(Addendum, February 14, 2018, 0845 UT) For all of you visiting this page due to retweets on Twitter and sharing elsewhere across social media: First of all… THANK YOU!! A much longer post will follow later in the day, but we want you to know that the problem described in it has now been solved. Customers at the Ebooks Direct store and kindly donors have completely wiped out our rent arrears. (Or will have done once the funds actually hit our bank account.) And for this, and all your messages of support and affection, Peter and I want to send you our profound thanks. You’ve made a huge difference in our lives, and after the dust settles, both of us look forward to getting back to what passes around here as “business as usual”: the happy work of writing to entertain.
As of this writing I’m going to remove the PayPal.me link from this post, since it’s no longer needed. But our heartfelt thanks again to those who went out of their way to use it. We’ll be in touch with you all to say “thank you” more personally.
As for the store, though, we’re leaving the sale prices running, because (a) lots of people will be coming along for a while yet who’ve only just seen the original tweets / posts about it, and (b) why not? Everybody likes a sale. 🙂
By the way, for those of you who were looking for ebooks of Peter’s at the store: they’re not there because he is at the moment under exclusive contract (as regards ebooks) to Venture Press in the UK, who market his books on Amazon. You can find them here. If you’re after his nearly-complete backlist — all intensively revised — that’s the place to look.
Finally, if you have customer service issues surrounding ebooks you’ve bought from us — sideloading issues, or you need a format swap, or something similar — please understand that we’re a bit swamped today. But we will get to you as soon as we can. (I may go down to the pub in our local shopping town, as the broadband there is better and ours at home is acting up this morning.)
More shortly. But once again, thank you all!
In the background of the image above is the rented house where Peter and I have lived for the last twenty years. An unexpected financial problem means we might be about to lose it.
(And I have to say that this is really not how I imagined our thirty-first wedding anniversary week going…)
The last year and a half have seen both Peter and me dealing with illness (especially eyesight and kidney problems for me) and injury (torn muscles / ligaments on both sides: do not get me started about the Karaoke Incident…) that have made it a lot more challenging than usual for both of us to get writing out into the marketplace.
Though both of us are now thankfully pretty well recovered from the physical depredations of 2016-2017 and are back in the saddle and writing again, the disturbance to the usual cash flow by medical expenses and other associated problems has meant that we’ve fallen into increasingly serious arrears on our rent. Our landlord’s been incredibly understanding about this over the last year, and has put in place a catch-up installment plan which we’ve been servicing via royalty income and proceeds from the Ebooks Direct store.
However, this strategy has just been dealt a serious blow by the arrival of a royalty payment that was unexpectedly far lower than projected, and leaves us unable to meet the next catch-up payment out of what’s arrived. Our lease comes up for renewal next month, and if we miss this next payment, it’s unlikely that it will be renewed. Which means we’ll be evicted, and realistically—because as we complete our current recovery, cash will remain an issue for some months yet—we’ll become homeless.
We’d really like to avoid that outcome if possible.
What’s most infuriating (and mortifying) about all this is that if what’s happening now was instead happening in six or eight weeks, it’d be less of an issue, as Peter’s entire (newly revised) backlist will be coming online in paperback format at Amazon. But it’s happening now, and the truth is that without assistance, we won’t make it to the spring—not and keep our home. So, swallowing our corporate pride, it’s time to turn to the larger community and ask for help.
We have a fair number of ebooks available in at the Ebooks Direct store, and money from those, all of it, comes straight to us, immediately. So if you’d like to lend us a hand in this difficult situation, please rummage through the inventory below and see if there’s something that appeals to you. With everything at 50% off, I don’t think anything at Ebooks Direct is overpriced. Naturally all purchases come with our usual customer service package: lose your ebooks due to computer mishap or device loss and we’ll replace your books for free. Change platforms and we’ll swap your ebooks to match your new format. (If you’re picking up a box set of the Young Wizards New Millennium Editions, please note that these are in the process of being updated, and you’ll be receiving new download links for the updated volumes over the next couple of weeks. More info on this here.)
Meanwhile, thanks for taking the time to read this. And if you’re able to help: THANK YOU so much. It’ll mean the world to us.