By my reckoning, we are 25 days from the Apex 10th Anniversary event at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY. This day also marks the release date for my new book For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher.

Look at the youthful publisher wannabe in the photo below!

That’s me approximately 10-12 years ago. This was me before kids, before publishing, with a lot fewer wrinkles and much lower blood pressure. Look at that face—even back then I took the happiest selfies!

That guy in the photo is clueless. He’s about to have a kid. He’s about to be laid off from that job and land a position at the Lexington city government offices. All the crazy life transitions messed him up. The guy tried to steady the boat and put a decent effort into succeeding at his boring system administration job.

It’s the weirdest things that make the biggest differences in life. For me, it was a cheap, broken printer.

Then this happened:

That was that. My side of the story was cast aside as falsehoods. The two directors commenced a discussion regarding a six-month probationary period, mandatory anger management counseling, and having my wages garnished an amount equal to the cost it would take to replace the broken printer.

As they talked about me as though I weren’t sitting right there, I considered my life. That exact moment was playing out exactly as it should based on the parameters I had set for myself for the last 30 years. I would sit there meekly, accept whatever punishment deemed appropriate, and continue to being a ‘nobody’ to all the ‘superiors’ in my life.

No, that would not do, I thought. I would change the script of my life.

—Excerpt from For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher, Chapter 1 “The Risk Master”

Not long after that, this happened:

The picture of me with issues one and two of Apex Digest was taken in late 2005. Almost 10 years ago.

I hope you come to celebrate those 10 years with me on June 20th. The event page is here. The event info is below.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Lexington, KY
5:00 pm