Introducing . . . Tadpole Press!

Happy New Year!  I have been needing to publish this blog post for awhile now and what better time than before the end of the year?  Not that I'm a big believer in completing all sorts of to-do lists just because it's the end of the year, but I did want to share with you all something really incredible that happened in 2016, actually just a few weeks ago.  I am now the founder and sole member of my very own company . . . Tadpole Press!

I primarily created it to have a company to publish my own books, but I am also going to be using it to offer my editing services.  I'm excited to see how it will grow.  There are going to be a lot of exciting things happening in 2017!

A few weeks ago, I had started to write a blog post about the difficulties I was having coming up with a name for my company, and rather than send that draft to the internet abyss, I will share it here with you now for any of you who are interested in a brief history of how I chose the name Tadpole Press . . .

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As you already know, choosing a name is one of the hardest parts of writing for me.  I have found a good workaround in my writing, which has been really helpful.  When I write my story and create a new character that needs a name, I simply take one off the top of my head or glance at my incredibly long list of names that I have generated and take one.  Then I highlight it yellow in my text so I can go back and review it at the end of the book to see if it will stay or change.  Then I simply move on.  This way I don't get stuck (which happened a lot when I first started writing) and can get the actual story out.

It's been a pretty good process so far.  However, there is one problem that this process isn't solving for me.  I decided a few weeks ago to create a company to publish my books, as opposed to doing it under solely my name as an author.  I'm not rehashing the process of deciding that I want a company in this blog post, but I will sum it up by saying that after debating it for quite awhile, I finally decided that the pros outweighed the cons.  Now that I've decided to do it, I have to name the thing.  And now you see the problem.

I actually had a great name picked out while I was mulling it all over, but unfortunately Dandelion Press is already taken.  No problem, I thought.  I also loved the name Firefly Press.  Both dandelions and fireflies, or lightening bugs, represent that magical quality of being a child where nothing limits your dreams and anything you believe in will come true.  That was the quality that I wanted to have in the name of my company.

Unfortunately, since someone else already realized how genius those names were, I have to pick something else.  So I have been poring over my lists and lists of potential names, doing internet searches on synonyms and meanings behind names like nobody's business, and I'm still stuck.  So I am turning to you, my dear blog readers, to help me figure out a name for my company.

Here are the requirements.  First of all, it is going to end with the name "Press" because, as far as I can tell, Press means a company that publishes a few books and is basically a smaller version of a Publisher.  Since I am very much on the small end of the scale, my company will qualify as a Press.

Okay, next.  I want a name that invokes a certain feeling.  The feeling of excitement and anticipation that you get when you open a book for the first time and get sucked into the story.  The feeling of enjoyment and pleasure that you get when you read a really good book for fun, without having to rush or worry about how much time you're spending on it.  Plus, since I'm writing a lot of children's books, the feeling that I described above where you feel like anything is possible, and can dream and believe in a better world.  Where your childhood innocence hasn't been smashed to smithereens by people telling you why your dreams won't work out.

For me, I get that feeling on warm summer evenings at dusk when the sun sets and lightening bugs come out, when the sun's rays shine bright golden over the lush green of trees and grass, when the light fades to a twilight blue and the lightening bugs' spark lights up and then vanishes and then lights up again as they fly across the night, and the stars start to sparkle as the night sky takes over from the day and turns a beautiful deep blue purple.  If I could just paint the word, that would be it.  The swirling colors of gold and green, mixed with blue and purple.

A name that invokes a feeling that things will get better over time.

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That's as far as my post made it, because before I was able to finish it, I stumbled across an old photo that I took near our creek this summer.  It was of a tadpole that was halfway transformed into a frog.  Much like how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, I think everyone knows the incredible metamorphosis that a tadpole makes to turn itself into a frog.  But what was really striking to me in that picture was the in between phase when the tadpole still has its long tadpole tail, but is also growing little legs and feet.  Seriously, where does its tail go when it turns into a frog?  And how does it change from breathing water as a tadpole to breathing air as a frog??  It is just as incredible as a caterpillar changing into a butterfly! 

The Inspiring Photo (c) Amber Byers

And it also satisfied my requirements for a name above.  To me, the tadpole transformation represents the magical childhood quality where nothing limits your dreams and anything you believe in will come true.  Where you spend your time doing what you love just because you love it.  As a kid, I spent countless hours swimming in creeks and squelching through mud, trying to catch salamanders and tadpoles.  I loved it.

I think the name works really well for my children's books, but I also think it will work well for my adult books.  While I haven't spent as much time writing my adult stories yet, I know some of them will be about adult transformations, renewal, and shifts in perspective.  Maybe some will be about how things aren't exactly as they seem.  And finding the magic in everyday events.

Anyway, I look forward to sharing it all with you next year!  And may you all have a Happy New Year where your dreams come true too!