Well, all sources indicate that ‘Dolls’ would-be publisher Bluechrome has closed down, and the book won’t be published by them.  As they breached the contract initially issued to me in 2007 by not publishing the book within 12 months of said contract being issued, and failed to sign a new contract since then, all rights have automatically returned to me and I’m free to find a new publisher for ‘Dolls’.  Inkermen Press are currently taking a look, and I sincerely hope that they like it enough and that it fits with their image as they seem to be lovely chaps.

The Bluechrome thing turned into a complete mess for everyone involved, with the publisher just cutting off all contact with authors, editors, other companies, etc, and it’s left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths.  But these things happen, and it’s just another symptom of the current economic climate that small publishers such as Bluechrome are snuffed out.  An email letting people know that they were shutting down would have been nice, but nevermind.  I just hope they don’t suddenly print ‘Dolls’ in the near future without having the rights if it’s already been picked up somewhere else.  That part’s the biggest stumbling block I’m encountering now in finding a new publisher, as no one wants to be sued for poaching someone else’s author.

To anyone who’s put their name down on Amazon or anywhere else for a copy of ‘Dolls’, retract the order and sit tight.  Hopefully it’ll be released properly under a different publisher, and there’ll actually be a book to hold.  With words in it and everything.

In other news, my PhD has officially started and is looking like terribly hard work as well as very enjoyable.  Today is the drudgery of setting up initial supervisor meetings, chasing up forms and bookmarking useful postgrad research sites for future reference.  The real vertically-difficult part is that the Creative Writing Research Doctorate is still a very young beast and is still fighting to some extent for validation and recognition, so there’s not a lot out there to look at in search of the ‘PhD-ness’ of the PhD (I hate this phrase already).   It’ll work out though, I’m sure.

Ah, exciting times.  By the way, I’m worth 2 camels in Egypt but 40 camels in Turkey.  True fact, that.

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