This may be the tenth anniversary of Exciting Press, but I also want to acknowledge that for several months there Exciting Press barely existed at all.
The books haven’t been unavailable. I’d consider Meets Girl the first real Exciting Press book, published in November 2010, and while titles have rolled in and out of availability, that’s been mostly because of experimentation in strategy more than anything else.
But last year . . .
Actually, in the past few years . . .
On Friday night, I took my wife to a local event the theme of which was attending a prom (and it’s been a solid twenty years since I’ve done anything like that). It’s an annual event, though, and while we were there we considered the previous time we had attended — which I remember very little of except that we left almost immediately after we gained admittance.
While we were filtering in, I got word that my mother was ill. This might have been in 2013 as easily as it might have been in 2014, but I think it was the former. Just a few months after my parents — healthy and happy — had attended my wedding, here in Pittsburgh.
My wife and I left the party, piled into our Hyundai, and powered by Monster energy drinks and not much else drove across the state to New Jersey.
My mom survived that incident. We got to her room in the urgent care unit, and we stuck there for a day or three, and in the end her levels stabilized and she was able to leave.
But in the end . . .
In the end, she passed away in August 2015, and my father passed in May 2016.
It’s been a rough few years for me, which means it’s been a rough few years for Exciting Press. That’s what happens when you’re a nano-press, when you’re working with authors who are more friends than clients, most days.
I’ve been dealing with a lot of loss and a lot of grief, and 2016 was just awful.
So far, I confess I’m not a huge fan of “Hold my beer” 2017 for several reasons, but at the same time, if I can help to be something positive when it seems like positive is critical . . .