Tag Archives: author

Money made publishing “Dreams” possible

Poetry, , , , ,

Dreams of a Rocking Pony is the first self-published title I feel really good about putting out there and promoting. Not one single typo, cover-to-cover, glossy finish, attractive artwork, “Luminare Press” stamp at the bottom of the first, beautiful blue page. The book makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like me. The me who writes–and publishes–books.

But I can’t really take the credit…money can.

I have been writing poetry, essays, memoir and children’s books for well over a decade. I began writing in high school, and in 2023 I will have been out of high school for 20 years! I have multiple projects just sitting in my writing den collecting dust bunnies. There’s the big project, a memoir, which I have spent most of my creative time on: I’ve workshopped it, critiqued it, hired a professional editor, had my best writing friend beta read it, and I’m critiquing it again, now. It still doesn’t feel perfect, but in August I will be pitching it at a professional writers’ conference. (Fingers and toes all crossed.)

My other projects include: “Do Nothing, Alone,” a children’s book on meditation, “Earthside and Other Everyday Miracles,” a collection of essays, “Mama Bird,” a farm memoir…I also have two other projects that don’t have names, but tons of material has already been written for those books, too.

Dreams isn’t the best representation of my work. (I realize that saying this risks putting you in the position of not wanting to buy the children’s book. But don’t let what I’m about to say stop you, just hear me out.) Dreams is the best representation of my grandmother, the illustrator’s, work. The book also illustrates the level of professionalism that comes from hiring a publisher to print it, and what a little money, used with the right intention, can do.

This experience–publishing Dreams–will probably change my outlook on self-publishing forever. In short, I will never do the formatting, cover design, and publishing work again all on my own. I will only hire professionals from here on out…as long as I can afford to. (And if I can’t afford to, I will save the money until I can!)

My first two self-published titles–Love, Blues, Balance and New Moon, were 100% free and 100% created by me. It was a painstaking process formatting the pages, creating a table-of-contents, and getting it all to line up appropriately formatting-wise on KDP (Amazon’s direct publishing platform). I don’t even think that one of the books has page numbers. It was perfect at the time, however, because it cost me nothing. It was a good experience and I had fun. Especially designing the covers.

But I didn’t LOVE the books. I could see all the little errors.

Fast-forward 5 years and my grandmother and I have just co-created Dreams. (I wrote about that experience here, in my previous blog post.) We joked about having the book published for real and I knew that self-publishing a children’s book myself through KDP was going to be a challenge. Publishing a book with illustrations was next level! I would need some help.

Honestly at first, when I got the price quote, I tabled the idea for many months. The pandemic was dragging on and on and, finally, while taking stock of my life and priorities, I decided that publishing a book with my grandmother was the thing I wanted to do most. My intentions around book publishing came into clearer focus when I received an unexpected financial boost. And yet the entire experience has taught me that I should value my work enough to have it bound professionally, even if I have to save money all year to do it.

Writers write. Book cover designers create book covers. Publishing presses print books. I learned through all of this to let others do what they do best. And then do what you do best. For a long time, I thought I had to become all of those other things…just to bring my words into the light. Now I know better. Now I see the piles of dusty papers in my writer’s den from a new, more optimistic, angle. They will, someday, get published. And I credit this book, Dreams of a Rocking Pony, for teaching me a valuable lesson about writing and publishing: That for 1/3 the price of a used car, I can bind–and sell–a beautiful freaking book.

The story behind “Dreams of a Rocking Pony.”

Poetry, , ,

By the time you get around to reading this I hopefully will have packaged up about 25 pre-orders of “Dreams of a Rocking Pony,” shipping them off to Cottonwood, Arizona; West Palm Beach, Florida; and Austin, Texas, to a name a few. The book is going to some cold places too, like Billings, Montana, which is currently buried in snow.

In light of this incredible milestone of publishing a book with my grandmother, I wanted to share the story of what got us here, of how we came to complete this passion project, together.

