Kathleen Taylor:
Coming Around Again
Way, way back in time, when Social Media consisted of mimeographed zines snail-mailed to subscribing members (or folks you hoped would subscribe to your newsletter, or random people chosen from the phone book because you needed a certain number of pieces to qualify for bulk mail discounts), I wrote the first two Tory Bauer mysteries on a Commodore 128 computer.
Though I had been a magazine craft designer for years, I had absolutely no contacts in the fiction world, and no knowledge of how to go about finding an agent, or a publisher, for the stories that were rattling around in my head. That I found both, and that Tory and the crew had a six book run with a Big Name publisher, was (and still is) nothing short of amazing. I was sad when the series ended in 2001, but so very grateful for the adventure. I moved on to writing knitting instruction books (a circle of sorts) and had a pretty wonderful time racking up five books (including a sock knitting book that was translated into Finnish), and a side-gig teaching workshops and classes all over the country (and on a couple of cruise ships).
Though I never officially ended the Delphi series, I was fairly certain that part of my career was over. Tory's fans, however, weren't quite ready to let her go. A couple of times a month, folks would email (the cyber world had evolved and took me along with it) to ask if I had plans to write another installment. I always replied with a vague *you never know*, and then went back to my knitting.
Or that's how it worked until somewhere around 2006, when my older son, a writer and artist in his own right, insisted that I release the entire series in electronic format. He offered to do the covers for me (the rights to the words had reverted to me, the original covers belonged to Avon. Or maybe to the original artist, I don't know for sure). I told him that was a good idea, and then went back to my knitting. It wasn't until 2010, when a friend asked if he could have his university grad students format the series for electronic platforms as a semester project, that we actually started the conversion work.
The mass market paperbacks were long out of print, and despite the occasional email asking for more, I assumed the e-reissues, with my son's amazing new covers, would be an amusing novelty and nothing else.
I was wrong. Between 2011-2015, all six of the books were released on all of the electronic platforms, and sales of this almost twenty-year-old series have been steady ever since.
The advent of the eBooks triggered a renewal in requests, not only for more Tory adventures, but for a reissue of the books in print (for those who don't do eReaders). A few months ago, I began the slow(ish) process of converting the electronic files back to print.
The first five Tory Bauer mysteries (Funeral Food, Sex and Salmonella, The Hotel South Dakota, Mourning Shift, and Cold Front) are now available as trade paperbacks through Amazon, and the sixth (Foreign Body) will be up and running in another week or so.
I can't tell you how exciting it has been to see them in paper again, especially with those fantastic covers (which I would love, even if my son wasn't the artist).
And you know what else? I've started thinking about Delphi again. Seriously thinking.
Yeah, I'm going to write another one. The first book in the series came out (under the title The Missionary Position, in a very limited edition) in 1993, the seventh, if all goes well, in early 2017.
Coming around again, I guess!
**
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Kathleen Taylor
Kathleen Taylor's Dakota Dreams http://kathleen-dakotadreams.blogspot.com/
On Instagram: kathleenmtaylor1952
Trade Paperback Editions of the Tory Bauer Mysteries:
Sex and Salmonella https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Salmonella-Tory-Bauer-Mystery/dp/1530577578/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466169625&sr=1-3&keywords=Sex+and+Salmonella
The Hotel South Dakota https://www.amazon.com/Hotel-South-Dakota-Bauer-Mystery/dp/1530577799/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466169659&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Hotel+South+Dakota
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