{"id":2164,"date":"2020-03-02T11:29:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T16:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2020-03-02T11:29:42","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T16:29:42","slug":"charlottes-publishers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2020\/03\/02\/charlottes-publishers\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte’s Publishers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As an English professor, I am one of the unfortunate people\nwho is expected to keep up the Modern Language Association\u2019s ever-changing\nrules about citing sources.  I usually\nadjust to these changes without much complaint, but there is one change that\nmade its appearance in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook <\/em>that bothers me. \nThis change relates to how we are supposed to deal with the publisher of\na book that is included on our works cited list.  Under the new rule, the location of a\npublisher is no longer mentioned.  I don\u2019t\nlike this change at all.  Publishers do\nnot function in a vacuum.  In most cases,\nthey are inextricably tied to the communities in which they do business.  The location of a publisher tells one\nsomething about the publisher, but it also says something about its home\ncommunity.  MLA might not care, but I\nthink it\u2019s worth noting that Charlotte is now home to several successful independent\npublishers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Falstaff Books, one of Charlotte\u2019s fastest growing publishers,\nmade its debut in January 2016 under the leadership of John Hartness, and it is\nalready publishing about 40 titles per year. \nKnown initially for writing popular works of urban fantasy, Hartness has\na strong interest in genre fiction, and this interest is reflected in the\ntitles that Falstaff Books releases.  On\nits official website, Falstaff Books is described as being \u201cdedicated to\nbringing to life the best in fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, romance,\nand dramatic literature.\u201d   Hartness\noften works with authors from the Charlotte region, including my friend and\ncolleague at UNC Charlotte A. J. Hartley. \nIn April, Falstaff Books will release A. J. Hartley\u2019s Impervious, <\/em>a fantasy novel that deals\nwith the topic of school violence.  For\nmore information about Falstaff Books, please click on the following link:  http:\/\/falstaffbooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I have a particular fondness for Falstaff Books since it is\nthe publisher of The Herald of Day<\/em>, a\nfantasy novel by my wife, Nancy Northcott. \nBecause of my wife\u2019s associations with the company, I have learned about\ntheir many connections with Charlotte\u2019s community of genre authors.  A prime example of Falstaff Books\u2019\ninvolvement with this community is its Saga Conference, a two-day, professional\ndevelopment conference for genre writers that\u2019s held in Charlotte every year. \nThis year\u2019s Saga Conference will take place on March 6-8 at the\nUniversity Hilton.  For more information\nabout the Saga Conference, please click on the following link:  http:\/\/sagaconference.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Main Street Rag Publishing Company, another one of\nCharlotte\u2019s successful publishers, got its start as the publisher of The Main Street Rag, <\/em>a quarterly\nliterary magazine that began in 1996 under the editorship of M. Scott\nDouglass.  Since then, Main Street Rag\nhas developed into a well-regarded independent press known especially for\npoetry.  Unlike most small presses, Main\nStreet Rag owns its own printing and binding equipment, which it uses in the\nproduction of its releases.  It has\npublished a number of regional and national authors, including Gustavo P\u00e9rez\nFirmat, Irene Blair Honeycutt, Randall Horton, Maureen Ryan Griffin, Diana\nPickney, Tony Abbott, and Michael F. Smith.  I am pleased that Christopher\nDavis, one of the creative writing professors from UNC Charlotte\u2019s English\nDepartment, is about to join the list of authors published by Main Street\nRag.  Oath,\n<\/em>his most recent collection of poems, is scheduled for release this\nspring.  For more information about Main\nStreet Rag, please click on the following link: \nhttp:\/\/www.mainstreetrag.com\/about-main-street-rag\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of Charlotte\u2019s quirkier independent publishers is Dark\nLantern Tales, the brainchild of Mark Williams. \nEver since he was a boy, Williams has loved to read dime novels and\nother forms of sensational fiction from the late nineteenth century.  Over the decades, he has built an impressive\ncollection of these publications. However, they were originally printed on\ncheap paper and are now so fragile that they are nearly unreadable.  In an effort to bring these crime thrillers\nback into circulation, he started Dark Lantern Tales.  As he states on his informative website, he\nhas now published trade paperback and electronic book versions of numerous\n\u201crediscovered crime and detective stories from the 1800s.\u201d  Among the books he has published are the Joe Phenix Detective Series <\/em>by Albert W.\nAiken.  Although Williams obviously does\nnot publish Charlotte-area authors, he does work with Charlotte\u2019s Park Road\nBooks to make the trade paperback versions of his publications available to\nCharlotte\u2019s reading public.  For more\ninformation about Dark Lantern Tales, please click of the following link:  https:\/\/darklanterntales.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aforementioned publishers are by no means Charlotte\u2019s\nonly publishers, but they serve as excellent examples of this aspect of\nCharlotte\u2019s literary community.  These\nand Charlotte\u2019s other publishers all make important contributions to storied\nCharlotte.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an English professor, I am one of the unfortunate people who is expected to keep up the Modern Language Association\u2019s ever-changing rules about citing sources.  I usually adjust to these changes without much complaint, but there is one change that made its appearance in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook that bothers me.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,21,22,20],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-dark-lantern","tag-falstaff-books","tag-main-street-rag","tag-publishers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2175,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}