As reported in these pages yesterday, we had received word that an "inventory transfer order" had been sent to the Simon and Schuster warehouse, which was the first step in the journey of 1200 subscriber-sponsored Saltations to Maine.

Today, the warehouse called Baen with the information that there are not enough -- not nearly enough -- books in the warehouse to cover that transfer of inventory.

In fact, the first hardcover run of Saltation appears to have sold out -- in just two weeks.

Baen is immediately going back to print. But! That means we need to ask those who pre-ordered to be patient. . .some while longer. We apologize, but this is something that is completely out of our control -- mid-list genre books just don't sell out in two weeks.

There are a few -- a very few -- books that were in the pipeline when the transfer order went out, and which are coming to Maine. They count in dozens; not nearly enough to fill the orders outstanding.

We will keep you informed, as we're informed.

In the meantime we thank you for your patience and for your on-going support.

Saltation, the second novel dealing with the Life and Times of Theo Waitley is now available as an eArc from Baen. As of this posting, on February 27, 2010, three-quarters of the novel may be read for free.

The hardcover edition of Saltation will be in stores in April, 2010. At this time, it may be pre-ordered from your favorite indie bookstore, as well as from online vendors, including Amazon.com.

Those folks who donated $25 or more to the writing of Saltation will be receiving a signed thank-you book from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, as promised. Please Note that all subscribers will be contacted by email in order to verify delivery addresses. You will be contacted by Scott Raun, the long-time administrator of the Friends of Liad mailing list and the liadenuniversenews list. We've known and worked with Scott for many, many years, we trust him implicitly, and we urge you to trust him in this matter. Many of you will remember that Scott did the address verification for Fledgling. The email address that he will be writing to you from is saltation_verifyATkorval.com (where @ replaces AT).

The timeline for mailing Saltation thank-you books follows:

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller will probably take delivery of 1200 copies of Saltation in March. We don't know exactly when in March. We have an Educated Guess in hand, but at this point it is exactly that, and not a hard delivery date.

After we take delivery of those books and get them under roof in the cold storage next to SRM Galactic Headquarters, we will sign them*.

*We don't know how long it's going to take, exactly, to sign 1100 books (which we believe to be the total of subscriber orders). Eleven hundred books is A Lot of books; we mention this because some folks seem to have no concept of that. Also, even though we both have relatively short names, signing them 1100 times takes a while. Our experience with Fledgling suggests that signing alone will consume on the order of several days to a week. Alas, we cannot devote a full week to only signing books; we have a day-job, and SRM usual business to accommodate during this time.

After the books are signed, we will log the database and print the labels. This also takes time, because, yanno -- printers, labels, on-line postage services. . . Once the labels are printed, Steve will single-handedly pack and mail those 1100 books. This could, conservatively, take weeks and weeks. And weeks.

It's entirely possible, as with Fledgling, that subscribers will receive their thank-you Saltations months after the book has been available from bookstores. We apologize for this and regret any inconvenience.

To sum up: We intend to ship Saltation to subscribers as quickly as humanly possible without killing ourselves, neglecting the cats, or defaulting on other of life's obligations. This seems the best course for everyone.

Please Note: At this time, we are closing pre-support donations to Saltation. If we have any books left over after the epic task described above is completed, and a suitable waiting period joined, we will put them up for adoption.

Thank you all for your understanding of this process -- and for your interest in and on-going support of our work.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller