It does exist, honest, but it is in fact unpublished.
It was supposed to be published by Firebird, but first the manuscript was late (that was my fault), and then it was too long but they thought it could work as a two-volume novel, only by the time I'd expanded it, the other two-volume novels they had been trying out had pretty much tanked, and also the economy had collapsed and publishers were frantic and paranoid, so they said it absolutely could not be longer than 100,000 words. I am the first to admit that this was in fact the contractual word count, but nobody had ever really held me to that before. So after some angst and a lot of complaining, I went about shrinking the book back down. I got it down to about 125,000 and the editor initially felt that it could be shortened to the required length by careful line editing. However -- I am about to use the passive voice because I'm not entirely clear, and probably am not meant to be, on who thought what at what level of the publisher -- it was felt that, first, the book was not actually YA, though it was supposed to be; second, cutting it even as much as I had done had rendered it excessively opaque and perhaps done damage to theme and plot (the editor thought this, definitely); and third, basically, the manuscript was not acceptable and could not be made so given the required length.
So they cancelled it, which was traumatic for me AND for the editor. And then it took forever and part of a day for the rights to come back to me. I fired my agent when I realized I didn't feel she would handle things properly in the wake of the cancellation, and that might not have been the wisest timing, as it made finding out what was going on with the paperwork entirely my problem and such things are not really in my skill set.
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Date: 2015-04-28 05:23 pm (UTC)It was supposed to be published by Firebird, but first the manuscript was late (that was my fault), and then it was too long but they thought it could work as a two-volume novel, only by the time I'd expanded it, the other two-volume novels they had been trying out had pretty much tanked, and also the economy had collapsed and publishers were frantic and paranoid, so they said it absolutely could not be longer than 100,000 words. I am the first to admit that this was in fact the contractual word count, but nobody had ever really held me to that before. So after some angst and a lot of complaining, I went about shrinking the book back down. I got it down to about 125,000 and the editor initially felt that it could be shortened to the required length by careful line editing. However -- I am about to use the passive voice because I'm not entirely clear, and probably am not meant to be, on who thought what at what level of the publisher -- it was felt that, first, the book was not actually YA, though it was supposed to be; second, cutting it even as much as I had done had rendered it excessively opaque and perhaps done damage to theme and plot (the editor thought this, definitely); and third, basically, the manuscript was not acceptable and could not be made so given the required length.
So they cancelled it, which was traumatic for me AND for the editor. And then it took forever and part of a day for the rights to come back to me. I fired my agent when I realized I didn't feel she would handle things properly in the wake of the cancellation, and that might not have been the wisest timing, as it made finding out what was going on with the paperwork entirely my problem and such things are not really in my skill set.
Anyway, yes, new book, after some more tinkering.
P.