Oh reader, where or where does the Red Haired Witch of the Western Sea find out about all of the wacky and wonderful books he reads?
Well, I'll be honest, Borders mostly. I happen to like how they lay out their stores better than that other chain whom in fairness has a more fulsome selection on average. And I enjoy the blissful time shopping the aisles looking for new writers to me that would be potentially an addition to the library. But I research Amazon.com often to find out what's going on, keep a list of my faves authors' websites and blogs to keep abreast of their next projects, and fear not, publisher websites as well.
When I was young, I thought that a good publisher's seal on the book was a stamp of approval; letting me know that the story contained between the cardboard covers was a place where I could escape and visit the magical and wondrous, the quest driven and free, the beauty and cruelty of another time and place, all while keeping a fine eye on the allegorical implications on the modern culture.
Where did that assumption come from? Well, in the 5th grade, I fell in love with two series of books, which I'm sure is familiar as a nostalgic holiday dinner to people who would read my ramblings - The Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks, and David Eddings' The Belgariad series.
With age came wisdom, but also moved me a bit away from my first impression as the "seal of approval" but now that I'm writing a blog about my book fetish, I wanted to really explore if this was still true. With that, I came back to the beginning with featuring Del Ray's imprint.
Now owned by Random House, the imprint was started by Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey in 1977. They started with their first book from Terry Brooks and have expanded to several legacy writers in the genre including Piers Anthony and Issac Asimov.
Just wanted to give them a big shout out for starting my torrid love affair with sci fi and fantasy and filling my house to the bursting with some of my favorite tomes of yore.
I think one of the questions we here in the sacred circle are asking is can we trust a publisher again like we did with del Rey?
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