In the Spring of 2019, when Autumn was just a few months old, we were visiting her Great Grandmother Peggy (I’ve always just called her “Peggy”). Peggy had recently, in the last year or so, completed a series of paintings of whimsical, playful animals. She was a lifelong painter so this was no surprise. Then Peggy made copies of the paintings and pasted them together in a book. She wrote small descriptions of the animals, such as, “a trick skunk black-and-white.” She presented the book to Autumn as a gift, gluing a piece of rabbit fur on the book bind, a little detail that was in perfect Peggy-fashion.

Autumn loved the book (as much as babies can express themselves anyway) and so did we. Peggy then asked me to help toy with the wording, creating more of a storyline to accompany to illustrations. We put in some time on the wording and joked about having the book published together someday (clearly once you see the illustrations, most, if not all, of the credit goes to her!).

Then the pandemic happened. The visits to Arizona stopped. The book got read and worn and read some more. I started taking stock of what was most important to me (I think we all did) during this time. I thought about the things I wanted to invest in. I thought: What if I did pursue publishing that book? Wouldn’t that be cool?

During this time I researched publication for children’s books, eventually settling on Luminare Press in Eugene (which is to say we didn’t settle at all, they are fantastic!). I decided to surprise Peggy with the book, and did just that when she received her proof copy in the mail on January 19th!

Now, almost a month later, and the book is live and ready-to-order on Amazon. Come February 11th we will celebrate our true “Pub Day,” when we receive a box of 75 books ready to be shipped directly to our readers.

It feels good to be typing this. Not because I am super proud of myself, I am not. I am most proud of my grandmother, the illustrator. I am most proud of the publishing house, including their cover design artist, Claire. And I am most proud of my daughter, Autumn, for inspiring it all. It feels good to be typing this because this was our pandemic silver lining. This book was a beautiful glimmer of something different and luminous in 2020. And honestly, I think you’ll like it a lot, too.

Love,

Mama Bird

Intentions for a New Season of Life

artwork, Dreams, Freedom, Inspiration, Nature, Poetry, , , , , , , , , , ,

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Brave the world. Be in it just enough to observe, earn, and give back. Escape it daily in an attempt to soothe your tired animal mind; spilling at the seams of this complicated human life. Adhere to the hermit way, it comes naturally. You are stick and stone, fire and water, a hot pot of tea, you are a simple flower, a timid bear, a lone wolf. You. You. You do it on your own. Take a few select things into your own palms and generate a life from it. This won’t be the first year you’ve done so.

Pages turn in the wind. You waste $2.99 on a set of “good pens”. They are not. You regret going out and getting your paws wet, wasting money. Your fate is solitude and opportunity, solitude and opportunity. A pattern emerges in the sand mandala of your life. Impermanence is a cackling witch assuring you that even your creativity is not fixed. It will not wait patiently for a boyfriend to come and go or for you to lose enough interest that your art rises to the top again.

So you bold your capital letters at the beginning of every sentence. Although this is a handwritten journal, you think it is what the professionals would do. Bold the capitals. You’ve seen it done.

The downside of your closed writing fist–gripping the new, slick and slippery pen–crushes an amber-colored bug onto the page. You smear it away and it looks like taco sauce on the page. Two distractions: one, children zipping through the park in fall on metal scooters in the wind. Two: professional. What is it? you want to know. Professional, adjective: a person engaged in a specified activity as one’s main occupation, rather than a pastime; noun: a person qualified in a specific profession.

Intentions for a new season of life: avoid generalizations. Never, fucking ever, quit Your Dream. Or all the little dreams in-between. In your diligent, orderly way, plot your escape from novice to master. Stop speaking if you have to. Write what’s in your head. Connect the dots in the world you see. Sketch a constellation. Name it. Gain pages. Lose friends. Win them back again. Fear blank more than sloppy. Rest. Rinse. Repeat.