Mark R. Probst

Amazon supports marriage equality

2012-07-27T19:47:10Z

Can you believe it's been over 3 years since the AmazonFail incident where my very own blog was ground zero? Amazon was not anti-gay then and certainly not now as CEO and founder Jeff Bezos has generously donated 2.5 million dollars to the Washington United for Marriage campaign to pass referendum 74 which will legalize same sex marriage in Washington. A big thank you to Jeff and his wife MacKenzie!

Movies to celebrate Father's Day

2012-06-17T08:22:25Z

Some of my favorite movies about dads:

To Kill a Mockingbird - Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch

Kramer vs. Kramer - Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer

Mrs. Doubtfire - Robin Williams as Daniel Hillard

Ordinary People - Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett

The Sum of Us - Jack Thompson as Harry Mitchell

The Descendants - George Clooney as Matt King

I started another blog

2012-05-29T09:46:25Z

So I decided to delve into a whole new blog. However this new one will have nothing to do with writing or publishing. In it I will talk about my other passion: Western movies. I will try to update it each week with an entry about one of my favorite Westerns. First up is John Ford's masterpiece, The Searchers, complete with pictures and a trailer. Do let me know what you think!
Classic Westerns and TV Shows Blog

With my apologies to Will Shakespeare

2012-02-22T02:17:24Z

I just watched the 1936 version of Romeo and Juliet with a 33 year old Juliet (Norma Shearer) and a 42(!) year old Romeo (Leslie Howard). Here’s an idea for an alternate ending. Romeo, in the tomb kneeling beside his beloved Juliette, holds up the vial of poison preparing to join her in death. Just as he raises it to his lips, she murmurs, “Romeo.” He winces and says, “My sweet Juliet, it’s as though I could still hear thy tender voice.” A little louder, she says, “Romeo? Wherefore art thou?” (good lines are worth repeating) He looks down, sees her stirring, drops the vial and it shatters on the tomb floor. He flings himself upon her and smothers her with kisses. “How be this miracle possible?” he asks. The friar enters and warns them that the watch is approaching and they must make haste and escape. They quietly slip out as the friar heads off the watch. After all, this is a Romance, right? A happy ending is REQUIRED! Have I just committed sacrilege on Shakespeare?

Teen bullying Youtube video goes viral

2011-12-04T18:28:31Z

Three months ago, 14-year-old Jonah Mowry posted a video on Youtube. He just wanted to express to the world how much pain he was in over being bullied, but that he wasn’t going to let it get the best of him. Last night the stars lined up and the video went viral. I watched as tens of thousands of comments were posted, most in support, but many against him, some saying that the video was a big fake. In response he posted a follow-up video thanking everyone and addressing the video’s authenticity.

His twitter account also went crazy with tweets, many from celebrities, and Perez Hilton even invited Jonah to his birthday party.

There are other videos on his Youtube channel of him just goofing around and being a kid that would suggest he’s probably going to be a creative artist when he grows up.

I’ve offered to send Jonah Cheyenne Publishing’s entire catalog of young adult books, though he’s probably so inundated with messages that he may never see the offer.

What I've been reading for fun

2011-12-03T08:11:17Z

Well I did something that I almost never do. DNF. That stands for "did not finish" and yes halfway through, I gave up on the book I was reading. No, I won't reveal the title because I've no desire to sabotage sales for this self-published book. Needless to say, it seemed obvious that the author didn't bother with having it edited as sentence structure and technique were all over the place. It was written by a gay man but read more like a housewife's fantasy of gay porn. Furthermore the description and the cover were very misleading, with the insinuation that this was a story about a homophobic father dealing with his gay son. Not so. The father only serves the story to kick his son to the curb and then is never seen again. Meanwhile the son ends up in New Orleans where he is taken in by a rich kid and the two of them spend chapter after chapter after chapter of explicitly-described sex all the way through Hurricane Katrina. Just horrible. I've probably just given away enough clues to lead a savvy person right to the book.

Oh well, now I'm going to read something that I've heard people raving about for years: Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books. Can't go wrong there.

What a cool idea.

2011-11-26T09:05:08Z

Now this is the kind of moviemaking that really gets me excited with anticipation. A brand new movie shot it black and white...and...wait for it...SILENT! Most people of my generation have never even bothered to sit through a silent movie, but I've watched a lot of them: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks and so on. I like movies that try to emulate the style of vintage moviemaking, such as Far From Heaven which perfectly captured the 1950s melodramatic style of director Douglas Sirk, and The Good German which was filmed to look like a 1940s film noir in glorious black & white. My own novel The Filly was a meager attempt to pay tribute to the Hollywood Western of yesteryear, so I think you can see where I'm coming from.

