More about The Skystone

Skystone-Small
The current Canadian version of the paperback edition

I wrote a post some time ago about what had happened to “The Skystone” because several readers had written to me saying they couldn’t find copies to buy, and some people had even heard that the book was out of print.

That last part galvanized me, I admit, because if the book had gone out of print, then it had done so without anyone at Penguin Books having thought to contact me in order to inform me that after twenty-odd printings and twenty-plus years of constant availability, it had eventually been deemed to be irrelevant and defunct. I seriously doubted that such a thing might have happened, and I was right. My editor at that time assured me that the book was simply “between print runs” and would become available again in the near future, and at that time I wrote a Blog entry entitled “It’s about The Skystone”.

Since then, though, my beloved editor, Adrienne Kerr, abandoned me, leaving the Penguin organization to get married to the guy she’d spent a lifetime looking for, and to hang out her own shingle as a freelance professional editor. And after her departure there came a long silence that lasted until I phoned the PenguinRandomHouse headquarters in Ontario and spoke with the Associate Publisher, who promised to get back to me the following day. In the event it was Brad Martin himself, the President and CEO of Penguin Random House, who phoned me back from the very apex of the mountain, and the last of my concerns evaporated as he laid out, chapter and verse, what would be happening henceforth not only with The Skystone, but with all future editions of my other novels. Henceforth, he told me, my books will be reprinted only in Trade Paperback editions as they become due for renewal. The only information I lack now is the exact, specific date when The Skystone will again become available in Canada, but he assured me that it will be very soon, and readers may rest assured that I’ll publish the information here as soon as I have it.