Being an author/publisher can be daunting, and by that I mean daunting. You are yourself responsible for the writing and editing. You are responsible for the layout, design, artwork and illustration, printing, distribution, marketing, and late night staring at the ceiling wondering if it’s all worth it. Yes, you will probably have help in the form of people who know what they are doing in each of those steps that will take your idea and make it into a book, but the buck stops with you, mister.

As a small press publisher, you don’t get the attention that the big publishers get. The chain stores don’t want to talk to you. You don’t have the easy access to reviewers and media. The reason is because self published books can be really dreadful. Unless you work with awesome editors, no one is there to tell you that your book is not yet ready for prime time. Unfortunately, too many of those books try to get out anyway and the whole genre of “self published” books gets a bad name.

Yea for Midwest Book Review! This organization is very open to reviewing small press books. And God bless them! One of the first things I did when I got my copies of Where the Jewels Are is send them copy. Happy dance, happy dance. I not only got a review by them, I got a wonderful review. Not only is the review on their site, it is used by Wisconsin’s public school systems and community libraries and Book Review Index, which is published for academic, corporate and public libraries. This is wonderful for a little book with very little wind behind it.

I need to mention one caveat about the review. There are ten books in the series Tales from the Throne, but Where the Jewels Are is the only one in print yet. Please stand by for the remaining titles.

It’s a happy day for this small press publisher. Of course I’m interested to see the sales that come of this, but more than that, I’m happy that my book has been recognized as a “real” book and it was all my effort to make it so. Kudos also to Brianna Scott, the illustrator, who was recognized for her delightful artwork.

Ok, sleeves rolled up, now it’s time to get the next on out.

I’ve always liked people who are smarter than me. As much as I think I know, there are more people who know more. They’re challenging. They make me think. They make me realize that I’m not always right, and that’s a healthy place to be. I have a friend, Tad, who is a physicist. We used to have conversations about where the soul is. If you slowly replaced all the pieces of a human body with prosthetics or robotics, at what point do you cease to be human? What if your brain could be transferred into something electronic? Does you soul go with it? These days, Tad invites me to lectures at Stanford or NASA where I listen and try to keep up. I love being mind-boggled.

I also love finding writers who are better than me and I just found a winner–Susanne Lakin. I met her in passing at the Mt Hermon writer’s conference. Turns out that the editor that I met with about my book is her editor. He encouraged me to work with her because he likes her style and that’s what they’re looking for. It also turns out that she belongs to the same writer’s group that I joined in San Jose. I made the decision some time ago to get to know the dozen or so published writers in this group by reading their books. When Susanne had copies of her new book The Wolf of  Tebron, I was excited to read it.

Susanne’s book is a lyrical fantasy-allegory. She also writes contemporary fiction, but The Wolf of Tebron is more in line with what I write, though miles apart. I love falling into a book filled with lush description and wonderful dialogue. Her allegory is along the lines of C.S. Lewis, but her writing is far more beautiful than his. She challenges my writing. I want that effect in my work. I read better writers and I write better as well. 

People who are smarter and better than me don’t make me feel stupid. They make me want to be better at what I do. There will always be someone smarter, someone who will find more truth in a sunset, more vision in a hero. Those are the people I want to keep up with.

I had the best meeting with my business Partner today. Sometimes I get frustrated with myself or discouraged that I don’t seem to be doing what I really have inside me to do and He always tells me to calm down. He’s so encouraging. Sometimes I forget how good He is at helping me do my best. I love working with Him. In our partnership, I do a lot of work, or not, and He does stuff behind the scenes. He knows people I don’t and has access to places and things I don’t even think about. Sometimes He comes up with the strangest ideas, but they always work out. Today He had to make it clear to me that I need to sit down and write and let Him take care of some PR. I forget how good His is at His job, He’s been doing it longer than I have. And one of the benefits in working with Him is that instead of bringing calorie-laden snacks to the meetings, He always brings the best fruit!