Pre-Publication Hard Copies of Mouse Received

Alien Buddha Press is now accepting submissions across all genres, for poetry chapbooks, novellas, short story collections, nonfiction books, and more. That had been the call, with a note that shorter works — those that, after formatting, might be published in 150 pages or fewer — were preferred. So in mid November I responded and. . . .

Came the reply, from Alien Buddha’s Red Focks, I am enjoying your collection, and would be happy to work with you. . . . Attached is our standard publishing contract. The book: AVOID SEEING A MOUSE, AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL (see November 26, 10). And things have been moving rapidly since with, as of now, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE scheduled to be officially published on January 8 2024 with, as I understand, a hard copy price of $12.99.

So this week I’ve received pre-publication copies of the paperback edition — just in time for Christmas gifts should they so be desired! And the book looks quite nice. In general, it is a short collection at just south of 40,000 words (cf. first paragraph above, the note in the call for shorter manuscripts, the reason I’d sent it there in the first place) — i.e., if it were an equivalent single narrative, just on the side of a long novella as opposed to a short novel — though with the actual book as a whole still coming in at about 200 pages. That is, Alien Buddha sometimes prints text with relatively wide vertical spacing, which makes it easy to read, but if more condensed it would probably have come in at comfortably under 150 pages.

Which means, to my credit (ahem!), that Publisher/Editor Focks apparently liked what he saw enough not to mind the “extra length.”