I’ve heard from half a dozen people so far that, as of Friday, THE BONE GARDEN had not yet arrived in their local bookstores.  The book was supposed to go on sale Tuesday, three days earlier.  Other readers have told me that in their stores, the books had arrived but were still in the back room, and only when the customer requested it did a clerk finally unpack them and pull them out.  Which means there are probably  dozens, if not hundreds of stores that will report no sales of my book for the first week — a vital week in a book’s release — and this could well be significant when it comes to tallying up the bestseller list. 

It’s frustrating for me to walk into a store and see that other books with on-sale dates the same week are on prominent display right in the front, while my book is nowhere to be seen.  Ironically enough, a book I blurbed is on display everywhere — while my own book remains hidden.   

Years ago, the same week that LIFE SUPPORT was released in hardcover, UPS went on strike.  Thousands of my books got stuck in warehouses, undelivered.  It dribbled into stores over the month that followed, and didn’t even make it into stores where I was doing signings. 

So this, in comparison, is a relatively minor aggravation. 

I’ve grown resigned to this situation, as it’s happened so often before, and I’ve learned to accept the inevitable.  The only thing I can control is what goes into the book.  After that, it’s in the publisher’s and the bookseller’s hands.

You can get agitated about this sort of thing only so many times, and then you learn to give up and let whatever happens, happen.  Over the years, I’ve fumed and fretted over situations like these.  This time around, it feels so familiar and so unchangeable that I’m just going to let the fates take their course.  I don’t expect a great first-week’s sales, so I just have to hope that THE BONE GARDEN will keep selling in the weeks to come.