Tag Archives: memoir

BCM launches Best Chance Media publishing

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Best Chance Media (Best Chance is an independent “print-on-demand” (POD) publishing imprint dedicated to giving up-and-coming writers a chance to see their book in digital and print formats.

Best Chance is transparent about its legal, marketing, and financial approaches and welcomes your questions.

There is a catch.

I’m a member of several online writing groups. Many writers lament about receiving rejection letters. Some report as many as 60 “no-dice” notifications. Our authors must demonstrate that the manuscript they submitted was rejected by one or no more than three other agents or publishers within the past three years. The fundamental Best Chance mission is to counterbalance mainstream publishers’ control over writers.

Best Chance is author-focused and collaborative. Approximately 3,000 ISBNs are issued every day. This means the competition for brick-and-mortar shelf space is high and favors the big publishing houses that sign celebrities. Even Snoop Dogg has a best-selling children’s book. Where does that leave authors who have no natural outreach platforms?

This means that writers and small publishing companies must combine forces to compete better.

Best Chance partners with IngramSpark to ensure our books are widely accessible on major online platforms and available for purchase in storefronts. Our authors work closely with our management team to produce the highest-quality books.

Creating the New Creative Economy since 2001/

Best Chance is an imprint of Boulder Community Media (BCM), a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization formed in 2001. BCM’s philosophy is to create safe spaces through the arts for communities to discuss and resolve critical issues.

BCM wants media in all their forms to be accessible to all. Best Chance is most interested in helping authors get their stories told.

Alan O'Hashi, Best Chance Editor and Publisher has been hooked on writing since reading his first byline in his junior high school newspaper.

BCM Executive Producer and Director Alan O’Hashi has produced five PBS documentaries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his work in progress stalled, and he dusted off his typewriter to resurrect his writing. He has now added Editor and Publisher to his credentials.

In early June 2019, he attended the Wyoming Writers, Inc. Conference in Laramie, where he met a publisher and pitched a book. Alan’s idea was accepted on the spot. He wrote 80,000 words and was contracted in October. It turns out that, COVID or no COVID, Alan doesn’t get out much. Since then, he has self-published nine books with another scheduled for traditional publication.

Securing a book deal on his first attempt wasn’t common. Alan didn’t realize how lucky he was. He became disillusioned by the stories he had heard from other authors about the daunting process of traditional publishing.

This led to the creation of Best Chance Media, which was designed around publishing and distributing Alan’s books and is diversifying, particularly encouraging first-time diverse, marginalized authors to submit. As the book industry evolves, Best Chance will continue to adapt and provide first-time authors the best chance of success.

Buy ‘True Stories of an Aging Do-Gooder: How cohousing can bridge cultural divides’

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I’ve lived a life of divergent experiences that converged when I joined the Silver Sage Village (SSV) senior cohousing community in Boulder, Colorado. My story about how to play well with others is a somewhat organized stream of consciousness.

Paperback available direct from the publisher Boulder Community Media

True Stories provides “nuts-and-bolts” methods about how your community can use cultural competence techniques that better encourage members to understand one another.

Buy a signed copy direct from the publisher Boulder Community Media.

The Kindle ebook and paperback are available for purchase on Amazon.

After arguing about whether pets are allowed in the Common House, what if cohousers organized themselves and decided to collectively undertake a mission to save the world?

True Stories explores why I believe cohousing can evolve from a “social movement” into being a “social norm.”

I’ll offer a paradigm shift about how cohousing can bridge socio-economic divides.

The stories are about relations between and among individual people and the personal changes necessary to find commonality with strangers, all with different experiences and lifestyles.

In case you’ve just returned after a year in outer space, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that began in late 2019 circled the globe.

Like everyone else, I’ve had quite a bit of extra time on my hands. I have no idea how my day was occupied before self-isolation.

COVID-19 brought to light glaring cultural inequities. The pandemic closed down the economy, and people lost their jobs.

That exposed the lack of lower-priced housing options when people lost their homes or kicked out of their rental apartments.

If homeowners default on their loans at the same time, as happened in 2009, the market will be flooded with pricey houses that nobody can afford to purchase, except the bottom-feeders.

Racial justice issues quickly floated to the top of the social change pond.

African American and Latino people are at the highest risk of contracting COVID-19, hospitalization, and death than the general population.

One nexus of lower-priced housing and racial justice is rental and owner-occupied cohousing that pool resources.

Residents share the financial risks and collaboratively operate and maintain their communities.

The story is written from my viewpoint as a cohousing community member, as opposed to a cohousing professional or a cohousing professional who lives in a community.

SSV is one of 170 existing cohousing communities in the United States.

If cohousing is such a great idea, why aren’t there thousands of communities popping up in all corners of the country?

After all, if there are 30,000 people residing in existing an existing cohousing community or in the community formation phase.

The book is part memoir and part “how-to” manual about my experiences that seemed unrelated at the time but added to my life gestalt, which eventually led me to believe cohousing can make social change happen by bridging cultural divides.

The only person I have any control over is myself. For me, personal change happens when keeping the amount of time between the past and the present as small as possible.

My experiences aren’t that remarkable, but the intent is to encourage you to remember what happened in your personal history as you figure out the opportunities and challenges you’ll face when choosing to care and share in a cohousing community.

‘True Stories of a Mediocre Writer … and Accidental Author’ now on sale!

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All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” is what Ernest Hemingway says about the essence of good storytelling.

Buy a paperback directly from the publisher

This book is for anyone who is a writer of organized words whether they are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, work memos, grant applications, academic papers, or love letters.

Kindle ebook and soft cover editions of True Stories of a Mediocre Writer are now available on Amazon.

If you want an autographed copy of the book, cut out Amazon and buy directly from me.

Read this book if you’re a professional writer, a novelist just starting out, or a screenwriter with a half-done script lost deep in the bowels of a computer hard drive.

Are you a writer or do you know a writer who wonders how to get over self-doubt, kick your obsession with perfection, and for whatever reasons, can’t quite finish your writing project?

Being a writer isn’t just about getting your words down on the page. Writing is a life metaphor. How do you get more focused? Why be organized? Is finishing that important?

This book will provide insight, and a few tips through the experiences of the author about becoming more confident in your ability balancing perfection and accuracy that results in a higher likelihood of finishing your work.

Alan O’Hashi’s memoir about how lessons from life were big influences that resulted in his first book pitch based on a typed up piece of paper in June, resulted in an 80,000 word manuscript and publishing contract five months later.

Author Alan O’Hashi has been writing since he was 12 years old as a reporter for the Carey Junior High School newspaper, “The Tumbleweed” published in his hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming.