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Authors who vanished from the face of the planet


Darth Richard II

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Yeah, Stover is not nearly as popular as people here think, unfortunately. (All though trying to convince certain people of that can be troublesome, but I digress).

I suspect at this point Stackpole's Crown Colonies will never be finished, which sucks, but hey yo got to pay the bills.

I suspect something similar may have happened to Alan Campbell, if I remember correctly his sales plummeted after his first book.

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2 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Hal Duncan - last novel in 2007.What happened to him?



I don't think a man with 36 thousand tweets can plausibly called 'vanished', tbh.

 

He appears to be very very busy all the time, just not on novels. He wrote a few short stories and a couple of novellas (all of which I keep promising myself I'll pick up, but haven't yet), he does quite a few essays and thinkpieces (or did at least, not sure if that's still the case), he does a lot of poetry.

Eta: On Alan Campbell:

A quick google found a facebook post from June last year, so a bit outdated but he did give an update (I'll repost here, spoilered for length, bolding of relevant paragraph mine)

 

I realise its been a hell of a long time since I posted anything. This will probably be my last post here for a hell of a long time. I'm not a Facebook sort of person.

I see I have messages, but I don't know how to reply to each one individually (Facebook seems to want me to install some code, which I don't want to do). So please don't message me through Facebook - email me if you like. I'll answer most of the stuff here.

I am not dead.

There is a third book to the Gravedigger Series. I think it's pretty good (OK, needs an edit). However, the publishing industry has been under enormous stress in recent years and my publishers haven't sold enough of my last two books for them to justify releasing this one, so we're looking at other options. The option I'd prefer is to rewrite the whole series, making them into shorter books, fixing stuff I wasn't happy with in TAOH, and re-release the lot digitally. But that will mean finding the time and the funds to do all this work. I need to earn a living, so I have been working on numerous other projects - mostly in the film industry. Because this work is generally commissioned or optioned I can't talk about it.

As soon as I have some news, I'll post it here. Until then, I just want to say thanks for buying and reading my books. Thanks for all feedback, the nice reviews and comments, the messages of support and for asking how I've been doing.

Cheers,
Alan.





Also, I mentioned DM Cornish earlier. I checked his blog again just now, and amusingly he updated it for the first time in three years two days ago. No info though, just straight into a fragment of story as is his habit when he is active.



 

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9 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

Well, since I'm a lazy bastard, and Google is so hard to write, what happened to Mark J. Ferrari? I remember I really enjoyed The book of Joby way back when.


Lazy git. Mind you, his internet presence is messy as hell when it comes to his writing so I don't blame you.

He appears to be an illustrator first and a writer on the side, so not urgent about releasing books, and to have had either two projects or one project renamed on the go but not published. At one point on his website he mentions doing his next series as an online serial so you really just need to google him every so often and see what pops up.

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10 hours ago, Werthead said:

Stover has been clear that the Acts of Caine series has really not sold very well, and it's getting tougher to convince publishers to take a chance on them. He may self-publish future books, but he needs to build up a good career elsewhere to pay the bills. Unfortunately, I don't think Stover is the sort of writer who can churn books out for money. He only did Star Wars because he wanted to subvert it and put his own spin on it, which was fine for the 3 or 4 books he wrote but he can't extend that to churning out tie-in books forever for the money, although I do think of how amazing the Aftermath books would have been if Stover had gotten them and not Wendig.

 

I'm quite aware that Stover is not a big seller.  I would think that most of his fans are aware of that.  And yeah, I remember he had issues getting his last Star Wars novel in on the schedule they wanted.  I vaguely recall him mentioning an unnamed tie-in in the last few years, though.  Obviously, nothing has yet come of that. 

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2 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah, when I started this topic so long ago I was thinking of authors who vanished from social media as well.

 

And here I have been, racking my aging brain for writers that actually have gone missing in real life. 

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Glad to hear Cornish is alive and still dabbling in writing. 

I'm not holding my breath for Jones.  I really would to see her finish the series and have it print but I think she came out of the woodwork a few years back with similar tone and, well...

Janny Wurts keeps dangling another segment of her exercise in character induced masturbation in the Chronicles of how Perfect Arithon Is or whatever the publisher made her call it for consumers.  But its been a couple of years hasn't it?  She probably doesn't count in this thread per se but she comes close.

But if Joane Bertin can do a comeback like she did there is always hope for everyone else.

Katherine Kurtz seems to have finally stopped beating the dead horse that was the retcon'd Deryni series but what happened to her writing as a whole? 

In the spirit of the thread, since Ian Graham finally jumped back in last year, is there any word of US releases of his book that came out last year set in the same world as Monument?

 

Andrew Davidson never followed up on Gargoyle, which had some flaws but was still a decent enough read to see what he would do next.

 

Before publishers found "guess the author's other nom de plume' trick, there were authors that tried other 'names'.  I wonder if some of the disappeared are now writing under another name and even another genre.  James Clemens comes to mind.  And someone who would return to his unfinished series.

 

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Kurtz?  Real easy.  The King Kelson timeline had the books based in a castle, swords armor setting and then by the time he was getting married the whole culture/world suddenly had all kinds of Renaissance feel to it that was never in the first Deryni trilogy or even the first King Kelson trilogy.

As for Jones?  We'll have to agree to disagree.  Maybe not quite the same but the stuff Tom Doherty handed to me along with his little spiel about hopes for Sanderson to go on and write added works to the Wheel of Time world before Harriet said "hell no" says to me otherwise.  Jones was even promising appearances at the time.  Again.  Different takes.  But promised sample chapters and murmurs of taking part in the Legends III anthology that fell apart and later got revamped by Dozois and Martin  also had a very similar tone to "it's a comin'....maybe" that I find in her dipping the toes in social media as an author.  Again. My take.  Doesn't have to be yours.

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9 hours ago, C Rutherford said:

Janny Wurts keeps dangling another segment of her exercise in character induced masturbation in the Chronicles of how Perfect Arithon Is or whatever the publisher made her call it for consumers.  But its been a couple of years hasn't it?  She probably doesn't count in this thread per se but she comes close.

 

 

She doesn't count and she  doesn't come close. She has maintained her web presence (e.g. been active on places like reddit).  and has consistently updated people about the status of her latest book on her site. The latest book in the series is due for release this year (Sept 7th) and she's reviewing copy edits. Once that's done it's on to the final book.

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On 2/19/2017 at 2:48 PM, Darth Richard II said:

I'd like to know what Felix Gilman is up to. I know he worked on the story for one of those crappy FPS games(Destiny? Titanfall?), but I want a book damnit.

He just pit out a book two years ago.  The Revolutions.

 

I didn't like it much.

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38 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

He just pit out a book two years ago.  The Revolutions.

 

I didn't like it much.

Damn, was that only two years ago?( I wasn't to keen on it either, the second half was just, bleh).

Well technically it's been 3, if you round :P But yeah I thought that was way longer ago. Shows what I know.

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Non-crazy Dan Simmons (just kidding - only sorta)

A few I thought of were authors who wrote a great work or two, then vanished (presumably sales related, I guess):

Theodore Judson (nothing since 2010 and that was historical fiction; nothing genre since 2008)

Paula Volsky (published a bunch in the 90s, then after The Grand Elipse in 2000..nothing for a decade...then a few books under a different name in the early 2010s and nothing since)

Eric Garcia (no -real- books since 2004...only the tie-in novel to Repo Men in 2009 - believe he was seduced by Hollywood script money)

 

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On ‎20‎-‎2‎-‎2017 at 0:03 AM, Darth Richard II said:

He had a Star Wars book that I think got cancelled when they reset the canon.

IIRC he was slated to finish the Imperial Commando series after Karen Traviss dropped out. I could've died a happy man if that had happened, but alas.

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Volsky's new books had to have to most inappropriate covers for a fantasy ever ever x1000. Like whoever came up with those and the ad campaign(which targeted romance readers) must have been high. That being said I don't think they sold too well.

Dan Simmons was replaced with a pod person in 1999. It is known.

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