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Guest Post: Joanne Merriam (Upper Rubber Boot Books)
on Publishing & Building Community

A writer’s day-to-day work often happens in isolation, but bringing a story, an essay, or a book to print and to the shelves of readers often takes many hands and hearts. There are several routes to publishing, from the Big Five to self-publishing.

Today’s guest post is by Joanne Merriam, who steps into the spotlight and looks back on her journey to becoming Publisher at her Independent Press, Upper Rubber Boot Books (@upperrubberboot). And she shares news of their big Kickstarter campaign to bring more women’s voices to readers. 

My journey into publishing started with poet Molly Peacock, who had immigrated to Canada from the United States and who told me to start something to get people to come to me, when I commented on how difficult I was finding it to build a community, having immigrated in the other direction.

person looking out into waterNo, it started the previous year, when I started a Twitter zine, Seven by Twenty, which ended up helping me build an audience for the publishing company I was still on the fence about starting.

Or maybe it started a few months earlier, with an 18-hour drive from Concord, NH to Nashville, TN. My husband drove the moving van, and I drove our car, and had very little to think about. I was a writer with a single book and a few dozen magazine publications, and I wanted to grow to do the next thing, whatever that might be. I thought about publishing a magazine or books, or starting a review site, or some kind of online community.

Or it started earlier than that, with five years at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. We had only two staff, so I did whatever the Executive Director didn’t do, which was mostly running the office and some of the programming, keeping the volunteers organized, and answering questions from the general public about writing and publishing. I didn’t want to accidentally slander some real publishing company, so in my examples I often mentioned Upper Rubber Boot Books, a joky made-up small press named after a Nova Scotian expression for an insignificant, out of the way location, like America’s Podunk (Maritimers often name places Upper and Lower Whatsit, you see, instead of North Whatsit and South Whatsit, so Upper Rubber Boot would be even more remote than some place that had the misfortune of being named Rubber Boot). Naturally, when I started my own company, the name leapt to mind.

The history of URB is a history of building community. The work of producing the books we all enjoy requires so many more hands and minds than the author’s, from editors to proofreaders to graphic designers to printers, and that community is then supplemented by the hard work of distributors, the insight of reviewers, the energy of readers… and on it goes.

cover image for Sunvault: stories of solarpunk and eco-speculation

My first title was 140 And Counting, a best-of anthology for Seven by Twenty, which was funded by a Kickstarter campaign which also paid for our first 100 ISBNs. My next big title was Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose for the End of Days, also Kickstarted, which was co-edited by Alexander Lumans and Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, and which put URB on the map since it contained authors like Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. Andrew then approached me to do a series of poetry chapbooks, which has built our community of writers and readers in a different direction.

Other Kickstarters included an immigrant science fiction anthology, How to Live on Other Planets, and a solarpunk anthology, Sunvault.

We’ve also released, without apparent external support, the dark feminist fiction anthology Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good, the adventure sci-fi anthology The Museum of All Things Awesome and that Go Boom, and a few single-author books like Argentine writer Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría’s Memory. I say “apparent” support because in fact all of our books receive amazing boosts, verbal and fiscal, from a wide community of readers, whose generosity continues to humble me, but whose support is largely invisible outside their own friends and family.

hands of several diverse people all together People have provided proofreading and cover art for free, and have promoted our work simply out of love for literature, which allows us to keep going. I’ve tried to pay that back by starting Small Press Week, which falls on the week of American Thanksgiving (2018 will be our third year – look for #spweek18!), and a monthly #SolarpunkChat which we co-founded with Reckoning Press.

Now we’re turning Choose Wisely into a series, with two new anthologies: Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good and Sharp & Sugar Tooth: Women Up To No Good. Broad Knowledge―for which Christi hosted the cover reveal!―features a handful of reprints (by Nisi Shawl, Angela Slatter, Sonya Taaffe, and L. Timmel Duchamp) and original stories by Charlotte Ashley, Vida Cruz, Premee Mohamed, Rebecca Jones-Howe and 28 other non-binary, female, and genderqueer writers, all revolving around knowledge: what women know, and how knowledge changes their choices. Sharp & Sugar Tooth, edited by Octavia Cade (who wrote Food and Horror: Essays on Ravenous Souls, Toothsome Monsters, and Vicious Cravings), explores the dark side of food and consumption, and features stories by Catherynne M. Valente, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Chikodili Emelumadu, H. Pueyo, and 18 others.

book covers & tiny excerpts from Broad Knowledge and Sharp & Sugar Tooth

I hope you’ll check out our Kickstarter and donate to pre-order (or even get a custom cover designed for you with your own artwork or photograph)!

