The other day I was talking to my niece on the phone. She’d called earlier with the happy news that she’d found cheap flights, and their whole branch of the family would be flying from Minnesota to California for a long January weekend. When I called her, she’d just got her three-year-old and baby bathed and was having a little bit of early evening quiet time. “Put Charlie on,” I said. His hello was a bit tentative. He only sees me every few months.

I have a childhood memory—Grandma Schuneman with a brown bottle of cod liver oil in one hand and a tablespoon in the other—chasing the cousins down one by one. “It’s good for what ails you,” she declared. Anticipating someone’s smart reply, “And if nothing ails you, it’s good for you anyway.” I don’t exactly know what cod liver oil is.

I do know that omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish oil among other things, are probably good for a number of things. And because I have in my hand a copy of Deanna Minich, Ph.D., C.N.’s latest book, Quantum Supplements, A Total Health and Wellness Makeover with Vitamins, Minerals, and Herbs, I know more than I did a few days ago.

Here’s something boring. I slept about three hours last night. Now it’s 3:00 p.m. And I’m drooping. I don’t even want to know the statistics—especially for women of a euphemistically so-called certain age. And it comes in different kinds—the can’t go to sleep, the can’t stay asleep. And there are about as many “cures” for it as Carter has little liver pills, as my grandma used to say. I’m not going to recommend any of them—neither the non-invasive old chestnuts such as drink a glass of warm milk, go to bed at the same time, avoid spicy foods—nor the made-for-TV butterflies and ask your doctor about other pills solution. I’m sure all these suggestions are suggestions because they work for some of the people at least some of the time.

When people don’t necessarily have the resources for or confidence in “traditional” solutions—they’re more likely to buy a book than seek therapy. Or they might try alternative medicine for problems rather than expensive western medical solutions—whether they have insurance or not.

Times like these and it seems a good time for the “one of us” school of author experts. I think of Karen Casey, who has written nearly 20 books over a span of many years and helped, conservatively, something north of a million readers be more comfortable, hopeful, and sober in their daily lives. A few years ago we published This Is Not the Life I Ordered, written by four women, who among them had logged a lot of “not ordered”—divorce, death, kid problems, and, through hanging out with each other, a whole cupboard of tools to deal with the daily stuff. People are looking for “community” for someone who has been there, understands, has some real-life solution/ideas to offer.

Okay, I admit to appropriating, make that misappropriating, quotes for my own purposes. Far, far, perhaps, from what the original author intended. Out of context, for example, T. S. Eliot’s line from Prufrock about minutes and decisions and revisions and reversing—well it can go to any kind of waffling or changing of mind prerogative.

But I digress. I’ve been looking at sales reports and print quantities and spreadsheets and budgets this weekend. Somewhere on the internet I’m sure there is information about exactly how many books were published last year, what their average print run (skewed by the odd million-copy bestseller) was, and how many more or less that was than last year and might be than next year. The accompanying commentary would tell you that we read more, or less, or about the same number of books than we did a generation ago. Okay, probably fewer per capita. Maybe.

I spent some time on the phone with Mary Anne Radmacher, who’s written several books for us. Courage Doesn’t Always Roar and May Your Walls Know Joy, among others. She’s swamped with deadlines right now, and we were talking about how over busy most everybody we know feels. After I hung up I thought about the many aphorisms Mary Anne’s written and created inspirational art from.

“Create a day you will long remember,” is one that sticks with me. “Be present to your own spirit, listen.” And as I listen and talk with her about projects she’s working on, projects I’m working on, I realize that we are creating a day I will long remember—perhaps not in and of itself. Perhaps not all the moments in it.

“Question authority” and “reality isn’t what it used to be” are abroad in the land. Not just leftover political slogans or metaphysical cultural crit. Questioning authority is, as near as I can tell, almost always a good thing to do. At the very least, ask “Why?” And maybe “Why not?”

Next question: what’s next? What do I want my life to be? What mark do I want to leave? How can I be part of the solution, not the problem, create a different way for things to be.

What I love about the kinds of books I’ve been privileged to work on and the people I’ve met in so doing is the questions they ask. People who write books are looking for answers, and, when I’m looking at manuscripts for books we might publish I’m looking at the answers they found, the story they have to tell, but even more I’m looking at how their answers, their story helps me create my own authority, my own answers, my own reality.

The Ledge of Quetzal is a book that questions authority, proposes answers, and besides, it’s a good story. Check it out. Why not?

From Friday afternoon,

Jan Johnson

Publisher

Hooray! A new website. Wait. Not everything on our new website works. Sometimes none of it seems to work. Sometimes it all seems to be going smoothly. We’re doing a “soft launch.”

I’m thinking that could also be called a slow launch, or a transition. We started this project almost a year ago. I ran into an old friend/colleague at a conference. His company makes websites. We were in desperate need of one. Handshake. Deal. Done. Oh, but not, by a long stretch. . .

And here I’d like to sing the praises of those who stretched. Who put in long hours figuring out how to transfer such a big and complicated bunch of data—books with titles, authors, subjects, ISBNs—the mind boggles. The bytes add up. Who designed and redesigned. Who thought about how readers, browsers, customers, media folks, and casual visitors would best be served by the site. Who thought about placement and front ends and back ends. Who undoubtedly said some swear words and ate some extra chocolate.

I started writing this post at the beginning of a long day, got distracted by meetings and manuscripts and contracts, oh my. When I started the site wasn’t live. Now I think it is.

So to the staff at Red Wheel/Weiser and the folks at Lantern Media
who are making it possible for you to read these words a huge and resounding “Thank you!” All of us together have done and continue to do what no one of us by ourselves could have hoped to accomplish.

Jan Johnson

Publisher

I love looking at clichés upside down and inside out. They’re clichés for a reason—they make GOOD sense. Very often they offer life advice that we’d do well to listen to. Not to mention some comfort in hard times—we’re in this together, there are ways to get through tough times, find the silver lining, learn something, grow from the experience.

Really? Really. And I even left my rose-colored glasses at home today.

Anyway, this is just a little blog to bring your attention to a new book called, you guessed it, Less Is More by Mina Parker with original photographs by Daniel Talbott. It’s third in a series—the other two being Half Full and Silver Linings—of take-a-cliché-and-really-look-at-it books. They’re lovely and scrumptious gift books for just about any occasion—and especially to cheer someone up. The photos offer beauty, tranquility, and a certain say-whatness? The essays offer ways to look at life that your grandma might offer and then other ways that a hip Brooklyn mama with an impossibly busy life might offer, which is exactly what Mina Parker is.

Here we are at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Sometime around the middle of the last century, when I was in grammar school, learning four-digit addition and subtraction, and the town I grew up in was celebrating its 100th anniversary, I became obsessed with what it was going to be like to live to the year 2000. I’m pretty sure I was (and am) not unique in my musings about what the world would be like “out there.” I had a keen interest in the goings-on of the Cold War, the space program—how could there not be life out there somewhere I thought, God and infinity—all from a child’s perspective. I had an even keener interest in books—with stories that transported me out there, back there, up there, almost anywhere away from the dull boring now. I didn’t have a name for it—I’d never met anyone who’d written or published a book—but I knew I wanted to grow up to do pretty much exactly what I do. Publish books to live by.