Hi Tiffany,
thanks for writing again. I’m very positive about Phoenix, readers’ kind and interested responses, and trying to let the issue ‘go’, but some very deep principles indeed were abandoned in this, both in life and in publishing. The astounding fear generated in New York around it has much to say of our times, perhaps, and a harm that can spread well beyond something as apparently unimportant as books. I did not behave very well, at times, but Abrams did something that was not only inhuman but actually breached essential US legal, even Constitutional principles. That’s why it’s flagged at the top of a blog. It is boring and repetitive sometimes, even damaging to put it there, but it was also blind and unnecessary. It is people who make the ‘systems’ we hide in or blame, and people who stand over real harm, or actually cruelty. In other examples that can go really dark. Abrams could and should make it right, but never will, and it is also about the sad climate in Publishing nowadays. As for The Sight 3, that would have happened too. I was told in the middle of it, by my editor Susan Van Metre, now Abrams VP, that fans ‘would love’ a sequel to Fell, and wrote a proposal, but that too was jettisoned, in a completely inadequate response to another book there and an editor’s ‘power over her list’, as my time and fans were disrespected.
As for my stories, Fell, Kar, you’ve hit a nail on the head. But Fell was the novel written at a wonderful time, that a person refused to even read, once talked about in warm jokes during editorial, but later part of awful invasions, by both an ex and my own editor, side by side. No writer or artist can be forced to function under those shocking conditions. No one can be dictated to like that, but see such dreadful and cynical hypocrisy. I hope they wake up to the harm they did, not only involving me but Howard Reeves. Nor was the story only about Abrams, but friendships back in London, and a laziness and emotional negligence that well reflected the passions and rivalries of wolf packs! Wolves though also seem to look after their own. Let’s move on and tell better stories about many things. Thank you for the encouragement, fans are only and rightly interested in the quality of stories, not the back room business of publishing, which here got straight into the front room.
all very best, DCD
To David Clement-Davies
I know Abrams stung you right through the middle but (being positive) forget about them. Your on this site now, your releasing ebooks on Amazon. Your doing wonderful for yourself. Look up reviews on amazon on paperback on some of your books:
The Sight:
Fire Bringer:
These reviews are not towards the publisher but to your work. The Sight has about 182 reviews.
Forget about The Man and continue this site’s great future.
You have my fan love, I don’t care about a publisher when I read a book I only care about the story, how it’s written, how character personalities are written and their situations. For a good example: Kar from The Sight, Kar is dragged away from his family when The Balker kidnap his siblings by Skop and adopted into Larka’s family and he seemingly accepts what he’s got before being separated from Larka and having to turn lone but calls Huttser father near the end when reunited with his pack.
I remember The Sight like it was a movie. I think it’s your best. Fire Bringer was good too but for me, I personally love dogs more then deer.
I hope Sight 3, will happen one day and you can give us the epilogue where Fell and Tarlar and puppies. Puppies would insure Fell’s happiness I think he needed it after the end of Fell, Kar needs to be with Larka. I’m sorry but I can’t imagine any other wolf with him.
This is the ending I’d write as a fan but my plot and layout planning sucks.
Hope this encourages you keep on your future track. All the best.
Tiffany B, A fan
I hope Sight 3 will come around one day.