I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because I’ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.
– P.G. Wodehouse, “Leave it to Jeeves”
Snake Year Press is my own publishing venture. To learn more about the Snake Year books, please select a title below:
More Snake Year books are on the way!
Where did the name “Snake Year Press” come from? It’s a tribute to one of my very favorite books, The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs:
In the cellar, rows of splintery tarred barrels ran off into the vaulted alleys; here and there lumpy starfish-shaped grease lamps gave off a smudgepot stink and precious little light. Prospero looked around and saw a man in a brown robe bent over a little low barrel. He was turning the spigot and drawing off a thick brown fluid that was probably sherry. Prospero stood watching him from a distance, and the man started to talk in a creaky old-geezer voice. It was not clear if he was talking to himself, but he gave no sign that he knew the other man was there.
“Ye-es, this is proper Snake Year sherry, it is. I’ve got the right barrel. Snake Year, ye say? Thaat’s right, thaat’s right. Seems there was a plague of adders several years ago. Well, they come down off of that Clock Hill lookin’ for a cold dark place, and they filled this cellar up to the gunnels. Right up to the roof beams. Wrigglin’ and squirmin’ like anything. Well, old whatsisname come down here in a suit of armor he borrowed up the road, and he laid around with a broadsword till they was all dead. Well, then they aired out the cellar ‘n’ carried out the segments, or figments, if ye please” –here he broke down into shaking silent laughter and hit his head several times against the barrel rim– “but it took ’em a long time to get this funny smell out. They finally did, most of it, but this here barrel, if ye pop out the bung, still smells bracky. That’s because a lady adder set down some eggs in here. She squirmed in the spigot and she squirmed out again. Now they ain’t many that likes this barrel, but I claim the taste is special.”