Still talking hats: Wayside Press

I’ve been waiting to post about this new hatted position until the website was up and running and I could send you to it. But we have postponement.

I feel a bit like an astronaut whose flight was aborted, but this is another test in patience. Still, I’m going to put up the ready-to-go post and then link to the new website when it releases.

Some very talented people are working on a logo for us. Can’t wait to see what comes out of those creative minds. In the meantime:

 

NEW EXECUTIVE EDITOR FOR WAYSIDE PRESS:  C’est moi!

Wayside Press is the newest imprint of Written World Communications, 

 

and I’m Written World’s newest editor. (Though that news flash may already be dated, as it looks as if Kristine has also hired someone for Timeless, the magazine/imprint for the over-fifty crowd.)  Until Wayside’s launching, WWC had a place for everyone except the rest of us. Christian writers could craft fantasy or romance, speculative or young adult. Even children’s writers could make a dent, and poets found their work on the pages of one of WWC’s three magazines.

But for those who write crossover works for the general market? Nope. No room at the inn.

That has now changed, and I get to stand at the helm as the change emerges. If I were younger or more nimble, I’d turn cartwheels.

Why did Kristine Pratt, WWC’s CEO, invite me to head up this line? Probably because I’m the pickiest editor she knows. My husband calls me a grammar nazi, and I suppose I am. I began editing professionally back in the 1970s, which, I’m afraid, does date me. But don’t worry. I read eclectically and always have, so I doubt you’ll scare me, even if I am older by decades.

I know you’re out there, lurking, hoping for a home for your literary fiction that forgot to start with a bang, but whose language compels a thoughtful reader forward; the cozy or even uncozy mystery that is all about story; the romance that hangs on the romantic and not the sexual; the humorous, the satirical, the sublime, anything that makes me smile and forces me to sit up and take notice…all because you have something wonderful to say and your writing sings.

Why does the publishing world need another general market line?

Now, I grant that this is merely my opinion, but I think a lot of writers feel left by the wayside. Their work isn’t steamy enough or violent enough or sweet enough or prosthelytizing enough to fit in the CBA or the ABA. They’ve searched the Indie publishing market and found few outlets for the sort of thing they write. And, to be truthful, many of us are disappointed with the quality of works on the shelves.

We at Wayside want to change that. I’ll be looking at submissions soon. In the meantime, leave me a comment and tell me what you’re working on that might fit into Wayside’s line. Let’s make a difference together.

For a sneak peak at some of the changes going on over at WWC, read what Kristine has to say on Facebook.

Harry Potter, A poker hand, and a whole slew of bookstores….

Six thousand miles and barely a ding. And now?

Sea Venture has seen storms before. Most of the big ones have been at sea, with room to roam and room to ride them out. Yes, she’s had a few dings in the last 6,000 miles. She lost bow planking in a big blow in the Sea of Cortez. Her new deck took a few gouges when the sailing dinghy slid to port from too much wind and too many breaking waves when the steering failed off Costa Rica. A panga or two scraped some topside paint from her gorgeous hull. But all in all, she has fared well.

Until the “chance of a thunderstorm or two” turned into something else in the wee hours of Monday last. Some suggest that a waterspout came through the area. All we know is that three boats dragged anchor. An 80 footer broke loose and went into the reeds. A few sailboats ended up with torn headsails. At the nearby airport, a hangar disintegrated while nearby small planes remained untouched. And Sea Venture’s stern lines pulled a cleat through what must have been rotting boards.

Which meant that our hefty lady went swinging. Her spring lines kept her from going forward, but nothing kept the stern in place. She bounced against a center piling, obviously more than once. Either she or that now bouncy piling (was it rotten too?) attacked a big sport fisher next door. We’re just now getting damage assessment by the insurance company.

At least she didn’t sink. At least her damaged rigging didn’t pull down the mizzen mast. She has a shattered solar panel now and an outboard that survived all those years in Mexico and Central America but came home to drown. (The piling broke the motor mount from the stern. We don’t know how it missed the Monitor.) Her gorgeously crafted boarding ladder is bent and broken. Stanchions are bent. Several chainplates need to be replaced. All aft standing rigging is either frayed from the rubbing or bent and broken. Her barbecue lost its support. The bimini is bent, broken, and torn. Some of her gorgeous teak cracked.

There’s work ahead. Lots of it. Perhaps we should consider this a blessing for the depressed marine economy. Think how many people will find employment now. Ah me. I’m glad we serve a big God, who wasn’t taken by surprise and who has all the answers we need — and all the provision. We’ll be back out there someday, wherever out there takes us.

 

The Hat. Watch the Hat.

Another hint:

 

This is the hat that goes with the picture that’s on the new website that tells the story that links to the news we’re about to disclose.

 

 

(I know. It’s a tad more formal than my sailing hats.  At least I’m smiling. I was when this was taken in October [she waves at her darling daughter], and I am now. This is a hat for good news, as well as for a different kind of fun.)

Have you guessed? (If you’re part of the advance team, shhhhh…)

 

 

Think Hats

These have been my hats of choice for years:

 

Sailing California

 

Walking Ensenada’s Malecon

 

 

Sailing Sea Venture’s dinghy off Isla Carmen in the Sea of Cortez

 

At Sea Venture’s helm

 

And lunching in Mazatlan

Hats define my workplace. I sail, therefore I wear a sailing hat. In Mexico, the hat was often bigger, floppier, hiding more of my pale skin from the sun than the caps of San Francisco and North Carolina. I’ve sailed and played and written from  my big boat-home, Sea Venture.

