How I Became a Publisher…Accidentally on Purpose
One of the things I swore I would never do was start my own
press.
(Never make such claims. It is generally the most certain
way to ensure that you eventually do whatever you say you’ll never do.)
Having worked in the publishing industry for over twenty
years as a career taught me all the various headaches that come with publishing
books. However, absorbing all that knowledge and doing virtually every job
there is in the industry pretty much meant it was bound to happen eventually.
At least I’d gathered a wealth of knowledge beforehand. Now I have only half as
many mistakes to make on my own.
This doesn’t tell you how I became a publisher, though.
Earlier this year I ran my first Kickstarter. It was for a
little personal project called
Eternal
Wanderings, a continuation of my
Eternal
Cycle series of Irish myth-based novels (you can learn more here if you are
curious:
http://kck.st/1tv0cq7) The
campaign was successful and the book needed a brand, an imprint to serve as a
foundation. Thus eSpec Books (
www.especbooks.com)
was born.
A few weeks after the campaign completed I received an email
from my friend, Misty Massey. She remembered that I work for Dark Quest Books (
www.darkquestbooks.com) and was
hoping they would be interested in a project for which the original publisher
had fallen through. That project was to become
The Weird Wild West. Unfortunately Dark Quest had a full schedule
through 2016 and Misty and her co-editors, Emily Lavin Leverett and Margaret S.
McGraw, didn’t want to wait so long to see their vision become a reality.
(Yep…here comes the accidentally on purpose part…)
When I saw how disappointed they were I found myself
saying…If you don’t mind taking a chance on a brand-new press, but with plenty
of experience, eSpec Books could help you out.
We hashed out the particulars and the rest, as they say, is
history!
Being a new press, with little capital, this fun, quirky
collection—a speculative fiction/western mash-up, is being funded through
Kickstarter, which in effect, allows us to take pre-orders:
http://kck.st/1udizgM.
In addition to some pretty fantastic pledge rewards there
are a bunch of stretch goals that are pure gold…all donated by our esteem
contributors. Speaking of which…
Our editors did a fantastic job corralling high-quality
authors for the project, such as R S Belcher (Six-Gun Tarot), Tonia Brown (Railroad!),
Diana Pharoah Francis (Trace of Magic),
John Hartness (Bubba the Monster Hunter), Jonathan
Maberry (Code Zero), Gail Martin (Deadly Curiosities), Misty Massey (Mad Kestrel), and James Tuck (Blood and Bullets).
And, because we are optimistic that way, if we raise
enough funds there will be a second volume, for which the editors already have
commitments from Faith Hunter, Barb Hendee, Devon Monk, Nicole Givens Kurtz,
Charles E. Gannon and Laura Anne Gilman.
But it’s not just about the known talent. Both eSpec Books
and the editors are very dedicated to giving new authors a chance. To this end
the first collection will have a minimum of four open submission slots, with
two additional slots to be added if we hit the appropriate stretch goals. If we
unlock a second volume, that will have open-submission slots as well. Submission
guidelines can be found at the bottom of the Kickstarter campaign page.
Won’t you help us make this dream a reality? Back, share, or
like…it all helps:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dackley-mcphail/tales-of-the-weird-wild-west
BIOS
The Publisher
Her published works
include five urban fantasy novels, Yesterday's
Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court: and The
Redcaps’ Queen: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale, and a young adult Steampunk novel, Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn,
written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo science fiction
collection, A Legacy of Stars, the
non-fiction writers’ guide, The Literary
Handyman, and is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Dragon’s Lure, and In an Iron
Cage. Her work is included in numerous other anthologies and collections.
She is a member of the
Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers, the New Jersey Authors Network, and
Broad Universe, a writer’s organization focusing on promoting the works of
women authors in the speculative genres.
Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband
and fellow writer, Mike McPhail, mother-in-law Teresa, and three extremely
spoiled cats. She can be found on LiveJournal (especbooks, damcphail or badassfaeries),
Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail), and Twitter (DMcPhail). To learn more visit
www.especbooks.com, www.sidhenadaire.com, or www.badassfaeries.com.
The Editors
Misty Massey is the author of Mad
Kestrel (Tor), a rollicking fantasy adventure of magic on the high seas, and
Kestrel’s Voyages (Kindle DP), a set of stories following Captain Kestrel and
her daring crew. Her short fiction has appeared in Rum and Runestones, Dragon's
Lure and The Big Bad II. Misty is one of
the featured writers on Magical Words (magicalwords.net).
When she’s not writing, she studies Middle Eastern dance and performs with
Mythos Tribal and Chimera. You can see more of what Misty’s up to at her
website,
mistymassey.com
or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
Emily
Lavin Leverett is a fantasy, sci-fi, and (occasional) horror writer from North Carolina. Her
works have appeared in Flash Fiction
Online and Drafthorse: A Journal of
Work and No Work, and will appear in Summer 2015 in Athena’s Daughters II from Silence in the Library. She also edits,
with short story collections including The
Big Bad: an Anthology of Evil and Big
Bad II with John Hartness, from Dark Oak Press. She freelance edits as well. When not writing
or editing, she also is a Professor of Medieval English Literature at a small
college in Fayetteville.
She teaches English literature including Chaucer and Shakespeare, as well as
teaching composition and grammar.
Medieval studies, especially medieval romance, heavily influence her
work. When neither writing nor teaching, she’s reading novels, short stories,
and comic books or watching television and movies with her spouse and their
cats.
Margaret S.
McGraw’s writing includes the daily prompt-writing blog WritersSpark.com, several short stories currently in circulation for
publication, and two novels in progress: Mira’s
Children is a YA science fiction
adventure, and OceanSong is a fantasy begun in the 2012 NaNoWriMo
challenge. Her imagination draws on her lifelong love of science fiction,
fantasy, and anthropology. Her education and experience range from anthropology
and communication through web design and IT management. Margaret lives in North Carolina with her
daughter and an array of cats, dogs, Macs and PCs, and too many unfinished
craft projects. For more details on her writing, follow Margaret on Twitter @margaretsmcgraw
or visit her daily blog at WritersSpark.com.
