Well, the Revised and Expanded version of The LawDog Files has been nominated is a finalist for an Imadjinn Award.
Yes, there has been hyperventilating at stately Rancho LawDog.
This will be awarded at the Imaginarium Convention in Louisville, Kentucky this July 19-21. Raconteur Press will have a booth there — come see us!
Deep breathing exercises.
LawDog
Gentle Readers, we are now accepting submissions for Moggie Noir!
I can’t wait to read these.
LawDog
It has recently come to my attention that some folks are confused about the “Raconteur” part of Raconteur Press.
A ‘raconteur’ is a person noted for the ability to tell stories with ‘skill and wit’; someone who is ‘capable of relating entertaining, and often humorous, tales.’
Given the propensity of the English language to mug other languages for words, it is borrowed from the French, but English speakers pronounce it a little differently.
Americans pronounce it ‘ra-kuhn-TUR’, although I tend to pronounce it ‘ra-KON-tyur’, that is probably a hold-over from hearing it from someone in my youth. Either way is completely acceptable.
Rita came up with the name after watching me hold court telling tales one evening, and I think I’m not being too arrogant when I say that I’m flattered.
Anyhoo, that should clear up some questions.
LawDog
Just now I had one of those moment when I realized that I do something completely odd. Usually when I notice this, I can do a little research and figure out which culture donated this oddity to me, but not this time.
When I indicate numbers with my fingers, I keep my palm towards the person I am signalling. An upraised index finger indicates “1”. Index and middle finger raised is “2”. “3”, however, is index finger down, and held under the thumb, with middle, ring, and little finger raised. “4” is all fingers up. Thumb joining is “5”.
While the “1”, “2”, “4”, and “5” are all from the British/American style of indicating numbers, the “3” isn’t — and doesn’t really seem to be from any culture that I grew up in.
Huh. How odd.
LawDog
One of the drums I’ve been pounding hard this last year is the “Rising tide lifts all boats” philosophy among other small publishers and Indie authors.
One such small publisher is Cannon Publishing, run by my friend J.F Holmes. Cannon publishes MilSciFi and other genres; and are Good Folks.
This morning we find ourselves in a friendly competition on Amazon’s New Release categories, both in Science Fiction Shorts and Fantasy Shorts:
Cannon is ahead of us in Fantasy, but:
We’re ahead in Sci-Fi! Woo hoo!
And when I say “friendly” I mean it — when small publishers like us start making in-roads in categories on Amazon, it helps all small publishers.
I hope to see more and more small publishers on those New Release lists in the future.
Oh, and this month’s Rising Tide interview will be with J.F. Holmes, for those of you following the podcasts. It’ll be up last week of March.
LawDog
… Substack? With pictures?
One of the things Kortnee and Jonna had on deck for Intern Steve was Social Media.
Apparently that includes a Substack.
Woo hoo!
Go! Read, comment, and subscribe! It’s free!
LawDog
It has been gently pointed out that I have told the tale of how Raconteur Press got it’s start, but that I haven’t written it down.
Well, that just won’t stand.
So. In 2021, a friend of mine named Robert Bruce MacIntyre asked the question: “If Germany had done the Intelligent Thing, and sent the force which invaded Crete to Malta instead, where would the best landing sites be?”
As I am proud of my birth-place, this simple question led to me writing a fairly lengthy Facebook post about how that would have been a Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad Idea on 16 SEP 21.
In it is a brief vignette involving some ghosts of previous invaders of the island watching the German troops having a bad time of it. People latched onto that little scene and started prodding me to expand it into a book. More folks read it, and starting pinging me about how they’d like to write in that world.
I honestly didn’t think they were serious, and kept poo-pooing the idea, until 22 SEP 21, when I took Jonna Hayden to the local cafe, and she dared me to do a Facebook post asking for authors who wanted to write in a Malta anthology to speak up. She further asked me not to look at the post until we had finished lunch.
I did so, and when I looked at the post 30 minutes later, I had 59 responses. While this freaked me out a bit, I figure that one or two out of ten would actually send me a story, so I just kind of batted the idea around for a bit; using the excuse of not wanting to fool with royalty splitting, tax stuff, and editing the whole thing.
Meanwhile Cedar Sanderson and I did Taskforce CHIWEENIE on 10 NOV 21, followed by her snagging me for her anthology Can’t Go Home Again on 19 NOV 21 — both of which used PubShare for royalty disbursements and tax documents.
