Aspen'd Publishing

New Webmaster

Yes, our web site will have a new web master.  My daughter, Tawn served noticed several months ago that she regretfully would have to resign.  I did my best to convince her to stay, even pay her if that would help, but to no avail.  With deep regret, I accepted the resignation of the pioneer of our website.  Thank you so much Tawn, you will be sorely missed.  We love you.

Andyy Barr Productions of Boise will be our new web master.  Ed Coxe, who is the principal participant, has taken on the task of upgrading the www.aspendpublishing.com site.  Among other things he will add another page to add links to the new shaman series of blogs that include Shaman Writers Club, Shaman Writers Competition, and Shaman Writers Conference.  He will also add to the PayPal credit card shopping cart that will make it possible to join the club and enter the writing competition directly from the website. All of this should be in place by the end of April, so bear with us!

Ageless nonfiction books

creative nonfiction

While we at Aspen'd Publishing are concentrating on family history, I am posting some comments from this mornings edition of Shelf Awareness that are of interest.  They note that "Despite the James Frey debacle--or perhaps in part because of the continuing sales of A Million Easy Pieces--memoirs remain a hot commodity, according to a long nonfiction story on the subject in today's Wall Street Journal."

They also go on to note that, publishers "plan to put out twice as many [memoirs] as last year," and agents and editors are receiving more memoir submissions than ever. Lee Gutkind, founder of Creative Nonfiction, told the Journal that while in the past writers would begin with autobiographical fiction and then branch out into other fiction, now "the novel's not hot anymore, and the autobiographical novel has been replaced by the memoir."

While all of this may be true, there is something else that we should keep in mind.  Fiction tends to ebb and flow with the events of the day.  The writing of nonfiction really is the factual reporting of events.  Given enough time they become historical in nature.  And, we can't (well.., some do) change history.  The story in a good creative nonfiction book is just as relevant today as it will be years into the future.  In the jargon, of the publishing business, "they have a long tail life."  That's good news for we writers of family history.  They take a long time to write.