Sometimes the universe tickles me
Long, long ago in the dark ages (1982) I bought a fantasy novel that I just fell madly in love with, by a new author named PC Hodgell. It wasn't terribly long, it was a dense, difficult read because there was so much going on and so many characters, and I adored it. It took forever for the sequel to come out - 3 years to be exact. After that, and quite disappointingly to me, I thought she'd actually stopped writing, because the *next* in the series came out a whole NINE years later, 1994, and I didn't find it until '95.
As the internet came into being, I would occasionally look her up to see if anything new was on deck. I found a Yahoo group dedicated to her books about 8 years ago - very little traffic because there wasn't much new to talk about, but it was a small, fervently dedicated group of her fans none-the-less, that dissected every word and had long discussions on the concepts of honor she had created. She had an omnibus version of the first 2 books re-printed in 2000, a collection of short stories in 2002, and finally a new novel in the series came out in 2006. I despaired that the series would ever finish before she died of old age.
Over that span, she had the absolute worst luck with publishers - they all went belly up, and she was hosed financially every time, as they always owed her money when they did that she never saw a dime of. The last one even went under with a huge stash of her last book in its warehouse - she drove to Atlanta from her home in Wisconsin to see if she could at least save the stock only to find out they'd destroyed them - so she saw not a single payment for her last book.
This spring, she finally started her own Live Journal, and I joined it like the squeeing fangirl I am. She has long been a person who has been challenged with depression - I'm fairly sure she's a bit manic-depressive, like so many writers, and absolutely detests reading her own books - and we have been serving as a bit of a cheerleading team when she gets down. We also answer questions about what happened in the old books so she doesn't have to go re-read them, lol, after all she started writing her 1st book as a teen almost 40 years ago and can't always remember the details.
She has a new publisher, the next book will come out in the Spring, and her first 2 books are again being re-released in an omnibus version in January in anticipation of the new one, which is all fabulous news for her fans, but is also freaking her out because she now has deadlines, which isn't something she deals with well. I'm likely to meet her next year if she gets a book tour going, as I sent her a ton of info on the fantasy book store in the Bay Area (of which there are MANY), and heck she may end up staying on my couch.
This past weekend she posted that she was really down, as the deadline for proof reading the manuscript for the omnibus was Thursday, she'd barely started, it was interrupting the new novel, and it was sending her into that spiral of depression that meant she was crawling into bed and anesthetizing herself instead of working. So, I asked if we could help, which led to everyone else jumping in and offering, which astonished her immensely but led to her immediately farming out the chapters she had left to all of us. I got 3 in the second book.
So, 25 years after reading and falling in love with this book, I have a teesny part in its re-publication, and a heartfelt thank-you from one of my favorite authors, which just tickles me to no end.