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:
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… 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
So with the painful political correctness, none of Heinlein’s juveniles would be suitable material. Got it.
Blackwing,
‘Red Planet’ would be fine. ‘Have Spacesuit, Will Travel’, also.
‘Starship Troopers’ — really directed at an older audience than we’re looking for.
Wrong end of the stick. Please be politically incorrect! Don’t allow modern politics or social ‘justice’ to color your writing. Give us brave boys doing boy things. Heinlein’s juveniles are right up the alley of what we’re trying to do.
LawDog, I love this. I grew up reading SciFi from the 50’s and “young adolescent” adventures from that time frame as well. I don’t know Jack about the publishing biz, so I don’t know if any of those kinds of stories from that era are available for reprint, perhaps contacting estates of some of the authors? I dunno. Thinking out loud here. I can say that growing up, I felt like the world described by those stories was so much more free and kids were able to explore and do stuff that today we’d never let them do today without wrapping them in bubble wrap and strapping a crash helmet and a parachute to them. The kinds of adventures you and your brothers had growing up in Africa. Books like the Swiss Family Robinson, or Robinson Carusoe. They taught self-sufficiency and flexible thinking. This is why Cast Away did so well. It was Robinson Carusoe written in a modern setting.
I remember a story, unfortunately I don’t recall the title or the author’s name. It was a crew of boys who had pooled thier money and snagged a surplus WWII mini submarine from a government auction for like the minimum bid because nobody wanted it. They spend an entire summer going through it, repairing it, and actually launching it into a nearby lake fed by a waterfall that had a cave behind the falls. They proceed to explore the cave behind the falls with it. Somehow someone got trapped in the cave and the boys used thier mini sub that nobody knew they had to rescue them. This is sorely lacking in society today, a place where boys can learn to be self reliant and well rounded and able to know how-to build a fire to stay warm, how to hunt and gather food to survive, how to not only shoot, but how to reload, how to make snares and traps, etc. This is why “Red Dawn” (the original) did so well too.
I believe that was called The Mad Scientist Club. A collection of shorts, IIRC.
Listen up, there is a gang of Wiley foxes in north Texas that are having fun doing what they do to know that they are breaking the rules of trad publishing. Its like fighting a serious battle for the fist time, sometimes audacity to try something different stuns an entire population into silence and lets the smart kids know that they lost. (Im thinking about the Doolittle Raiders from WWII). Then, the little fox that could figures it out and goes holy ape shit on them and ends wars. (Now ask yourself how Curtis LeMay finished out the summer of 1945 with two bazillion dollar rice cookers). Innovation and rocking the boat come from doing the right thing, no matter what. BZ, Fox Gang, and shake the pillars of heaven with your might!!!
Lawdog, I think you might consider being a little flexible on the political bit. I can see wholesome kid oriented stories set in say occupied France. Or Italy, or Africa during WWII. Or even in Vietnam or Korea. Kids especially adolescents need to build a love of country and patriotism and an understanding of right and wrong and how it applies to everyone, not just other people.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s the Contemporary Issues political messaging they’re coming down against. So weighing in on the Trans In Sports issue is *SEHR Verboten,* but coming to the cause of the Roundheads against Charles I’s Cavilers, or vise versa, should not be too much of an issue.
Of course, I don’t work there, and so I really *might be* mistaken.
I do work there, and this is exactly it. We don’t want the current political/social nonsense oozing into our books. Actually, to address Blackwing’s comment above, we’d like to be the opposite of ‘politically correct’ in this here era. We’d love to see boys who can safely handle weapons, do daring things, and defend themselves and their families.
I grew up reading stories by the likes of G A Henty, R M Ballantyne, R L Stevenson and so on. Longer stories than you’d put in an anthology, but the kind of stories that encouraged both an interest in history and a desire to go out and DO THINGS.
There are books on my shelves that are collections of the type that you are proposing, that are 80-100 years old, maybe more.
More power to you, that is a project worth taking on!