Turn Your Intellectual Pursuits into Fun, Profit, and Recognition
by Michael R. Wing, Ph.D.
Today’s workforce is highly educated and underemployed, and many of us are in jobs that don’t fully use our skills, talents and interests. Passion Projects for Smart People is a unique career guide that shows how to do serious intellectual work in your spare time — and turn side projects into career-building opportunities.
Written by a high school science teacher who has done field work in six countries, published in professional journals and worked with NASA, Passion Projects for Smart People provides a blueprint for leveraging your intellectual interests to develop your career and earn professional recognition.
Passion Projects for Smart People shows how to become an intellectual entrepreneur and launch your own academic, scientific and artistic projects. Author Michael R. Wing dives into the nuts and bolts of how he created his own research projects in marine biology, high altitude gardening, astrobiology and archaeology.
Wing also profiles others who have created fascinating projects in backyard science, nature surveys, history, art, anthropology, poetry, conservation and more. These projects have also earned their creators substantial conventional success: book publishing deals, museum exhibits, art commissions, opportunities to teach and lecture, paid positions on scientific expeditions, and even full-time employment.
Passion Projects for Smart People provides specific strategies for making your project a success: how to form alliances with institutions, collaborate with others, apply for grants and travel opportunities, publish your work, and teach and mentor others.
The perfect career guide for the era of the Ph.D. barista, the underpaid adjunct and the gig economy, Passion Projects for Smart People will help you take charge of your career and your life.
Audience: Career advice readers, aspiring and established professionals, and anyone seeking fulfilling work.
About the Author: Michael R. Wing, Ph.D., is a high school science teacher in Anselmo, California. He has done field work throughout the world and worked in collaboration with NASA, the University of California, the Mars Institute, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service.
$14.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 180 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-306-9
Field Notes on Foul-Mouthed Babies, Disenchanted Women, & Careening into Middle Age
by Kara Martinez Bachman
Now available for pre-order. Publication date: February 2017.
Life doesn’t end at 40. It just gets really, really weird. In Kissing the Crisis, humorist Kara Martinez Bachman takes on middle age with a kick-ass Generation X attitude and a willingness to try anything. Bachman’s comic essays recount her many absurd adventures in her forties, presenting a decidedly female approach to the midlife crisis.
Written for every woman who knows that turning 40 is no reason to become respectable, Kissing the Crisis is the field guide you need to blaze your own unconventional trail through the jungle of middle age. Bachman reports from the front lines of the battle to stay awake after 9 p.m., and her adventures will make you scream with laughter, cringe with embarrassment, and vow to tackle your own midlife crisis with a can-do attitude and a tasty cocktail.
Kissing the Crisis tells of Bachman’s fearless exploits such as searching for a child-friendly bar and grill for a parents’ drinking night; reigniting her rock ’n’ roll lifestyle by founding the world’s greatest ukulele-harp goth band; futilely trying to shush a foul-mouthed toddler shrieking obscenities in the grocery story, while everyone judges her for being a bad mother; overcoming her lifelong beliefs about gun control to learn target shooting—and absolutely loving it; and her many other wild attempts to live life after 40 to the fullest, even in the face of the harshest mommy judgment.
Bachman is a fresh, new, irreverent voice in humor, the spokeswoman of today’s middle-aged people, Generation X, who long ago lost the media’s attention but have been quietly redefining middle age as a time of freedom to be yourself without apologies. Kissing the Crisis is an inspiration to all of us living with a youthful spirit that says “Yes!” to adventure and a middle-aged body that says “Meh … let’s get ice cream instead.”
About the Author: Kara Martinez Bachman is a New Orleans-based freelance writer. Her work has appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, NOLA.com, The Writer, Funny Times, NPR’s State of the Re:Union, Ellipsis, Magnolia Quarterly, the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina retrospective, Katrina Memoirs, and numerous other publications.
$14.95 ($18.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 146 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-290-1
by Pat Hunter and Janice Stevens
The best loved and most spectacular drive in California is documented in a beautifully illustrated artistic and literary journey. A fantastic drive comes to a stunning conclusion in An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South. Completing the trilogy started in An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 North and continued in An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 Central, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South is an enchanting exploration of California’s State Highway 1 from Point Hueneme Lighthouse to the Mexican border.
