foremost, this topic makes me feel helpless, and furious, and very very depressed.  Second, I’ve been dithering over how much of this I can talk about in public.  The very last thing I’d ever want to do is sound like a disgruntled troublemaker.

But a few days ago I unwisely let something slip in the comment thread to a recent blog post, where I thought very few people would see it.  Instead, it ended up on Twitter.  (I really wish I’d taken a more moderate tone in my off-the-cuff comments there.)

So I’ll cut to the chase: My publisher has delayed—yet again—the publication dates for the mass market paperback of Bitter Seeds, as well as for the hardcover of Milkweed #2, The Coldest War.  This means that contrary to my last announcement (which came on the heels of a face-to-face meeting with my editor), Coldest War will NOT debut in October 2011.

This post isn’t intended as a woe-is-me story.  But lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the publication date for Coldest War, and I’ve decided that if I have to announce yet another delay, I’m going to lay out the situation in as much detail as I can.  My intent is to give a clear and complete accounting of the history of the Milkweed books’ publication process.  Because it seems that every so often I’m forced to come up here to eat my words and rescind a previously announced publication schedule.  Which makes me look, and feel, like a lying bastard.  Which, you know?  Not fun.

But anybody kind enough to care about my books deserves to know why I keep changing my tune.  Please believe me, brothers and sisters: it ain’t by choice.

Below the cut, I’ll try to explain how and why this is happening.  (I say “try” because, frankly, I don’t fully understand it myself.)   But I want to be very clear that I’ve never, ever announced a publication date that didn’t come straight from my publisher.  And in the meantime, my agent and I have done everything in our power to try to push this series forward, including most especially meeting my contractual obligations and even finishing each manuscript ahead of schedule.  (Which is pretty much the only thing an author has power over.)

Sigh.

OK.  So what happened?  And why will more than 2 years pass between the publication of Bitter Seeds and its sequel, The Coldest War?