Former Joliet man’s press dedicated to fiction

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Bill Moser

Updated: February 7, 2012 8:05AM

Bill Moser of Homewood, a former Lincoln-Way Central English teacher and Joliet resident, is turning his love for writing and literature into publishing opportunities for other writers.

On Aug. 12, 2010, Moser officially began Ramsfield Press, (www.ramsfieldpress.com), an independent press dedicated to encouraging and publishing traditional, linear fiction of any genre and rewarding good writing through contests. His immediate overall goal is to simply break even.

“I’d like to become successful enough that Ramsfield Press becomes a name for high-quality fiction,” Moser said. “It would be fun to help a few people get published.”

Reading, writing, learning and teaching are inherent parts of Moser’s life. He’s studied journalism and pop culture and earned two master’s degrees — one in communications and the other in creative writing — and supplemented his knowledge with additional classes, thanks, in part, to grants form the National Endowment for the Humanities.

These days, Moser is learning American sign language and training to be an adult literacy mentor.

“I’ve even taken drawing classes at Prairie State College because they’re free to seniors,” Moser said.

In 2004, Moser published a novel, “Family Plot,” through AuthorHouse. The book is about the 15 children of a dairy farmer and their dark secrets.

Since then, Moser has received plenty of rejections for two more books: “Oliver, Oliver” and “Maximilian and the Man With No Nose,” the latter aimed at fourth- and fifth-grade boys. Sample chapters of the books are available on Moser’s website, www.billmoser.net.

Moser has also written short stories and poetry, some of which, he said, magazines have published. Yet, even before Moser saw some success, a tragic event on Jan. 7, 1993, ultimately affected his writing: the death of his college-aged son.

“He was being silly, fell off a roof, and died,” Moser said. “I took a summer off and locked myself into three hours every morning and wrote a series of six good short stories. When I read them over, I realized they were all about dead children. My poetry was a conscious way of dealing with his death.”

As the publishing landscape changed and small presses began flourishing, Moser contacted another house for a sample contract, learned a design program, offered a few contests and called out for submissions.

He’s since passed on several manuscripts and published a cookbook and a meditation book for cancer patients. Ramsfield Press’s third book, a novel about three friends who open a restaurant in a small town, is scheduled for a 2013 release.

However, as Moser now knows, publishing books as a small press is more complicated and time-consuming than he first imagined it would be, since he is fully responsible for all aspects of the finished product, from editing to design to marketing.

“I even vacuum my own office,” Moser said.