5×5

5×5

The towers that are A Word with You Press are not only still standing, but propagating, and I am writing to you from Ceske Budejovice.  Do not pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would have stayed home; I am delighted to be here in the Czech Republic, the heart of Europe, the best of Bohemia.

For almost ten years and at least 50 contests we have provided a forum for you to flex your writerly muscles, and many of the same people come repeatedly to the well. It’s time to acknowledge them.

And that is what we are doing by publishing our third anthology.  Five writers.  Five stories from each of them:

5×5

And the format allows each author to not only demonstrate the unique style that got them selected for this edition, but also to dispense a few words about the craft, the art of word-smithing, and their addiction to the keyboard.

Here’s a tease:

I believe every writer is motivated by something uniquely their own. For me, writing is a way to overcome fear, loneliness and to connect with others. In my case, the fear of being judged, of being hurt, of being abandoned, must be met with absolute vulnerability. When others connect with that vulnerability, I know that the voice inside my head that tells me I’m alone, is a lie. My motivation has been to find a language for pain that doesn’t leave the reader feeling hopeless. That doesn’t leave me feeling hopeless. How can I express rejection, emotional wounds, and spiritual violation in an authentic, genuine manner, without being unnecessarily brutal to my readers? How do I find that middle place? In the end, I do not write about what I feel, I feel what I’m writing.

Kristy Webster, author of The Gift of an  Imaginary Girl

We’ll feature the work of Jon Tobias, Ed Coonce, Laura Elizabeth, Kristy Webster, and Mike Stang. We have had other fine writers feed our beast, but we (ok, his moiness) selected these five because I could not read their work without reading it four or five times—one helping was never enough—and because without their name attached to the stories, I knew exactly who wrote what. I am in awe of their talents and diversity, and with this anthology, if you are unfamiliar with their work, you will be, too.

Like most people who write, money has never been our motivation here at the towers.  Our purpose on the site is to save the world.  Sometimes we need your help to do it, and this is one of those times:  Donations and pre-sale of “5×5” will help defray the costs of design formatting and publication, which will run about $1500.  The authors have all donated their writing.  So, how about this?

5 for $50

Send payment to thorn@awordwithyoupress.com, along with your mailing address and we’ll reserve your copies, available to mail in time for our Sixth Annual Writers and Creatives Reunion in Oceanside, California on June 15^th.  If you’d like to make a straight donation and receive just a single copy, we’ll list you in the pages of the book as a patron of the arts, much as we listed over a hundred people who sponsored our award winning publication Raw Man by Fred Rivera.

Please join me, and prepare yourself for an amazing read, which, if you have a pulse, will send your heart surging with inspiration.

Love and affection to all from the towers,

Thorn,

Editor-in-Chief