David Alastair Hayden

Alter­nate Title: The Sea­son of Famil­ial Obligation

Some of you may be won­der­ing: Where are all the books David promised us in late 2011? I’ve read Wrath of the White Tigress and The Storm Dragon’s Heart and now I want more. More, damn it, more!

I am deeply sorry. Noth­ing would make me hap­pier than hav­ing more books out for you to read.

I am work­ing on the next book, but things are going slowly. And at this point I’m four months behind on my pub­lish­ing sched­ule. It’s likely that I’ll be five months behind once Decem­ber ends.

I’ve been stressed by inter­mit­tent famil­ial oblig­a­tions over the last 16 months. For most of that time I was able to keep pace with my work and so I thought I could get out a num­ber of books late this year in spite of it all. In June, the stress of oblig­a­tions ratch­eted up but then cooled off again. I was a month behind pace then, but fig­ured I could catch up.

Then came September.

I won’t go into details because they would do nei­ther me nor you any good and most of it is pri­vate in nature. Suf­fice to say, my par­ents have been in dire need of my assis­tance. And when my time isn’t directly occu­pied by help­ing them, I find myself unable to work. The stress of the sit­u­a­tion some­times leaves my mind vacant of cre­ativ­ity and I want noth­ing but rest or some mind­less endeavor.

In short, I’m hav­ing to take care of things only I can take care of, things I do out of love and respect for my fam­ily. Things that are not pleas­ant and leave me lit­tle cre­ative time.

But in Jan­u­ary, my time will be my own again. The bits of work I can man­age now will become tor­rents and new work shall appear.