CHINKS OF LIGHT

In the midst of a battle with my publisher, a ten year old boy wrote to me to ask me to always keep Fell safe in his travels. It had me in floods of tears, because Fell was me in NYC too, but Tarlar never came. But that isn’t true. The story is the story, and Fell and Tarlar travel on forever, side by side, seeing the light in the dark, and healed by each other, as powerfully alive and brave as many are. I’ve never been a quitter, and if Abrams can’t be true to the fans, or me, perhaps there’s a chink of light here still. I learnt yesterday that I of course own the digital rights to all my books, so Phoenix could theoretically publish Fire Bringer, The Telling Pool, and The Sight and Fell, together now, brought together again in one Kindle, Sony or E-book omnibus. Since my publishers shut the doors, perhaps that would reconnect me and a floundering little firm with my own stories, at least, if only online, and the writing wound would be less. But I have to make some kind of living, and need to know if there’s a public for that, and right now there isn’t. The connection is always the writer to the reader, the person who finds depth, insight, inspiration, fear, hope and beauty in the journey you try to go on. Of course editors are important, especially commissioning ones, but learn some humility too in front of the artist, successful and unsuccessful. Need to think over the weekend. DCD