It was not looking good for my Tin Jubilee.

My dream had been to see all three of my books out on the first of March 2012, to mark my 10^th anniversary of arriving in the UK to stay.  To that end, I finished the manuscript for the final book in the Postcards Trilogy, Postcards From Ireland and sent it off to my publisher.

Now, when I say “my publisher” I mean the micro-publishing company that published my first book, Postcards From Across the Pond.  And yet, I don’t.  There had recently been some acquisitions and mergers in the publishing house (the world of high finance; I’ll never get my head around it) but the new publisher was keen to do business with me.

But then I published More Postcards From Across the Pond myself, just to see if I could do it.  I could.  Great fun.  Now let’s get back to business.

Postcards From Ireland was a hit with the new publisher and they we began to talk business.  The problem was, because of my self-publishing lark, I now had one book on the inside and one on the outside and no way to join them up for a Tin Jubilee get together.  No matter what I did, I would have two books in one place and one in the other.  In the end, I decided to go the publishing route, and see if I could convince the publisher to take on the middle book as well.

It sounded a good plan, but it didn’t work out; the new publisher and I failed to reach an agreement so I decided to publish Postcards From Ireland myself, which left one book with them and two with me.

But then I received an e-mail out of the blue: the original publisher—the one who actually acquired my first book—decided to close down his part of the business, and the rights to my book, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, reverted to me.  So I am now free to self-publish that one as well.

This bodes well for my Jubilee celebration.  I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to play it, but don’t worry, I’ll keep you updated.