Category: fiction

How I Got My Book Published

I’m a writer not completely unfamiliar with the publishing process. I published a book in 1988 with a new edition in 1993. Hard Hatted Women: Life on the Job is an anthology of stories by and about women working in the construction trades and blue-collar jobs.

I had a publisher then, Seal Press, a woman-owned press that focused on women’s stories. Started in a Seattle garage, Seal Press came out of the Women’s Press Movement at a time when women, and especially lesbians, could not find printers who would print our words. Seal Press assigned me an excellent editor (every writer needs a great editor) and also a press person who got me interviewed by Jane Pauley on the Today Show. She organized a bare-bones  book tour in which I drove my CRX across the country and back, staying in the homes of women’s bookstore proprietors. I loved working with those brilliant women at Seal.

Oh how the publishing business has changed since then! Seal Press is now an imprint of Hachette, a big publishing house in New York, still with a feminist focus. But I didn’t even send them a proposal for my latest book, Wonder Woman Electric to the Rescue. My book is a collection of essays, fiction and memoir and I know publishers prefer manuscripts that stick to one genre. Finding a niche publisher just seemed like an overwhelming challenge and I didn’t feel like writing proposals and waiting for rejection letters. Also, I know that even if I was lucky enough to find a publisher, they’d be unlikely to do much to promote my book. 

Nowadays there are lots of “self” publishers to choose from, but I was lucky to employ a friend, Chris Carlsson, who has self-published a stack of books. Chris directs Shaping San Francisco (www.shapingsf.org), a project dedicated to the public sharing of lost, forgotten, overlooked, and suppressed histories of San Francisco and the Bay Area. The project hosts a digital archive (where many of my writings appear) at foundsf.org. The proceeds from my book will go to this project. 

Once I had assembled the manuscript, I asked around and found a proofreader through a writer friend. I didn’t hire an editor, but most of the stories in my book have been published elsewhere and have been reviewed by my writers groups.

The motto of Redwood Writers, my local branch of the California Writers Club, is “writers helping writers,” and they take their mission seriously. I read a story in one of their salons and I learned about promotion in one of their workshops. I hired that workshop leader to set up a website for me and to design the book cover. 

I’ve been calling Chris my publisher because he is the connection to Amazon. He uses Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon). He lays out the book with Indesign and uses Photoshop for photos. Then he just follows Amazon’s directions. He found it difficult to engage with Amazon when he needed them to correct a mistake in the title, which would have made it impossible to search for the book by title. It took him many days to get hold of a live person to talk to. It seems the publishing department is run by robots.

My book is published but you can’t order it from your local bookstore. If you want the actual book, you must order it from Amazon, although you can access the digital version for free with Kindleunlimited (owned by Amazon).

Now I’m promoting my own book, something my publisher would have seen as their job in the old days. But there’ll be no more driving across the country for me. My book launch parties will be zooms that can gather readers across the country (and the world). Technology has revolutionized the publishing industry, and I’m still not sure what I think about that.

Here’s the link for the book:

Plumber Seduction

Feminary: a lesbian feminist magazine of passion, politics & hope, was a publishing venture sponsored by the San Francisco Women’s Centers in the 1980s. It was a beautiful collective work of art and I was delighted for this story to appear next to those of revered lesbian writers in Vol 14, 1985.

 

How to Kill a Contracting Collective

Many a tradeswoman dreams of dumping the bosses off her back and starting her own business. In the 1970s I was a partner in two small electrical contracting businesses, one–Wonder Woman Electric–all women. While the prospect seems idyllic, running a business is fraught with its own problems. I was glad to have done it and also relieved to go back to taking orders from a foreman. Contracting drove me crazy but I’m proud that we succeeded in training female electricians who made great careers in the trades.  Here’s a story published in Tradeswomen Magazine set in that time when everything seemed possible.

When Homelessness Still Shocked

This story was published in Tradeswomen Magazine in 1995, but it’s set in the early 80s when encountering homeless people was not yet a daily phenomenon. Young folks won’t remember but there was a time in San Francisco and in other cities when we didn’t have to step over people sleeping in doorways and on sidewalks. It was before Reagan, as governor of California, closed down mental health facilities and sent their residents into the streets. Before buying a house in the city became out of the reach of most working people. Before the commutes of construction workers averaged two hours from far-flung communities on the outskirts. Before we got used to it.

To join Tradeswomen Inc. Today go to http://www.tradeswomen.org

The Good Co-worker

Here’s another story from Tradeswomen Magazine, published in 1997. Like all my fictional stories, it’s autobiographical. I was working as a maintenance electrician out of the San Francisco Water Department corporation yard. The photos are of  women building a house in Florida.

Women Run Screaming

Archiving during the pandemic shutdown–it’s a pastime of lots of us old folks. I admit to feeling nostalgic as I box up historic files and read through past Tradeswomen Magazines. The quarterly magazine was published for nearly two decades, the 80s and 90s, and it tells the story of our movement for equity in nontraditional jobs. Of all my writings published in the magazine, the short fiction still resonates best. Here’s a story from the Spring, 1987 issue.

Bathroom1

Bathroom3

Bathroom4

Bathroom5

In the Wake of the Weinstein Conviction

I’ve been going through my collection of Tradeswomen magazines (published by volunteer tradeswomen 1981-1999) and thinking about how much of what we wrote still has relevance today. We started writing and talking about sexual harassment before the term was even in the mainstream lexicon and before we had any legal backing. We were truly foremothers in this fight, and our persistence has paid off in improved industry standards and better working conditions for women in the construction trades. Here’s a story we published in 1983.

%d bloggers like this: