Can I get a hallelujah?

At long last, the first Part of The Kitra Saga is complete. With the publishing of Majera, there is now a complete arc of the first beyond-the-frontier expedition of Kitra, Pinky, Fareedh, Peter, and Marta—and hopefully, a satisfying resolution. Why did it take so long? Well…

First off, as you can see, Journey Press has prioritized audio book productions of all our books, with the goal to have audio versions of all our books by the end of next year. Majera actually marks our first new title in two years!

But secondly, Majera was just a hard book to write. It’s one thing to spin entertaining yarns. It’s another to resolve a bunch of disparate threads, and also to weave them into a happily ever after for all concerned. I felt that the Majera crew deserved that, and frankly, I just didn’t have the experience I needed to write that ending until last year.

Thankfully, I think the next six books in the series should be easier to produce, although I’m going to take a detour and put out a collection of my published and unpublished short stories, first.

Anyway, if you liked the previous Kitra books because they married space adventure with good science, you’ll like Majera. If you dug the spooky vibe of Sirena, well, Majera‘s got that, but squared. If you thrilled at the burgeoning queer romantic subplot(s), well, you’ll definitely be into Majera. And if you want to know more about what’s really inside Pinky, aside from cream custard, Majera definitely delivers there, too.

Oh, and of course, Lorelei Esther’s interior illustrations are stellar, and I can’t say enough good things about the cover art by Jessica Holmes. Wow!

So pick up a copy. It’s the first Journey Press release to be available in all formats, physical, electronic, and audio, upon launch. And we haven’t jacked up the price, even with inflation what it is.

Because you deserve something nice. Just like Kitra, Pinky, Fareedh, Peter, and Marta.

~Gideon

The production of Journey Press audiobooks continues apace! The amazing Kitra Saga continues with the audiobook of Hyvilma. Space pirates, insurrection…and Pinky at death’s door. All narrated by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.

You don’t want to miss this one, folks!

The audiobook for Majera (Book 4) should be coming out next month. It will wrap up this arc, though not the series as a whole. Stay tuned! We hope you’re as excited as we are.

With the publishing of the Audiobook for Kitra, a whole new audience of listeners was introduced to the story of the Majera and her crew. Ever since, we’ve been flooded with requests: when is Lorelei Esther going to narrate the sequel, Sirena?

Wait no longer! The Sirena audiobook is here, and it’s sensational. Plus, we’ve made it available in a variety of formats: as a .zip file of mp3s, on Google Play, and (sigh) yes, even Audible. The .zip makes us the most money, but the important thing is that you enjoy the book, whichever format you prefer!

The audiobook for Hyvilma (Book 3) should be coming out next month, and we’ll likely be releasing the audiobook for Majera, fourth book in the series, as a prelude to the print version! Look for that one early next year.

Our goal is to release audiobook versions of all our books over the next two years. In addition, we have some great new titles besides Majera coming your way in 2026-7. So keep watching this space for more exciting developments!

Why did we do it? Well, it’s no secret that a publishing house needs some kind of internet presence these days. But social media is a drag (and aside from Blue Sky and mastodon, they’re all some kind of evil), e-mail lists are a pain, and search engine algorithms like to hide your results unless you pay them.

But Discord…

Discord servers are entirely customizable. Everyone you meet on our server is likely to be not only a fan of science fiction and fantasy (of the queer and feminist variety) but also someone with impeccable taste. It’s a fun place, small enough to be intimate, large enough to be interesting!

You’ll be the first to know when new books are coming out. Where Journey Press and its authors will next be appearing. Fascinating tidbits about the various worlds we’ve created. It’s like a permanent, floating, ‘Ask Me Anything’.

So come on down and introduce yourself! It’s a real fun time.

When we started the press, we had no idea how to distribute, but we knew indie bookstores wanted to carry our books. Thus, we signed up with Ingram, and now we’re sold across the nation (and to some degree, the world).

One of Galactic Journey’s writers (its youngest, as it turns out) was a budding artist. I wanted The Kitra Saga to have pictures. Thus, an illustrated YA series!

Janice, Lorelei, and I all have professional performance experience. We like to read. Why not make audiobooks? Thus, Kitra now has an audiobook, and more of the books in the series are in production.

