Here’s a small story of the publishing world. It includes hope and anguish, heroism and tragedy. If you read to the end you may be touched, as I have been, by the goodness that surfaces from time to time in human affairs.
In December 2020, mystery writer G.P. Gottlieb sent word to book coach Christine DeSmet that Dan Willis of DX Varos Publishing, Inc., would be open to new submissions in January. Noting that historicals were among the genres Dan published, Christine passed the information on to me.
I sent a query, and Dan asked to read my shiny new manuscript, Freedom’s Purchase. Trembling with hope, I sent him the file. After only a few weeks, he replied:
Dan Willis
Hi Larry, Thank you for the opportunity to consider to consider your manuscript for Freedom’s Purchase.
I’m afraid I’m going to take a pass on this one. The plot as described in the query had not begun to develop in the first 50 pages, and I frankly lost interest in the story at that point. You might want to consider rearranging some of your chapters, assumed the escaped slave story did eventually materialize, and have it interspersed with the character/scene development that was all at the beginning.
Best luck to you!
Daniel Willis, Publisher D. X. Varos, Ltd.
Sigh. Another rejection, par for the course.
But this was the best kind of rejection—a personal note telling me what was wrong. Combining it with one received from another publishing house and triangulating: BAM! I achieved a sudden blinding insight.
I spent a year rebuilding my book from the ground up, gave it a new title—The Maelstrom—and asked Dan to read the new version. He agreed to read it and then agreed to publish it.
So on August 23, 2022, I became the author of a published novel, now titled Price of Passage. This is the proudest accomplishment of my life, after my daughter and grandchildren.
Think of my world as a great room in which nervous writers shuffle about, bumping into one another, smoking endless cigarettes (real or metaphorical), while riffling the smudged and bruised pages of manuscripts that are getting old. The vast floor of that room, Dear Reader, is knee-deep in jagged shards, the remains of shattered dreams.
My book, Price of Passage, would be among those dead fragments of once-bright literature, had not Galit Gottlieb shared key information; had not Christine DeSmet passed that information along; and, especially, had not Dan Willis agreed to read my manuscript—twice!—finding, on the second read, some of the value I had struggled so long and hard to put there.
That’s exactly how gritty and how personal the book publishing business is.
Nearly a year has elapsed since my book was launched. Dan Willis has been my partner in the tough job of selling books. Neither of us is flush with money for advertising. Both of us have struggled, persistently. Dan has been in this struggle not only with me but with about thirty other authors DX Varos publishes.
Dan Willis died July 9.
R*I*P
Dano died of natural causes. He was a comparatively young man, I don’t know how old exactly, but he had not been healthy for some time.
His demise has thrown the future of DX Varos Publishing, Inc., and the future prospects of more than fifty books, by about thirty authors, into uncertainty. That’s because DX Varos has been virtually a one-man operation.
Dan’s friend Karen Morrisey, secretary and co-owner of the publishing house, is trying to sort things out. It will be a while before we know what the future holds.
What we all do know—we authors have been commiserating via Facebook and Zoom—what we all know is that we have lost a great friend and champion.
Dano was a man of many parts. He was an accomplished genealogist with a deep and abiding interest in the royal families of Europe. He was an author, who published several works of fantasy or speculative fiction plus authoritative nonfiction works on the Romanovs, the Hapsburgs, the Windsors, and other royal lineages.
And, oh yes, he was a publisher for aspiring authors like me. In the halls of Random Penguin Publications, he would pass unnoticed. Hidden behind a water cooler. Swamped under piles of digital press releases. Perhaps relegated to the AI department. Who knows?
But at little DX Varos, in Denver, Colorado, Dano was a giant.
Dan didn’t make money as a publisher. He always had to supplement his income with a day job. But he discovered authors, gave them a chance to shine, and brought out a lot of worthwhile books that otherwise would have been just the fragments of shattered dreams.
Dano hawking his wares at a book fair.
His contract was simple, clean, and unambiguous. He responded promptly to emails and was, according to all his authors, a delight to work with. Amid financial and business pressures that must have been gigantic, Dano always found time to pay attention to our questions and concerns. And he was an important part of the volunteer machinery of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association.
We are finding out that Dan, fearing his life might be cut short, had taken special care to set up his files and busines operations in an orderly way so that Karen, his executor and successor at the helm of the publishing company, will have a fighting chance to keep it going, sell it advantageously, or wind up its affairs in a sound way.
We mourn the loss of a wise and patient man who helped us all navigate the problematic world of book publishing.
The Big Five publishers—the ones we all wish would look at our books—have their own way of doing things. A profit-oriented way.
Charred, the third book in G. P. Gottlieb’s Whipped and Sipped mystery series, puts the reader deep in the mind and heart of Chicago café owner Alene Baron at a time when Covid seems to have shut down everything except arson, murder, and chicanery.
A construction site is torched, an unburned body found in the debris. Amidst pandemic-imposed precautions, protest marches, and opportunistic looting, it’s all too much. A dead body at a fire scene shouldn’t have anything to do with Alene’s café, but—as things turn out—it does.
Baron is hardly an eager sleuth. She just wants to protect her family, her friends, her business—and her love commitment to divorced police detective Frank Shaw. The rhythm of these concerns as they overlap and clash in Alene’s brain forms a distinct heartbeat for this engaging story. Everything is further complicated by the skeleton in Alene’s closet—an estranged uncle who wants absolution for his role in a long-ago bank robbery.
Juggling characters, relationships, and conflicts in a way that flows swiftly to a compelling conclusion is Gottlieb’s special strength as a mystery writer. This is the third literary outing for Alene and her coterie, and the author strikes a confident pace with a narrative which, though complex, always moves forward.
Readers of the first two books, Battered and Smothered, will certainly enjoy Charred. And so will anyone else who enjoys mysteries whipped, sipped, and basted with the juice of uptown intrigue.
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INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
G.P. GOTTLIEB
Dear Reader,
Few authors I have met since entering the literary world can match Galit Gottlieb for hard work, organization, and brains. It was Galit who introduced me to my book publisher, DX Varos Publishing. And when the book was published, she helped me spread the word by interviewing me on her New Books Network podcast, New Books in Literature. Besides organizing and conducting this weekly half-hour author interview show, she has found time so far to write and publish three engaging murder mysteries, the Whipped and Sipped series from DX Varos.
These are great books, and if you like a mystery, they’ll be right up your alley.
A few days ago, on your behalf, I asked Galit these questions:
ME: What made you become a novelist, and more specifically, a mystery writer?
G.P. GOTTLIEB:In 2014-15, I made it through an epic cancer battle by dreaming of the novel I was going to write if I made it out on the other side. I’d written stories, poems, and songs, but because I loved reading mysteries, I wanted to write one. I read a lot of classics, and especially enjoyed Rex Stout’s descriptions of the gourmet food his protagonist enjoyed. In my book, I thought, I’ll also include recipes, and the food will be what I like best-vegetarian, healthy, clean. So, I sat down and started writing a story about a café owner in Chicago, very close to where I live. I worked with a fabulous teacher, spent three years perfecting that first novel, and won a publishing contract in a rare stroke of good luck!
ME: How much of your protagonist, Alene Baron, is G.P. Gottlieb? How do the two of you differ?
G.P. GOTTLIEB:Alene is nothing at all like me; she’s from a different generation, a different neighborhood, and had different dreams. Also, I have no business ability and can’t imagine running a café, dealing with employees, or facing endless dilemmas. I do love eating and drinking in cafes though, and I enjoy being around people, so maybe there’s just a little bit of me in her.
ME: What is next on your horizon as a writer?
G.P. GOTTLIEB: I’ve started another novel in the Whipped and Sipped series (it might be called POUNDED), I’m writing lots of essays to submit to journals and as guest posts, and I’ve been working on and off on a novel in short stories for several years. I enjoy most of the process except for the marketing, which I wish wasn’t as necessary as it is. My plan for this launch is to write so much that every day people around the world look at social media and see another essay by me – some are standard, but some might be (and have been) referred to as “odd.” As long as it entertains me to write it, I’m okay if anyone thinks it’s odd!
