Twice Orphaned, Thrice Determined

by Catherine Dilts

What’s an author to do who gets orphaned, finds a new family, then is orphaned once again?

Hint: Quitting is not an option.

Back in 2012, I was enamored with traditional publishing. I hadn’t been able to acquire an agent. I was thrilled when my debut novel, Stone Cold Dead: A Rock Shop Mystery, was accepted by Five Star. They also published the second in that series, Stone Cold Case.

After sending in the third book, Stone Cold Blooded, there was a long silence. Crickets. The news finally came. Five Star dropped their mystery line. Not me personally. I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had been shedding genres like a bird molting in spring. Their romance line had previously gone away. Now their entire stable of mystery authors went poof overnight.

My mystery novels were now orphans.

Fast forward to a new opportunity. Encircle Publishing adopted many Five Star orphaned authors. We were delighted to have our series continue in a traditional publishing model.

Book three in my Rock Shop series had found a home. Then my new series, titled A Rose Creek Mystery, achieved publication of books one and two. I sent in book three, and was met with an uncomfortably familiar silence.

All good things seem to end. The creative and kind folks at Encircle faced a brutal financial reality. They made the decision to switch to a “hybrid” model. Meaning authors would pay for services (cover, editing, formatting) to have their books published. Not a vanity press. Not self-publishing. It’s perfectly fine, in my view, if you understand what’s at stake.

Having my second series orphaned after two books, I was ready to go it alone. Not entirely alone. My daughter Merida Bass declared she had no interest in trad publishing. She had witnessed my journey from the sidelines. We co-authored two books in a YA series that doesn’t fit the angsty, adult-ish tone of current YA. We knew it would be a hard sell to a trad publisher. And we started on a series whose pitch captured attention and interest.

A ninja kidnaps senior citizens and places them with families in need of a grandparent.

We both had a very good feeling about this project. In an informed and researched decision, we decided to skip seeking the traditional route and try self-publishing.

I couldn’t abandon my Rose Creek series. I requested my rights back from Encircle, which they swiftly and graciously returned. This orphan had self-emancipated.

Rose Creek book three, The Body in the Hayloft, released in December 2025. When my Encircle rights reverted to me for The Body in the Cornfield, book two vanished from the usual sales outlets. Book one is still available via Harlequin Worldwide Mystery, having been farmed out by Encircle in their final days as my publisher.

Yikes. Yes, it’s complicated.

I realized my series isn’t a series if books one and two aren’t available. I edited book two, The Body in the Cornfield. Why not? We have to redo everything, so I needed to do everything possible to improve the story before re-releasing. My daughter will create new cover art, and we’ll publish the novel this summer. This fall, book four, The Body in the Chuckwagon, will be released. When book one becomes mine again, we’ll do the same.

So much work. Editing. Cover art. Book design. Formatting. Getting the books up online. Hand-selling to libraries and bookstores.

Is it worth it?

Have you ever watched a televised series that is cancelled midstream? Like the cult classic Firefly, or the high-stakes thriller The Old Man. The dissatisfaction level at incomplete series? High!

I don’t want to leave readers feeling like the characters in my novels simply . . . stopped. Fell off the edge of a suddenly flat earth.

More important to me, I don’t want to feel like I left something undone.

At this point in my life, the best route to completion is this experiment in self-publishing. I don’t have to be an orphan anymore.