Personally, I write Free Verse. My reason is simple… I hate dealing with the rules. Other forms require the poet to be aware of syllables or the syntax of the poem. Some require certain rhyme schemes.
I’m working on a volume of poetry entirely done with forms other than free verse – Xactly Poetic.
I am so frustrated with it at the moment. I am at 60 poems. I started with the idea that I was going to do 50… realized that I was being lazy because I always do 70 poems in each volume and I got mad at me.
So I am going to do 70. But it is not as easy as it is for the regular volumes. And I am irritated with myself for wanting to quit.
I have set a self imposed deadline/release date of September 15… that is a I have to get it done and published by that date. Which means I have to get it written by August 15. And I have 10 poems left to write. Ugh. Not normally a problem… so I am hoping that I can get it done.
Serena decided to do a book similar to my own Anthology Alumni. Hers is all short stories. She chose not to include the ones that are pieces of extended stories.
If you are interested here is the link. It is due to release September 22.
Second, she is going to be working on a 3rd poetry volume. We will let you know when it is available… but here is the cover for it….
And if you have not gotten it…her second one, Blood Red Rain is out for preorder with an August 25 release date.
I do not know if I will have Serena Doing anymore Poetry. I enjoy exploring the Darker poetry with her, but at the same time it is exhausting to have so many projects open at once. I am hoping to still have Xactly Poetic releasing in September. I have it over half way written. This year has been a busy writing year for me. I have released more volumes this year than I often do. I have a kid’s book I have been trying to get illustrated for Kid’s week in December.
Ever think that you were caught up, and then realized that you had forgotten about something important? That was me this past week. I have done all the work for July and publishing… and I thought I had done June as well… only to find out that I had forgotten about June.
Though I was frustrated and feeling like I was a screw up… it was not the end of the world. It was not even a truly terrible thing. It was just a little bit of a frustration. I got it fixed (though my own poetry volume in June immortality is only in ebook form until the 20th.) A minor oops. Still at the time…it felt like I was just incapable of doing anything right.
And it is not an uncommon thing for such situations to cause a lot of people to feel like they can’t do anything right. The internal voice is often so mean.
Don’t let that voice make you feel like you are anything less than amazing. I’m fighting with my own.
So, many of you know that I run a small press. Fae Corps Publishing.
We have a busy schedule for the next few months.
March 31 – The Key of the Storm by DW Storer
April 7 – Internal Battlefields by Patricia Harris (My poetry volume)
April 14 – Valley of Thoughts by NK Xero
April 21 – State of Mind by Jennifer Elliott
May 7 – Keko and the Lost Bananas by CM Snow
May 15 – Faery Flying anthology release
May 22 – Toe Rag by Ruan Bradford Wright
May 26 – The Riverside Chronicles by Raz T Slasher
June 1 – Life Lost, Love Gained by Ashira Dayta
June 15 – Blue Ted’s Easter Adventure by DW Storer
There will be more… but that is what I have scheduled for now. We have another anthology call scheduled for this year. The deadline is August.(I will be posting it on the fae corps blog in June.)
I am hoping to be able to do another volume of Poetry at the end of June… but I don’t want to promise it until I get it done.
So I have been busy working on publishing tasks yesterday, Well that for me included dealing with the dreaded Goodreads Now admittedly I don’t do everything I need to with it, because every time I go there it is the same thing. I can’t claim all of my books on there. Not even the ones all written as me. The reason – My name is too common. I should be able to give the information about the book and claim it…but no. It is based on the name of the author. I am debating doing a rebranding. Adding my grandmother’s maiden name in as my middle name (I tried my middle name to start with…it is even more common.) Still I wonder how much I should rebrand? Should I just start from here? or go back and rebrand from the beginning? There is a lot involved. I just don’t know if Goodreads is worth the effort. I have my amazon author page. I have my books2read reading list. Does anyone other than authors even really use Goodreads?
Though I have to say that I am annoyed by how common my name is. Names have always been a fun thing for me. I wanted to write as Susan Ann Andrews when I was a girl. I really thought it was the prettiest name out there. I chose to write my poetry and my kid’s books under my name because I wanted to love my name again. I wanted it to be mine again. It was part of healing the abuse I had been through. I chose to do the pen name of Serena Mossgraves for my horror and darker stuff so that my kid’s books would not be tainted by those writings. So I am struggling now. Do I really want to rebrand simply because of how common my name is? Or do I stick with who I am? This really feels like I am facing an existential crisis. Do I change my persona for the idea that I am not fitting in? Or am I fitting in too well? Oh crud. I really don’t know what to do here.
Yesterday I was sure that I needed to change the branding. Today, I wake up and find in my email in response to my help request…OK we merged this and this….I look on goodreads…now one of Serena’s books is listed as Patricia. And still not even half of my books are listed as me. I still can’t claim them. Changing my brand will mean I have to go and fight them for the right to the listing all over again. In order to change it I need to go into KDP and D2D and Google Play and Barnes and Noble. Change The Details on each. I need to upload a changed cover for each. Then I need to hope that I have not screwed something up. For one or two books it is not that difficult…but I have a catalogue of around 30+ It is a hugely daunting task. OK… I can change my branding from here on out…but the whole reason I wanted to do it was because of Goodreads not letting me accept my books…if I change my brand it will throw them into a worse fit.
I think I need to think on this. I am going to do nothing about it until after the first of the year at the least. That way I can be sure I am still needing to adjust and I don’t feel like I rushed in for stupid reasons.