Tom Purdom’s exquisite masterpiece, I Want the Stars, was perfect for an audio version. Thus, it now has one as well!

It’s a long time coming. I actually approached Tom last September with the idea of me narrating his book. He liked my sample chapters (though he personally quibbled with my degree of acting; I see an audiobook as a kind of radio play; he liked a flatter style), and he gave me the go-ahead. But for various other reasons, other projects kept taking priority, and he passed away before I could finish the book.

That galvanized me, and I threw myself back into it, finishing the audio version. It’s actually been done for a month—but the loss of two dear friends and the demoralizing results of a national election (all within 48 hours!) created further delay.

But now we’re back in gear and on schedule to release an audiobook at least once per quarter, knock on wood. I think you’ll particularly like this one. Tom created such a rich world, and a huge cast of characters. I tried to do them justice.

I hope you enjoy.

~Gideon

Get the Audio Book!

So we’ve always been looking for cool avenues through which to distribute our books. Our favorite, of course, is the independent bookstore. It’s no secret that one of our favorite parts of this business is keeping in touch with our bookseller friends, both at new release time and just for fun. You end up with fun occasions like this one, where a fan Instagrammed one of our books caught in the wild:

(Erica Brickley holds up a copy of Kitra at Walls of Books in Ankeny, Iowa)

But lots of folks want their books electronically, and we get that. That’s why we sell direct, offer through itunes, and (sigh) even sell Kindle editions.

This week, we’ve rolled out a new e-book distributor: Google Play Books

“But aren’t they just as bad as Bezos and Co.?” Arguably. But, if there are two behemoths in the marketplace, well, by definition, there’s no monopoly. So why not play both ends against the middle?

Here’s our lovely new Google Play Books shop. Check out all the pretty covers!

Of course, there’s another reason we’re working with Google Play, and it’s a really big deal, something a lot of you have been waiting for forever. The truth is, we’re…

…well, why don’t we wait ’til next week so as not to spoil the surprise!

Stay tuned!

Journey Press launched in 2019 with volume one of what has become our flagship series: Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women. Our mission was and is to spotlight the superlative female science fiction writers of the 20th Century, whose work has largely been lost to time and/or eclipsed by that of their male contemporaries. It has thus been critically important to ensure that the Rediscovery series is of the highest quality—from the stories inside, to the commentary by modern authors, to the perfection of their presentation and format.

This is why we were horrified to discover that the third volume of Rediscovery, covering the years 1964-1968, had a fatal, inexcusable error in it.

We included two stories by Hilary Bailey, a terrific author from the United Kingdom. One of them is “The Little Victims”, a tale of mutants and mother love; the second is “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner”, an alternate universe story from a world where the Nazis conquered Great Britain in World War Two.

The only problem: due to a formatting error, “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner” was credited to Margaret St. Clair.

Once this error was discovered, conscientious business practices dictated just one option—we had to destroy all existing flawed copies and replace them with corrected ones.

Thankfully, we have a terrific set of partners in our constellation of bookseller friends. Once we put out the call, they quickly destroyed their existing copies so we could send replacements and notified (to the best of their ability) patrons who had purchased flawed copies.

E-copies are even easier to deal with: books bought via Apple/Ingram affiliates/Amazon are automatically updated with new versions (at least, they should be—folks who bought via Amazon should make sure “download latest version” is turned on). Those who bought directly from our Journey Press online shop have already gotten an email with a corrected version.

The only books we have not been able to replace are the print copies purchased online and the ones purchased from bookstores before they could stock fixed copies. We will replace these as well. Simply send us an email with a photo of the book with the cover destroyed as well as a mailing address, and we will send you a replacement copy, free of charge.

Note: this error is not a collectible or “cute” one—we must destroy all the flawed copies we can to do right by the legacy of Hilary Bailey. If you have a flawed copy, please ****@**********ss.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>let us know so we can get it out of circulation.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining. We were able to evaluate our processes, identify what caused this error, and ensure that it won’t happen again. In the future, the editing and publishing process will be smoother, less prone to error, and produce books of consistently high quality.

And so we go forward, embarrassed by our mistake, but resolved to make good on our promise to honor the memory of the legendary authors who paved the way for the luminaries of today. Thank you for your support in this mission.

