Destroyer Destroyed?

There’s bad news for fans of Warren Murphy’s long-running The Destroyer series. Bruce Grossman, who has frequently written about those action-oriented novels for Bookgasm, directs us to this note, written (with a notable absence of capitalization) by Murphy, on the Destroyer Club fan site:

right now, everything with the destroyer is basically on hold and i think remo and chiun, series-wise, are going on vacation for a while. tor hasn’t offered us a contract and, frankly, if they did, i don’t think i’d entertain it. they were just not efficient at getting the books out on time and the operative word with a book series is “series.” publication dates have to be fixed and predictable. It’s hard enough to write the books without worrying about when and if they’re finally going to see the light of day. gold eagle was a suckful publisher, but at least they got the books out on time. tor was so stupid that they couldn’t, so done and done. let’s see what the future holds.

on the other hand, the audio people are at work, the trade paperback reissues from e-reads continue to sell well, and all the talk i hear from hollywood re the new movie is promising. if the movie gets near production--and that’s always a long shot--we can pretty well rest assured that the publishing folks will be looking again for series books and we’ll have to see what happens then. i just won’t anymore do any contract when on-schedule publication isn’t guaranteed.

sorry the news isn’t more promising but life’s landscape is full of peaks and valleys and all you can do is keep walking. it’s good to know that so many other nice folk have spent so much time on this journey with us.

Indeed. If Wikipedia’s count is correct, fans have already kept this series going for more than 140 books.