The end of any project can be bittersweet. Returning to square one of the production schedule with a new book project can be a bit of a shock—but at Ooligan Press, we don’t have to go cold turkey because our previous project is still ours, and it serves as a critical reminder of what you’re working towards. Memories Flow in Our Veins has been out for two months, and it continues to surprise us with its sweet victories and positive reception.

In addition to being included on the Tumblr Queer Book Club’s list of top ten April book releases, Memories received its first review in the June/July print issue of BUST magazine—the one and only magazine that provides a book rating system on a scale of one to five tiny boob icons. (Spoiler alert: Memories knocked it out the park with a five-boob [OMG AMAZING] review—find it on newsstands this summer!)

We’ve been hustling behind the scenes to maintain this momentum, assembling all the necessary materials to help the summer team follow through on our postpub sales and publicity goals. Some endeavors, like our effort to pitch Memories to local specialty markets, have already yielded promising results. Other efforts, like our work to present our anthology as a new go-to text for the college classrooms where CALYX titles have previously thrived as academic tools, have proved to be more involved and will require ongoing pursuit from the summer team if they choose.

As for our next move as a team, we have already been assigned to our new project, and its development is well underway. Earlier this spring, Ooligan Press voted to acquire a new young-adult-fiction manuscript by debut author Meagan Macvie. Meagan’s work first came to the attention of Ooligan’s acquisitions managers at the 2016 Write to Publish conference, and as the acquisitions department was abuzz about the manuscript from the moment they heard the pitch, our team was delighted to dig in on this new assignment. Our first round of developmental edits is complete, and the summer project team will be eagerly waiting to receive the next draft.

Next up: additional rounds of developmental editing and heavy line editing, researching and building our marketing plan, brainstorming titles, helping CALYX Press to plan a small summer reading tour, and setting up a brand-new Start to Finish page. Memories, over and out!