Monday, January 20, 2014

Closed Doors Means New Beginnings

Greetings readers. Let’s take a trip back in time shall we? Nov 17, 2010, to be exact. I received a contract from XOXO publishing for my short story, True Meaning of Love. Wow. I was so excited, elated, and relieved that a publisher took the chance, giving me, a new author, the chance to release a book. I had high expectations. No, not millions of copies sold or a best seller at Amazon. I only expected to make a dent in the publishing world, to get my name out there and improve as an author as time went along. And I did. I got my name out there with this book as well as A Second Chance and The Power of Muse, along with other shorts I did in their anthologies. However, authors rarely stay with one publisher throughout their writing career. They move on to other publishers or they try their hands at doing it on their own. This was no backlash against XOXO but instead, just a way to see if I could make several dents throughout the industry.

And I have with all 3 names. Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time writing under BL and Michael hasn’t really had the chance to publish with other companies. I plan on changing that now with some revisions as well as new stories I’m sending out to publishers. However, I also had the above mentioned stories in the back of my mind. I wanted to totally redo the stories, delve deeper into the characters and hopefully find a new home for them either with another publisher or publishing myself. Well, now I get that chance. Yesterday, I received a letter from the acquisitions editor that XOXO is closing its doors. Wow. In truth I’m not really shocked. I hadn’t really kept in touch with the owner and only talked with the editor a couple of times recently when I wanted these stories pulled but I suspected that things weren’t going as expected and the person in charge decided to fold.

Interestingly, I’ve seen this happen not only to XOXO but No Boundaries Press which closed its doors last year and to date hasn’t paid a lot of people their money owed, me included. At least with XOXO, she did, and for that I am grateful. And though I just said I’m not shocked, I am saddened that the company wasn’t able to go on. I wish no ill will on anybody, not even the criminal from No Boundaries but authors see this happen all the time and yeah, the backlist gets smaller. Hell, Michael’s lost four books in the last year! *smiles* But it’s an opportunity to re-work these stories and make them better. Michael and I will do the character arcs we didn’t do in 2010. We’ll plot these out and make better stories for A Second Chance and The Power of Muse. We’ll incorporate True Meaning in with the second book to make it a more complete story and we’ll move on. Me and this muse will be okay. Yeah Michael, we will. *pats the muse*


I’m excited about this new beginning for all three of these stories and look forward to diving back into the characters. Yeah, I lose 3 very awesome covers done by Amanda Struz but I thank her and XOXO for giving me a wonderful start back then and a new beginning for the near future. 

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