Lavishly illustrated with over 130 original full-color Pat Hunter watercolors depicting gorgeous landscapes and architectural treasures, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South is a thinking person’s travel guide for people who want to explore the history, culture, and architecture of the Southern California Coast—as well as experiencing the best in dining, lodging, and unusual experiences along the route.
Going far beyond the usual travel guide, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South is a literary and artistic collaboration that captures a very personal experience of a journey, illuminated by a deep cultural awareness of the places, people and history of California.
A personal memoir of the Hunter and Stevens’ personal journey along the great highway, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South records the authors’ explorations off the beaten path, their serendipitous discoveries, and their personal reactions to the places they encounter.
Along the way, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South explores the greatest sights and experiences
along the great highway, giving readers tips on the major points of interest, sights to see, places to stay and the best seafood restaurants on the coast.
A satisfying and contemplative mixture of captivating artistry and personal essay, An Artist and a Writer Travel Highway 1 South is a triumphant conclusion to a unique travel trilogy.
About the Authors: Pat Hunter is a widely recognized regional artist whose work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout California. Janice Stevens is an author and teacher of English literature and creative writing. Hunter and Stevens have collaborated on numerous books on California architecture and history.
$26.95 • Trade Paperback • 11” x 8½” • 128 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-297-0
Travel/California / Art • BISAC TRV025130 /ART016010
Over 130 Original Full Color Illustrations
You’re Invited … Relax and Enjoy!
Illustrated by Laurie Triefeldt
Adult coloring books are taking the publishing world by storm—or perhaps it would be better to say, by a calming wave.
As a meditative refuge from the modern world of constant overstimulation, 24/7 activity schedules, and incessantly blinking and beeping electronic devices, coloring books are giving adults a new way to relax, explore their creative sides, and focus their minds.
Coloring book fans are invited to ease their tensions and invigorate their creativity in the immersive world of Elegant Tea Party Coloring Book. Hand-drawn by acclaimed artist Laurie Triefeldt, these 70 absorbing illustrations of cups, saucers, teapots, muffins, and flowers will give colorists hours of calming focus.
Triefeldt’s illustrations range from intricate geometric patterns on fine bone china to fluid, organic shapes of floral prints, cut flowers, and even a kitten in a tea cup. These complex images offer colorists endless opportunities to create personalized works of art through use of color and shade. And the tea party theme adds a special touch of civilized comfort and relaxation that immediately calms a busy mind.
Elegant Tea Party Coloring Book is especially designed to provide a high-quality coloring experience, using thick paper, printed only on one side, to offer a smooth, firm coloring surface with no bleed through.
Like a rich cup of tea, Elegant Tea Party Coloring Book is a relaxing and stimulating break in one’s busy day.
Audience: Adult coloring book fans.
About the Illustrator: Laurie Triefeldt was born and educated in Toronto, Canada. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and the University of Windsor. Triefeldt is the creator of World of Wonder, the award-winning syndicated weekly illustrated newspaper feature exploring the educational themes of history, science, nature and technology, appearing in more than 100 newspapers worldwide. Triefeldt is also the author and illustrator of World of Wonder: Plants and Animals, World of Wonder: People and Places, and the forthcoming
Boudoir Coloring Book, all available from Quill Driver Books.
$14.95 ($18.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 8½” x 10″ • 144 pages (70 illustrations)
ISBN 978-1-61035-284-0
A Woman’s Journey in 1898–1899
by Josephine Knowles
When Josephine Knowles left for the Klondike gold fields with her husband in 1898, she didn’t know she would be facing a constant battle with cold, disease, malnutrition and the ever-present possibility of death.
Gold Rush in the Klondike is Knowles’s true story of her year in the Yukon territory, a revealing, never-before-published personal memoir of day-to-day life at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Written in a clear, forthright, nineteenth-century style, Gold Rush in the Klondike presents terrifying struggles against a hostile environment, picturesque descriptions of an untouched Arctic wilderness and Knowles’s keen observations of men and women on the frontier.
A Victorian gentlewoman of refinement, Knowles found herself among swearing, whoring, sometimes violent miners, whom she won over with her grit and compassion. Deciding to never moralize or condemn, Knowles writes frankly of the intense hardships that drove miners into lives of drink and dissipation and the frontier women who were forced to make stark choices between prostitution and starvation.
