Third and final

My third poetry book is now at the printers, with the proof approved and just waiting for the printing then the delivery, the latter which seems to take longer than it did in the past.

I say final, because, at this stage, I am not anticipating writing any more of these rhyming poems, not a book anyway. Of course there may be further children’s stories. Naughty Nana-Reah is being illustrated for me now. This is similar to the poems in the book, only a children’s version. I do say though, that if these books took off and there was sufficient interest, I might consider writing another, but at this stage, no. They are expensive to produce and hard to sell. When I offer my books at the markets, poetry is not something that people seem interested in, even though those who read the books say they enjoy them. People seem to have an aversion in their minds to the word poetry. But as others suggest, I will find my tribe, the people who do enjoy this type of writing.

I have been waiting for this third book to be complete, before I start a targeted approach. I will try to market them as a set. The first book, Greatcoats to Growler, only came out at the end of November, the second, And I Was Still Alive, in March, and this latest, The Miner and the Model, hopefully, in only a week or two. As the first one was published, most of the poems for the second book had already been written and the same with the second. Most of these poems in this latest book were already completed in March, so I haven’t really targeted their selling, knowing the third was still to come.

I have stopped myself from writing any more, not that I have many ideas left anyway. This frees me up for writing something else, though what, I am not exactly sure. There are a lot of people in our second writing group and some of these are prolific writers. I would consider myself reasonably prolific, though I do need something to write about. As I write generally non-fiction, even the poems, that narrows the scope of topics. I did enjoy it when I was writing blogs regularly. Perhaps I will write more of these as I contemplate my next project.

One of my other interests is photography. I had a prompting from the company I had once made a calendar from. If I didn’t use these services, my photos would be archived. I think they were anyway because I didn’t act in time but that spurred me to print off a couple of photo books. I just need to learn how to do what I want with the photos on the pages and then I will be away. With 70% discounts on the books, it makes quite a reasonably priced job. One book I made will probably be ok but the second I am not sure about but that is something for me to learn, firstly from, and then how to do it properly in the next book.

Meanwhile, I am excited for The Miner and the Model to arrive.