And if that's not exciting enough, Wings, the movie to win the first Best Picture Academy Award (and the only silent movie ever to win) is finally coming out on DVD and Blu-ray in January!

'Scuse me while I brag...

2011-10-28T02:12:42Z

As a publisher, let me say this is one of which I’m really proud to be associated. Junction X is remarkable in its honesty of showing the inner battles of a human being yearning for happiness but unable to have it because he is trapped by what society demands of him. Unflinching and harrowing in its portrayal, and inspired by true events, Junction X really is a moving story. There is a revelation at the end of the book I won’t spoil that will make you rethink everything you have read up to that point. While all of Erastes’ books are good, this one is different than anything she has ever done, and I truly hope people will give it a chance even though it is outside the bounds of traditional romance.

Now available in Print:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
TLA

and eBook:

Kindle
Kindle UK
OmniLit

The 1960s are "in"

2011-10-01T04:28:59Z

Just watched the movie An Education. I know it's a couple of years old; I had always planned on seeing it from the time it was nominated for all those Oscars but I'm just now getting around to it. I love period British drama (not to mention the very handsome Peter Sarsgaard and one of my favorite British actresses, Emma Thompson) and this one is quite well done. I didn't expect the ending at all and am glad that none of the previews spoiled it. It's set in 1961 which is just about the same period and setting as a book that Cheyenne Publishing has coming out next month, Junction X.

And speaking of the 1960s, thanks to Mad Men, TV shows set in the sixties have become very chic. Is anybody watching Pan Am? It's a fun show, perhaps a bit fluffy but mostly historically accurate except for the fact that the producers decided to allow one small historical inaccuracy and depict the era as a nearly smoke-free environment. I guess I can forgive them for that.

Pride Pack series is finished!

2011-09-11T22:02:01Z

The Pride Pack series is finally finished and put to bed. It was a lot of hard work and I really appreciate the contributions of all involved: Wayne Gunn, Jordan Taylor, Josh Aterovis, Lori Lake and Steve Berman. And of course my thanks to Ruth without whom none of this would be possible, and let me also say how very gracious it is of her to donate her author royalties from the series to The Trevor Project.

The books will be available shortly in print and in the eBook format.
For full synopsis of each book, click the book covers above.

Hurrah!

More young adult titles coming to Cheyenne Publishing!

2011-08-03T21:27:13Z

Way back in 1995 Alyson Publications introduced a series of mysteries aimed at LGBTQ kids called The Pride Pack.

Original covers from Alyson Publications in 1995

They were penned by R. J. Hamilton, which was a pseudonym for none other than Ruth Sims, author of The Phoenix and Counterpoint: Dylan’s Story. The series died in infancy when Alyson Publications was sold shortly after the first two titles came out. The new owners promptly cancelled the series even though two more books had been completed. The first two then lapsed out of print and The Pride Pack was never given a fair chance.

Now 16 years later, Ruth Sims, with the help of Drewey Wayne Gunn, is bringing the series back into print via Cheyenne Publishing. The books will be given sparkling new covers designed by Jordan Taylor, and each volume will include a new introduction from one of Ruth’s fellow authors as well as an afterword by Wayne Gunn which will place the books in their proper historical context.

Unfortunately the manuscript for the fourth book in the series is lost, but the first three will make their Cheyenne debuts in September. And who knows, that fourth manuscript might just yet turn up in someone’s attic!

How to get to be a New York Times best-selling author...

2011-07-02T23:58:40Z

Write a children's book... FOR ADULTS! Now why the f**k didn't I think of that?

Cheyenne authors at Coffeetime Romance chat

2011-06-21T19:53:17Z

Lee Rowan, Erik Orrantia, Jon Wilson and I will be chatting live in the Coffeetime Romance chatroom tonight (June 21st) from 9-10pm Eastern. Come join us!

Support a good cause! AWAKE benefits the Trevor Project!

2011-06-17T17:07:49Z

Awake is now available for sale. Cheyenne Publishing has teamed with Nancy Garden, Kathe Koja, Robin Reardon, Brian Katcher, and Jordan Taylor to present four YA stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens. All net proceeds go to The Trevor Project.

Amazon (print)

Barnes & Noble (print & Nookbook)

Amazon Kindle

TLA Video

The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

Amazon UK

Publisher Information page

Do authors resemble their book covers? and other eerie things...

2011-04-03T10:33:09Z

I've been putting together a promo CD for Cheyenne to pass out at events and while assembling the material onto slides I noticed something that made me shiver - the resemblance of the authors to their book covers.

The other weird thing that happened to me is that while I'm halfway through reading Farley Granger's autobiography, Include Me Out, the man up and dies! Very eerie indeed!

See there, how people can jump to wrong conclusions!

