Our Story

Crabapple Mews Collective (CMC) is about stories, gleaming polished-apples stories.

We’re an author collective made up of volunteer writers and editors. We draw on our backgrounds as writers, teachers, editors, booksellers, designers, academics, publishers and producers of kick-ass literary events to help bring new stories to readers.

Purpose

CMC members help bolster each others’ work. We share writing and publishing news, we pass on advice, we test our yarns on each other. We make sure that when our work goes out into the world, it’s good and ready. And, as time permits, we give our time and support to other writers who need self-publishing help.

Where’s the money?

Printing and other publishing costs are funded by the authors or, on occasion, a crowd-funding campaign.

All proceeds from a book sold on this site go to its author.

History

CMC sprouted from a seed in the lush imagination of Inge Bremer-Trueman during the spring of 2013. Joined by other keen-eyed literary minds, Inge had found her people and the key editorial support she needed to publish her first novel, A Root Beer Season. To turn her manuscript into a luscious, perfect-bound, offset printed book, Inge enlisted the help of professional editor Sylvia McConnell and award-winning book designer Natalie Olsen of Kisscut Design. With the book’s launch in late 2013, the CMC germinated into a full-fledged author’s collective.

Since then, the collective has grown to a burgeoning orchard, with more good stories in the offing. Inge’s sequel in the Sonja Pfeiffer series, When the Wheels Fall Off, and Tanya Coovadia’s Pelee Island Stories, were both launched in fall 2015.

Vision

CMC members help each other publish short stories, novels, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and whatever the hell else excites us. We all follow a publishing path that suits our crabby-picking tastes, when we want and how we want, just because we can. Because friends don’t let friends publish prematurely, we provide honest and constructive critiques before submit is clicked or a printer is contacted. And should some larger-than-life publishing Big House bless one of us with a contract, we’ll applaud that too and we probably won’t pitch sour crabapples at them from the orchard.

For every Crabbapple project that goes out into the world, we don robes, sing Hallelujah, and turn a few cartwheels, and immediately organize a launch party. And, of course, when things don’t turn out as we dream them, we soothe each other’s bruised psyches with plenty of wine and chocolate.

The world of publishing is changing by the minute, and together, we try new things to get our work out to readers wherever they may be. We’re on Twitter too, so connect with us there.