Now, at least temporarily land bound, I’m about to don another hat for a new job. I’ll keep the old and enjoy the new.

Stay tuned.

Chila Bradshaw Woychik Writes

 

Chila:

 

A legacy lurks within me

bound within each cell—

the longing I have to matter

and passion to do it well,

to tread while leaving footprints

and live while loving hard,

to fight the wakeful sleeping

and benefit from scars.

 

I’ll fall off the edge of the boat

if I must, and sink beneath the waves

to risk the walk on water

embracing what life gives;

I risk it all for what’s ahead

and what I’ll leave behind;

I’ve nothing more than each new breath

and nothing less than time.

(from On Being A Rat, by Chila Woychik)

Her name is Chila Woychik. Yes, she is publisher/editor at Port Yonder Books. Yes, that puts some writers in an awkward position, but not this one: she doesn’t publish works like mine. So, freedom here: I have absolutely no self-serving reason at all to write well of her or her writing…except that I must. (See, Chila? One worry discarded. Poof!)

I chided Chila when she said, “I don’t call myself a poet.”  Of course, she’s a poet. She’s a sparkling word-weaver. There’s a power in her metaphors and language-juggling that reminds me of being lost in Frost as a young girl. (Think “Blueberries” and “The Road Not Taken.”) Some poems have the jaunty aspect of TS Elliot. (Oh, J. Alfred, my friend of old.) Some are merely free association: I ponder and smile.

In her new memoir-esque book, On Being a Rat, Chila flows from poem to prose to poem with word-smithing that may be too obscure for many. Sometimes she rails at life…and then pulls back with whimsy, which may then meander into darkness. She takes risks here: tread warily as you read. A person who exposes the rhythmic thumpings of her self to us, her readers, places herself at our mercy. (For this reason, I write fiction. I don’t want you examining the deepest me. In novels, I can pretend none of the dark things happened to me and none of the thoughts espoused are mine. Well, most didn’t and don’t, so I’m not lying. Merely entering another’s skin…such fun. Peopling new worlds…such fun. The created following the Creator’s bent.) Chila, instead, says, “Here I am. Love me or not.” How, when given that choice, can we turn away? How can we, careful reader, caring reader, do anything but say, “Thank you. I will hold your words close and whisper back.”

“Time respects no one,” Chila writes. “Young and old, it preys upon the world en masse; even the rocks groan. If you have a story to tell, do it; tomorrow may elude you.” She seems to be trying to stop time – or at least to leave an ash or two for memories.

Listen to this on friendship:

… I tell you truer truth after having spent the afternoon with a friend.

My tongue boils cold—

it licked a star—

sheds layers

while I add two more.

 

I storm around this Abell place

with snowshoes and a set of poles

and plant a flag of ownership—

squatter’s rights in space.

 

Now I freely give it,

piece by hard-earned piece.

 

Some friends deserve

a slice of star.

A slice of star. Do you hear it? Quickly – what picture comes to mind? Do you wish, as I do, for such a gift, handed in friendship?

She speaks of communing with Emily Dickinson: “…two porcelain spirits, confident, challenging, with a union as fragile as a poem gone wrong.

I love this, Chila’s porcelain spirit revealed here. If you have a poet’s heart or even merely an ear for fine lines, please read this book written by an imperfect woman striving – as we’re each called to do – toward the best.

 

Stateside Parking

 

Sea Venture has a parking space. Poor lovely lady must feel slightly out of place among the sport fishing vessels, gleaming and pampered, that surround her. She won’t blend.

She’s happiest at anchor in some remote and lovely spot, but sometimes life intervenes, and she, like the rest of us, doesn’t get what she wants. This is one of those times.

We, her owners, have placed her in the care of dock lines and fenders in Beaufort, NC, a 20-minute drive from home. I know, I know. She’s been our main home for so many years, she must feel an element of jealousy. But at least we’re lightening her load. Michael has made countless trips, removing all the tools, including welder and wood-working machinery, that took up most of the forward cabin. Extra clothing, bedding, towels have come out of hiding. And books. Oh, my, two full boxes of novels from the aft cabin sit in a guest bedroom here at Sleepy Creek. (Along with bags and boxes and files and…and…and stuff that must be sorted and tossed or stashed or, perhaps, returned to cupboards on board once we clean and air and do a little cosmetic work after all those sea miles.)

We’ve ordered new cushions for the cabins that never got them in the days when I was stitching and remodeling. My hard dink rests in the yard instead of on deck, and the rubber ducky will either go to West Marine for repair or have its air leak stopped somehow. Sea Venture’s due for a few weeks at the spa (notice the sad condition of her brightwork): fortunately, we can now give it to her.

Of course, those weeks must fit between jaunts to play at Cape Lookout or up the ICW. We wouldn’t want her to grow lazy. And I long to sit under the bimini once again, sipping Sumatra and watching sea antics instead of marina marvels.

 

 

These two pictures show her tied to the fuel dock just after she came in from the sea. Michael’s at-sea boots attest to the temperature out there in the Atlantic.  On the 18th, we moved around that pier to her parking place in Town Creek Marina, where she’ll sit for a month or two while we decide what’s next.