Please Join Us at Goddess of the Desert Books!
Editor-In-Chief Sally Shideler is Now Launching Our First New Imprint Which Offers a More Gentle Cultural Focus.
One of our longtime plans at God of the Desert Books has been to develop multiple imprints for the broad variety of books we intend to publish, as well as for the shorter content we’re going to put out online through various mediums: principally Substack for now, but we do hope to expand into other media formats also when we figure out which ones are most worth the time and effort. Down the line, we plan to launch a science fiction/fantasy imprint, a literary/poetry imprint, an action/thriller/mystery/horror imprint, and a nonfiction/Zionist/political imprint, as those are some of the initial genres we’re planning to explore with the authors and titles currently in our growing group.
The first of these imprints is now live and available for you to follow, currently featuring four new pieces of content.
will be led by my beloved fiancee, writing partner, and business partner and will feature a growing list of contributors, including many of the writers you’re already reading here at God of the Desert. I will also serve as Associate Editor there, assisting Sally as she needs it, and she will assume that title here.While the names of these two publications reflect the masculine and the feminine aspects of the divine, they will not be gender-segregated at all. Both men and women have both tendencies within them, and each publication will feature content reflecting those tendencies. We also welcome contributions from both members of the LGBTQ+ community and non-binary-identifying individuals.
Goddess of the Desert will also offer a different publishing schedule than what we’ve been pursuing at God of the Desert. While we aim to put out 2-4 pieces of content per day here, often in response to contemporary events, Goddess of the Desert will publish twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays and generally feature more “evergreen” content less tied to breaking events.
What sorts of books will this new imprint publish? Sally is especially drawn to historical fiction, but I anticipate other genres will also fall under her umbrella, especially cultural essay collections and memoirs — two genres I’m especially challenging her to write herself. We plan to start publishing under both imprints later this year, as we continue to get our ducks in a row administratively, nail down plans with a potential distributor who has offered to help us, and plan out all our production procedures.
Want to learn more about the goals and spirit of Goddess of the Desert? There are plenty of places to start. First see these two posts, an essay and a podcast we published here in the run-up to the new Substack’s launch:
Next check out Sally’s welcome to the publication:
Here’s a key excerpt:
We are an imprint of God of the Desert Books, overseen by David Swindle. David and I are engaged, and one of the best facets of our partnership is our freedom to revel in our differences. God of the Desert reflects David's Zionist, hawkish, militant-feminist activist tendencies, and Goddess of the Desert reflects my own. And my tendencies are, well, different.
How so? I needed to create a gentle space as a writing home - a retreat. It's a place to celebrate the cozy, the hippie-dippy, the fun, and the poignant parts of life, faith, and culture. Crucial to my happiness in life is my conviction that these joys are just as worthy of honor as the world's ills: after all, it's only by nourishing our souls and comforting our spirits that we have the energy to face the world's harshness. And there are times when we all must face that.
That's why this is is a positive and nurturing space, created out of gratitude for life's blessings we've enjoyed and curiosity about the ones we haven't discovered yet. It's also a place to examine difficulty, but with a spirit of honor and exploration, never indictment.
And then dive in to the first round of content which she’s published, three pieces across genres and subjects.
Poetry:
Pop Culture Analysis:
And a quick Spiritual Reflection with lovely desert photography:
We welcome your comments and questions, and we hope you will consider contributing your own content, also! Leave a comment or respond to one of Goddess of the Desert’s emails to reach out to Sally with your ideas on what sorts of subjects you’d like to write about.
