Today’s NextGen Publisher isn’t a personal friend — yet.

Tuscany Bay Books came to my attention when there was a bit of a kerfuffle involving one of their authors and their publisher — Richard Paolinelli — backed his author. Sorry to say that’s kind of unique these days.

They started out as an on-line magazine publisher in 2007, expanded to novels in 2013, and has a decent collection of authors, including (but not limited to) Lori Janeski, Bob Brill, Rob Jones, Raconteur author Declan Finn, and others.

I’d like to mention that Lori was in a massive car wreck recently, so if you could go by her Amazon page and show her some love, it would be greatly appreciated.

As you can see, Tuscany Bay Books offers some genres that the other NextGen Publishers I’ve mentioned don’t — including poetry.

I am gently informed that most of our readers would probably enjoy the Planetary Anthology series, and members of our staff are big on the Saint Tommy series, so you might consider starting there. although — quite honestly — the Cthulu Amalgamated series looks right up my alley.

Their YouTube channel is here.
Facebook is here.

One thing to keep an eye on too, is the long-awaited debut of SF living legend John C. Wright’s Starquest series, born out of the author’s frustration with a certain…war of stellar bodies…setting.

Publisher Richard Paolinelli himself has two prequels out in this series, which is off to a promising start!

I’d take it kindly if you’d tell five friends about Tuscany Bay Books, go by their social media and say “Hi!”, and then browse their backlist. I think you’ll be pleased.

(Cross-posted to the Raconteur Press Substack.)

LawDog

I have a fondness for today’s NextGen Publisher.

Hillbilly — also known as William Joseph Roberts — of Three Ravens Publishing was the first publisher to treat me like a peer, shake my hand, and simply say, “If you need something, let me know.” No caveats, no conditions, no limits. Just, “How can I help?”

As you can figure, Hillbilly is a genuine salt-of-the-earth guy, and quite honestly Rita and I count him and Word Witch as dear friends. He is also a veteran — again, recurring theme, right?

Three Ravens Publishing is probably best known for their It Came From The Trailer Park anthologies, and their work in Steve Jackson’s Car Wars IP, but they publish some horror, some Mil Sci-Fi, a little Fantasy, a little Science Fiction, and some work from the legendary Robert Silverberg.

A little bit of everything, really.

You’ll find Three Ravens Publishing all across social media, but in the vein of: “Don’t Let Ian Touch The Tech!*” I keep hearing, we’ll restrict the list to the ones I’m familiar with:
Facebook.
YouTube.
And apparently something called a “Discord Server”. Damfino, y’all will have to figure that one out**.

Three Ravens has been having some Life Issues pop up and huck some Big Ol’ Pocking Wrenches into things, but I have faith that they’ll come out just fine.

Go tell five friends who don’t know them about Three Ravens, say, “Hi!” on their social, and go browse their back-list. They’ve got good stuff.

(Cross-posted on the Raconteur Press Substack.)

LawDog
*Computer and internet stuff is just magic. If people would let me hit it harder, pretty sure the spirits would straighten up and start acting right.

**People think I’m joking when I refer to the “Magic Elf Box” and “Sacrificing a bucket of KFC” to fix it. I’m not.

Ok, reach into the hat — today’s highlighted NextGen Publisher is Cannon Publishing!

Another press started by veterans (Seeing a trend here?) , Cannon is headed up by J.F. Holmes — his first name is actually “John”, but for obvious reasons he tends to go by “J.F” (Kids, ask your parents). He’s a friend and a good man, with good people working with him.

Cannon Publishing runs the gamut from Zombie Apocalypse to Urban Fantasy to Military Sci-Fi, and other stuff.

Of course, Cannon offers audiobooks.

Cannon also runs the annual High Caliber Award for New Writers — well worth taking a look at if you’re a new, or aspiring, writer.

Cannon Publishing’s Facebook page is here.

Tell some friends about Cannon Publishing, pop over to their Facebook page and say, “Hi!”, then go peruse their back-list. Pretty sure you’ll find something worth reading there.

(Crossposted to the Raconteur Press Substack.)

LawDog

Ok. Rising Tide Week.

We’re starting out completely randomly with Jumpmaster Press. I have no idea why this press isn’t more well-known, because they’re professional and putting in the work.

Gene Rowley and Kyle Hannah are veterans, salt-of-the-earth folks, and I’m proud to call them friends.

Their website is here. And their selection is glorious. If you’re a geek, they publish Armin Shimerman, best known for his work as Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but he’s a damned fine author as well.