Knowles’s adventures include encounters with author Jack London (Knowles firmly disapproved of London’s cruel mistreatment of his sled dogs), nursing miners during a typhoid outbreak until she fell ill herself, witnessing savage fights among the miners, dangerous travel through the mountain passes and river rapids of the Yukon, and a daring surreptitious visit to a gambling saloon. Amid all hardships, Knowles formed warm relationships with the mining community, for, as she put it, “All the diseases and other troubles had knitted us into one large family.”
Illustrated with period photographs, Gold Rush in the Klondike is an invaluable historical document of a lost time and place and an admirable portrait of one woman’s determination in the face of danger.
Audience: History readers, women’s history readers and nineteenth-century history readers.
About the Author: Josephine Knowles was born in Illinois in 1864. She lived in Nebraska and California before her extraordinary year in the Klondike in 1898–1899. She returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1899 and spent the rest of her life there. Knowles died in Berkeley, California, in 1936, at the age of 71.
$22.95 ($28.95 Canada) • Hardback • 6″ x 9″ • 172 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-270-3
How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966–1980
by George Case
Publication Date: March 18, 2016
In 1966, secular rationality seemed so dominant that Time magazine ran a cover story that asked, “Is God dead?” No one could have anticipated that mysticism, the irrational and the Occult would rule American popular culture for the next 15 years.
Here’s to My Sweet Satan is the first book to fully document the Occult craze of the 1960s and 1970s, when the Devil, demonic possession, and magic became the dominant themes of music, books, movies, and even Saturday morning cartoon shows.
A sweeping and masterful cultural history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan tells how the Occult conquered the American imagination, weaving together topics as diverse as the birth of heavy metal, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, New Age cults, Bigfoot, Scooby-Doo, Count Chocula cereal, the serial killer Son of Sam, and more.
Here’s to My Sweet Satan is both a fun, nostalgic look at some of the campier aspects of 60s/70s pop culture (remember Dark Shadows, pyramid power, In Search Of … and Chariots of the Gods?) and a serious inquiry into the origins of the dark, disturbing phenomena of the era, from the Manson Family murders to the Jonestown massacre. Cultural critic George Case gives a superb account of the crisscrossing artistic and cultural influences that intersected between the Occult, rock music, paperback fiction and pop culture of the period. (Case’s account of how Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band led to heavy metal is a must-read for all rock fans.)
Here’s to My Sweet Satan ties the many manifestations of the Occult craze into a single cultural movement, a crucial turning point that permanently changed American society, creating the cultural framework for the political power of the religious right, false accusations of Satanic child abuse, and today’s widespread rejection of science and rationality. An insightful blend of pop culture and social history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan lucidly explains how the most technological society on earth became enthralled by the supernatural.
About the Author: George Case is a writer on ideas and popular culture, and an acknowledged authority on the band Led Zeppelin. He is the author of Led Zeppelin FAQ, Calling Dr. Strangelove and several other books. Case has also contributed several articles to the social science journal Skeptic.
$18.95 ($23.95 Canada) • Hardcover • 6″ x 9″ • 196 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-265-9
Famous Film Scenes and Their Italian Locations
by Romina Arena
Three Coins in a Fountain. Roman Holiday. Eat Pray Love. In many of the greatest movies ever made, the biggest star was Italy itself. Where Did They Film That? Italy is a unique travel guide that invites the reader to explore the beauty and cultural riches of Italy through the universal language of cinema.
Where Did They Film That? Italy shows readers where to find the exact locations where many of the most famous movies set in Italy were filmed — plus nearby attractions, museums, restaurants, shops, and must-experience slices of Italian life. The beautiful and historic sites immortalized in great films are the reader’s keys to experiencing the best in Italian travel, art, dining, and living. Special sections highlight romantic Italian sites that are perfect for scheduling weddings and other special events, and the book includes recipes for dishes from famous films and authentic Italian regional specialties.
Where Did They Film That? Italy gives readers in-depth knowledge of the behind-the-scenes details of great films by placing their locations within the full context of their history and meaning to Italian culture. Guided by celebrated Italian popera star Romina Arena, readers will discover the real Italy as Italians know it.
An irresistible combination of film history, travel guide, and the zest and seductiveness of la dolce vita, Where Did They Film That? Italy is a new kind of travel guide that will turn Americans’ love of movies to a love of travel and new experiences.
Audience: Travel readers, film history readers, and Italian culture readers.
About the Author: Celebrated as “the Queen of Popera,” Romina Arena is an award-winning Italian international pop opera recording artist and songwriter who has performed before President Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, and many other world figures. Arena has sold over four million records worldwide and has received many major honors, including a Global Citizenship Award from the United Nations in recognition of her humanitarian support for the children of Haiti. Where Did They Film That? Italy is her first book.