~Gideon

When we started Journey Press back in August 2019, we had one overriding goal: to publish excellent speculative fiction about and by women and queer people—and get them into your hands!

To that end, over the past five years, we’ve built a distribution network to make sure you can get our books in as many places and as many formats as possible. Whether it’s independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Apple Books, or even the Evil Amazon , you can always find a copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women or Mirror of My Heart.

The latest frontier for our expansion has been libraries. We’ve always wanted to our books to be in your local library, freely available for people to enjoy, but for many reasons, a relationship with more than a handful proved elusive.

For physical copies, it’s because libraries are decentralized entities, and it is difficult for a small publisher to work on an individual basis with the tens of thousands of libraries in the United States alone! For electronic copies, the main problem is that Overdrive, the main provider of e-books to libraries, has become increasingly “enshittified“.

So, we were at an impasse as to how to go forward with libraries. Until…

Enter Lyrasis

A number of competitors have sprung up to challenge the bloated giant that is Overdrive, and the one we like the best is Lyrasis. Through platforms like BiblioBoard and The Palace Project, and on a non-profit basis, they “make it [their] mission to provide ebooks in a sustainable licensing model that benefits not only the library and the publisher, but also the author and the patron, to get high-quality ebooks into the hands of library patrons in as equitable and accessible a way as possible.”

We inked our relationship last week, and soon, Journey Press’ entire catalog will be available to Lyrasis’ hundreds of library clients. We are absolutely thrilled, not only at the prospect of being able to reach millions of people who use our public library systems, but also at the thought that our books will help Lyrasis erode Overdrive’s virtual monopoly, leveling the playing field for publishers and authors everywhere.

So, if you want to see our titles on the shelves (virtual or physical) of your local library, don’t be afraid to request them! Between Lyrasis and our other distribution methods, it’s a sure thing your library can stock our complete catalog.

It’s taken a lifetime, or at least feels like it, but August marks the book birthday for Hyvilma, the third book in The Kitra Saga.

This exciting new chapter in Gideon Marcus’ YA space adventure series is the closest the books have gotten to “space opera”, with pirate ships, rebel Imperial Navy vessels, plenty of pew-pew, and as you can see from the cover…Marta with a gun.

But of course, since it’s a Kitra book, you never lose the sense of found family, the underpinning of solid science, and of course, it’s plenty queer.

There’s more we could say, but honestly, Gideon did a great job with his bit on Mary Robinette Kowal’s “My Favorite Bit“–you’ll want to check it out as it has a nice excerpt from the book!

Hyvilma is out in both e-book and physical, and it’s either in your local bookstores and libraries, or it can be ordered from them.

Work is almost complete on the third volume of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women. Covering 1964-1968, it promises to be our biggest and best installment yet. Once again, the Journey Press team pored through hundreds of stories to rescue from the depths of time some of the very best science fiction ever written.

And, as before, we’ve assembled an army of commentators to bring their authors to life, including in several cases, relatives who are creators themselves. Thus, you’ll be hearing from people like Susan Emshwiller, Kate (Reed) Maruyama, and Astrid (Anderson) Bear. But there are also amazing pieces from folks like Seanan McGuire, Marie Vibbert, Ai Jiang, Alyssa Winans, and many more.

It really has been a thrill watching this volume come together, seeing the Silver Age of Science Fiction give way to the New Age, all from the unique perspective of the women who soldiered through what, in many ways, was a difficult time for female participation in the genre. Even more exciting has been forging connections with the heirs and estates of these authors and, in the happy case of Mary Jane Engh (Jane Beauclerk) and P. A. (Pam) Zoline, the authors themselves!

Rediscovery, Volume 3 will be out in March 2024 for Women’s History Month. If you haven’t picked up the first two volumes, now’s a great time!

We’re super excited about this one. Laura Weyr’s sapphic retelling of Snow White comes out this Fall, and it’s both a steamy read and a compelling fantasy. And with its release, Journey Press will be up to three speculative fiction romances–a fact which should make y’all very happy…

So, three cheers for our three newest titles! And keep your eyes peeled for more great stuff coming down the pike…

Rebecca Inch-Partridge zoomed back to the 1960s for a one-on-two chat at a recent National Science Fiction Convention.

This was the result: