Fans and Decisions.

Spending time with your greatest fan is a plus especially when he's your grandson. On a recent trip to Florida for a high school graduation I was bugged by my grandson as to when the final book of The Henge Betrayed series will be available. The interesting conversation made me feel great. He has read the first three books more than once and has passed them along to one of his teachers who is also waiting for the book to arrive. J feels the books would make a great video game since there are so many adventures in the three he's read so far. He's a great reader which may be unusual in a boy but he's always enjoyed reading. During out talk, I told him what I had done with the fourth book. That was to make a decision. The book had been at the publisher for a year with no word about what was going on despite a number of emails. In this day of electronic publishing there's no reason for books to linger with the publisher. I don't know why this happened but looking back on my contract, I realized this was par for this particular publisher. Granted the books haven't sold well with them perhaps my fault but perhaps not since I've promoted and placed ads for the stories in a number of venues. So I came to a decision.

The first book Flight was out of contract and the fourth book was withdrawn. Rights back were given. I decided that I won't sign contracts that state a book's stay with a publisher will begin on publication rather than on acceptance but that's for another day. What was the Henge Betrayed series will be published under the series name as Affinities and the first book will be out maybe as early as today and the fourth book will follow in several weeks. This comes about three weeks after acceptance. The first book Escape will have a new cover the falling tower from the Tarot cards and it is a symbolic cover. The figures falling from the tower to me represent the four children's parents who metamorphosize into birds who protect the children. The final book is entitled Confrontations and my grandson is eagerly waiting for it to arrive. He says he'll but his mother to let him download it onto her Kindle Fire since he must read it right away. The book will also be in print and I'll have to order a slew since most of my grandchildren have a major or minor role in the books.

So that's my news. I'll have to figure how to change the cover that's used here on the site as the book that shows who I am and that will be done soon. I want the Confrontations cover there when that happens. I wish I could have spoken to his teacher to discover why she liked the books. Building fans a book at a time is a good way to go. By the way I'll be J. L. Walters on the covers to distinguish these books from the ones I write for other publishers.