The future of the Taylor & Graham series

You may have trouble buying books in my Taylor & Graham mystery series quite soon.  In fact, you might never find any except through eBay or one of those stores that carry out of print books.  For that’s what my entire series is right now...or very soon may be: out of print.  Yes, it is sudden.  It might happen within a day or two.  Even though the series' print and availability status is uncertain as to date cut off, one thing is certain.  My books are no longer under contract to Hilliard & Harris.  Hence the out of print status.  But hopefully only temporarily, until they can find a new home.  Which means a new publisher.  So, what this really boils down to is if you want one of the first seven in the series, you’ll have to hunt around on some Internet site to find one, or buy one straight from me.  You can go through my online store www.johiestand.com to order the book.  Or, if you know me personally, of course you can get one from me.  Sorry it’s such an inconvenience, but that is reality right now.

I had a very long (over a year) and very tough mental and emotional struggle with myself, debating whether to take this step to break the book contract.  I knew what it would mean if I went this route, and I knew that I would also be killing two books co-authored by my friend and writing partner Paul Hornung.  I knew he would suffer the consequences of my action -- and why should he be punished?  His (our) books would be as out of print as my solo efforts and I felt very bad about that.  But sometimes you have to do something drastic in order to achieve something greater in the future.  It is uncertain at this moment whether that something greater will be achieved, whether I have done the best thing for Paul's and my books by taking this action.  But I could not sit any longer where I was.  I had to move forward -- what I consider moving forward.

With this in mind, I have also completed writing book eight in the series.  I will try to find a literary agent for the book, with an eye to moving book eight (and the entire series) to a new publisher.  I hope this is attainable, as book eight is, I feel, the best in the series so far.  And written differently from the other seven.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed and sending up prayers daily that the book will be published elsewhere.

Anyway, I wanted to let any T&G readers know the situation so you're not confused if you try to order a book and discover it's no longer available.  The McLaren series is not affected by the Taylor & Graham situation.  I hope McLaren has just begun a long run of books.  That's what's going on here at the moment....