We have the occasional guest blogger on Getting Medieval. Today's is author John Desjarlais with an all-too familiar tale about what can happen to an author's work in this crazy world of publishing. No, we don't get to sit back and let the publishers do the work. We've got to be on top of it at all times. We are the captains of this vessel and if we don't keep watch, we'll sink.
John wrote a book of Crusaders and relics, a 12th century adventure that got lost in the shuffle. Well, we'll let him tell it.
“Son of Man, can these dry bones live again?” God asked the prophet Ezekiel in a symbolic vision of a valley of skeletons. The answer, applied to my second historical novel Relics, is yes.
Relics (Thomas Nelson, 1993) is set in medieval France and Crusader-occupied Palestine in the year 1250, soon after the disastrous venture in Egypt led by the saintly King Louis IX of France (for whom St. Louis, MO is named). Intended as a men’s adventure story with a crime element – a suspicious cathedral fire, stolen relics, and a terrorist plot to kill the king of France – the book was marketed as a women’s romance. To be sure, the story contained a romantic element (a lovely, lonely baroness who is the protagonist’s idealistic and impossible love). But I must admit that when I first saw the cover, with its soft-focus flowers and charming French chateau overlooking a serene river, my heart sank. Where was the brave knight on a swift steed? Or the imposing Krak de Chevaliers fortress overlooking the desert?
Perhaps due to my own unhappy lack of enthusiasm in marketing, or the recession of 1992-93 in which I lost my day job and my thoughts turned toward survival, the book underperformed and was hastily remaindered. My agent retired and my writing turned to academic articles and short literary fiction. Relics, like the enshrined bone of any saint, was dead.
Still, I thought it was a fine yarn. After several years, when used copies of the book were selling for a penny on Amazon, I asked for the rights. Maybe I could re-issue it via a POD, as with my first book when it was declared out of print.
Not so. The publisher replied that the title was officially “out-of-stock,” not out of print. I made several inquiries over the years, with no results. Then last year, when the “Google Settlement” web site listed Relics as out of print, I contacted the publisher again. Please return the rights to me, I asked, or re-release it so I can promote it anew. Its subject matter – the collision of the West with militant Islam – is timely. At least consider re-issuing the title to prevent Google from hijacking the book.
They agreed to re-release the book in a ‘short run’ – code for Print on Demand. As it turns out, they were already planning to restore many backlist titles to their catalog since POD technology allowed mainstream publishers to make such books available again at virtually no cost to them. At any rate, I had my book back in circulation – sort of.
While the rich trade in holy relics is no longer a provocative issue today, the sudden confrontation of the West with jihadist Islam is. In Relics, my examination of multi-layered Islam – the practical Sunnis, the intense Shi’ites, the resentful splinter groups and fanatical military sects – reflects the shifting complexities of the Middle East in which the West is currently entangled. My portrayal of the Western powers – well-meaning but naïve, devoted to high principles while at the same time acting barbarically – serves as a cautionary note to our own culture.
I hope readers find Relics to be entertaining, and that they learn a few things along the way. But the power of historical fiction is in its ability to examine our own times through the experience of another time. Given our current venture in Afghanistan and the Levant, there is hardly a more important story to be told. We certainly do not want this to turn out the way it did for poor King Louis: senseless losses, squandered resources, a shameful retreat and animosity burning for generations. That’s why I’m so glad to be resurrecting Relics.
You can find out more about John Desjarlais at http://www.johndesjarlais.com, http://jjdesjarlais.blogspot.com, and www.facebook.com/desjarlais1
