Well, now I understand why they say never to hit the back button when posting a blog--I just lost a very witty and warm intro I'd typed for the last twenty minutes.

Poof, gone in one unthinking uncaffeinated act.

So, just a bit of rehashed backstory on this post.

Greg and I are moving from the Bay Area at the end of this month. We got evicted two years ago from San Francisco (it's called an Ellis Act eviction and it's when the landlord takes the entire rental property off the market for good and you have to be gone by a certain amount of days with a small cash prize so they can sell the building as quasi-condos for many times more what you ever made in a year).

We found a lovely rental house in Oakland--in the demi-ghetto between the hard-core flatlands and the posh-y hills. It's the coolest and queerest neighborhood we've ever lived in. And we grew to love it as much as we loved living in the Mission in San Francisco.

But the overheated housing market caught up with us once more and we found out in July that the house is being sold. We got first dibs, which was nice, but since our treasures are of a more ethereal and "great is thy reward in literary heaven" kind, we couldn't swing a half-million dollar home.

So, we did some hard-core soul-searching and apartment hunting and realized we would never be able to afford a house here unless we quit publishing altogether--and if we wanted to keep publishing and thus renting we'd need to live further and further to the east.

And east we're going. To Cleveland. Yes, Cleveland.

Thanks to our amazing fairy godmothers, Gil and Mike of Nightsweats & t-cells (www.nightsweats.com) we have the chance to lease to own an entire commerical building where we can live upstairs and run the press downstairs and even open a new and used bookstore called, wait for it, Suspect Thoughts Books.

It won't just be our press' titles, or the bulk of our personal libraries, it will also carry new titles from some of the coolest indy presses around (check out www.alternaqueerbooks.com for the whole selection--it's 8:30am on a Sunday morning and my caffeine hasn't kicked in hard enough).

The store is going to be located at 4903 Clark Ave, between W 48th and W 50th Streets, and it'll be open from 11am-7pm Wednesday through Sunday.

Our grand opening will be at 11am Saturday October 13 (the Goddess' fave number). Come celebrate the beginning of the last Mercury Retrograde of the year in style--and the beginning of Queerland. It's gonna rock!

Ah, yes, the backstory. So all this was just to let you know about the attached letter to the editor.

I sent it to the Bar Area Reporter, our local queer newspaper (I had a pretty good hunch the indies and dailies wouldn't want to print it), and alas, it was too long to print as sent. After reading this, I know you're surprised too.

In other words, I had to cut all the names out of the people I wanted to thank.

But now, I'm thanking them here.

And thank you for reading all this.

A huge kiss and curtsy,

ian

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The Wicked Little Press of the West Heads East...

After we got Ellis'ed in 2006 from our apartment along the TIC landing-strip that is also known as the Mission's Valencia Street Corridor, Greg and I and our little press too found a lovely place to set up shop and keep making queer books in the fruit hills of Oakland. But that rental house, in little more than a year, is now going on the market.

So, after two evictions in two years, we've decided to take Suspect Thoughts Press and head east on October 1—to Cleveland, Ohio. (Yes, Cleveland, Ohio. It's the new East Bay.) We've found an entire building for what we'd pay for a broom closet in the City, and we're setting up an alternaqueer bookstore there as well. Thanks to many of our fellow alternative and queer publishers like Manic D and Cleis Press, we've got it nearly fully stocked. So, whenever in Cleveland, please come say hello at Suspect Thoughts Books (4903 Clark Ave or www.alternaqueerbooks.com).

But, before we go, we want to thank everyone here who's befriended Ian (for the last 18 years) and Greg and the press (the last 6 years). You've made the Bay Area our spiritual home no matter where we two queens roam.

In fact, if space permits, we'd love to give special kisses and curtsies to the following (past and present) Bay Area fairy godmothers and godfathers and godknowswhats who've made Suspect Thoughts the queerest little press on earth: