just in time for christmas!

A stocking stuffer for the writer in your life!

Writing Lessons, Ten Tales of Suspect Instruction by Peter Darbyshire, author of Please and The Warhol Gang.

Art and design by the other half of UpStart Press, Darryl Joel Berger.
You can find copies for sale at Novel Idea, in downtown Kingston, or here.

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What if you throw a party and no one shows up?

Or how about if you send out a call for submissions and no one answers?

Work for the anthology has been on the back burner lately, while I struggle valiantly with my Master's thesis and my now five-month-old daughter, Oona. One of these two things is delightful; the other is a great big drag that I wish was over.

For those of you who eat this stuff up, here's a taste of the little delight in my life:






And for those of you who either know what it feels like to write a thesis or for those of you who are thinking about starting one, here's a little something my husband (the other half of UpStart Press) whipped up one day to cheer me:



At least it gave my thesis advisor a chuckle.

With a mid-April deadline for submissions, there hasn't been much for me to do but wait. So I have been waiting, pushing down my "no one will come to my party" fears as much as possible. Imagine my delight when the submissions started trickling in last week. As did the casual inquiries ("When was that deadline again?") and earnest promises to "get something in soon."

I bumped into Elizabeth Greene downtown today. She was toting home an enormous and heavy-looking bag full of books, contest entries, and she had an afternoon of reading and sore arms ahead of her. She promised to get something in to me "soon" and asked how things were going. I told her my only lament so far was that I wasn't able to find Judith Pond. Google, Facebook and all email inquiries had led nowhere. "Leave it with me," said Elizabeth. Two hours later I was reading a very enthusiastic email from Judith herself. Elizabeth Greene is the bomb.

The deadline for submissions is April 15, and my fears are fading away. It's going to be a great party!

What is UpStart Press?

Upstart Press is based in Kingston, Ontario, and was founded by Christina Decarie, writer and editor, and DJ Berger, writer, artist, and graphic designer, as a way to combine their skills and passions to further their love of the art and writing communities in Kingston.

Among other projects, it publishes annually If I Knew Then: St Lawrence College Students Interview Business Professionals, a collection of interviews and essays used as a business communications textbook.

Christina Decarie is a freelance writer and editor, contributing regularly to Shameless Magazine, Quill & Quire, and Profile Kingston. Her fiction and other writing have appeared in Pottersfield Portfolio, Antigonish Review, The Puritan, All Rights Reserved (and other journals), and the anthologies Writing on the Edge (Siren Song Publishing) and Lake Effect (Artful Codger Press). Her chapbook, Nemesis Girls, is published by Black Bile Press.

DJ Berger is a graphic designer, artist and writer in Kingston, Ontario. His work has appeared in Prairie Fire, The Windsor Review, Geist, Subterrain, The Fiddlehead, Queen Street Quarterly, The New Quarterly, Event and others. The unpublished manuscript for his short-story collection - called Punishing Ugly Children - won the 2007 David Adams Richards Prize. This same manuscript will be published by Killick Press in fall 2010. His short story Scissors was a finalist in the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. His work and thoughts can be found at www.red-handed.blogspot.com.