Your faith was strong but you needed proof

I read Cat's blog this morning. Guess now her bad mood is explained! Christmas was pretty well fucked by emails received on Christmas eve. Nice.

After reading that, it occurred to me that I'm not the only one with trust issues.

The first publishing company that signed Cat went belly-up seven days before the supposed release of killerbyte. That was when she met Jeffrey Deaver and he gave her some great advice. Oddly - the two books he signed for her that day have both mysteriously disappeared.
That's beside the point. The point is he offered some advice and she heeded it.

What happened next... you all know what happened next Penguin NZ said she wasn't kiwi enough. (Makes me laugh every fucking time I think about it.)
A chance meeting via Barry Eisler's forum led to Cat signing with Rebel.

Three books later and right as the 'last' lot of edits are underway for the 4th book in the series, it looks like Rebel will no longer exist in its current form. She has no idea if the 4th book will ever be seen or if she should even bother finishing the edits. (Which she will, despite not wanting to write at the moment - because she just will.)
The last six months have been super shit and this is not unexpected but happening with more haste than Cat realized.

Which has left Cat wanting to kill.
Seriously, twice?
Will she ever trust another publisher?
Doubtful.

At least this time there won't be a six-eight month fight to get her rights back (if indeed it comes to that - because right now... nothing is certain.).

The crazy thing is - Cat's books should be selling like hot cakes... they should be. And they're not. Which pretty much means the publisher is not doing what they should be doing.
So, big changes maybe the answer... except these big changes may mean starting all over again and wiping the last five years of work. It might be years before anyone sees this series again. Because this is the SLOWEST industry in the world. And also because Cat doesn't believe that agents who didn't want to know her five years ago will want her now.
Sure on a good day she knows she's a fucking excellent writer... but on a normal day... why the fuck would they be interested now?
Where's the proof?

Proof!

Not - "of course things have changed blah blah blah.." because we ALL know that it's luck and timing. LUCK.
Fucking ridiculous that careers are made and broken on something as intangible as luck.

It's not like the real world where you work hard and reap rewards... this is totally giving yourself up to what someone else wants today. It could change in five minutes. It might change by the time you hit send on the email.You miss a fucking comma and you're screwed.

Up shot is... I may not exist for much longer. So get those books while you can!
It's not that Cat will stop telling my story, it's that there might be no one publishing it.

Right now... I'm going to go find Delta and let them know. Then we're going to the range. Something needs to die ... it should be a couple of dozen targets and not an actual person.

Ellie.