$18.95 ($21.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 144 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-182-9
The Pressured Past and Precarious Future
of California’s Coast
by Kim Steinhardt and Gary Griggs
The Pacific coast is the most iconic region of California and one of the most fascinating and rapidly changing places in the world. Densely populated, urbanized and industrialized — but also home to wilderness with complex, fragile ecosystems — the coast is the place where humanity and nature coexist in a precarious balance that is never perfectly stable.
The Edge: The Pressured Past and Precarious Future of California’s Coast is a dramatic snapshot of the California coast’s past, present and probable future in a time of climate change and expanding human activity.
Written by two marine experts who grew up on the coast, The Edge is both a celebration of the coast’s natural and cultural uniqueness and a warning of the many complex changes that threaten that uniqueness.
As ocean levels rise, coastal communities are starting to erode, and entire neighborhoods have been lost to the sea. Coastal ecosystems and wildlife that were already stressed by human settlement now face new dangers, some threatening their very survival. The combined impacts of climate change, housing and commercial growth, commercial fisheries, oil drilling and production, along with environmental advocacy, all come together to define the future of the region.
The Edge examines the current state of the coast’s natural and social environments, gives the historical causes for the coast’s present endangerment and offers informed projections on possible scenarios of the coast’s future.
A masterful and sweeping synthesis of environmental and social science, The Edge presents a comprehensive portrait of natural and cultural history — the story of the people, communities, industries, ecology and wildlife of the California coast.
Audience: Readers interested in environmental issues, marine wildlife, climate change and California history.
About the Authors: A widely recognized marine wildlife photographer, former administrative law judge, and a long-time conservation advocate, Kim Steinhardt delivers popular lectures and photographic programs on coastal conservation and ocean stewardship issues for aquariums and marine centers, universities, state parks and other audiences. Gary Griggs has written or co-authored nine books about the coast and coastal issues both in California and globally. As a Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz, he is known for his expertise in oceanography and coastal geology. He serves as the director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
$18.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 300 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-309-0
Explore the Famous Sites, Neighborhoods, and Vistas in 17 Enchanting Walks
by Kristine Poggioli and Carolyn Eidson
Every visitor to San Francisco has seen the classic roadside signs showing a seagull that beckons motorists to follow the famous 49 Mile Scenic Drive. Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive shows how walking—rather than driving—San Francisco’s famous scenic route gives both tourists and natives an active, funway to enjoy and fall in love with the most beautiful city in the world.
Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive invites readers to explore quirky locales face-to-face, so they can fully savor the City’s beauty and cultural riches — while also enjoying a healthy urban hike.
Written by two long-time San Franciscans who have explored every nook and cranny of the 49 Mile Drive, Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive presents 17 bite-size walks, complete with turn-by-turn instructions, maps, and historical facts and information. Each chapter introduces the sights, landmarks and secret treasures of a specific San Francisco neighborhood, while leading the reader along a route that will pro vide healthy exercise for both brisk and sedate walkers.
Each chapter includes detailed maps, points of interest, info on bus routes and parking, recommendations for visiting hidden gems and must-see museums, plus plenty of tips and stats to help walkers, such as step counts and mile distances, hill steepness rating, weather tips and more.
The perfect guidebook for today’s urban enthusiast who values walkable neighborhoods, hyperlocal culture and the pleasure and health benefits of walking, Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive is the most intimate way to explore one of America’s greatest cities.
Audience: San Francisco Bay Area residents, visitors to San Francisco, urban enthusiasts and hikers.
About the Authors: Kristine Poggioli is a native San Franciscan, copywriter and storyteller. Carolyn Eidson is an award-winning filmmaker and comedian. Together, they are the first people to have walked the entire length of San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive, resulting in a combined 75-pound weight loss.
$16.95 ($21.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 180 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-279-6
Available for pre-order. Will ship upon publication.
The Science-Backed Program to
Fight Sitting Disease and Enjoy Lifelong Health
by Dr. Joan Vernikos
Losing your strength, balance, and stamina is not a natural part of aging. So why do so many of us gradually become disabled and lose our independence as we grow older? The chief culprit is prolonged, uninterrupted sitting caused by office work, long commutes, and modern sedentary living. The human body is designed to move, not stay still for hours at a time.
Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and pioneering researcher in the physiology of immobility, has done groundbreaking research on how sitting disease causes poor health and premature aging.
In Designed to Move, Dr. Vernikos shows how you can fight sitting disease through simple movements you can do anywhere — at your office, at home, and even in your car.
Citing her NASA research on the physiology of space travel, Vernikos shows how the health effects of prolonged sitting are identical to the muscle and bone degeneration suffered by astronauts in microgravity. The human body evolved to constantly resist gravity, and removing gravity — either through actual weightlessness or simple inactivity — slowly destroys the body’s health and prematurely ages the body.
Fortunately, adding gravity-resistant movement back into your daily routine can quickly restore good health, and Designed to Move will show you exactly how to do it. Designed to Move presents a simple, easy-to-follow, science-based movement program to help you regain your good health and stay healthy for the rest of your life.
The Designed to Move program offers a variety of easy, low-impact exercises that can dramatically improve your strength, balance, mood, and long-term health.
Written for everyone who wants to feel healthier and stronger — at any age — Designed to Move is the science-backed solution to sitting disease that will keep you healthier, fitter, and more energetic.
About the Author: Joan Vernikos, Ph.D., the former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division, is a pioneer in space medicine research and a leading researcher in healthy aging. Her previous books include Sitting Kills, Mov-
ing Heals, available from Quill Driver Books.
$12.95 ($16.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 128 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-271-0
by Stephen H. Provost
From Pace Press.
When Minerva Rus’ dead childhood friend returns to life, she discovers she has the power to raise the dead — plunging her into amazing possibilities and terrifying danger.
Memortality is a genre-breaking new contemporary fantasy novel that poses one of the most frightening questions of all — what if the dead don’t stay dead? We all fantasize about reuniting with lost loved ones, but would any of us want to be responsible for wielding such power? And if good people can be revived, what about evil ones?
Minerva’s life has never been the same since the childhood car accident that paralyzed her and killed her best friend, Raven. But when the long-dead Raven reappears in her life, now as a very attractive grown man, she discovers that her photographic memory has the power to bring the dead back to life … heal her paralysis … and shape reality itself.
Pursued by a rogue government agent who wants to eliminate her and her talents, Minerva must learn to control her powers to save herself and Raven. Because if she dies, Raven will die as well — again.
Racing to learn the secret of how and why her powers operate, finding unlikely allies, facing a truly frightening villain and battling her own demons from her abusive childhood, Minerva finds that she is fighting not just living evil, but the terrifying prospect of bringing back an evil that had been long defeated.
Featuring an intrepid, take-charge female protagonist who lets nothing — not disability, not death, not loss and heartbreak — stand in her way, Memortality blends fantasy, mystery, espionage and romance in a compelling story that will keep readers gripped until the final, startling revelation.
Audience: Contemporary fantasy readers from young adult to adult.
About the Author: Stephen H. Provost is a journalist and author. He has worked as an editor, reporter, and columnist at newspapers throughout California. He is the author of Fresno Growing Up: A City Comes of Age 1945–1985, a history of his hometown. Provost lives with his wife on California’s Central Coast, where he is the editor of The Cambrian newspaper. Provost frequently blogs on writing and current events at his website, stephenhprovost.com.
$14.95 ($18.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 270 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-289-5
by James A. Ardaiz
From Pace Press.
A young assistant DA takes on an elusive serial killer and a flawed justice system in this gritty debut legal thriller, the first in a new series.
Assistant DA Matt Jamison is called to a meticulously staged crime scene on a canal bank in rural Central California — the latest in a series of murders that have killed three young women in one month. A serial killer is on the loose and adept at hiding his tracks. And before the murderer can be brought to justice, Jamison will lose his illusions about what justice means.
As a fourth victim is abducted and investigators race against time, Jamison must cope with a sophisticated and evasive killer, a politically-minded sheriff eager to claim credit and spread blame, and mounting pressure to resolve a high-profile case.
The stakes get higher when Jamison brings a shaky prosecution to court and must manage an arrogant defense attorney, a smoothly lying defendant and a fragile witness. And while Jamison struggles to convict a murderer, events outside his control will test his trust in the justice system and the fallible human beings who operate it.
Written by a former investigator, prosecutor and judge who intimately knows the world of attorneys, detectives and men who kill, Fractured Justice crackles with authenticity, realistically depicting the lives of the all-too-human people who enforce the law and the messy compromises they make in their work.