If you like the classics — and who doesn’t — their Black Spine Collection has to be seen in person, the Internet doesn’t do them justice. And for those who appreciate a good audiobook, Jumpmaster has a really unique take on them — a take I’m quite frankly jealous of. 

Their Facebook page is here — drop by and say, “Hi!” — and they’ve got a YouTube channel here.

Good, decent people, with a broad selection of reading (or listening) material.

Tell at least five friends, and browse their back-list, of your kindness. I think you’re likely to find something that appeals to you.

LawDog

(Cross-posted on the Raconteur Press Substack.)

Rita is off visiting tribe, and then to see her out-of-State family so I’m baching it for the week or so.

To stay out of trouble I have decided that the week is going to be Rising Tide Week!

I hope it is no secret that I’m a big cheerleader for small publishing houses. I do realize that small publishing houses have a reputation — deserved in many cases — for being dilettantes in the industry. For not taking it seriously, for treating like a hobby, and — most damning in my eyes — for not being professional.

There are many, many small publishers who do not deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the fly-by-nights, and the vanity presses. Let us call these professionals “NextGen Publishers”.

NextGen Publishers are, to my mind, the way of the future. Traditional Publishing is chained to techniques and procedures from the last century. They are hide-bound and moribund, and — absent a seismic shift in their corporate mind-set — headed to the same fate as the T-Rex. The change from Traditional Publishing to NextGen Publishing is inevitable. All things grow, mature, and die in their cycle, and Traditional Publishing is no more immune from the Great Wheel than anything else.

As inevitable as change is, I would not mind if the cycle sped up a little, and the biggest impediment to things hurrying along is the simple fact that NextGen Publishers simply don’t have the name recognition as the Traditional Publishers. People — readers — simply don’t know them outside of small fan groups.

Let’s change that a bit.

During the five days of Rising Tide Week, each day I will do a post about one NextGen Publisher. In these posts I will embed as many links to the social media, webpage, and anything else that I can dig up.

What I would like you, Gentle Reader, to do is:

1. Find five reading friends who haven’t heard of these Publishers and tell these friends about them;
2. Pop over to their social media sites and say, “Hi!” Bend that Social Media algorithm to our will!
3. Peruse the back catalog on their websites (Hello, “Search Engine Optimization”!), and if you see something that stirs your interest … buy it.
4. Take a note of any cons they’ll be at in the future, and if you’re near one of them, go by, shake hands, and say, “Hi!” in person. 

That’s it. Nothing to it, really.

Rising Tide Week starts Monday.

Thank you,

LawDog

(Cross-posted to the Raconteur Press Substack.)

Wyrd West received one hundred and seven (107) submissions. Of those 107, we picked ten, so ninety-seven authors didn’t make the cut for one reason or another. Stick a pin in this fact, we’ll get back to it.

This specific week at Raconteur Press we are doing the initial read on submissions for one anthology; we are copy-editing a second anthology; contracting a third; and building and formatting a fourth anthology for publishing.

On top of that we are maintaining marketing, social media, building our website, and improvising, adapting, and overcoming speedbumps that keep popping up.

In the wider general view, Raconteur Press is in the Building Phase (Pre-Deployment for the veterans out there) for publishing novels in the next some months. We are making sure that the foundations of this venture are stable and solid, so we don’t fall on our faces.

Raconteur Press is also building an imprint — Fox Cubs Adventure Club — to publish boy’s adventure stories in the next several months. Again, we want to have this thing stable and secure before we launch.

On top of that, Raconteur Press is launching a second imprint — CrossFox Concepts — to re-release previously published non-fiction. We don’t want CrossFox Concepts to be any less solid than RacPress and Fox Cubs.

Let’s put another pin in this one, too. It’ll be brought up in a bit.

To my shame I can not pay the Raconteur Press staff enough to keep food on the table. I just can’t at this time. So, everyone who works for RacPress has a job that keeps a roof over their heads, or is seeking education to further their ability to put food in their family’s mouths.

Everyone who works for Raconteur Press is a creative with their own projects to work on. I’ve got Fuzzy Yeet Cow stories to write. Rita has East Texas Witch stories, Cedar has her own press, Jonna has sewing that just can’t wait, so on and so forth.

That’s the Ten Thousand Foot view: Everyone is working on four current anthologies at one stage or another; everyone is building foundations to make sure our expansion doesn’t explode on us; everyone is helping with social media, marketing, and our new webpage, everyone has their own writing or creating to get done … somewhere in the middle of all that.

