Category Archives: News

You Have a Story to Tell Tote Bag Sale

Book Acquisitions, News, Sale, , , , , ,

Tote Bag Fundraiser

Show your support for writers, and help bring a book into the world.

For a limited time, we’re running a special tote bag sale hosted at Custom Ink featuring a hand-lettered design by Keiko O’Leary.  From Nov 2 through Nov 17, you can order canvas tote bags featuring the message You have a story to tell.

large image of black tote back with inset of other product/color choices
You have 6 product/color choices

Who is Keiko O’Leary?

Keiko O’Leary is one of the founders of Thinking Ink Press, where she writes, edits, and designs our limited edition hand-folded books and flash fiction postcards. Keiko leads the Write to the End writing group and teaches writing workshops, including a free poetry series at the Sunnyvale Library. If you’re in the South Bay, you may run into her at literary events like Flash Fiction Forum, literary pub crawls, or demonstrating how to create hand-folded art books.

Where does the money go?

Proceeds from this sale will be used to publish and promote a short book of essays by Keiko. The book focuses on encouragement and insights for writers, and it will be published in 2019. Any additional proceeds will fund Keiko’s Thinking Ink Press publishing wish list.

To contact Keiko directly, email her at keiko@KeikoOLeary.com, or visit KeikoOLeary.com.

How can I get involved?

Order your tote bag now and show your support!

Order now!

Listen to “Wild Card” by Dover Whitecliff from Thirty Days Later

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Want to hear a story about the Superspy with the Clockwork Eye? Twinstar Studios just released the audio story “Wild Card” by Dover Whitecliff, first published in our steampunk charity anthology Thirty Days Later: Steaming Forward, 30 Adventures in Time.

Congratulations to Dover Whitecliff! We’d also like to give a shout out to Emily Riley Piatt from the cast of Sage & Savant, who did a wonderful job reading this story.

Dover’s stories appear in all three of our charity steampunk anthologies: Twelve Hours Later, Thirty Days Later, and Some Time Later. A portion of the proceeds from these anthologies benefits public libraries.

 

If you’d like to get to know Dover a bit better,  click the image below to check out her interview at Sage & Savant, or visit her website at DoverWhitecliff.wordpress.com.

Down and Dirty with Dover Whitecliff, author and editor at Thinking Ink Press

 

 

About “The Bottle Imp” by Robert Louis Stevenson

Book Acquisitions, News

Some time ago, during a Thinking Ink Press discussion about our small books, Anthony Francis floated the idea of publishing one or more classic short stories.

Bottle Imp art by Harvey Chin

Many of these stories entered the public domain because they were published before 1923 and their copyrights expired. Not everything that was published before 1923 is in the public domain. Some works have had their copyrights renewed, so it’s important to check, rather than making assumptions. Anthony looked into some classic sci-fi and fantasy stories he likes, but their copyrights were tied up.

In the meantime, Betsy Miller remembered a story that she had read and liked when she was growing up—“The Bottle Imp” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Set in Hawaii and San Francisco, this is a story with a cursed bottle that grants wishes but can send you to Hell. Not to mention, the story includes true love and leprosy—what more could you want?

Robert Louis Stevenson, by Artist unknown, via Wikimedia Commons

In case you sort of remember Stevenson and are not sure exactly why, he wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and many, many more books and stories. “The Bottle Imp” was published in the book Island Nights’ Entertainments in 1893. We decided to look into publishing a small print edition.

The project took off when Betsy and Maria Judnick were chatting at Peet’s coffee shop in Cupertino. Maria is an English Professor at Santa Clara University, and when she heard about Betsy’s interest in publishing “The Bottle Imp,” she stepped forward with an offer to work with a group of college students to annotate the story and to provide historical context.

Maria Judnick <3 RLS

It turns out that Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the authors that her students study, so this was a perfect combination of publishing and academics. And that is why  you should hang out with your friends at coffee shops from time to time.

So, the annotated edition is in the works now and we’re looking at publishing it in 2018. We might even have a party to celebrate. Because you should also party with your friends from time to time. We’ll keep you posted.