The Burning Bush Press was founded in 1979. I had been interested in publishing for a while, and when the opportunity arose to publish a novella written by a friend I took it. The Runestone by Mark E. Rogers became the first Burning Bush Press title with an edition of 200 copies; 170 numbered and signed by the author and 30 roman numeral copies signed by the author and reserved for distribution by Mark and I. Mark provided the cover and several interior illustrations; the logo was suggested and drawn by Nancy Lebovitz. It was first offered for sale at Unicon, a Science Fiction Convention held in Silver Spring, Maryland. Mark was the Artist Guest of Honor at that convention; the Writer Guest of Honor was Robert Bloch and the Special Guests were involved in the making of the movie Alien which had been released earlier that year; writer Dan O'Bannon, Executive Producer Ron Schusett (he was ill so his wife came instead) and conceptual designer Ron Cobb. I decided to have some fun with the "Alien" theme and made up buttons that said "In New York City, No One will Listen When You Scream -- The Runestone", a take-off on the movie's ad campaign "In Space, No One Will Hear You When You Scream." 

The book sold out in a little more than a year.

Although this has been the only publication of this story to date, there was a movie version made in 1990 starring Peter Riegert, Joan Severance, William Hickey, and Alexander Godunov.

The second book published was a collection of short stories by Mark, The Bridge of Catzad-Dûm and Other Stories. It was planned as a showcase for Mark's versatility as a writer and contained three short stories; "Nevermind," a science fiction tale, "The Horns of Hel," a Norse saga, and a parody. Originally we planned to use a Conan parody Mark had written, "The Great God Cecil", but decided that it was perhaps a bit too over the top. So Mark suggested a story about Samurai Cat, a character he had created. There already were a well received series of "adventures" for this feline hero - but they only existed as paintings. Mark created a backstory for the Cat and wrote a Tolkien parody, The Bridge of Catzad-Dûm for this collection. Realizing that we had an additional market for this book with the Samurai Cat story we made it the title story and increased our print run to 500 copies, 470 of them signed and numbered. This too, sold out in a little more than a year a year. Again, Mark provided the cover and illustrations. 

In spite of my interest in quality, hand-typeset books the production process for The Burning Bush Press title took an alternative approach. In those days before the advent of personal computers and desktop publishing (the IBM PC was two years in the future and the Apple Mac was even further out) these books were "typeset" using a proportionally-spaced IBM Selectric II typewriter. This meant careful planning of the layout, good typing, and a lot of corrections. The printing was done by a local quick-copy printer in Newark Delaware, Shamrock Press. Standard 8.5" x 11" paper was used, printing 2 pages on each size. These were collated, folded in half, saddle-stapled and then trimmed.

The third and last book released by The Burning Bush Press was a one-act play, Waiting for Gomot by Officer Joe Beckett (transcribed from the original crayon by Mark E. Rogers.) It was a parody of Thomas Beckett's Waiting for Godot starring The Three Stooges. (Mark was an English major and a fan of slapstick comedy.) It had already been performed on May 16th, 1976 at the University of Delaware as part of an Electronic Music Concert. Music and sound effects were provided by our friend, John J. Adams. (Three years later I would have my own work performed as part of a similar concert.) The book was only seven pages of text, but there were a lot of extras. There was a biography and portrait of the author, Officer Joe Beckett (inspired by the host of The Three Stooges TV show on New York television when Mark was growing up, Officer Joe Bolton.) The book was not only signed by the "transcriber," Mark, but posthumously in florescent crayon by the "author." (I supplied the latter.) Instead of being stapled, these were bound using colored yarn. With the obviously limited audience for this kind of work we again only printed 170/30 copies. However, most of these never were never bound and currently reside in a box in my parent's garage. One of these days I'll get them finished...

Mark went on to write a series of stories about Samurai Cat that were first published by Donald Grant and then picked up by TOR books. He also sold several novels to Ace Books. For more information about Mark and his work go to his website at http://www.merogers.com/.

 

At this point I had made the transition from physics student to philosophy student; I was not only majoring in philosophy, I was a paid teaching assistant as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware! The department chair was a science fiction fan and introduced me to the work of Charles Harness; in particular his short story "The New Reality." This rekindled my interest in the philosophical content of many science fiction and fantasy works and I decided to produce an academic journal on the subject. By this time Mark's wife, Kate, had gotten her Ph.D. in Medieval Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and was back teaching at Delaware. So with her help as co-editor Philosophical Speculations in Science Fiction and Fantasy was born. In order to better accommodate the growth of my publishing endeavors I decided to change the name of my company from The Burning Bush Press to Burning Bush Publications. To go along with this new name I got a new logo, this time from my fiancée Dawn E. Wilson; she also provided the covers for the magazine.

At this time I don't remember the details of how I got started, how I solicited manuscripts and how I got a few subscribers willing to pay me money. Somehow I managed and the first issue was published in March, 1981. The contributors included both philosophy professors and science fiction fans; a list of articles is available on the Burning Bush Bibliography page.

One of my early subscribers was Dr. Nick Smith, then teaching at Virginia Tech. He suggested that we create an editorial board and volunteered to chair this effort. So by the second issue we had a 16 person editorial board that included professors from the U.S. and U.K. and several published science fiction/fantasy authors. We also had a wonderful feature article by R. A. Lafferty, "The Day After the World Ended."

Alas, this was to be my last issue. By this time I had left Delaware and had managed to talk my way into a non-existent masters degree program in philosophy at an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania. But soon I realized that a career as an academician was not for me, and as a philosophy Ph. D. my choices were limited to that, being a lawyer, or becoming a stand-up comedian. So I left after one semester and within a few months had a job as a Customer Engineer for Hewlett Packard, fixing their mini computers. This involved a lot of field work and overtime, along with being on call every four weeks. I also got married, and since I decided to work Dawn decided to pursue a career as a book cover illustrator. So I ended up taking care of the books for Nemesian Associates, the company under which Dawn did her work. My publishing projects were put on indefinite hold and Burning Bush went into hibernation.

And that's where things now stand. Burning Bush has made a brief re-appearance the last few years as the publisher of my homemade Christmas/Holiday cards. At the moment no other projects are planned, but that might change...