With the August release of Texas Short Stories (from his own Browder Springs Press), which features an astonishing collection of established writers and newcomers, Mr. Hill has gathered 55 previously unpublished short stories running the emotional, geographical, historical and textural landscape indigenous to the state.
Once news of the proposed anthology spread, Mr. Hill received more than 1,000 submissions. "The volume of quality material was really flattering," Mr. Hill says, leading a tour of the extraneous bedrooms in his home which serve as the Browder Springs publishing empire.
A short, perpetually smiling man with sandy hair, dressed in khaki shorts and shirt and tennis shoes, Billy Bob (he goes by both names) gestures in a room stuffed waist-high with shipments of Texas Short Stories, and laughs. "I'm learning to pack boxes. Do you got a two-wheeler?"
Next is his office, where amid the collections of signed first editions by Texas authors, he points out his two favorite letters pinned to the wall next to his desk. Both are from writers in response to Mr. Hill's solicitations for his poetry and short fiction projects. One, from Horton Foote, is gracious in refusal, concluding, "Unfortunately, I only write plays."
Another is from Larry McMurtry, and Mr. Hill comments, "This is actually Mr. McMurtry giving me permission [to use an old poem]. He's also turned me down several times, and he's always written a very civil refusal letter." Mr. Hill smiles and points at McMurtry's scrawled name at the bottom of the page. "And I've noticed over time his signature is getting more post-modern."
If Horton Foote and Larry McMurtry are occasionally reluctant, several luminaries from Texas letters are represented in the collection: Clay Reynolds (the whimsical and melancholic "Goodnight Sweetheart…"), Marshall Terry (the ironic and juxtaposed punch line of "Yardman"), Terence A. Dalyrimple (a reflection on the deaths of fathers in "Heartbeat") and Jan Reid (whose "Second Saddle" is an evocative study of post-civil War racism in the context of a Quanah Parker raid).
"I'd just go up, introduce myself and solicit." Mr. Hill says of getting submissions from the more celebrated writers. "I'd show them Texas in Poetry, an anthology of poetry I did a few years back, and some of them sent me something. I tried to mix in some new people with some of the obvious old pros. I do that, in part, to sell copies, but it's also not by chance that Marshall Terry, for example, is head of a creative writing program [at Southern Methodist University]."
Mr. Hill says he was also pleased by the emergence of some relatively anonymous writers such as Rhonda Austin, Ivanov Y. Reyez, Joy-Ellis McLemore, Rubin Degollado and Michael Verde, all of whom contributed stories as startingly fresh as they are diverse. Mr. Verde's "Weasel Loves," for example, is a bittersweet look at the melodramatics of high school romance - with a dark twist - while Ms. Austin's white-trash take on "Green Card" is particularly amusing.
If the motivation behind Texas Short Stories is nothing greater or simpler than Mr. Hill's love of Texas literature and a belief that there are plenty of excellent writers who deserve to be read, the volume is also a logical progression from the earlier Texas in Poetry: A 150-Year Anthology, which came out as a Center for Texas Studies in hardback in 1994.
"The poetry collection was an outgrowth of my dissertation at the University of North Texas," says Mr. Hill, now a professor of English at Eastfield College. "I'd Xeroxed some poems that I liked, and I didn't know what to do with them. One of my professors, A.C. Greene, told me, 'Hey, you've got a book there.'"
At first, Mr. Hill was skeptical. But with encouragement from Mr. Greene and a gradual immersion into the Texas literary scene, he became convinced that the project had merit. He knew there hadn't been an inclusive collection of Texas poetry published in several years, and he became intrigued by what he calls the "detective work" behind the ideas.
"Actually, I was pretty leery at first," Mr. Hill admits, "but I pursued it. Really, I went behind the scenes, I read a lot of literary journals and certain old Poetry Society of Texas yearbooks, and kind of just re-read what was out there. I made it a point to go out and meet the Texas writing establishment."
Not surprisingly, finding material that deserves to be anthologized wasn't the difficult part, though paring it all down proved challenging. But finding some of the authors to secure rights to the poems was probably the hardest task.
Mr. Hill pauses wistfully. "A lot of really fine poets in Texas just disappeared; I couldn't find out what ever happened to them. They wrote two or three really fine poems and then were never heard from again."
Such a fate is not likely now that Mr. Hill is on patrol. He hopes to publish a second poetry collection, and he is thinking of trying to get the rights to Texas in Poetry and reprinting it: to the surprise of almost everyone, the book sold out, and reviews in such publications as Texas Monthly and The Dallas Morning News were uniformly positive. And, to be certain, the poets were ecstatic.
With the success of Texas in Poetry, the idea for a short story collection began to germinate in Mr. Hill's mind. His involvement in the labyrinthine Texas literary scene had exposed him to a number of writers and organizations, and he decided there was a lack of opportunity for certain voices to be heard. The concept of creating his own publishing house - Browder Springs Press - seemed, if not logical from a business standpoint, at least intellectually rewarding.
While the solicitations and plans for Texas Short Stories were under construction, Mr. Hill got his feet wet in the publishing business with another poetry project.
"My first book was actually a poetry collection, Circling, by Paul Ruffin, who's a professor at San Houston State. And it actually won the Mississippi Institute of Letters award; Paul's a Texan but he was born in Mississippi."
Mr. Hill also toyed with the idea of publishing a novel at some point, but he's got plenty on his docket as it is. Calls have already gone out for the next short fiction anthology, Texas Short Stories II, which will be edited by Mr. Hill and Laurie Champion. In November, Browder Springs will also publish a literary "trade secrets" book by Clay Reynolds called Twenty Questions - How to Get in Print. And Mr. Hill envisions publishing volumes of poetry by individual authors on a roughly biannual basis.
"I'm open to any concept, but really I like anthologies because you can publish more people with less money," he says. "I think of my role as a middle man; it can be a first publication for some writers, or a needed publication. And then they can take their story or poem in my book and go forward."
That Browder Springs might flourish probably never occurred to Mr. Hill, who remains bemused by the burgeoning success of his operation. He says, "Well, I didn't have much in my background to be an editor, and I didn't have anything at all to run a business. Details like getting the books in Hastings and Borders and Barnes & Noble is stuff I'm learning as I go. So far, so good: the books are in the stores."
Given his devotion to the nurturing and exposure of Texas literature, one might automatically assume that Mr. Hill is himself a writer. "Just barely," he says. "I've been in a few small literary journals. But I don't think of myself as a writer-dash-editor. I'm just an editor. I like to joke that you don't have to own a cow to sell milk."
Rick Koster is a Dallas free-lance writer.