URB’s Publisher is Joanne Merriam, a Nova Scotian poet and short story writer living in Nashville. She is the author of The Glaze from Breaking (Stride, 2005; URB, 2011).

*Photo of many hands above via MilitaryHealth on VisualHunt.com/ CC BY
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Guest Post: Michael A. Ferro on the Side Effects of Publishing

If you’re a writer, you dream of publishing your work. Maybe an essay, hopefully a collection of stories, definitely a novel. If you’re a writer like me, you figure the putting the words in good order is the hardest part– get the book finished (dammit!) and *then* you’ll be on easy street. Traveling the road to publication though is…well, not necessarily fraught with potholes or full of dead ends; the book will still reach the shelves of readers. But when an author (say, Michael A. Ferro) steps up to the podium at his next reading to share an excerpt, he first may lean in close to the mic and whisper a warning.

Welcome Michael A. Ferro as he talks about the side effects of publishing. Tune in to the end and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of his debut novel, TITLE 13.

My Eye Exploded
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love (or Cope) with Publishing

It was mid-May of 2017 and I could not have been more excited: I’d signed a contract a few months prior to have my debut novel, TITLE 13, published by the wonderful press, Harvard Square Editions. My dream had come true. (And thankfully it wasn’t that one recurring dream where I turn into a hot dog and get eaten by a kid at a minor league baseball game.) Since I’d signed the contract at the beginning of 2017, I was feverishly working on preparing for the big publication date nearly a year in the future on February 1, 2018. One of the biggest tasks to complete was working with my unbelievably talented editor to get the manuscript finalized for the first printing of advanced reading copies. As someone who also works a full-time job, I thought I’d prepared myself for the amount of work that would go into getting my novel published.

I was stupid, naïve, and wrong.

One day near the end of the editing process and in the midst of other book-related activities, I noticed that I suddenly couldn’t see out of my left eye. It happened without warning. Through my left eye, all I could see was a large black “burn” spot like the kind one gets after they’ve been starting at the sun for a while. I remember thinking: Hmm, this seems not right. I asked myself whether I had been staring at the sun that day like an idiot. No, I hadn’t. Plus, it was dark out and I’d been working at my computer. Had I accidentally poked my eye with a toothpick? I wondered. Nope. The ordeal puzzled me more so at first rather than terrified me. Perhaps I just needed to sleep. As many writers know, long hours in front of a computer screen spent well into the night can often produce some oddball oculary concerns. I went to bed and thought nothing else of it.

When I woke the next morning, I still couldn’t see out of my left eye. Concerned, I did what any rational person in my situation would do: I ran to Google. After a bit of searching I was convinced I had cancer of the eye (as well as a nasty case of Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever), so I finally decided to visit a doctor (but not before I did a quick Google search for affordable, unadorned coffins). After being sent to the emergency room and seeing ophthalmologists for hours of observation and tests, they claimed they had just a few more questions for me.

“So, Michael, tell me: are you under a lot of stress?” asked the doctor.

Being a manly man, I didn’t want to appear weak, so I sort of shrugged off the question.

“Eh, I’m okay. How are you?”

“Michael…” the doctor said, looking impatient as I wasted their valuable time.

“I suppose you could say that I am a complete and total wreck, riddled with uncontrollable anxiety and fear,” I surrendered.

“I see,” the doctor said. “And would you categorize yourself as a ‘worrier,’ or someone who can be obsessive about certain things?”

I was too busy rearranging the tongue depressors, cotton balls, and other medical equipment on the examination table to listen. The doctor seemed satisfied with his assessment and made a note on his paper. He said he’d finally diagnosed my problem: Central Serous Chorioretinopathy.

As I heard the news, I prepared to call my mother and ask that the family bury me in my inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex costume and that my house and all my belongings be placed in a trust for my faithful dog, Rube. Thankfully, the doctor informed me that I wasn’t going to die. Rather, he stated that CSR was, unfortunately, somewhat common in white males between 30-50 years of age who are not only highly stressed, but tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive and anxious by nature. Unfortunately, I could tick off all those boxes.

While there is no cure for CSR, I was told that my vision might return in time. As the doctor explained, some individuals release higher levels of cortisol (known as “the stress hormone”) than others, and that it can build up on the back of the eye, causing a rupture in the retina that allows fluid to pool under the central macula, effectively blinding the patient. The most important thing, the doctor emphasized, was that I needed to reduce my stress levels. He asked if this would be possible. I replied, “Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I have a book coming out next year and it’s quite an effort to do everything involved with that and also work a full-time job.”

