And for 2016, A Micro-Press

Last year, I had a dream. Not a night-time, fuzzy version populated by strange characters from my past slinking in and out of the scenery. I had a dream to start a tiny publishing house. House. What a big word for such a small venture. Mine is more like two playing cards (Jokers) leaned up against each other.

Everything in my logical mind (and here is where I spend far too much time, hence many of my dreams are never pursued because practicalities outweigh possibilities) said GET REAL. Who are you to publish other people's work? A literary genius? An editor with aplomb? A deep-pocketed heiress? No, I am none of those. And I started a press anyway.

Enter the world, Black Bomb Books.

The name suggests my thought process. I wanted to blow up my own conventional ideas about what I was supposed to do. Smithereens, we're talking. Who has a corner on the publishing world? I'm here to tell you, no one does any more. The landscape is a shambles, and so why not agitate the chaos and send another voice into the smoke heaps. The old ways of publishing are burning down. Black Bomb is another detonation. More like a firecracker.

Thing is, I knew plenty of good, dedicated writers who couldn't find the right place to publish their work. It often takes years of trying. Years of writing something new. Writing something commercial, something marketable, before an agent or a publisher takes interest. This causes good writers to give up. Should they? I think there is room in the world (the galaxy) for many, many stories. If one writer's story or poem fails to attract the interest of the NY brain trust, should the writer up and quit? What a tragedy. And this happens far more than is researchable. Drawers and drawers full of dusty manuscripts.

I'm not the answer to rejection; I just didn't want to contribute to it when I had the skills to give a few good pieces of work a little push out into the world. That's how I envision it, as a way to put a shoulder into a writer's efforts, give the artist some encouragement, tell her the work is fine work, should be birthed, and wouldn't it be grand if he could hold it in his hands, for kicks, for others to read, for mom-n-dad, for people to see the connections.

Writing is truly about connecting with humanity. A writer's ideas are letters of hope (even the zombie books and the erotica). We fling our stories out into the universe and say to the swirling stardust: You might be bigger, but take a look at this. I hope my little press launches a few good ideas and the writers who wrote them. Potentially lighting a few more fuses.