Featuring an intricate plot, a chillingly sophisticated villain, a dogged and determined protagonist and a clear-eyed assessment of how the justice system operates, Fractured Justice is a gripping, fast-paced and coldly realistic thriller — and a stunning debut novel by a remarkable new mystery writer.
Audience: Legal thriller and mystery readers.
About the Author: James A. Ardaiz is a former prosecutor, judge and Presiding Justice of the California Fifth District Court of Appeal. Ardaiz’s first book was Hands Through Stone , a nonfiction account of his investigation and prosecution of murderer Clarence Ray Allen, the last man executed by the State of California.
$16.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 350 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-298-7
The History of California’s Main Street
by Stephen H. Provost
Before it was a modern freeway, California’s State Highway 99 was the main street of California, a simple two-lane road that passed through the downtowns of every city between the Mexican border and the Oregon state line.
Highway 99: A History of California’s Main Street turns back the clock to those days when a narrow ribbon of asphalt tied the state’s communities together, with classic roadside attractions and plenty of fun along the way.
Illustrated throughout with historical photographs, Highway 99 documents the birth and development of the great highway, from its beginnings as a dream project by a handful of early motorcar enthusiasts to its 1920s incarnation as a narrow trail over the Grapevine to the modern superhighway of today.
Along the way, Highway 99 chronicles an amazing amount of history: the invention of basic highway equipment such as the center stripe and the road sign; the great Dust Bowl migrations of the Okies; the origins of California landmarks like Griffith Park and Magic Mountain; and the network of beacon towers for airplanes that briefly paralleled the highway in the 1920s; and numerous other stories.
Above all, the story of Highway 99 is the story of classic American roadside culture. Highway 99 witnessed the birth of the motor court motel, the drive-thru window, the theme park, and the truck stop, and Highway 99 unearths detailed histories of the innumerable gas stations, hotel, restaurants, amusements, and whole communities that developed to cater to the motorist.
From the foundations of America’s fast-food culture to the birth of the Bakersfield Sound, the history of California has happened around Highway 99, and Highway 99 brilliantly depicts that history.
About the Author: Stephen H. Provost is a journalist, author, and editor of The Cambrian newspaper. His previous books include Fresno Growing Up: A City Comes of Age 1945—1985, a history of his hometown. Provost lives with his wife on California’s Central Coast, where he blogs at his website, stephenhprovost.com.
$20.95 US • Trade Paperback • 8.5″ x 10″ • 350 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-296-3
HISTORY / California • BISAC HIS036140
Over 300 black and white plus 33 color photographs• Index
Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction
by Gary Rogowski
“Gary Rogowski leads us gently but surely upon the path to a type of success we may not have previously considered. (Hint: it involves blisters.)” —Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own Canoe
A new classic in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Shop Class as Soulcraft, Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction will help creative people in any field reconnect to the source of their creativity and revitalize their creative energy.
In Handmade, master craftsman Gary Rogowski confronts the greatest obstacles to creative focus in the modern age: distraction; pointless busyness; fear of failure; and the devil of self-doubt that tells you your work doesn’t matter. Handmade shows that the path around these obstacles is the act of creative work itself. The discipline of working with one’s hands, mind and heart to create unnecessarily beautiful things shapes the builder into a more complete human being.
Handmade tells the story of how the young Rogowski, an intellectual college graduate with no formal training in woodworking, became a craftsman through years of persistent labor, which taught him patience, resilience, tolerance for failure, and a love of pursuing beauty and mastery for their own sakes.
Rogowski punctuates the story of his growth as a craftsman with accounts of his hiking and mountaineering expeditions with his friend Wheaton, who taught him a different kind of perseverance and patience in the face of danger, discomfort, and the wild beauty of nature. In telling his stories, Rogowski reflects deeply on the lessons he has learned and presents a series of profound meditations on the eternal value of work, creativity, human fallibility, and the stubborn pursuit of quality.
Part autobiography, part guide to creativity, and part guide to living an authentic life, Handmade is a book for craftspeople, artists and anyone who seeks clarity, purpose and creativity in their work.
Audience: Artists, craftspeople, woodworkers, creative professionals, and anyone developing their creativity.
About the Author: Gary Rogowski is a furniture maker, designer, teacher and author. He is also a playwright, essayist, and novelist. His previous books include the best-selling Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery. Rogowski is the founder and director of The Northwest Woodworking Studio, A School for Woodworkers.