2011-03-23T02:52:53Z

Yesterday I posted about YA author Jessica Verday and the kerfuffle over being told the gay characters in her story would not be accepted by the publisher. Well I checked back at her blog today and there is an update: Jessica Verday's updated blog post Turns out the editor had made the decision on her own and after Jessica's post, the editor found out from Running Press that they would have been delighted to have included the gay story! So apparently it was all much ado about nothing. Anyhow I'll be following her blog to see if amends can be made and if she will be invited back into the anthology with her original story.

Not in our anthology...

2011-03-22T05:40:00Z

New York Times best-selling YA author pulls out of Running Press anthology because she was told that her gay-themed story was unacceptable.
Hmm…interesting. My immediate reaction was outrage. It’s easy to jump on the homophobia bandwagon. It seems with gay characters sprouting up all over the place in movies, TV shows and books, that objecting to gay teen characters in a YA anthology is completely unfounded. And I applaud author Jessica Verday for having the integrity to withdraw from the anthology and then publicly tell everybody why.

Now speaking as a publisher, I do understand a little bit about demographics. When you market a specific type of product to a specific market, it often means setting up guidelines for what is and what is not acceptable. Running Press did a brief series of M/M Romance novels in which they were testing the waters by introducing gay romance into the Romance genre and they were fully behind it. So this about-face is a bit perplexing. I imagine they feel that in this case they are marketing to a specific young-adult demographic and allowing homosexuality into the anthology could backfire with a lot of angry parents who think their children need to be protected from all knowledge about unthinkable subjects. Running Press probably wants to play it safe and that is their prerogative, but personally I think they would benefit with a more progressive attitude and be willing to embrace a little diversity in their young adult literature.

Cheyenne Publishing is putting out its own YA anthology this June called AWAKE with all publisher profits going to The Trevor Project.

Anyhow, I think Ms. Verday may have found a new reader...

Edit: An update on this story...

23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalists Announced

2011-03-16T09:03:48Z

It's a great day for me. The little publishing company I started has finally been honored to have a book become a finalist in the Lammies! For those of you not familiar with the process, that's the shortlist where they take all the open nominations (actually submissions) and narrow them down to 5 finalists per category. So I want to congratulate everyone involved with bringing Normal Miguel to fruition: Author Erik Orrantia, editor Tracey Pennington, and cover artist Alex Beecroft!

2010 Lambda Literary Finalist
Gay Romance

Note to authors...

2011-01-28T20:53:39Z

If you query a publisher and they invite you to send in the first three chapters of your manuscript, please just do it! There have been several authors whose queries interested me so I asked for the first three chapters, only to have the authors balk, begging to send chapters from the middle of their book because the first three chapters aren't "representative of their work"! Well I've got news for you, if you haven't engaged the reader within the first three chapters then you have colossally failed as an author. When people are browsing for a book to buy, they don't crack open the middle of the book to check it out, they start reading the first chapter, and if it doesn't draw them in pretty quickly, they put it right back on the shelf. Whenever an author isn't happy with sending me only the first three chapters, I immediately see that as a red flag that they don't have faith in their own work.

My new bike, or why I’m not normal…

2011-01-06T04:34:42Z

So entering the New Year I was determined to shed some extra weight that’s slowly been accumulating the past several years. A diet is good, but if I throw in some exercise I’ll lose the weight even faster, right? Anyway that’s the theory. So I decided to get a mountain bike to start riding everyday. I’m not going to go overboard or anything like these ridiculously healthy people who ride 50 miles a day, but I’ll try and take a 20 or 30-minute spin on the days it doesn’t rain – aha! A loophole, you see I live in the Portland, Oregon area.

So here comes the part about why I’m not normal. The normal person would go to a local bike shop, pick out a really nice bicycle, pay the owner of the bike shop god knows how many hundreds of dollars, put the bike in the back of their vehicle, take it home and start riding it.

Not me. No sir. I go online and find the cheapest bike I can find (sold by Amazon for an embarrassingly low $99) and wait 3 days for it to be delivered. So it arrived via Fed-ex at the office where I work and one of my co-workers had signed for it. When I got to work I saw that the box looked like it had been used for a battering ram. Now here is where the normal person would probably show some alarm. Not I. I was sure it was fine. After all, bikes are sturdy aren’t they? I pulled it out of the box and immediately discovered that one of the pedals had some small pieces broken away and the reflector had fallen off. Ah, that’s not so bad, it’s only a pedal. Who cares about that? So I tore through all the paper wrapping around the frame and snipped the tie-wraps that secured the front wheel and the handlebars to the frame so I could start assembling my new bike. And then I discovered some more significant damage. That gearshift thingy on the back wheel that moves back and forth to guide the chain onto the different sprockets was bent all the way into the spokes of the wheel. Now here’s where the normal person would have stopped, packed it all back up and tried to contact Amazon to complain that the merchandise was damaged, and demanded to know what they were going to do about it. Not ol’ Mark. I can fix that. Who wants the headache of convincing Amazon of the damage and getting them to replace it, not to mention the hassle of putting it all back together into that dilapidated box and hauling it to a shipping facility? I wanted my bike then, not 3 days or even 2 weeks later. So I disassembled the bent thingy, and using a vice and brute force, I managed to make it almost straight again. Anyway, after hours of fiddling around with it I managed to get it working. It works though not quite as smoothly as it would if it hadn’t been mangled in the first place.

