Today, I’m visiting with Duke Pennell, a computer engineer, an author, an editor and now a publisher.  So, I’d say he’s seen all aspects of this business.  Duke, you were/are a computer engineer. How did you get involved in writing?

Duke:  Engineering is an intensely structured profession, as you know. I think I was driven to write because my imaginative side demanded it. Nothing frees your creativity as much as building your own world, and that’s what many fiction writers do.

JRC:  What do you write yourself?

Duke:  I love Westerns, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Historical . . . I enjoy writing almost anything. I used to be a technical writer, but I don’t see going back to that. It’s a bit too limited for my tastes, though plenty challenging.

JRC:   Okay. That’s writing. How did Pen-L Publishing happen?

Duke:  I kind of backed into it. I freelanced as an editor for several years. When the time came to make an anthology of the first year’s Reader’s Choice winners from my Western ezine www.FrontierTales.com, I explored the publishing world and discovered that the technical part of bringing a book to print and ebook is right up my alley. So my editing and technology skills are valuable and my wife, Kimberly, has the rest – she is the Design and Marketing Editor. She has a great eye and attention to detail, and can make the book-marketing process a lot less stressful for authors. We enjoy offering a high quality product and happy experience in an often tough business. This is a great time to be a writer and publisher because access to print and ebook products and to the reader via social marketing is huge.

JRC:   Which do you find more rewarding or interesting – writing or editing?

Duke:  That’s like asking which one of your children you love the most. Writing lets me create, editing lets me problem-solve and help other people. Different, but equal.

JRC:   Frontier Tales is listed as Vol. 1. When will Vol.2 be available? And how often do you envision this anthology coming out?

Duke:  We’ll bring out Volume 2 in the fall. It will include winners from 2010 to 2011. After that, a new one each year at about the same time.

JRC:   You’ve got some pretty good authors there. How did you assemble such a great group?

Duke:  That’s the funny thing. You’ve heard all the doom-and-gloom stories about Westerns and how the genre is all but dead? Well, that’s a lot of bull! People love Westerns. They love reading them, they love writing them. I just gave folks an opportunity. They did the rest. Dusty Richards, a Western Heritage Hall of Fame member and author of over 100 Western novels, kicked off our inaugural issue, and it’s been a stampede since then. Several of the Frontier Tales authors wrote, that because of their exposure in the ezine, they published longer works. The ezine format is a great way to get your work out there. All writers should be submitting to ezines in their genre. While I didn’t pay for the original works, the winners of each month, who appear in the book, will earn royalties. That makes them all professional writers, which allows access to associations and other useful tools.

JRC:   Pen-L Publishing is accepting both fiction and non-fiction. Are you accepting all genres? And what areas of non-fiction will you cover?

Duke:  We intend to entertain and inform. The job of publishing is simply to present the author’s work in its best light. If we can do that, we have achieved our purpose. We have a literary novella and two short-story collections in the works, a mainstream novel, and a young adult historical, and a couple of non-fictions.

JRC:  You and Kimberly were gold and silversmiths. Is that as far from writing as some of us might think? Or does the lure of gold and silver just make your imagination more vibrant?

Duke:  Creativity is creativity, at its core. It’s a matter of taking off what is NOT needed to uncover the beauty underneath, to paraphrase Michelangelo. After all, the graceful curve of a gold ring has the same beauty as an elegant turn of phrase. And running a business of any sort requires skill in planning, recordkeeping, and marketing. The biggest difference is that words are much cleaner to work with than metal and polishing compounds. And wordsmithing is portable –you can craft a story in about any location, without a workshop full of tools. All an author needs is a brain to create a brand new world. Oh, yes, and a good editor!

JRC:  Thanks, Duke, for visiting and telling us about your life in the literary world.  And Readers, you can find out more about Duke and Kimberly, and incidentally, Pen-L Publishing and The Best of Frontier Tales on their website:  www.Pen-L.com.  Pen-L Publishing is located in Fayetteville, AR.

And leave a comment, ask a question, or just a “Like.”  Thanks for visiting.