After Can’t Go Home Again went live, someone brought up the Malta anthology at the shop, and I mentioned that I would inevitably screw up paying people. Cedar looked at me gently, and in that very Cedar way sweetly pointed out that I had used PubShare twice already for her, and there was no reason I couldn’t use it on my own.
Well, that was two out of my three arguments excuses done for, but I held out on the editing part.
At which point, Jonna cut my legs out from under me by mentioning she had a roommate who had Done This Sort Of Thing Before. That got Kortnee Bryant on-board. And I was out of excuses.
The first week of January 2022 we opened for submissions for Ghosts of Malta. I was still expecting to have less than ten stories.
We got four times that. And they were good stories. After I calmed down, Rita and I were having supper, and I said that I guessed I was a publisher now, but I had no idea what to call the press. Rita looked at me over the chicken pasta, and said, “You’re a storyteller. A raconteur. It’s Raconteur Press.”
Ghosts of Malta went live on 20 APR 22 under Raconteur Press. Followed by Knights of Malta on 29 AUG 22, and Saints of Malta on 25 DEC 22.
I had said that I would be done once the Malta stories ran out, but during FoolzCon of ’22, Jonna, Tully Roberts, Tom Rogneby, and Wayne Whisnand conspired to get me very, very drunk; and took advantage of my weakened state to get me to agree to an antho involving “Cow- hic -boys in space!”
Space Cowboys and Space Cowboys 2 followed (23 FEB 23 and 08 MAR 23, respectively) Saints of Malta, and I had pretty much (privately) given up on fighting the inevitable, but then TulKon came along.
Oh, my tap-dancing gods. The (now-infamous) book launch/room party. I think we still have books on deck that I agreed to after imbibing way too much really good liquor by way of Scott Richardson. (ps: Oilfire is Teh Debbil. Just saying.)
I gave up and filed a Doing Business As in October of 2023, and followed up by filing as an LLC in February of 2024.
So. There you go. The tale of the start of Raconteur Press.
LawDog
Looks like Kortnee may have beaten the Amazon elves into submission — our anthology with Guest Editor James Young went live a day early.
We are really, really happy with this one, and I think y’all will be, too.
Go! Read! Review! Tell everyone! Support starving authors! (And small starving publishers!)
Didn’t Cedar knock that cover out of the park? Wow.
LawDog
This is a way past due post, and one that is meant for authors out there.
If you are on Amazon, you need to have an Amazon author’s page. You do this by going to Amazon Author Central and creating an Author page. Once you have done that, there will be a hyperlink on any book you have claimed. Folks can click on that hyperlink and be taken to your Author page, where other books you have claimed will be listed — and fairly importantly — the ‘Follow’ button is located.
I say ‘fairly importantly’ because if your Gentle Readers have clicked that ‘Follow’ button, Amazon will — allegedly — send them notifications when you upload a new book. You can see how this could be helpful.
I also seem to have been remiss in telling new authors that they really should claim any of our anthologies they’ve been in.
To do this, go to your Amazon Author Central page, click on ‘Books’ on the tab-line across the top, and then click ‘add it now’, and follow the instructions.
Amazon is a little squirrely on the number of authors they’ll let claim a book, but we’re usually under their max limit. If you find you can’t claim one you’re published in, let us know and we’ll see what we can do. No promises — it IS Amazon, after all.
Please remember to go forth and have your family, friends, fans, followers, and random folks on the subway ‘Follow’ your Amazon page, and Amazon page of any other author they like — it helps you, and it helps us.
Thank you.
LawDog
This Friday (09 FEB 24) we will be launching the first of a couple of series with Guest Editor James L. Young.
I’m really kind of chuffed about this one — it’s an anthology centered around giant robots/mecha, and James brought in some stellar talent:
I’m serious, folks, some of the names that submitted stories had my inner BattleTech fanboy squeeing.
As usual for us we got enough stories that there will be a second volume of giant robot stories coming out later on.
All that being said, I’d like to ask our Gentle Readers to do me a solid: I’d like Giant Freakin’ Robots to launch high enough that we impress James and the authors that he has brought with him. Impress them enough that we can keep bringing this level of talent and entertainment to our fans. Buy this book. Talk about this book. Recommend it to your families, friends, and random people on the subway.
And — as always — leave ratings and reviews.
I’d certainly appreciate it.
LawDog