Back in December, I joined Tina Pollick as a guest on her blog for a three-part interview series about Spark: A Creative Anthology. Today, Tina invited me back for a follow-up to that series. Read the whole interview on TinaPollick.com!

Tina Pollick: Where do you see Spark a year from now? In two years? In five years?

Brian Lewis: In a year, Spark: A Creative Anthology will have four volumes in print, and we’ll be working on the fifth. I’ll have proof to someone besides myself that my vision is realistic and truly beneficial to writers! I have already spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars believing in this project, and the payoff for me will be to have others truly believe in it, too. I expect that I will always be covering costs and contributing financially to make Spark work, but in a year I hope to be moving toward the possibility of breaking even. (read more…)

Tina Pollick: What have you learned about the publishing industry, and what have you learned about getting an anthology off the ground?

Brian Lewis: One of the most amazing things I’ve learned is that outside of the “Big Publishing Houses,” the writing and publishing industries are much more collaborative and much less competitive than I believed. I’ve had great and very supportive conversations with staff at Writer’s Digest and Poets & Writers Magazine, telephone chats with executives at The Office of Letters and Light (the organization that hosts NaNoWriMo each year), and friendly interactions with dozens of professional authors who turn out to just be normal, good people. I have received support, encouragement, and even cross-promotion from the staff of Shadow Road Quarterly and Unstuck, both of which are publications I mentioned in our last interview.  (read more…)

Read full interview at tinapollick.com!