Above: Fictional Café Founder Jack and Managing Editor Mike Mavilia Rochester

We recently connected with Jack B Rochester and have shared our conversation below.

Jack B, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

I’ve worked for a few good people, but I’ve had far more who were awful managers. Some were wimps, some were domineering, many had Peter Principled out. I think managers need to be cultivated. You can’t just promote someone from the line staff and expect them to have managerial acumen, but it’s done all the time. One of my better managers guided his people and let them self-manage. Another was a collegial but often bombastic man whose most important skill was as a teacher of people. Dr Shanna Teel, an executive coach, wrote, “To move our relationships forward we need to feel heard, to be seen, known, and understood, in life and business.” Although I didn’t fully understand this need in myself at that time, I knew I wasn’t getting it from my managers. So I decided it was time to fulfill my dream of starting my own writing and editorial services company. 

Years earlier, I’d had a profound spiritual experience crossing the California-Arizona desert at dawn in the Joshua Tree National Monument. Whatever I would do next, I thought, would bear the Joshua Tree cactus’s name and image. Thus on April 15, 1983, Joshua Tree Communications was conceived. I created a logo and put it on a bookmark that read, “The Joshua Tree (yucca brevifolia) is a rare, noble inhabitant of the American Southwest and Mexico. It was named for the great warrior Joshua who commanded the sun and the moon to stand still. The warrior-tree which bears his name stands as a symbol that, with worthy purpose and courage of heart and mind, all things in life are possible.” I vowed to be the best boss I ever worked for, treating myself with fairness and honesty, and in turn doing the same for all those with whom I worked. In time I became my own best boss and have been fortunate to practice what I believed with the Baristas who work with me at The Fictional Café.

Author-client Andrew Peat and his wife Maria in Magong City, Penghu Islands, Taiwan

Author-client Derrick R. Lafayette with Jack at the Cocoa Village Book Fair, Cocoa, Florida

Jack B, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Joshua Tree Communications was, and remains, a writing and editorial services company. With my strong background in book publishing, I was soon focusing on helping authors get their books written. Over time, computer and network technologies reshaped those services, so in 2003 I renamed my business Joshua Tree Interactive. Today, forty-one years later, Joshua Tree has shifted slightly to provide a range of media and information management services related to publishing, but the writing and editing – helping authors write their books – are still at the forefront.

In 2013, my career took a detour from writing business books for my author-clients. My true love has always been fiction and Caitlin Park, a Joshua Tree scholarship recipient and graduate student at my alma mater, California State University, launched an online “zine” we named The Fictional Café. How, we asked ourselves, can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and writers? We thought: Give creative people the opportunity to publish their work for free. We live in a society which values monetization higher than creative quality. We’re a publishing venue for poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, fine arts and fictional podcasts – all for FREE. Artists don’t pay to submit. Viewers don’t pay for access to the site. Joni Mitchell wrote the song, “For Free” and it’s our mantra. Today we have over one thousand subscribers to our Coffee Club, and we are now ten Baristas keeping the wheels of creativity turning.

Editor’s luncheon: Jason Brick, Jack and Charlotte Pierce, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

One of our favorite gag lines at The Fictional Café

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Give our creatives opportunities to present or publish their work for free. We live in a society which values monetization higher than creative quality. I’ve set a stake in the ground with Fictional Cafe to provide a publishing venue for poetry, fiction, fine arts and podcasts – for FREE. Artists don’t pay to submit. Viewers don’t pay for access to the site. Joni Mitchell wrote the song, “For Free” and it is our mantra.

Author-client Philip Gabbard in his Fat Unicorn Society media studio, El Paso, Texas

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

From my perspective the keys to success, or critical success factors, are:

Work on one book or project at a time; give your client 120 percent, always your very best work

Establish a realistic project management calendar with the client, recognizing they are usually very busy people, but do your best to hold to it. Nothing is more dissatisfying than a stalled or failed project, for both the client and the facilitator

Provide free, seasoned editorial counsel with every thought, word and concept

Strive to create collegial friendships with other creative people; we’re loners by nature but we all have wonderful things to share. Relationships, for me, are the most important aspect of work.Remain optimistic: believe life is good and make working together fun. It’s the way to achieve pleasure and satisfaction in the work you do.

I’ve worked in publishing my entire adult life. During the early years, working as an editor for trade and college textbook publishers, I began developing “The Joshua Tree Book Development Methodology” which breaks a writing project into discrete steps that go a long way to ensure the book will be written and completed to the author-client’s satisfaction. I’ve seen over 200 books using this methodology become published.

Chen Qinrui, Surrealist/BioArtist, Featured Artist on The Fictional Café, Shanghai

“FC” Associate Editor Tori Merkle and Jack surrounded by stacks of the first Fictional Café Anthology

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fictionalcafe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefictionalcafe/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fictionalcafe
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemrochester/
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