UPDATE: Email contact was made this morning! Hopefully, all of this will be ironed out soon.
UPDATE #2: Ladies and Gentlemen we have phone contact!!!! So I should have gotten a letter in the mail explaining the delay in The Martian Chronicles, now due out in late March 2007 (and it sounds amazing). I also should have gotten a small giftbook by Ray on writing Chronicles. So, since I didn't get that I didn't know what was going on and they've had personnel problems and yadda yadda yadda - but now giftbook is on the way and I know about the delay on Chronicles and maybe, just maybe, life is looking good again.

FINALLY!

So two years ago I signed up and paid for the Ray Bradbury Author's Preferred Edition Series at Hill House Publishers. The deal was to get gorgeous editions of The Cat's Pajamas and The Martian Chronicles, signed by the author. It was $300 (as I recall but might have been $400) but it was Bradbury and that's how it goes - I'm sick about him.

Now I'm just sick and tired.

I did receive The Cat's Pajamas in due time and it is gorgeous but Ray's advancing age made the Preferred Series impossible so I was contacted and told that while the series would be discontinued the books were still going to be published (just not with the promised extras) and as a member I would receive them. I just had to be patient as it was going to take a lot longer.

So - last year, when I was supposed to get The Martian Chronicles, I contacted HIll House, reminded them I still existed and received their apologies about the delays along with the very sweet Trivial Pursuit Transporter. A very small edition (50 copies) bound short story by Ray. Loved it. And the promise was Chronicles would be out this last October. (They also sent me a limited edtion holiday story they published last December to apologize for not keeping me up on things.)

Then I waited.

In October I sent an email asking about my copy, Then two more emails. And in November, more emails. At the site, the Hill House publishers noted email problems and apologized. I emailed again. Still no reply. Thanksgiving week I started calling. I've left at least three messages at two different numbers. On one I was promised a return call within 24 hours. That was four days ago.

Hill House - we have a probem.

Now I'm left with writing a letter which I will do but I have no doubt that it will be ignored like all my other efforts at contact. I have no idea what the problem is, why they run such an expensive publishing company and then offer such horrible customer service. I'd love to know why on earth Neil Gaiman is still with them - although I imagine they return his phone calls.

I didn't want to post on this, and thus badmouth a company that does such beautiful work but I'm just a very mad customer at this point. It was a lot of money; I shouldn't have to beg this hard for my book.