First of all, I’m elated to announce that I’ve sent out all the Kickstarter rewards, and that means that the Great Self-Publishing Adventure of 2012 all done and dusted. If you were to perform a chemical analysis of my internal composition, you’d discover that I’m at least 67% Gratitude for all the love and support that came my way to get Book 1 of Ministers of Grace out into the world. I still have a thousand more Thank Yous in me for everyone who helped. For those of you who haven’t picked up a copy, you can get yours here.
Secondly, a number of people who’ve read my book have told me that they liked it. Testimony goes a long way in this world, so when you raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth about what you thought about my book, a respectable number of people will believe you. Therefore I’d like to invite those praising and/or criticizing folks to spread the word by writing a review on Amazon, Goodreads or Shelfari. Extra bonus points to those folks who tell their friends, too.
Thirdly, I’ve admittedly lapsed in my attention to almost everything in life on account of having moved for the fourth time in four months. Such is life when you relocate from Santa Fe to New York. I’ll be moving at least once more in the next two months. At least. I’m hoping to get back to promoting Book 1 pretty darn soon, as well as working on when I’ll be able to drop the rest of the trilogy on you. The good news is I wrote the first drafts of Books 2 and 3 of Ministers of Grace a couple of years ago, so it really is just a matter of finding the time to redraft the unsightliness of raw plotting into finessed and slick prose. I’m hoping to get back to it over the next month or so, as I’ve already heard a few calls for MOAR.
Fourth: my book launch and reading is happening this Sunday, August 25th, at 7 pm at the Swift Hibernian Lounge (34 E 4th St, between Bowery and Lafayette). Hope to see you there if you’re kicking around NYC.
Lastly, in the chaos of moving, I’ve done very little writing, and lately, I’ve felt like the folds of my cerebrum have been unfolding into slackened cords of nothing-doing. That said, I challenged myself to write a poem last night, a 10 x 12 syllabic poem employing the terms rocking chair, varnish, table and draw. This is a first draft, too, so I imagine it’ll morph over time, but hey, at least I wrote something recently…
“Obstinacy”
Her will summons shape as a Minotaur,
and it draws itself forward, attentive,
in a rocking chair at the stony shores
of her platitudes. It picks and pokes at
the uneven varnish of the arm rests
with a meat hook meant to mount unworthy
rationales, carving sins as hash marks with
its jaws snapping at their crumbling logics.
The tides obey the tables – low swells to
high, steep curls back to deep – but no one comes
around to challenge her strictures. No one
can, not with such menace keeping the watch.
♥ EAB
