- We’re up to almost $1000 on the Kickstarter project for Tu Publishing. Thanks so much to everyone for pledging, and please feel free to share the link with anyone who you think might be interested, even if they can only spare $5. We’re starting this through Kickstarter because it’s secure, run by a third party, and it’s a great way for me to be able to give back to the people who pledge — if you donate $10, you get a coupon for $5 off a book, and so forth. The idea is that if a lot of people pool together, artistic projects can get off the ground more easily. Tu Publishing will be a for-profit company, but we are committed to literacy for all children and young adults and will be getting involved in local and national endeavors as we grow, such as YALSA’s Teen Read Week. (If you have literacy projects to suggest involvement in, especially ones that I can volunteer for here in Utah, please feel free to let me know. I’m on the lookout, and will be getting more involved in the community once I finish up the critiques I’ve got in the queue.) If we reach our Kickstarter goal, and add to it the money from a private investor and some savings of my own, it will be enough to cover the costs of our first season’s books (author advances, small stipends for freelance, printing and shipping costs, and marketing), and it will also show a bank that we are a good investment for a small business loan going forward.
- Our first two books will be fantasy or science fiction, and I’ll specifically be looking for books that feature characters of color, characters from minority or non-Western cultures, and/or non-Western/minority cultures. That’s pretty broad–it could be Japanese or Jamaican, Alaskan Inuit or African American settings and/or characters, and I’m not looking for books where race is necessarily the issue–just really great stories that will entertain readers from 7 to 18 (and up, if you count me and all you folks like me!). So if you’ve got a children’s or YA novel that you think will fit this criteria, if we make our Kickstarter goal I’ll be acquiring manuscripts beginning January 1. That means you’ve got just over three months to whip that manuscript in shape! I’ll be posting more specifics for our submission guidelines as that time comes closer, so keep an eye on the Tu Publishing Submission Guidelines page. As you can imagine, just as with the critiques, during this transitional period to my day job, these website changes will be coming along sporadically. I’ll post about them here as well to alert you.
- Here’s a place to learn more about Kickstarter, if you’re interested. I think it’s providing a great service to the arts community.
- In addition, several people have asked that instead of giving them the incentive, that I give it to their local libraries, which is completely doable. If we reach the goal, I will be contacting everyone to get their mailing information to send them their rewards. At that time, if you want me to send it to your local library instead of you, all you’d need to do is let me know their address. Full books will be sent later, of course, when the first season’s books are printed.
- I’m hosting a book club tomorrow, where we’re going to discuss Justine Larbalestier‘s How to Ditch Your Fairy. The book is a fun read so far, but I need to finish it tonight! If you’re local and can’t make it tomorrow, feel free to go ahead and send your suggestions for what to read next month, so that we can have plenty of time to decide and prepare. If you can come tomorrow and need to know where to go (7 pm, my house), please drop me an email and I’ll give you the scoop.
- The new job is becoming quite fun. In my off time, I’ve slowly been getting back to authors on their critiques, so thanks again to everyone for all your patience as I transition and finish up those critiques while starting a new full-time job. Now, if I can just get health insurance going, life would be just about perfect (it’s a small non-profit based in California that uses Kaiser Permanente, which means that here in Utah I’d have no coverage with that, which means that I have to get an individual policy, which is really, really complicated when you have chronic conditions like asthma). If you’ve been wondering why I twitter so much about health care, it’s because I have a personal interest in the health care crisis, seeing as how I’m having my own personal health care crisis. Hopefully, by my talking about it openly, it will put at least one face on the discussions out there–the face of a self-employed (and now employed by a small nonprofit) worker for whom taking care of something as simple as an asthma condition becomes out of the question due to the cost of health care and insurance.