Letters from the Publisher

From Ben Beard publisher at Raging Rooster Press 

A lot of good books appear every year. There are more books than readers; most titles not backed by corporate publicity machines sell less than a few hundred copies. And a lot of killer indie publishers already exist. They appear, struggle against immense market forces, and either retreat in ideological niches or are buried by obscurity. It’s a broken model in a lot of ways, and a lot of great writers never find their audiences. 

So why Raging Rooster? What is it?

An imprint of the New Day Writing Co-op—a writer’s collective based in Chicago—Raging Rooster delivers angry literature for an angry era. Motivated by quality, verve, and expression, we’re going to publish old school books written by outsiders, outcasts, and rebels.

We’re pro-sex, anti-fascist, and anti-racist; everything else is fair game.

Our goal is to share weird nonfiction and excellent fiction. Not the stuff of manifestos, but we’re looking to share great writing first. We have an inhouse designer (the off-the-grid Wes Atwood, out of Wisconsin), an editorial staff, and a great slate of authors. 

Now we’re looking for readers. 

When did we outsource all our eroticism to teenage fantasy and the bargain bin mass market? Who says literature can’t give us joy? Why can’t books be fun? 

Our heroes are Flannery O’Connor (minus the racism), Stefan Zweig (minus the suicide), Cormac McCarthy (minus the underage girlfriend), Iris Owens, Robert Stone, Anna Kavan, and Chester Himes.

Our first title is Genevieve, Untethered, a fantastic coming of age romp—laced with exquisite bits of drama—by award-winning novelist and poet, Barbara Roether. It follows two friends, Lori and Genevieve, trapped by the mores of a small town in the 1970s. They missed the revolutions of the 1960s and, feeling outside of history, seek pleasure and excitement the only way they know how. They leave. They travel. They drink, read, and generally get it on. They travel to distant lands, meeting the beauiful, the Buddhists, and the completely unreliable. The world belongs to them, until it doesn’t.

  “Could you burn up darkness?” the narrator asks early on. “What would be left after the fire?” 

Roether’s funny, sometimes devastating novel does what great fiction should do, it transports you into another world, another era, a time when a different madman was in the White House, and the way to enlightenment often seemed hidden behind zippers.

Raging Rooster is excited to bring this wonderful, earthy novel into the world. 

By way of further introduction, I'm the co-founder of the New Day Writing Co-op. I've published multiple books on cinema, including The South Never Plays Itself (just re-issued in paperback), and the novel, The Last Days of Calvin Coolidge. You can read my other long-running blog here. I will be writing about Raging Rooster in this blog.