Where to begin?

Should I begin in the early eighties? Waiting and waiting and waiting for the ERB Mars novels with the Whelan covers? Reading the Venus tales in between. And then later waiting for the next Xanth and Shannara novels. Or sooner? Reading the Narnia novels gifted to me Christmas of 1978? Back to Jules Verne in 1976, read as part of the library’s summer reading program (300+ titles read that summer, housebound from asthma). John Carter was the tipping point. I lived for those books. Reread each while awaiting the next.

Somewhere in there, someone – a librarian probably – recommended Dumas, and I enjoyed that immensely; however, I was solidly and forever in the Sword & Planet fanbase by then. With Terry Brooks and later Stephen R Donaldson, S&P blended into a more general passion for Fantasy and any scifi that had enough action/adventure in it.

Since we’re in the 80s, we have to mention Dungeons & Dragons of course, and the Dragonlance novels. Anything with dragons and/or swords was a sure way to sell me a book back then. And a Whelan cover was the cheatcode to my reader-heart.

By 2003 I had taken my passion for adventure fiction to college and gotten a BA in pursuit of an eventual career in writing. Both poetry and fantasy fiction. I joined a local writers’ group and was doing a lot of open-mic events and every workshop I could either join or form. From this, I learned of the concept of the chapbook. I think my first was thrown together in 1997. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t trash. From there, I kept putting out chapbooks about every three to six months. Other poets got interested in the chapbook journey, and I really wanted to help them get exposure, so I started a quarterly literary magazine – well, really just a rag in the beginning – I dubbed Prism Galliard.

Prism Galliard later became Prism Quarterly. In the beginning, it went from folded and stapled to a tape-bound, stapled publication 5.5”x8.5”. Eventually, I was able to move to 6x9 perfect binding. About the time I upgraded, I published this talented poet whose poetry really lit me up. I think it was the second poem of his that had a particularly long line in it, and when I printed from MS Publisher to PDF, the line was broken and I rebroke the line to fit the page – my break was done in the wee hours up against a deadline, so it was done without the poet’s knowledge. Soon after I sent the contributor copies out, I got a scathing email from said poet.

That poet was Daniel E Blackston. After my apology and some discussion back and forth over the nuances of poetry and publication editing, manuscripts, and desktop publishing, we learned that we were practically neighbors. Dan lived about three and a half blocks from me. I’ve always preferred in-person discussions to phone conversations with people who are not very familiar to me, so we set up a time and I paid the poet a visit.

Dan had a full bookcase dedicated to basement publications – that’s what we called them at the time: stapled, sometimes taped, booklets tossed together by amateur (and I use ‘amateur’ as descriptor with much respect and zero stigma as I still consider myself one) desktop publishers. Among the poetry publications, Blackston had a number of genre fiction pubs; this led to deep and long conversations about genres, subgenres, and fandom. I believe this all took place in the spring of 2003.

For several months after that, we would occasionally visit each other and get into these sprawling, super rich conversations about writing that ranged from a singular poet’s style to the future of speculative fiction to the future of publishing itself. He introduced me to SFReader.com and a few other chatboards and online sources and told me about his connections and acquaintances in the various arenas of SF subgenres. And we talked at length about basement publications and what it takes to throw one together and how to evolve one as Daybreak Press had done with Prism – from folded and stapled to tape/glue to perfect binding.

Late in 2003, after I received my BA and determined to go on for my Master’s degree, the writers’ group over which I presided at the time had a big anniversary party, and of course we invited every local writer we could find out of the closet. It was at this party that Dan and I (I may have been a bit in my cups) agreed to form a publishing partnership.

Something to keep in mind: neither Dan nor I had business experience or savvy at the time. I still don’t. No idea about Mr. Blackston. What we had was passion, a whit of talent, and the love of the game. I absolutely thrive when building a manuscript. Dan is at his best discussing the things he’s passionate about. Fortunately for our projects: those were prime years for credit. I had no governor. I’m still paying. But I digress . . .

When we started, we were thinking we would form a bifurcated publisher with two imprints, Daybreak Press being the established poetry publisher and . . . what to name our SF imprint? I’d like to say it was just obvious from the get-go, but I have to admit that I agonized over the name for about a week. At one point I had a list of maybe a score of possibilities, but nothing that popped. I went to sleep on it.

Four in the morning – Pitchford and Blackston? How had no-one suggested Pitch-Black? But would people think we were trying to hitch our wagon to Vin Deisel? We decided it didn’t matter if they did. It was the one that popped. And a deep internet search proved that the name was up for grabs, so we grabbed it.

Somewhere along the lines, I formed this nearly superstitious self-limitation: nothing is real until you name it. Well, with a name like PitchBlack, we were not starting in a pedestrian way. I was an all-in sort of person at the time, anyway. So we jumped straight from filing paperwork into figuring out a major project. In April 2004, Dan proposed Lords of Swords. By September, we had a manuscript. I’m still damned proud of that book, and everyone whose name was whispered in association with it should be. It may not have sold as much as we wanted, but it was a worthy debut.

We considered a new periodical in which to publish SF for about a minute. Journals are very very very very very difficult to start and maintain. Very hard. Really hard. The odds are astronomical against them. Total money pits. From the—four years?—I had been doing Prism, I knew that starting another periodical was courting burnout. So we compromised, and I still think it was a good compromise, by starting a new section of Prism: Gates of Arcadia. That happened in Jan 2005 with Prism 7.3. We used this both as a venue and as an ad station.

In 2005 we released Sages & Swords. Another wonderful anthology of sword and magic. A worthy Sophomore effort for any publisher. But in every business measure a less than stellar accomplishment. I had never kidded myself with Lords: it was our first fruit, and was primarily to buy us legitimacy, not to play cashcow. Equally, I have to admit my disappointment with Sages. It barely made cost, but then returns . . .

By 2006, we were pretty crispy from burnout. I was in the middle of grad school, working as a writing tutor to pay my tuition, still presiding over a writers’ organization, and falling behind with PB. We took on a few other cash projects, but both of us (and our very supportive wives at the time) had too many irons in the fire. We published a couple poetry books that actually made profit (this was actually a total travesty, as the poetry was supposed to lose half of what the fiction would rake in).

Also by 2006, we were starting to see some of the authors we had promoted make serious progress. We were sad and disappointed with our personal results, but it cannot be overstated how much it meant to each and both of us that we were able to help revitalize SF subgenres. About the time I finished my Master’s project, it became obvious that PB was not sustainable. We had gotten into this project . . . well, it was a documentary thing on DVD that fell through, and that’s pretty much what killed it for us. We put months of energy and serious resources into this on the promise of a huge payout, and then the lawyers cut it out from under us. We never recovered.

But in the spirit of those beloved heroes we so much love to read and write about, we couldn’t just lie down and return to the dust. We had been watching others watch us, and some had begun to move toward immolating – that is, emulating – us. Dan and I of course had a falling out – as much stress as we were under, how could it be helped? We agreed to walk away, and to salvage what we could by cutting favorable deals with some folks inside the industry. That meant practically giving away our inventory to someone who might use it to bolster their own business.

It really would have been the easiest thing to be embittered and walk away from the whole shebang. We had seen a few others do this with poetry, theater, and other artistic endeavors. In the end though, neither of us had it within us to walk away – step away, yes, but walk away, no. I have no idea how Dan handled it, but I chalked the whole thing up to bad research leading to unrealistic expectations, and thus to disappointment. And I have used that since as fuel for my fiction – part of the challenge every protagonist must face in the hero’s journey.