$18.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 180 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-314-4
Self-Help / Creativity • Crafts & Hobbies
A Cultural Topography of a Land of Wonder and Weirdness
by Sam McManis
Sacramento Bee journalist Sam McManis spent five years on the road trying to find the real California. He discovered that there is more than one California, but every different California is equally weird and wonderful. Worlds collide and commingle: the neo-hippies with the rednecked farmers; the urban sophisticates with the quirky desert dwellers; the Hollywood power brokers with the Outsider Artists.
Brought together in a bouillabaisse of voices, Crossing California will make you see the state in an entirely new light.
From the briny scent of Fisherman’s Wharf to the fragrant sage scrub of Imperial County; from the otherworldly starkness of Death Valley to the crashing waves and flexing muscles at Venice Beach, Crossing California gives readers a first-hand experience.
McManis has stalked the tony aisles of the newly minted Broad Museum in gentrified downtown Los Angeles, and quick-footed it through the International Banana Museum along the desiccated shores of the moonscaped Salton Sea. He has inadvertently gotten his car stuck in a tree at a cheesy drive-thru giant Sequoia roadside attraction along the hemp highway between Mendocino and Humboldt, and witnessed, with both fascination and can’t-look-away horror, grown men and women, sans children and sans inhibitions, belt out full-throated versions of “Let It Go” at a Disneyland sing-along. All told, Crossing California is a trip.
Audience: Readers interested in California culture, history, oddities, and humor.
About the Author: Sam McManis is a former columnist and feature writer for the Sacramento Bee. He is a four-time winner of the Society of Features Journalism awards and three-time Best of the West honoree. He also has been a staff writer and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times. His profiles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He lives and writes in Washington state.
$14.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 280 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-313-7
by Daniel Stallings
“An Agatha Christie cast of characters seen with a modern eye, and with startling moments of both insight and compassion.” —Anne Perry
The traditional murder mystery collides with an entirely different kind of detective hero in the new mystery novel Sunny Side Up. An engaging mixture of Agatha Christie–style intrigue and Millennial snark, Sunny Side Up takes a fresh approach to the traditional murder mystery with a modern sensibility and a working class amateur sleuth.
For 20-year-old Liam “Li” Johnson, a job as a cruise ship waiter was supposed to be a way to get over his father’s death and earn enough money to go back to college. Instead, Li is struggling to maintain his sanity while coping with the demands of a sadistic maître d’ and a boatload of entitled rich jerk passengers.
Li just wants to keep his head down and survive his job from hell, but when he finds a passenger sunburned to a crisp on the Sunbathing Deck, something about the scene just doesn’t add up. Li starts asking uncomfortable questions … and gets some forceful pushback, including a whispering campaign suggesting that Li himself may have had something to do with the victim’s death.
Before he knows it, Li is on the track of a murder … and if Li doesn’t find the real killer soon, or he might just get framed for the crime — or worse, lose his crappy job.
A brand-new classic in the amateur detective genre, Sunny Side Up is a traditional murder mystery for the 21st century, with a glamorous setting, a gallery of suspects, clues that will keep readers guessing to the last page, and a delightful new hero in Li Johnson, the millennial minimum wage manhunter, who brings sleuthing to the service economy.
Audience: Lovers of traditional murder mysteries.
About the Author: Daniel Stallings’ love of Golden Age detective fiction inspired him to bring the style of the classic murder mystery to modern audiences. In addition to writing mysteries, Stallings works in theater as a producer, director, and actor. He currently serves as President of the Eastern Sierra Branch of the California Writers Club. Stallings lives in the city of Ridgecrest in California’s Mojave Desert.
AVAILABLE NOW!
$12.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ × 9″ • 206 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-311-3
How to Craft and Publish Flash Fiction for a Booming Market
by Fred D. White
Publication Date: July 1, 2018
Writing Flash is a fast and informative guide for writers who want to develop their skills in one of fiction’s most challenging genres. Acclaimed creative writing teacher Fred D. White gives a fast-paced and in-depth introduction to the fascinating genre of flash fiction, the art of the ultra-short story that is 1,000 words or fewer.
White shows that mastering flash fiction is an indispensable skill-building challenge for any writer. Learning how to compress a story to its most essential elements will make your writing vigorous, evocative and full of emotion — invaluable skills for any kind of writing, including writing novels and longer short fiction.
