Spaces to meet and work, online and offline

I am fighting an honorable fight against the concept of “remaindering.” Last week I celebrated my 64th birthday, and I write with a nice fire in the woodstove, Nick Drake on the speaker, and an absolutely delish espresso on my aptly-named coffee table.

Beware always when those bearing solutions were originally responsible for the problem. “Remaindering” is corporate sleight-of-hand wordspeak for what happens when a book doesn’t sell. In the 1990s, when decisions like food, books, or electricity were choices which excluded each other, I became an expert at sifting through remaindered stacks at the monolithic bookstores.

Among the jewels I discovered were a handful that never get far from my reading chair, including Merrill Gilfillan’s Magpie Rising, Harry Middleton’s On the Spine of Time, and Bettie Sellers’s book of poetry Morning of the Red Tailed Hawk. I am aware, though, that life is not so much a fight against remaindering, but the ability to beachcomb the jewels that somehow get washed up and buried in today’s noise.

This coming Monday, March 2, publisher Ethan Casey will host the first Blue Ear Books all-authors-are-welcome Zoom gathering, at 7:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time. You don’t have to have published a book with Blue Ear Books, or even be planning to, to join this gathering. You may log in simply by going to www.blueearbooks.com, clicking on “Contact us,” and connecting to the Zoom link down the page. Or use this direct link. Ethan will discuss his history, work, and plans for Blue Ear Books. As you and I are the mortar Ethan is using to build this independent press, our presence is more than just spectatorship. After Ethan’s ten-to-fifteen-minute talk, we’ll discuss topics you bring to the space.

And speaking of spaces, through a tad of serendipity and several pounds of hard work, the BEB Writer’s Space is now a reality. We’ll also discuss Ethan’s plan to make the cabin in the mountains in southern Colorado available to folks who need a location to work intensely for a few days, or longer, on their books or other creative projects.

The cabin can sleep between three and six folks comfortably, and can host a larger number for strategic editing, authoring, marketing, and planning. Ethan and I spent a week there in October, working with author and educator Patrick Rutikanga on his book in progress about generational trauma and recovery in the long aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. We’ll be opening the cabin to other authors in the near future. A lot happening at Blue Ear Books these days!

John Singleton is consulting editor at Blue Ear Books.