The Riptide Unleashed

The reason why I've been busy over the last two months is now out in the open. Last night, at 4 in the morning, we Have Unleashed The Riptide.

Specifically, Riptide Publishing, an exclusive, high quality m/m and gay fiction publisher that focuses on quality, editing, good covers and excellent marketing support.


To speak from the very high horse: Riptide is my response to the State Of Our Genre. I didn't find a publisher that offers everything I want. That's how it works with writing. If you want something and it doesn't exist, then just make it.

Rachel Haimowitz and Chris Hawkins, my partners in literary crime (hah!) bring a wealth of experience in PR, editing, business and networking. I believe right now we're the leanest, meanest machine out there, and we already have signed up fantastic authors, and more big names and extremely hot new, fresh discoveries coming your way.

Apart from the rest of the team, who've put in extremely long hours over the last two months, we owe an extremely big debt of gratitude to all the amazing authors that didn't laugh us off when we pitched them Our Grand Strategy.

It's notoriously difficult to get anybody of note and talent to sign up with a completely untested publisher. While WE believe in this and know what we can do, many authors - logically, understandably - wait for the publisher to settle in first. Then approach authors who have published there, listen to the gossip, and, once all these tests are passed, submit something.

Not Our Authors. They jumped into the fray feet first. We're working with courageous and entrepreneurial people (who are also idealists, to a certain extent, to sign up when we didn't even have an active website). That's support nobody can buy.

Our "First Wave" authors are: Andrea Speed, Brita Addams, Bryl Tyne, Cat Grant, Damon Suede, Kari Gregg, L.A. Witt, Peter Hansen, Rhianon Etzweiler and Storm Grant.

Thanks, guys, we won't forget your trust and help.

We acquired anything from a short story to six books from each one, and most of them are already going through the editing process.

While we will do everything to fulfill our promises - and we are extremely well positioned to do exactly that and do things differently and better - we will mess up. Our processes will have to settle. We're already growing really fast, and the biggest challenge for every start-up is to grow in a controlled, sustainable manner.

This is the reason why we're not open to the general public and don't even have a submissions call out there. We need to cope with growth first, and we will never have hundreds and hundreds of authors. We're not designed to churn out fifteen so-so books a week - if all works out well and we ramp up to what we can handle right now, we'll publish 2-4 per month, and that includes short stories.

Right, I better get back to editing and reading submissions.