I recently joined a few writing discord channels. There was an article shared. It spoke about Vanity presses, small presses, and indie presses. It advised the author to avoid all three. I will link to the article…as it was an interesting read. It gave me a bit of an issue, however…as I run a small press. It spoke in the article about checking the education of those running the press…I am not classically educated. I could not afford college. I learned via free classes and reading everything I could get my hands on.
Soooo this article made me wonder when the writers in that discord would call me out for the imposter I know myself to be. I have been publishing for a decade…and I am still learning. I don’t do everything perfectly. No human does. I, personally, advise you to use common sense. Does the small press expect you to do everything? Are they asking for money upfront? If you have to pay to get your book published then yeah they are likely not legit.
However, not everyone can afford to go to college. Those who go do not always know what they are doing, and those who cannot sometimes do have knowledge. Sometimes you have to ask questions and make choices that are not based on how many degrees are hanging on someone’s wall.
The next few months are going to be busy for me. (Yes I seem to do that to myself a lot) So, as I am sitting here trying to get all my weekend work caught up, I realize that my poor blog is AGAIN neglected. Friday we are releasing Andrew McDowell‘s second edition of Mystical Greenwood. That means I am trying to gather images and activities for the release day on our Facebook Party Room group. I have things I am trying to put together for the Fae Corps Blog…again to get everyone possible to see his book.
That is just the first thing I am doing. Then, I have our Halloween Anthology. This year it is called Darkness Screams. It received so many outstanding submissions that I split it to accommodate the quality of stories. (I have done this before with other anthologies)
So I am neck-deep in editing, Marketing image creation, and formatting for these two. I give myself two months to do this with each anthology because I have a routine. Once approved I invite the author/artist to join the company discord. I have each anthology set up in a private room within the channel. This allows Files to be shared and questions answered easier. I ask everyone to sign a contract (So I can legally publish their story/art/ poetry and they have protections of their copyright) I ask for a bio written in 3rd person and an image to represent them. (I say an image because I have had a few who gave me photoshopped images, due to personal reasons. ) Then I sit down and put together a rough draft of the anthology. I don’t worry in the first rough about perfect formatting or having it be edited and polished. After I get a feel for how the anthology will flow, I feel like I am more capable to suggest edits. Yeah, that seems so silly…the grammar will not change based on how it fits in the book, right? Actually, it might. It will help me to see the story on its own instead of trying to place it mentally in an imaginary book. I send the suggestions to the author and give them a deadline for when I need to see the finished copy.
Then I start while waiting for the stories to come back…to make images to catch the interest of possible readers. I do (For most of the anthologies) a cover reveal, A author/artist list for each anthology, A image to represent each story, and a meet the author/artist graphic. That can be quite the undertaking. In Darkness screams that is 3 graphics just to list the author/artist in each one. I, as you can see above, combined the cover reveals. I have already today done the story graphics for each book.
I still have more to do just for the anthologies… Then I have another book we are releasing in October. The third book in Ashira Dayta’s Magick Saga. (The cover reveal should be happening soon on Fae corps Blog. I am quite proud of that cover) It releases on October 31st. I have to do some images for marketing it as well.
Then I have other projects that are ongoing and need my attention. (For example Formatting for a Poetry book by NK – Titled Valley of Thoughts. We are supposed to be releasing that next year. Editing for Ruan Bradford Wright’s Novel Toe-Rag which is expected to release in February. Writing my own poetry and prose books. And just being a mom and person who has housework that is not getting done more often than not.)
I honestly intend to do this blog every week..but I end up overwhelmed. I think I will just post some of my poetry this week. I thank you for your patience. I swear I am not forgetting y’all.
So I was going through a manuscript today…previously published. I am oddly confident in what I publish. I am aware that every book – even the ones published by the big publishers – often still have typos and other minor issues. There was only 2 minor typos. I was quite impressed. Now that being said…I wonder how many times I have missed errors. I employ a multiple eyes on a project policy. This means that the anthologies that Fae corps publishing puts together are edited by myself, and then I ask the authors to go through and let me know any mistakes I missed. Especially from their own story. I ask for them to read the whole thing and point out anything missed in the entire anthology. Because in the end I want to publish something that each author is proud of.
The perfectionist in me though edits it, then runs it through grammarly, then triple checks for anything that I may have missed. I feel like I have to be better because I am a small press. I am embarrassed by any mistakes that come with publishing. So, I try to get it right the first time.
I took a writing class and I was extremely embarrassed by the way it was done. There was a hot seat session. I handed, for my turn, an unedited version of a work in progress. The person who was running the class proceeded to tear into what was wrong. I hope that no one has to deal with that. I had not adjusted the layout and had things that I knew needed fixed because I wanted to see what the teacher would do. She made such a big deal about the minor things that I felt like I was doing awful. It was something that could have made me walk away from writing. I was irritated by the way I was feeling. Instead, I decided that I would learn to do it better. I would never send my work out to be edited without it being edited by me first.
When you judge people you have no idea what you are doing to them. You could end up being the reason why they give up. Or you could be the reason why they knuckle down and improve. The only person who can possibly know what they are going to do is the one you are judging.
okay, I am done random rambling. What do you feel like has to be perfect? why?
Many years ago, my first kids book was Pip the pup. I illustrated it with my own drawings and clip art. One of my young readers – Dante, asked for more of Pip’s story.
I couldn’t refuse him. Releasing December fourth is the next chapter of pip’s adventure… Done in the same style. My own drawings and clip art to illustrate what I hope will be a good continuation of a cute story.
Pattimouse 