Ten years ago in 2004, Claudia and I were hanging out in Portland, Oregon—Claudia was there to see a former track student, Robyn Stevens, compete in a track meet and I was working at Blackwell’s Book Services in Lake Oswego, Oregon—and decided to start a publishing company to publish the kind of books we liked to read.
The first Bedazzled Ink office was rather mobile and it began each day in the quaint and always busy Starbucks in downtown Lake Oswego . . .
and then moved to a second floor table of the equally quaint Lake Oswego Public Library for the rest of the day.
Our first book, Dragon Drool, and the first issue of our ezine Khimairal Ink were published from that second floor table.
By coincidence, we’ll be celebrating our tenth year at the GCLS Conference in Portland, Oregon. We like both the serendipity and the symmetry of this coincidence because we embrace the paradox aspect of Zen. Paradox nudges the mind away from routine by disengaging the rational mind and letting in creativity and intuition.
Our approach to publishing mirrors aspects of Zen—we believe that neat boxes labeled “publishing company” are difficult to maintain in an industry that is ever changing and is now changing so rapidly that just keeping up with them is a challenge. So we try to avoid boxes and neat labels or anything that is resistant to creativity and intuition. The rigid parts of this business—the parts of production that involve third parties—are balanced by a freedom to fashion each book into unique creative entities. Our authors come to us mostly through serendipity. We like the organic way an amazing manuscript travels its own unique journey to our little part of the world and we love helping that manuscript along on the next leg of its journey.
We decided to take a look around and see where we were after ten years. We like the direction we’re going in, and the best way to keep striding down this wonderful path is to remold the company into something that matches where we are today and where we want to be in the future. So we split Bedazzled Ink into three divisions—BInk, Nuance, and Dragonfeather Books.
BInk focuses on . . .
• Mainstream Literary Fiction with strong female protagonists
• Mainstream Literary Lesbian Fiction, including genre fiction that transcends or exemplifies the genre.
• Literary Young Adult
• Children’s
• Nonfiction
• Special series and projects
Nuance is all about genre lesbian fiction . . .
• Action/Adventure
• Historical
• Romance
• Speculative Fiction
• Thriller
Dragonfeather Books continues to be books for kids twelve and under.
We hope you join us as we embark on our next ten years of publishing unique and wonderful books.
C.A. Casey
“When you’re writing, you’re creating something out of nothing . . . A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.” — Susanna Clarke