Monday Poetry

Today is one of mine and one of Serena’s poems, Mostly because Serena has been writing more than I have. Her Midnight Verse is nearing done. I have barely started with Echoes.

Monday Poetry

I oopsed and undid my Monday poetry post from this week…so here it is again…one from me and one from Serena…

Cover art is subjective

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know I love doing cover art.

Canva is a tool. Not my only tool. But one that I use often.

I usually don’t use the template option. I feel like I’m more creative and can come up with something else.

That being said… the above cover was only slightly modified from the template option.

That template inspired me.

Then I wrote the volume, published it, and found out that the image has inspired many people. It has been used for several books.

Sigh.

So I revamped the cover. I gave it my own flair. And I feel like it fits better. I have already updated most of the ebook locations. And I will be doing the same thing for the print and remaining ebook sellers later today. It should have been more like this to start with.

I have really no excuses. Inspiration does not always equate to me thinking things through.

The link is the same.

The only thing that is changing is the cover is getting a little bit better.

Serena Mossgraves’s Poetry

Since today is the release day for her Blood Red Rain… I thought I would share 2 of Serena’s poems. One from the new release (at the bottom) and another one from the one in progress.

Book Birthday – Blood Red Rain

Buy your copy here…

Prompts, ideas, and rabbit holes

Ah… my brain is burning.

I wish I could claim it was just the heat.

Here lately I have been getting spurts of inspiration… and urges to write or create. It always makes me feel like I’m feverish.

I can remember when I wrote when the muse struck me and the idea of using prompts seemed like cheating. Now, the prompts are more like a spring board. I am often less worried about the prompt than I am what I want to say.

I end up feeling like the prompts don’t fit with the idea of the volume I have been working on and I pass them by. I get a vision of what I want the book to look like and then I just don’t want it to be anything less.

Now that leads me down rabbit holes looking for just the right prompt, just the right idea to be just the right poem. Perhaps perfectionism is a true problem…

Laziness, busyiness or burnout

I have been doing the publishing stuff since 2010. For my own personal stuff, then I started with Fae Corps in 2019.

I struggle with depression, PTSD, Migraines, and a whole bunch of other health issues. Which is why I don’t do more than I do. Fae Corps does limited books because I don’t have the ability to do anything more.

I use several platforms to publish the books, with a few routines to make the work easier for me to accomplish. And I always leave plenty of time on the deadline so I don’t ever get pressured for time. Hence why we are starting to take the children’s book submissions for the kids week books now.

One of the places that I have used for publishing is draft2digital.com and I will continue to for the ebooks. Their print option however is awful. I stopped using them when we were getting reports of the cover for the books being delivered cockeyed.

Now I do the same place as they did separately. Better quality. The trick for their ebook set up is to prevent them from messing with the layout. So the only way to do that is to provide an epub file… which means I have learned how to make that.

That was in 2020 that I stopped using them for print. I really don’t know what I have been thinking. Someone pointed out that the print was wrong for Through the Sunshine… so I checked. I care about the quality of our books. So I will always check. Yes it is something that I can fix. Something that I should have already done.

Now, I am asking myself. Is the 17 books that I still have to port over a sign of laziness? Or that I have been doing too much? And should I even get upset with myself over the whole thing?

Honestly I think that I am just going to get it done and write it off as a learning experience. If I beat myself up over it, well it will just be longer for me to get it done.

The 17 books are a mix of the early Anthologies for Fae Corps Publishing and some of my poetry volumes. In order to get it fixed I will have to take it off sale on the one place and put it back up on the other two. So I am going to be doing this one book at a time. It should only have each book down for around a week in print only.

I will get each of them updated on their books2read.com links. I plan on posting on fae corps publishing as I have each book updated. This is a ridiculous amount of work and I am probably still going to be dealing with this well into the next year.