To steal a metaphor: We may look like ducks serenely gliding across a lake, but under the water our little legs are going ninety-to-nothing.

“So, LawDog, what’s your point?”

I’m an author. I know, and I understand how important feedback is to an author — especially one who is new to the industry.

However: To mangle one of my father’s quotes to the head-shed: “We’re up to our gonads in gators. Anything that doesn’t involve draining the swamp isn’t a priority at the moment.”

There are ninety-seven (97) authors from a single anthology who would like feedback. Those 97 are on top of the other authors who didn’t make it into one of the other anthos we release every two weeks. Ninety-seven responses — even if only a one-line email — is a chunk of the day in which that editor isn’t working on something else with a dead-line.

If one of the RacPress editors sends you feedback — yay! Take it as a gift, but I’m here to tell you that getting feedback from us is probably not going to be a thing in the future. Matter-of-fact, if an editor asks me whether or not they should be giving feedback, my response is going to be a gentle “No”.

We simply do not have the time as it is, and that’s before all the extra work coming down the pike in 2025.

I am sorry, but that’s the way it is. I have to concentrate on publishing, and anything that doesn’t involve getting these books published isn’t a priority at the moment.

Don’t take it out on the editors. It is my call, not theirs.

LawDog

(Cross posted to the Raconteur Press Substack.)

No, seriously. I’ve never been a publisher before.

Which — to be perfectly honest — is a rather odd professional career choice for an introvert who literally dislikes people as much as I do.

However, while I don’t know the first thing about publishing, I do know a little bit about leading people — PLDC and BNCOC beat the basics of leadership into my thick skull, and various LEO leadership classes polished the idea up a bit.

One of the enduring lessons I learned came from a grizzled sergeant-major, who sighed, glared at me over his coke-bottle glasses and snarled, “Your soldiers can’t soldier until you get  your [deleted]-hooks out of the soup. Knock it off. Go get coffee and let them work, [deleted]-head.”

Which was the profane, yet somewhat poetic way of advising me that I was micromanaging that my considerably younger self needed.

I’ve written here about the Sandhurst Flagpole Test before, and I’m fully aware of my predilection for getting waaaay too micro-manager-y, so I’m being really careful not to fall into that trap as CEO of Raconteur Press.

One of the questions that has been popping up now that we’re venturing into novel-publishing territory concerns how we intend to contract for these novels.

Well, I don’t have a clue. I don’t. See “Never done this before”, above.

What I do have, on the other paw is:
1) a staff made up of extremely bright, extremely experienced problem-solvers;
B) authors who trust us; and
iii) contacts in the publishing industry who provided us with copies of their contracts.

The minions are currently working with several long-time authors who have experience — both good and bad — with publishing contracts, and we’re putting together a contract that will be fair and above-board to both our authors and our company.

It’ll take a little while, but we’ll have it done by the time we open up for general manuscript submissions.

So, if you’ve been contacting me or the press about what our contracts will look like — or making enquiries on random web-pages —  be patient, we’re getting there.

LawDog

Author and friend Jesse Barrett has called Raconteur Press “The little press that does” and considering that we’re kind of just stumbling around in publishing without the first clue as to How Things Are Done, we actually do seem to be getting stuff done.

I’ve been talking here, and at several conventions, about how we intend to start publishing adventure books for boys.

Girls have a pretty good market for books aimed at the 10-16 cohort, but boys do not, and we figured why not see what we could do about that? Besides, the enthusiastic response from the distaff side of the species — both the ladies who work for Raconteur, and the ones who approached me at the cons — kind of hinted that the market would be broader than I had initially thought.

So, we’re figured we’d put out a call for adventure stories for boys. Adventure stories that encourage boys to be … well, boys. To take chances, to reach past their limitations, to try new things. To just … be boys.

Since I tend to the old-fashioned, we had some pretty hard left and right limits: families should be wholesome, and relationships should be healthy. No crude language, no sexual content, no preaching, no scolding — and absolutely no social or political messaging.

We’re going to let the kids be kids as long as they can.

Well, we put that up on the SubStack, and holy gods. The engagement has been off the charts. Today we discover to our delight that our open call for boy’s adventure books has hit the Recommended Reading List on SubStack’s front page:

…

…

… Wow.

