HIGHLIGHTS OF MY WRITING AND PUBLISHING CAREER

I write fiction in the literary tradition of Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and Rod Serling. These are some highlights from my writing and publishing career.

At the beginning, I was a writer learning the trade, working in solitude, sending things out, occasionally getting things published, and collecting lots of rejection slips. Only when I started to “break out” in the public eye and become somewhat known did I really start to build a track record, so I’m posting selected items from my public career on this page. As much as possible, I’ve broken the PDFs and photos into categories and have listed them from the most recent to the earliest.

MIDLANDS BUSINESS JOURNAL

My work as a writer and photographer for the Midlands Business Journal began in March 1994. A short time later the company established a sister publication, the Lincoln Business Journal, and I contributed stories and photos to both papers. I left in February 2003 but rejoined the firm in 2013 and am still working with them. I estimate that I have written about 3 million words and counting for those publications.

A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR

On Feb. 21, 2012, I launched the print and digital versions of my Novelette A Friend of the Family with a virtual book tour, during which I wrote a few guest blog posts, did a few interviews–including a 30-minute podcast–and gave away a $25 Amazon gift card. A Friend of the Family was originally published in Space and Time magazine in 1987. I wrote a new opening scene and did a few other minor revisions to the story for the new edition. The week of its release, A Friend of the Family broke into the top 30 of two Amazon best sellers lists, peaking at #26 on the Science Fiction List and #21 on the Literary Fiction List. Here are a few stops along my virtual book tour.

“J. A. Beard’s Unnecessary Musings” Interview

“Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews“

“Beauty in Ruins” Guest Blog Post

B.K. Walker’s Blogtalk Radio interview (30 minutes).

CLIFFS NOTES

During the 1990s, I copy-edited many manuscripts for Cliffs Notes, which had been founded in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was still based there at that time. Part of my copy-editing duties included inserting codes throughout the manuscript that told the printer to use boldface or italics. There were many other codes, but I’ve forgotten what they all were. After I’d been doing this for a while, Gary Carey, the Notes editor, asked if I would update the Notes they had for Willa Cather’s My Antonia. The one they were using had been written in 1964 and was not very good. I ended up discarding that one completely and wrote a new Notes. Gary had read my thesis on Ray Bradbury and apparently forgot that it was an undergraduate thesis, so he listed me as David Kubicek, M.A. on the title page. I reminded him that I had only a B.A., but before he could make the correction for a second edition, the company was sold and moved out of Lincoln, so I guess that error will stand until time itself comes to an end–or until the new owners stop publishing the Cather notes.

INTERVIEWS

I’ve been interviewed for a few articles that were independent of any book tours. The first time was for Our Books Our Wings, a book published by the Nebraska Library Commission in which Nebraskans with some notoriety (and in many cases a lot of notoriety) in a wide variety of professions were asked to describe three books that impacted their lives–one from childhood, one from adolescence, and one from adulthood. My listing was on two pages, hence the two PDFs. The Lincoln Journal-Star and Grassroots Nebraska articles were too long to fit on one page, so I’ve divided them into two parts. The Income Opportunities article was primarily about Kubicek & Associates Publishing. The Word Springs interview was for a blog, and the Patti Roberts & Guests was the first interview I did for In Human Form.

Theme of Absence Author Interview

Our Books Our Wings 1 Our Books Our Wings 2

Lincoln Journal Star 1 Lincoln Journal Star 2

Grassroots Nebraska 1 Grassroots Nebraska 2

Income Opportunities Word Springs Interview

Patti Roberts & Guests

KUBICEK & ASSOCIATES PUBLISHING COMPANY

Kubicek & Associates (K&A) was established to publish one book, an anthology of short fiction about the family farm. I’d pitched the idea to Duane Hutchinson, a writer and storyteller friend who operated a regional publishing company called Foundation Books. Duane greenlighted the project, contracts were drawn up, and I put out the word that I was looking for stories.

But after about a year and a half, Duane suggested that Foundation might not be the best publisher for this anthology. It would be a departure from the books they usually published, so they had no experience marketing fiction, and Foundation’s publishing footprint was small–maybe my anthology would fare better with a publisher who had a farther reach.

So I took my anthology to Jerry Kromberg, president of Media Publishing. I had worked with Jerry on writing projects and would work with him on another book before Media was sold and closed up shop in Lincoln. My anthology was out of Jerry’s wheelhouse, too. Media was a powerhouse at marketing nonfiction but had little experience with fiction. Jerry suggested I publish the anthology myself, and he offered to help in any way he could.

So Kubicek & Associates was born, the associates being a network of freelance writers and artists I used for various projects. The anthology of farm stories had become The Pelican in the Desert. The title story was written by my friend Dick Lane, who passed away before the book was published. Pelican was dedicated to his memory.

Although Pelican was to be a one-and-done project, the book’s success made me rethink that idea. K&A published four more books before closing its doors. The Forgotten Pilgrimage of Jesus: Sojourn in the Land of the Wise Men, compiled by James F. Forcucci; How Do You Do It? Ask The Kids, edited by Reba Pierce Cunningham; October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror, edited by myself and Jeff Mason; and The War Letters: A Young WWII Naval Officer Writes Home, by John B. Davis.

The only one of those books that tanked was The War Letters, which I think was because it was our last, published shortly before K&A closed its doors, so it didn’t benefit from a consistent marketing effort like the others. The Books, in order of publication, were:

The Pelican in the Desert (1988)

Edited by David Kubicek

Front Cover Designed and Illustrated by Sheila Smith

Used for several semesters in a University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) English class.
Received good reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Lincoln Journal Star.
Two stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize (my own story, “Ball of Fire”, and Marjorie Saiser’s story, “Settling in”.)
Wasn’t a best seller, but it sold consistently, eventually breaking even and making a little money.

