Introductions, please

I know what you’re thinking.

“What on earth is a ‘tree barn’ and why would anyone build one?”

Lest I give the federal government an idea on something ELSE to build that’s massive, expensive, dangerous and has no foundation (thanks a lot for making me lose my medical insurance, by the way), I’ll say that there’s no such thing. Nor should there be.

It all started with M&Ms. 

For years, I’ve wanted to see my name in print—and I have, under newspaper headlines and magazine articles—but within the past several years I’ve wanted more. I’ve wanted to see my name on the spine of a book. A real book. Something you put on the shelf to read again another time, rather than toss in the trash at the end of the day or month.

While copy editing for Hewlett-Packard in Boise in 2006-2007, I took an online course from Eastern Idaho Technical College in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on self-publishing. The instructor never mentioned a single word about self-publishing through Amazon’s CreateSpace, because I doubt he had ever heard of it. (I hadn’t at the time.) He talked about self-publishing the old school way, which at that time was as current as it got. I was fascinated and wanted to self-publish. I had several ideas for novels I wanted to see in print.

So I came up with the name of my as-yet-unformed self-publishing business, called “Clover Publishing,” which was based on a random dream I had had one night. (Thankfully, it didn't involve me being in my underwear.)

Now we come to the M&Ms. While I was working as the new editor of an agricultural magazine called Potato Grower magazine, I was chowing on M&Ms at my desk, with no regard to calories, from a small Tupperware container. I poured out several more onto the desk to munch on and suddenly found what I thought was a statistical improbability. I only saw two colors. Green and orange. There were about 10 or so of them on my desk, but there were only two colors. Inspiration hit, and I decided to make those two colors the main colors of my logo.

I eventually abandoned the idea of using a generic clover as the theme of my business logo, and I went with something a little more self-centered. I decided to use two of the three initials in my name (TB) to represent my business name. The “T” was obvious. My last name is Deutsch for “tree,” and so that took care of that. After deliberating, I finally decided to go with what once was the red, wooden, rickety structure across the street from my house before it was torn down, to represent the “B”—a barn.

Thus, “Tree Barn Publishing” was born.

At this time, I’m focusing on using my editing skills to help clean up the filth that’s all too pervasive in the written word nowadays. And I’m working on a fantasy novel. And I’ve got lots more novels in the pipeline to start on, and even a few nonfiction books.

So stay tuned. And have some M&Ms.

-Tyler J. Baum