Ok, then. We start accepting submissions for Wholesome Boy’s Adventure stories on November 1st of 2024. We will continue to accept those submissions them until they don’t sell anymore.

Which, I hope, is a good long time.

LawDog

“Phrase of the Day”. We tend to run through cycles of catch-phrases that people glom onto and use way too much. Usually mis-using, truth be told.

“Dunning-Kruger Effect” was a recent one. All of a sudden everything was “Dunning-Kruger”. Even things that weren’t, “Dunning-Kruger” was confidently attached, I guess as verbal proof that the person using it was correct in whatever assertion they were arguing.

Another recent one was “narcissist”. Suddenly every person with a bad character trait was a narcissist. We had narcissists coming out our metaphorical ears — Significant Other dumped you? Narcissist. You dumped a Significant Other? Narcissist. Hamster got the clap? Narcissist. Pork belly futures not looking so good?  There’s a narcissist involved, somehow.

The latest one seems to be “gaslighting”.

These days occurrences which would normally be easily-explained by absentmindedness are immediately “Straight to gas-lighting, do not pass go, do not collect $200.”

It’s annoying.

What’s even more annoying — and a wee bit worrying — is the over-use of the phrase “gas-lighting” is causing us to willfully ignore full-on instances of gas-lighting that are happening to us right in front of our eyes.

As a cynic, and a history buff — but I repeat myself — I put very little faith in the media to do anything other than perpetuate itself. “Yellow Journalism” anyone?

However, recently … bloody hell.

The Legacy Media was in lock-step, singing paeans to the “sharp as a tack” mental acuity of President Biden. Until, suddenly, they couldn’t. Has anyone in the Legacy Media fallen on their sword for that abject failure? Taken any sort of responsibility, of any kind?

Hell, I’m in Texas, and I’ve been making “Non Compos Alpo” jokes about Biden for years now, I find it hard to believe that alleged “professional” “journalists” living in the same sodding zip-code couldn’t see it.

Anyone besides me remember the Legacy Media chanting “horse dewormer” regarding ivermectin? Despite ivermectin being on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines for literally decades, being used to treat river blindness, scabies, elephantiasis, trichinosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, and literally scores of other infections in humans … the Legacy Media decided to deride this miracle medicine as “horse dewormer”.

Has anyone in the Legacy Media given a public apology, then retreated to their office to Do The Right Thing? Taken any sort of responsibility, of any kind?

Now, Legacy Media is announcing that the economy is actually all ok. CNN today had a article about how “slower inflation is boosting American’s confidence.”

Horse. Feathers.

I’m retired, so I’m drawing my pension from the Texas County and District Retirement System. It’s a decent little monthly cheque.

On top of my pension I’m having to work a full-time job, Rita has a full-time job (and hauling down all the overtime she can get), and we’re both getting some royalty cheques from our books. Those five cheques keep our household treading water in this “confident economy”.

I’m here to tell you that when two #1 combos from McDonald’s to feed a traveling couple costs almost $30 — your economy is in the khazi. And the “Hail fellow well met” grin you wear while lying to us about how things are actually great isn’t really all that convincing.

Anyone else remember the prim expressions when the Legacy Media chidingly informed us that Hunter Biden’s embarrassing little laptop was “Russian disinformation”?

Well, there definitely was some disinformation involved there.

Has anyone in Legacy Media taken any sort of responsibility, of any kind, for that lovely little bit of bushwa?

The latest is Legacy Media informing us quite haughtily that Haitian immigrants are not eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio.

I’m going to be quite honest here — I really didn’t think that folks from Haiti were actually eating people’s dogs and cats … but given the Legacy Media’s track record of — let’s be quite honest here — gas-lighting the American public … now I’m not so sure.

The current cynical joke is something along the lines of: When the Media denies something, it’s two months away from being proven correct.

This can not continue. This gas-lighting of the public by the Legacy Media is toxic to society, and has to stop. One way or another.

And that scares me. The thought of the ultimate response to a Media which — occasionally openly and proudly — engages in gas-lighting the society in which they must exist, in which they should serve, in which they must function …

… I’ve seen a response to journalists and Media commonly thought by the society to be corrupt. And that way lies madness, fire, and screams.

But I don’t know how to stop them. And I’m not sure that Legacy Journalists and Legacy Media they work for want to be stopped.

Madness.

LawDog

You turn around twice, and the interns have made an Official Music Play List for your little publishing house.

If the Spotify link above doesn’t work, here it is on our SubStack.

Lord, have mercy.

LawDog