As I wrote in “Life’s Too Short Not to Love,” time never waits.
It was early 2003 when I first arrived in the Authors Den; at the time, I was interested in refining my poetry and sharing it with others, saying that I wanted to become published someday. I had no idea of when “someday” was going to be, and truthfully, I didn’t have the confidence to translate such dreams into determination of effort. When I left the Den in 2004, I still lacked that confidence, but still carried the desire to share my writing, however raw they might be.
March, 2004 proved to be the turning point in my creative life. I was given a recommendation to submit a manuscript of poetry to PublishAmerica. I was excited about the notion, but still lacked the self-confidence to act on it, and it took some prodding before I finally made the submission. In August, The Ten-Digit Poet was officially released; even now, that event astonishes me because it finally happened.
Since that book, I’ve been blessed to see two other collections in print. PublishAmerica just released the title My Flying Dreams in February 2006; that volume represents my first efforts at writing free verse. The most special collection, however, came into being nearly a year earlier.
In the fall of 2004, I dreamed of producing a book of Christian and spiritual poetry. It was to have been my third collection, but the length of time it took PublishAmerica to produce My Flying Dreams allowed me to put together a combination of traditional and free verse work entitled Sunshine for the Soul. A search for another publisher led me to the online print site called Lulu Press, and the ease of use of that site allowed me to put this work together in a matter of a few months. I released Sunshine in April, 2005, to a lot of affirmation and encouragement…so much so that I am now working on a second volume that I hope to produce later this Spring.
Online, I spent the past couple of years on a few different writing sites, settling on one of them by Fall, 2005. By this time, I began to focus more on my local writing community, still considering myself a novice in both writing and self-marketing. I joined a local writers’ group and through that participated in my very first book fair. This proved to be quite a revelation for me. A group of us attendees befriended each other and decided to attend events and promote ourselves as a group, a decision that made it possible for me to attend my first-ever book signing event in March, 2006.
I am currently making plans for two book fairs this Fall, and decided to try to increase my exposure online. I made a random visit to the Den…and saw how much had changed, as well as how much stayed the same. The new works produced, and the same supportive atmosphere, made my decision to return here an easy one. My experiences so far in the week since that return reinforced the validity of that decision.
I look forward to sharing more poems, reading those of new and re-acquainted authors, and sharing news of my books and other projects that come my way. Feel free to read and review, or drop me a line if you so desire. If you’re a Den member from the Columbus, Ohio area, I would especially like to hear from you.
Until next we meet, may your muses speak a new blessing each day.
