The Best of Cemetery Dance 2 - A Lesson in Patience

The email came as a surprise. 2009 was such a long time ago.

I should explain.

Cemetery Dance Publications has been publishing magazines since 1988 and books since 1992. I discovered Cemetery Dance when I became interested in author autographed books. The company is well respected for their autographed limited editions.

In 1998, they published the book, The Best of Cemetery Dance.

"The Best of Cemetery Dance showcases five dozen of the very finest short stories from the first 25 issues of Cemetery Dance magazine.... Featuring a virtual who's who of today's greatest authors of dark fiction, The Best of Cemetery Dance is one of the most important books of the year — including contributions from Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Richard Laymon, Poppy Z. Brite... " from the CDP website.

That book sounded awesome, but I didn't know about it until 2007. After nine years the signed edition was going for $750 on eBay, so that wasn't an option for me. I settled on a much cheaper, but nice trade edition instead. I still have it.

Then Cemetery Dance announced they would be publishing A Fifteen Year Celebration. According to an old Amazon ad, the book would come out at the end of 2010.

The limited edition was also going to be signed by the authors, and it was priced at $175. With a baby in our plans, that seemed too steep for one book. When a fifty percent off coupon arrived in my email, I jumped at the chance. If anything, I could tell myself that it would be a good investment. Look at what the first one was now selling for.

Back then I was more organized, and I printed my email receipts.

 Here's a picture of my order and the date.

I was pretty excited at the chance of owning this book, but this was just a preorder. The book wouldn't be ready right away. So I waited.

And I waited.

And I waited.

And you can see where this is going. At some point during the past decade, CD took down their Internet page advertising A Fifteen Year Celebration. I later received an email informing me that the book was getting too big, and would have to be revised. They said they'd let me know.

And so I forgot about it. A lot has happened since then. 

There were a few updates, but for the past nine years it's been mostly the sound of crickets. A few months ago I showed Charlotte my printed receipt in an effort to teach her about patience,"You think it's hard to wait three days until Christmas? I have something you have to see. It's from before you were born..."

Then I received this email yesterday:

"Hi Brent,
As a reminder, Cemetery Dance: A Fifteen Year Celebration has grown into The Best of Cemetery Dance 2 and we have an important production update for you today. We’re thrilled to report the first two sets of signature sheets are DONE and back home in the CD offices, and the third set of sheets are with the final author and will be headed back here very soon, at which point Richard Chizmar will sign them and the book will be ready for the printer! For that reason, we’re finally ready to officially announce this project to the world!

Thank you again for your patience as this project has evolved into something even bigger than we originally planned!"

It's taken nine years and seven months to find out that the book is almost ready. My first reaction was an underwhelmed, "Huh. They'll finally finish it." 

The book will look nice on the shelf next to my old trade edition, but I don't think it will become the investment I thought it would be when I first made the purchase. But then again, in 2009 I could have spent my $87.50 on a HD DVD player and look where that would have gotten me.

Looks like you can get the same copy that I've been waiting for, and it will probably only take you a few months to get it...  ---> link

Or not... I gave up counting months years ago.