Writing Flash presents a comprehensive introductory course to the techniques of flash fiction, beginning with a rigorous analysis of the mechanics of effective flash stories that will give you new insights into the bones and sinews of all literature. Each chapter also contains challenging exercises that will strengthen specific writing skills, extend your abilities and give valuable practice in the craft of flash fiction.
But flash fiction is more than just an exercise. It’s also an elegant art in its own right that can produce stories of startling depth and feeling. White illustrates flash fiction techniques and strategies by giving numerous examples of some of the best flash stories from great writers.
Writing Flash also includes fantastic resources for aspiring flash writers, including tips on publishing and marketing your own flash fiction to build your writing career, plus extensive lists of flash fiction literary journals, award contests and resources for further study.
Writing Flash won’t just help you become a better flash fiction writer; this book will help you become a better writer, period.
Audience: Professional and aspiring creative writers.
About the Author: Fred D. White received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. For nearly 40 years White has taught writing courses at Santa Clara University, where he is now Professor of English, Emeritus. White has published several books on writing, as well as dozens of stories, essays, poems and plays.
$14.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ x 9″ • 150 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-317-5
Creative Writing • LAN005000
Bibliography • Index
Now available for pre-order. Title will ship upon publication.
subtitle: “How to Write Accurately about Psychological Disorders, Clinical Treatment and Human Behavior”.
Writers frequently write about mental illness and psychological motivations, but all too often they use terms and concepts that are clichéd, outmoded or just plain wrong.
Written by a clinical psychologist who is also a professional writer and writing coach, The Writer’s Guide to Psychology is an authoritative, accessible, fun, and easy-to-use reference to psychological disorders, diagnosis, treatments, psychotherapists’ work and what really makes psychopathic villains tick.
The only reference book on clinical and counseling psychology designed specifically for the needs of writers, The Writer’s Guide to Psychology presents specific writing dos and don’ts to avoid the psychobabble clichés and misunderstandings frequently seen in popular writing. The book’s extensive sidebars include Q&As from real writers, information on controversial treatments and issues, tips for using realistic psychology to create complex and compelling characters, and Don’t Let This Happen to You! boxes that humorously expose mortifying mistakes in fiction, film and TV … and teach readers how to get it right in their own writing.
Subtitle: “An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses.”
In this revised, expanded and updated second edition, Could It Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses uncovers a public health crisis that even many doctors don’t know exists—the chronic misdiagnosis of vitamin B12 deficiency.
Written in a highly accessible style that makes complex medical information clear and comprehensible to ordinary patients and their families, Could It Be B12? gives readers the knowledge and confidence to fight the ignorance and rigidity of the medical establishment and take control of their own health. Could It Be B12? presents vital information and strategies for readers to learn if they or their loved ones are suffering from B12 deficiency and how to work with their doctors and other health care professionals to get the treatment they need.
An Indie Excellence Book Award Winner.
Subtitle: “How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure”
Using examples from actual cases, as well as fiction, movies and television, Books, Crooks, and Counselors answers real writers’ questions on over 160 separate topics, including: criminal and civil law; differences between federal, state, and Native American jurisdiction; legal aspects of police and private investigation; criminal sentencing, including the death penalty; wills and inheritances; legal terminology; and the written and unwritten codes that govern the public and private conduct of lawyers and judges.
Winner of the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
2012 Anthony and Macavity Nominee for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman
By Adam Plantinga
400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat — a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of a single eight-hour shift. Written by veteran police sergeant Adam Plantinga, 400 Things Cops Know brings the reader into life the way cops experience it — a life of danger, frustration, occasional triumph and plenty of grindingly hard routine work.
In a laconic, no-nonsense, dryly humorous style, Plantinga tells what he’s learned from 13 years as a patrolman, from the everyday to the exotic — how to know at a glance when a suspect is carrying a weapon or is going to attack, how to kick a door down, how to drive in a car chase without recklessly endangering the public, why you should always carry cigarettes, even if you don’t smoke (offering a smoke is the best way to lure a suicide to safety) and what to do if you find a severed limb (don’t put it on ice — you need to keep it dry).
400 Things Cops Know deglamorizes police work, showing the physical, psychological and emotional toll of the job. Plantinga shows what cops experience of death, the legal system, violence, prostitution, drug use, the social causes and consequences of crime, alcoholism and more.
Sometimes heartbreaking and often hilarious, 400 Things Cops Know is an eye-opening revelation of what life on the beat is really all about.
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