A Year in the Life--First Notice

More on the emergence of Round Bend Press in 2011.

One of the earliest supporters of the very notion of Round Bend Press was Charles Deemer, a friend from the old neighborhood who read and encouraged the production of my first play, Litany in a Trumpeter's Bog.

He even found a director (Patrick Rosencranz) for the project, a story conjoining homelessness and metal rock (don't ask me why!). Then he played a role in the thing, the part of an American manchild addicted to sardines squatting in an urban basement about to be turned into a rock club (read the play).

The resultant local television production became a Thanksgiving staple on access television for a number of years and went on to win a national cable producer's award in 1990.

When Cold Eye appeared Charles was all over it on his blog, Writing Life II, praising the effort and providing background. I thanked him for his blurb and linked what he had to say here (more on Charles later in this series of posts as I discuss how his volume of poems, "In My Old Age," came to Round Bend this past summer).

While Cold Eye and A Marvelous Paranoia were taking shape, K.C. Bacon and I hit on another idea simultaneously. K.C. had published a trio of books in 1994--a short play of mine, Deemer's Ten Sonnets and his own collection, An Establishment of Change: Poems, 1974-1994, through his Irvington Press.

I'd seen some recent paintings by K.C. in July, 2010. I made a blog entry about the work.  When we decided his book should be reissued by Round Bend, I lobbied hard for this painting to grace the cover.

Cold Eye, A Marvelous Paranoia and An Establishment of Change in their final edits came out in a flurry of publishing activity late in 2010 a little over a year ago, and carried into 2011.

Round Bend had started to pick up steam.

(to be continued)


TS