My mother’s mother’s cousins had a fabric company in the Garment District that lasted until the late 1980s. They were the Marks family (no relation to the one who spelled his name with an x); and they named their business “Sunmarks Fabrics”. My grandfather—who they recruited to work there—would bring us surplus order pads from the office that my sister and I would write on.
So almost 10 years ago, I had the idea to start a small publishing company (I work at a really big publishing company—in scholarly publishing—for my day job); focusing on short genre fiction. I named this company “Aurora Publishing,” and launched an imprint and website for it, focusing on publishing genre fiction short-story singles—short stories, one at a time (rather than gathered in a magazine). That was the Pulp Corner.
It didn’t work that well. Mostly because the main distribution channels (Amazon and Apple) take cuts (which—to be clear—they should); but to keep the price low enough to make sense, you’re pretty much left with nothing—to be shared between Aurora and the authors. So I let Pulp Corner lay fallow for a long time.
Recently, though, I was digging through some old files—stories I had written 10 or so years ago. I hadn’t looked at them since. I hardly even remembered writing some of them. So I was able to read them with fresh eyes—as though I was reading someone else’s work. And I couldn’t stop reading them—the mark of a good story.
So what to do? Print them out, package them up, send them off, and hope for the best? (Where I’m competing for limited space with established names?)
Or take a chance on putting them out myself? See—I’ve recently seen more posts popping up on my various social feeds of friends and family—and friends and family of them—publishing their own work.
And that’s when they don’t even have day jobs in publishing. 🙂
But I did not want to put these out under the Pulp Corner imprint—I do want to keep that separate for—if I revive it—publishing other people’s work.
So I needed a new imprint. And I was walking, and thinking—what could I do that would have some link to Aurora—to dawn? And I thought, sun. And then the memory of my grandmother’s cousins’ company occurred to me. So a quick web search (there is a bank, and maybe a few other small concerns out there); and a domain meant exclusively for publishers.
So here we are. At the launch of, not only Sunmarks as a publisher, but my first story collection, Earthrise and Other Stories.
The title story—which I don’t think is the best one anymore (for me, the best one is the story that closes out the volume—“The Tower in the Tunnel”)—was a Writers of the Future Honorable Mention about 10 years ago. And I had sent some of the others out to major venues before—and got personalized rejections. (For those who aren’t writers—a personalized rejection generally means, “competent, but we’ll pass.”)
So here we are. The book—just out—is available in a fancy hardcover edition (complete with dust jacket!), trade paperback, and iBook and Kindle versions. I’m also looking into a more mass-market edition for cheaper…
The hardcover is at Blurb.com; the others at Apple and Amazon, respectively. All the sites have sample pages available, but I might publish pieces of the stories here as additional samples.
Oh. And I have more stories already—or nearly finished. So a second book will be coming in a few months.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to drop me a line.