So day one, I take my bike out for my first ride. I made it all the way around the block, my heart pounding, hardly able to catch my breath. Well that was enough for day one, don’t you think? Maybe I’ll go around two blocks on day two. Holy smokes, when did I get so old?

Just wondering... Is Lesbian Romance on the rise?

2010-12-29T23:35:05Z

Apparently, if you go by the submissions so far for the Lammys. Forty-five books in the Lesbian Romance category compared to just six in the Gay Romance category. Go Girls!

Christmas special on "The Filly"

2010-12-01T23:40:09Z

I apologize for using my blog to hawk books. I suppose if I don't do it very often, you all won't be TOO annoyed :)

Right now Cheyenne Publishing is trying to unload some excess inventory and has a special price of $3.99 plus shipping for signed copies of The Filly. Just use the link below to purchase from Amazon and make sure you are buying from the Marketplace seller called "Old Movie Lover" - that's us! We guarantee Christmas delivery if you purchase by December 15th.
Click here for a special deal on THE FILLY
Happy holidays!
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Update: the deal has now expired.

Back from D.C. vacation

2010-11-23T23:17:10Z

I had a nice little vacation in our nation’s capital. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever visited Washington D.C. so it was a really incredible experience to witness all the history preserved by all the monuments and museums. Here’s a picture of me at Arlington Cemetery next to Audie Murphy’s gravesite. Tim had to ask me who he was. I guess you either need to be a senior citizen (which I’m not) or an avid old-movie buff (which I am) to know Audie Murphy these days.

We toured the Capitol and even sat in on sessions of each house of Congress. We also took a tour of the Library of Congress. While my book does have a Library of Congress catalog number, sadly a copy is not actually in the building.

The last thing we did that everyone should do at least once in their livetime is visit the National Archives and look at the actual original documents of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. The ink has now faded so badly on the Declaration as to make it mostly unreadable. Trying to read words that are no longer there, I was struck with the notion that it’s almost symbolic of how in some States human rights are fading away as well.

Oh, and by the way, I also got to meet up with the owner of Bristlecone Pine Press, Leslie Nicoll, who has published the eBook versions of all of Cheyenne's books. It was nice to finally meet her in person after working with her the past couple of years.

I'm blogging today at the Macs

2010-10-25T20:21:25Z

Today I’m blogging over at the Macaronis. It’s somewhat of an editorial, entitled The Closet of Some Who Write Gay Romance. My opinion may rub some the wrong way, but it is, after all, just my opinion. Some great points have been made in the comments. Feel free to post your own 2 cents to the conversation.

Does anybody else agree with me that Lt. Dan Choi is a real American hero?

2010-10-22T19:57:17Z

This brave soldier, after being discharged from the military as a casualty of the DADT policy, has become a crusader for civil rights, chaining himself to the White House fence during a protest and eloquently speaking out about the current administration’s bungling of the DADT repeal process, and most recently reenlisting during the one-week window when the military had to comply with the judicial ruling.

Here’s what Lt. Choi had to say in response to the Justice Department’s decision to appeal Judge Virginia Philips’ ruling that DADT is unconstitutional.
“Yesterday, when President Obama, after ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ has been dead for a week – no enormous consequences. No people quitting the military because of honest soldiers. And all of the sudden you see this president want to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to discrimination and injustice.”

And here’s his response to White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett’s statement that the Justice Department is required to defend the law of the land.
“When Congress enacts a law that's unconstitutional, whose job is it to strike it down? The court's. I understand the judicial branch is now the only branch of government that is filling its mandate to the Constitution.”

Brilliant comments from a real American hero.

Now, on the positive side, President Obama has contributed a video to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign:

Despite all the criticism the President is getting from both sides – the lynch mob mentality of the Tea Party (sorry but that’s really what it looks like to me) and the disappointment from the LGBT community that feels he is not fulfilling his promises, I am glad he is taking part in this campaign. Cheyenne Publishing also has a project for 2011 with all net proceeds going to The Trevor Project.