“Oh, really?” said the doctor, noticeably interested now. “What do you write?”

“Literary fiction. The book is a novel.”

“Ah, what’s it about?” he asked.

I always find it hard to describe my novel to strangers. TITLE 13 is an eclectic mishmash of satire and emotional realism that follows the oft-absurd story of a young alcoholic named Heald Brown who lives in downtown Chicago and works for the federal government. And while there’s plenty of postmodern, Kafkaesque tragicomedy within the pages, much of the novel also centers around the brutal realities of addiction and the divisive nature that has consumed our society and poisoned our culture in a broken modern America.

“It’s a book about a stupid idiot,” I said to the doctor after a long pause. We looked blankly at one another.

“Ah, I see,” he said, his eyes returning to his clipboard. I was discharged shortly after.

Since then, I’ve been seeing an ophthalmologist monthly for regular checkups (not the same ophthalmologist—he’d had enough of me). My vision has improved somewhat and fluctuated from good to bad again, and odds are it will remain this way for the rest of my life I’m told. Still, all things considered, it could be much worse. I could be turned into a hot dog and eaten by a kid at a baseball game.

Plenty of writers, male and female, have similar dispositions: anxious, detail-oriented, and prone to high levels of stress. Whether it’s approaching deadlines, concerns over a career path or level of success, or just the arduous task of sitting down and actually writing something, it’s not an easy life to live. My experience in dealing with CSR while preparing for the publication of my first novel has taught me one important thing, though: if you’re lucky enough to find a publisher for your book, just take it one step at a time and don’t sweat the small stuff. Trust me—your eyes will thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and bred in Detroit, Michael A. Ferro holds a degree in creative writing from Michigan State University. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award and won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction in 2008. TITLE 13 is his debut novel.

Michael’s fiction and essays have been featured in numerous online and print publications. Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For more information on Michael’s writing and TITLE 13, check out his website, find him on Goodreads, explore his Amazon page, and read about him on his Poets & Writers profile. He’s been interviewed on Michigan Quarterly Review and Chicago Tribune Radio with Host Rick Kogan. He’s also keeping up his status on Facebook and Twitter. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A timely investigation into the heart of a despotic faction within the government, TITLE 13 deftly blends satirical comedy aimed at the hot-button issues of modern culture with the gut-wrenching reality of an intensely personal descent into addiction.

Young Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots. Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with concerned family and his dying grandmother while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center. Attempting to combat the devastating effects of his addiction, Heald’s reality digresses into farcical absurdity, fevered isolation, and arcane psychological revelation, hilarious though redoubtable in nature. Meanwhile the TITLE 13 secrets remain at large, haunting each character and tangling the interwoven threads of Heald’s life, as the real question looms: Is it the TITLE 13 information that Heald has lost, or his sanity?

ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY

It’s easy to enter. CLICK HERE, watch for an email on Tuesday, March 13th.

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Suzanne Conboy-Hill: The Audio/Book that isn’t an audio-book.

I can’t always trace back to the day I met a particular writer, especially when that writer lives overseas and the furthest east I’ve ever travelled is Massachusetts, years before I took my writing seriously. But with the Internet and social media, the “when” doesn’t matter; the fact is, near or far, in state or not, we can fall into conversation with writers from all over fairly easily.

Such is the case any time I connect with Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a former psychologist, a writer (and an artist!) who lives in England. Suzanne has published essays, flash fiction, sci-fi, and more. Besides being an author, she is also the editor of a very cool anthology, Let Me Tell You A Story. You purchase the anthology in print form, but this is no ordinary book; it’s a collection of stories and poems with a unique reader in mind. I’m thrilled to host Suzanne with the inside story, and there’s a giveaway. I have two copies of her anthology ready to share. CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway by Tuesday, February 6th. 

Now, welcome Suzanne Conboy-Hill!

Let Me Tell You A Story – the audio/book that isn’t an audio-book.

Anyone who’s ever squinted at a book or a leaflet because they forgot their glasses will have had a glimpse of what it’s like to struggle with reading. Others struggle because of a global intellectual difficulty, some because they’re reading in a second language, and a good many because of dyslexia or a neurological condition. Not being able to read means you’re out of the loop and dependent on others to mediate the world for you.

Some years ago I sat with a man with intellectual disabilities who was about to be evicted from his home because he had broken the terms of his tenancy. My job as a psychologist was to understand why that was and try to help, so I started by getting him to read the contract he had signed. He read every word but so slowly and hesitantly that when I probed his understanding, it was clear he had no idea of what he’d read. He had guessed a lot, misunderstood basic words, and taken so long with each sentence that he’d lost any sense of it by the time he reached the end. From the start to the finish of each string of words, his was a hiccupping disconnect of sounding-out and misidentifications.

