GABRIOLA CHUTZPAH PROPELS TUCSON TALE

New imprint garners National Jewish Award nomination.

January 20th, 2015, From BC BookLook.com

Although Manitoban Carol Matas has more than forty titles, she turned to her friend Morri Mostow on Gabriola Island to produce Tucson Jo.

Tucson Jo by Carol Matas is inspired by the first Jewish mayor of Tucson.

Although Carol Matas had a track record for writing award-winning stories pertaining to Jews and the holocaust for children and young adults, mainstream commercial publishers rejected her manuscript for a book inspired by the life and times of the first Jewish mayor of Tucson named Charles Strauss. That’s when she turned to former Reader’s Digest writer Morri Mostow to publish her novel for middle grade readers, Tucson Jo (Fictive Press, 2014), set in the Territory of Arizona in 1882.

Mostow’s fledgling imprint for e-books operates from Gabriola Island in B.C.

Morri Mostow at lauch for Tucson Jo.

"Morri offered to publish the book because she believed in it and loved the story,” Matas has recalled. “For me, choosing to publish with Fictive Press was a huge departure, since Fictive is a small digital print-on-demand publisher and therefore that meant an entirely new business model for me. Once we’d agreed on a contract and made it all official, we went to work. Morri pushed me on some story points—and here I thought I might get off easy because she was my friend but it was quite the opposite. That’s when I suddenly rewrote the entire back half of the book and it all came together. Or so we thought. Morri, of course, did the heavy lifting re the publishing, the cover, the review mailings, etc. But all decisions were made together. When we finally saw the final version we were really happy with the result, although we were unsure how this experiment would work out.”

Much to the surprise and delight of both Matas and Mostow, Matas subsequently became the only Canadian author nominated in the category for Children’s and Young Adult Literature for the 2014 National Jewish Book Awards in its 64th year of competitions. The National Jewish Book Awards are sponsored by the Jewish Book Council, based in New York City. It is touted as the longest-running program of its kind in North America... FULL STORY