Obviously, Hidden Youth was delayed a long time. There were a number of reasons for this, the main one being that our co-publisher, Kay Holt, experienced significant setbacks dealing with her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She was in and out of crisis for several months, and as a result, our other co-publisher, Bart Leib, was left handling most CG responsibilities on his own, while also working a day job. We made a few public updates about the situation but they were infrequent and incomplete. (There were other challenges early on, too, like preorders coming more slowly than anticipated, and a change in editors.)

Another problem has been that a number of authors who submitted stories never received rejection emails. We’re only now becoming aware that this was a bigger problem than one or two misses. And a number of authors who queried never received responses to their queries.

We believed all rejections had been sent out by April, and all queries had since been addressed. It’s on us for not dealing with the breakdown in communication in a timely fashion, and it’s our fault authors waited far too long for a response, or never heard back.

We believe in treating everyone involved in the process of making books with respect, and we failed to do so in this case. We apologize. This is NOT how Crossed Genres usually operates. All we can do now is promise that we’re putting procedures in place to ensure this never happens again.

Assuming the Kickstarter is funded, Hidden Youth will release on Monday, November 21, 2016. Kickstarter backers (as well as authors, artists and editors) will receive their copies at least one week before the official release. As of now, everything is on track for on-time completion. But IF anything changes – if anything causes a further delay to the release – we will immediately make an announcement to clarify where things stand.

This message is being sent to everyone who submitted. If you submitted a story to Hidden Youth, and haven’t received an email from us by Sunday, June 19, please contact us directly at crossedgenres@gmail.com.

Again, we’re sorry for all the delays and lack of communication surrounding this project. It’s still very important to us, and this is our promise to do right by it, and all of you, from here on.

Bart & Kay,
Co-publishers