This goes for fiction just as much as fact – trip over words often enough and you give up, thinking the book or poem is ‘too hard’ for you. Or your reading is punctuated by dictionary searches to help make sense of it, which staggers fluency like speed bumps in the road. Personally, I have a problem with poetry – I read it as though I need to get it finished before some hidden timer goes off and it explodes. The craft and artistry is lost to me. Listening though, that’s a different matter. Hearing the weight applied to some words and the air lifting others; the cadences and the way some parts speed up, wind right down, or drop me onto a cliff edge with a two word sentence: those things become apparent when I hear a poem read.

I wanted to bring this to more people: to readers who need a nudge to find the music in the prose; to struggling readers who can’t hear rhythms over the noise of working out the individual words; to those who already read well but need help hearing words in a new language; and to people who can’t read at all due to cognitive limitations, neurological conditions, or plain old dodgy eyesight.

Luckily, the stars and planets aligned when phones became so smart they could carry apps that unlocked all sorts of worlds with the prod of a finger. Music, audio books, anything, available at a touch. When one of those apps also scanned the QR codes beginning to appear on envelopes and the sides of vans owned by enterprising businesses, the possibility of using that combination to bring the voices of authors straight from the page was not just feasible but easy.

How to demonstrate the idea took some thought. It had to be entertaining and comprise short pieces that might suit different audiences; a buffet not a four course fish dinner.

I chose writers I knew could both write and perform, and material that had already been published so I didn’t have to judge. We also used professional recording studios wherever possible. We were exacting – the audio had to match the text precisely. After all, if the idea was to support reading, we couldn’t betray the trust of struggling readers by allowing the two versions to differ.

Only one of us had ever recorded our work and you’ll hear the quality of that in Phillippa Yaa de Villiers’[1] beautiful readings of her poems. Lyn Jennings also has a profoundly microphone-ready voice. Speech and drama trained, Lyn can project through brick walls but also soften to a whisper when she needs to. The rest of us: Anne O’Brien[2], Tracy Fells[3], Nguyen Phan Que Mai[4], and I, were novices, but you will hear Irish, Vietnamese, and South African voices along with English Received Pronunciation, some of it with hints of Sussex or Yorkshire popping up like a dash of cinnamon in coffee.

This book is, I think, the first of its kind, and I hope not the last. In particular I hope people take the idea and use it to help anyone who is out of the loop. Community magazines, health leaflets, voting slips, the information inside packages you almost need a microscope to read. QR codes bring a personal reader to anyone who, for whatever reason, has trouble with written information or would just like to read along with a poet or storyteller the way they did as a child at bedtime.

There’s plenty more on the Readalongreads[5] site that might help. If you have questions please ask, and if you get a QR project up and running, I’d love to hear about it.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

PS. A review would be fab!

Website: http://www.conboy-hill.co.uk/
Twitter: @strayficshion
Blog: http://conboyhillfiction.com/

[1] Phillippa was commissioned to write and deliver the Commonwealth Poem in 2014 before Queen Elizabeth II. She is currently a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[2] Anne won the Bath Short Story award in 2016 and is also a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[3] Tracy graduated in Creative Writing with Distinction from the university of Chichester in 2016. She was the Canada and Europe Finalist for the Commonwealth Short Fiction prize in 2017.
[4] Que Mai delivered the official International Women’s Day poem in 2014. She too is a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[5] https://readalongreads.com/about/; https://readalongreads.com/readalongreads-2/; https://readalongreads.com/the-science-part/; https://readalongreads.com/who-is/

WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK

CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of two copies. Also, Let Me Tell You a Story is available from both Amazon (UK and US) and direct from Lulu.

ABOUT SUZANNE CONBOY-HILL

One-time artist, long-time NHS clinician, now-time word wrangler. Academic alphabet: BA(Hons), PhD, MPhil, MSc, MA. The first four in various kinds of psychology 1978-1998 and the last in creative writing 2014. Nurturing provided by Goldsmiths’ College (university of London), University College London, Institute of Psychiatry/Maudsley Hospital, Leicester university, and university of Lancaster. 

Forthcoming titles from Suzanne include Fat Mo, a novella telling the story of a young woman groomed and entrapped by the charismatic man for whom she works, and Writing as P Spencer-Beck, Not Being First fish and other diary dramas, also available via Amazon and Lulu. (A sample image from the illustrated edition, due in 2018, shown right.)