Are you stuck in life, surrounded by pain or powerlessness?
I know how you feel. You are not alone.
I was diagnosed with a debilitating nerve condition that trapped and controlled me for two years.
The pain left me writhing on the floor, silently screaming, with tears running down my face. I felt trapped and helpless...
Until I began to find hope in the smallest of things:
In the wildflowers blooming alongside our burnt roads
In the first notes of a song I hoped would play next
In the invitation of new friends to go out for ice cream
The poetry in this anthology taps into my heart of pain as my story was transformed into one of life. As I began to dream again.
Now you can access the same. This Christian poetry anthology is my story. You can find yourself in the emotion and walk with me as, together, we rediscover imagination.
I have had my poetry published in 3 anthologies that I can remember and have turned down having it published in another. I have never had the chance to publish my novel (except with a sketchy publishing company that was asking me to pay them money). It didn't take much for me to realize it might be a good idea for me to publish a poetry anthology as opposed to focusing solely on the novels. By the time my mother suggested I write a poetry anthology, I was already collecting my poems to do so.
My poetry in the self-published anthology is organized into three sections, a section of pain, a section of "promise" (poems written about my relationship with Christ), and a section of "possibility" (poems of joy, imagination, and laughter). I love the section about Christ but if I am being totally honest, I love the third section most. I love going back and reading the poems about potatoes and candy on the teeth and dirty dishes.
It was a difficult process self-publishing a novel. I struggled to find a formatter for the inside of my poetry book and worried that they would not format the poems exactly the way I wanted. I had specific ideas in mind for a few of the poems. I wanted "The Wind Blows" to look like a breeze and "We Dance" to dance back and forth across the page. I did find a formatter but when it came down to the last edits that needed to be done, he flaked on me and it took me a few months to gather the courage to find a second formatter and tackle the last few edits.
The cover was a different issue altogether. I found a fiver worker for the cover as well but his work looked like the work of a two-year-old and when I sent him my mock-up done with a trial of photoshop, he took the mock-up and put a melted down overlay of a different picture over the top of it. I quickly realized that I could do a better job of it than he could and abandoned the fiver cover artists. The issue was, my photoshop trial quickly ran out and though I had a working cover, I did not have the tools to fix the little issues that I could only spot when the cover was printed on the author's proof. I ended up having to ask for a friend's help.
Man is it a struggle to self-publish. I can't wait to see what it's like to be published by a company.
Check out the book on Amazon with the button above or under the "books" tab.
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