It’s been a rough last few months for us and all the other authors over all this. Beyond the several thousand dollars McKay and I are owed, we’ve had to spend many, many hours of time when we could have been writing new material in getting old stories submitted to other places, and going the self-pub route for others. Like so many others of you, we also have day jobs and families, so our writing time is both limited and precious, and I, for one, greatly resent all the time I’ve had to spend doing this. It also delayed by months the release of Herc’s Mercs: Where Angels Fear to Tread and caused us to have to submit our new novella for Lawyers in Love elsewhere. That’s money out of our pockets at a time when both of us could really use it.

Both McKay and I are striving for the holy grail — being able to support ourselves completely from our writing, and this has definitely been a stumbling block in our path. We’re getting past it, but it’s slowed us down tremendously, and that really sucks.

There are so many things I could say about what happened. About how completely stupid and unnecessary it was. About how simple honesty and integrity could have made a difference. About how trust and faith were violated for completely selfish and avaricious reasons. About the sheer stupidity of running a successful company into the ground, pissing off hundreds of people, and sullying an otherwise good reputation and forever being branded a liar and a cheat. About pissing off family and friends and throwing away something that can’t ever be returned. But I’ll hold off because I have to go to work at my day job, then come back and continue dealing with the messes still on my plate.

I’m an engineer. I operate on logic, and I can find absolutely no logic in what was done. But it wasn’t my company, and my decisions didn’t make it happen. The fault rests squarely on the owners of the company — it’s just too bad that they aren’t the only ones who are paying the price.