The Forgotten Pilgrimage of Jesus (1989)

Compiled by James F. Forcucci

Front cover designed and illustrated by Sheila Smith

Received a good review in Publisher’s Weekly.
Became a perennial favorite of the “New Age” community.
Sold foreign rights to Mexico.
It sold consistently, eventually breaking even and making money. When K&A closed, I returned the publishing rights to Jim Forcucci, who continued to publish it for several more years.

How Do You Do It? Ask The Kids (1989)

Edited by Reba Pierce Cunningham

Front Cover Designed and Illustrated by Harry Dingman III

Our first bestseller. Baker & Taylor (a large book wholesaler) ordered it by the carton.
Highly recommended by Booklist, one of the journals libraries used to make buying decisions.
Unfortunately, the printing sold out before we got paid for it (the big wholesalers had three months to pay), so we couldn’t afford a second printing. I sold the rights (for $1.00) to Media Publishing to keep the book in circulation.

October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror (1989)

Edited by David Kubicek and Jeff Mason

Front Cover and Interior Illustrations by Jeff Mason

Our second bestseller–it was going out to Baker & Taylor by the carton.
Highly recommended by Booklist.
One of the stories–“Mr. Sandman”, by Scott D. Yost–was picked up for inclusion in Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVIII.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford a second printing because the first sold out before the money for the first came in, so OD quietly went out of print, although Amazon and other online outlets have used copies for sale to this day (I saw one listing where the seller wanted $1,000 for his copy; I doubt that he got it, though, since it was listed next to a copy of OD selling for $10.00).
A note about my co-editor, Jeff Mason. Jeff was one of my “associates”, an artist I brought into the network to help with various projects (brochures and newsletters, etc.). Although he was trained as a commercial artist, his first love was reading science fiction, horror, and comic books and illustrating for all of those genres. So we hit on this idea of editing an original anthology of horror stories. In addition to his editing duties, Jeff provided several pen and ink drawings for the interior and a colored pencil drawing for the cover (K&A’s first and only full color cover).

The War Letters (1990)

By John B. Davis

Front Cover Designed and Illustrated

by Sharlene Stoetzel

Following are 1) A press release about K&A published in the MBJ several years before I became a contributor to that paper, 2) The front and back of K&A’s first newsletter, 3) The front and back of the newsletter announcing October Dreams, with a drawing by Jeff Mason of a skull in the lower left hand corner, 4) The front page of the Nebraska Writers Guild (NWG) Broadside, announcing K&A’s closing [I was president of the of the NWG at that time], 5) The Acknowledgements page from The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVIII showing the credit for Scott D. Yost’s “Mr. Sandman”, originally published in October Dreams and 6) The listing for October Dreams in The Supernatural Index–if you scroll up to page 27, you’ll note that the editors confused me with another David Kubicek who died in 1990; as Mark Twain said when his obituary was prematurely published: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” (FYI, the listed birthdate of 1944 is also wrong).

MBJ Press Release

K&A Newsletter 1(front) K&A Newsletter 1 (back)

K&A Newsletter 2 (front) K&A Newsletter 2 (back)

Nebraska Writers Guild Broadside

Acknowledgements Page for Year’s Best Horror Stories XVIII

The Supernatural Index

PHOTOGRAPHS

Although my main interest with Kubicek & Associates was book publishing, we were a small press, and publishing alone would not pay the bills. So we also designed and wrote brochures, newsletters, and other public relations materials for local businesses. That’s where my “Associates”–my network of freelance writers, artists, and designers–helped immensely. One of those projects was taking photographs for a Nebraska Department on Aging (NDOA) brochure. Because it was a government project, I had to bid on it, and since it was my first time bidding on anything, I was a bit surprised that I was awarded the contract. The job consisted of taking candid photos at several senior recreation centers in southeast Nebraska. Here are the PDFs of that brochure. I didn’t write it, but the photos are all mine.

NDOA Brochure 1 NDOA Brochure 2

NDOA Brochure 3 NDOA Brochure 4 NDOA Brochure 5

I told the story about the following two photos in my blog post, “The Day I Took a Fake UFO Photo“, so I won’t go into it here. Basically, the aluminum pie tins stapled together look like a UFO when thrown into the air and photographed just right. These are both cropped sections of larger photos. The one on the left was originally published in Grit. The photo on the right, of the UFO in flight, was published for the first time on my blog.

Stephen King stopped in Lincoln to sign books at Nebraska Bookstore, and I had an opportunity to talk with him briefly. Afterward, I took lots of photos from various directions and angles because, as a photographer, that’s the kind of thing I do. SK was aware that I was buzzing around doing my paparazzi thing, so when he saw me setting up a shot he turned to the camera and posed. That photo turned out to be the best one.

Around that same time, Lawrence Welk stopped in Lincoln to sign books at Miller & Paine, and I was there with my trusty camera.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND SHORT STORIES

I wrote “Unblinking Eyes” for online publication Theme of Absence‘s flash fiction Halloween horror story contest. Although it didn’t win, the editor liked it well enough to run it as a regular submission, and it appeared in the November 1, 2019, issue along with my author interview (see Interviews above).

“Quiltmaking Engineer” is about Ernest B. Haight, a Nebraska farmer who got an engineering degree from the University of Nebraska, then returned to the farm. After a challenge from his wife, he developed a new method of quilting and became famous for his work in that area. An editor for Humanities magazine, the publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities, heard that there was an exhibition of Ernest Haight’s work at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum–which is in my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska–and searched for a local author to write a piece about Haight. She came across my blog, liked my writing style, and asked me to do it. The story was published in the March/April 2014 Humanities and also uploaded to the Web.

For information about my books click here