That writer, the one you loved so much when you were twelve? Or twenty-eight? Or forty? The one from whom you bought every new release? Whatever happened to him/her? They seem to fall off the face of the earth.
Three of weeks ago when I was very sick and running a fever, I decided to clean out my Twitter account. Over fifty writers I followed at the beginning of my career in 2011 have disappeared. These include both trad published and indie published folks.
In the case of most trad writers, their publisher dropped their contracts. A few stated that they also publish as "So-and-So" in "Such-and-Such" genre and "Here's the link", but most don't even give that slight acknowledgment.
Some, both trad and indie, quite literally disappeared. Their websites no longer exist. Others still have their books for sale, but nothing new had been published since 2012 or 2013, and neither their websites nor their blogs/Twitter/Facebook/etc. have been updated since then either.
There's no explanation. Nothing. Nada.
I don't know if they died. Or got burned out. Or if simply life got in the way.
It makes me a little sad. Such wonderful voices that made me happy, never to be heard from again.
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2 hours ago
I've had that happen too. :/ At least nowadays they can be found if they want to be. Back in the early-ish days of the internet, I lost a favorite writer (pretty much the only mystery writer I read) and found her again through a newsgroup; she'd gotten stomped by the ordering-to-the-net thing, and had to change the name she published under. I promptly started buying all her books again. Although I really liked her old series and wish she could've kept going with it. [sigh]
ReplyDeleteEarlier than that, I discovered that a favorite historical romance writer, who'd vanished, was writing mainstream fantasies, by noticing that the copyright name on New Pseud's copyright page was Old Romance Name. Okay, well, good. No wonder I liked that book.
And there is (was? haven't been to that site in ages) a Canadian used-romance bookstore that kept an index of various writers' pseuds, which was very helpful back in the 90s.
Nowadays, at least if someone vanishes, we know it's because (assuming they didn't pass away or something) they wanted to vanish. :/
Angie
I think I was surprised by the sheer number that had disappeared in a very short time. I admit I'm not much of a Twitter user. At my most involved, I followed 250 people, so that's 20% in less than three years.
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