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Grim Oak Press has announced that Unveiled, the highly anticipated follow-up to Unfettered, has been canceled due to a conflict between its publisher and editor.

“[Unveiled] will not be happening,” revealed Shawn Speakman, publisher at Grim Oak Press. “And it’s important to say, through no fault of my own. After waiting for more than six weeks for the simplest of work to be done on the anthology, editor Roger Bellini asked me to renegotiate the contract. In the renegotiation, he asked for 17.5% of hardcover and ebooks sales—less than originally in the contract, true—and his name still on the dust jacket. In return, he would not be editing the book. This would give Roger large royalties for effectively doing what I consider very little work on the book,”

As of the time this was written, Bellini, who was attached to the ill-fated Neverland’s Library anthology, has not commented on the cancellation of Unveiled.

“After talking with my book agent, I decided it best for Grim Oak Press to terminate the contract,” Speakman announced, spelling the end for this iteration of Unveiled.

This is disappointing news for readers and the authors involved in the project. Given Grim Oak Press’ success with Unfettered, readers can hope that the anthology finds a new editor before long.

Speakman discusses the cancellation in more depth on the official Grim Oak Press website.

EDIT (Nov. 3rd, 2014 – 7:05pm): Speakman confirmed on Reddit that he’s working on a different anthology. It won’t be called Unveiled or feature the same lineup of writers, however.

EDIT (Nov. 4th, 2014): Turns out that Bellini owns rights for the stories, so Grim Oak Press and Speakman are unable to use the collected stories in a new iteration of Unveiled. It’s unclear what Bellini intends to do with the anthology, but he, theoretically, could sell the it to another publisher.

EDIT (Nov. 4th, 2014): Having spoken with several of the authors announced for the anthology, none of them were under contract yet for their stories (though some had already submitted them), suggesting that Speakman and Grim Oak Press might be able to reassemble the stories under a different title.