Posts Tagged ‘delay’

The Shadow Commission delayed until August 11

For those who have pre-ordered The Shadow Commission, my upcoming third Dark Arts novel from Tor Books, be informed that due to the effects of the ongoing pandemic on the publishing industry and related businesses, the release date of my book (and many others) has been delayed.

Originally scheduled to publish on June 9, 2020, The Shadow Commission is now scheduled to debut on August 11, 2020.

I know it’s a bummer, but there’s really nothing that can be done about it. Many publishers, including Tor’s corporate parent company, Macmillan, are laying off employees and reducing the salaries of those who remain. Printers are running out of paper to print books, because the supply lines for their just-in-time inventory model have been disrupted. There are fewer truckers to cart books from printers to warehouses, and from warehouses to retailers. And the brick-and-mortar retailers are mostly closed, and the biggest online retailer isn’t accepting books right now.

Kind of a perfect storm of suck, really.

At any rate, please be patient. Here’s hoping that when the book arrives at last, you’ll all agree it was worth the wait.

 

#SFWApro

Today’s frustrations

Thunderstorms are moving into the New York area, threatening to preempt my weekend plans.

My blog is malfunctioning in myriad small ways. The plugin that’s supposed to gather a daily digest of my Twitter updates stopped working last week, so I replaced it with a different one. That one worked for a few days, then it died, too. I tried upgrading my WordPress software and the plugin versions. No dice. So much for auto-feeding the blog beast with cheap tweets. Another plan foiled.

So far I haven’t done any writing today. Instead, I’ve been scrambling around and running errands. I still have to clean the cats’ litter box. Oh, joy.

Time to go get the dirty work done and then get to writing. If I can. Sigh.

Good to Be Home

…It's almost 11 p.m., and Kara and I are finally back home after a weekend away visiting her parents in Northern Virginia. It was a very short trip — in late Friday night, Saturday with the family, back out this afternoon — so there was no opportunity to look up friends who live in the area, alas.

But the real bummer was a three-hour delay of our train, caused by the nebulously phrased “police action on the tracks” outside of Trenton, N.J.

I had other items to post about, but it will keep until tomorrow. Now it is time to prep everything needed for my wife's workday-morning routine, then crash before it gets too much later….