 I've
been making stuff a long time: forts, mostly, a very long while ago. Then I graduated to homemaking and made everything
from scratch. Spaghetti? first you plant tomato seeds. Soap? Heat lard, slowly add lye, stir.
Mayonnaise? Butter? Clothes? Well, you get the picture. Besides making things, I read. A lot.
Mostly I studied history, taking my Master's in American history late in life, and teaching the subject in community
college for ten years. For reasons that are utterly unclear, I decided to combine my love of bookstores, kitchens and gardens into a
small bookstore, the Ginger Cat's Kitchen Garden Bookstore, which specialized in cooking and gardening books.
It was terrifically cute .... but terribly boring for me to be locked up in one place day after day. I discovered
I would rather buy books than sell them. And that I would definitely rather be grubbing in the garden and in the kitchen
than reading about doing so -- so I closed the Ginger Cat's Bookstore and inaugurated the Ginger Cat's Garden, based in my 2.5 acre avocado grove in Escondido California. The
Ginger Cat's Garden raised fresh fruits and vegetables, 70-80 chickens, and 2 pigs. The pigs we butchered for
our own larder, but the eggs, vegetables, and fruit we sold out of my Saturday morning farm stand. We took some 10,000
pounds of avocados from the grove, which we wholesaled. And I raised heirloom tomato seedlings, about 150 varieties
eventually, which I wholesaled in the spring. About half the acrage was cultivated in demonstration gardens for people
to tour. Meanwhile I still read a lot, kept teaching American history, and dabbled at my writing projects. I
was not bored, but was I tired! No surprise there. And I was tired not
only of all that hard labor, but of living in a very dry, very crowded region. So I packed up and moved East to find
a green, well-watered place with a strong arts community supportive of my pursuit of a literary life. Arriving
in New England I found a large house, and turned it into a B&B, which was fun, but what was far better was discovering
an Amherst Artists and Writers group, in which I first began to apply myself to my writing undistracted by the demands of
the farm life. But what writer is content to file her work away in a drawer for her heirs to stumble
across after the funeral? This writer was also not content to endure the submit, reject, resubmit, wait wait cycle.
So I thought, why not publish my own journal for the exhibition of my own work and that of the many talented
writers I was getting to know. By establishing my own journal I could publish what I wanted to publish
and I could do it my way, just like Frank. And what I wanted was to create a journal that exhibited the artistic qualities
of the traditional book arts. And so came into being the Equinox, a small journal, conceived out of my mind's
lust to tell stories and my heart's love of beauty. I dubbed myself the Ginger Cat Publications in honor of the long
journey that began with that little bookstore. The Booksmyth Press is the imprint that seems to capture
my ambition to create well-crafted books suitable for the talented wordsmiths - and it has been a source of pleasure for others
as well! So, yes, I went as far as I could go with the Equinox, added a few
chapbooks and then decided to branch off onto a less arduous path than publishing a literary journal, so now I'm strolling
into publishing a limited number of trade and hand bound books, blank journals and design commissions. The next turn
in the path? Can't even imagine it yet! Best wishes to you on your journey, keep you eye peeled for promising
side trips!
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