I like to keep this blog filled with poetry, I have other blogs for my more personal types of sharing. However, I felt that this was the appropriate blog to share this news.
In November, on my post Out of Character I opened up a little letting others know that I had several challenging months. December was no different. It proved to be one of my most difficult of all. I decided to use my energies in a positive direction. Mostly, to prove to myself that I could accomplish what I set out to do.
I made the decision to complete a poetry book by New Year’s Eve. My efforts spun into a series. At the moment, I have six in the series. Two of which, I did self-publish by my deadline. The other ones I plan to release in the next few months. One or two at a time.
The first two are many poems from this blog that people have not seen because I was the “shy” blogger for a very long time. 
I have taken them, rewrote several of them, as well as added ones that I have not shared before, or wrote while editing the books.
The series is titled “Into Infinity” each book is categorized and filled with poems that are my heart for certain topics. The first two share my love of science, numbers, words, and “love-hate” for punctuation.
The books to follow will be about emotions dealing with love, heartbreak, society, and other interests I have such as myths and fairy tales. I do have and will have new poems, possibly some short stories as well in these.
I am looking forward to learning more about the self-publishing process, as well as pushing myself to get better with each venture. As I went through my past poems, I did change several of them, but there were also some that I did not edit.
My reasoning stems from something I read about the poet John Keats. Here is an excerpt. “Keats when he became a published poet collected every scrap of paper containing his earlier poems and burnt them as he considered them to be awful.” I read it here Keats’ Kingdom.
I too have destroyed many of my pieces in the past because I felt that they were awful. I decided that I would not do that ever again after reading about Keats. I want to look back at my work to remember where I was. I want to see the progression, I can still use them as a base and change them if I like later, but it is a good thing for me to reflect on what I thought was “awful.”
Besides, some people may connect to those pieces, and that could inspire me in other ways. I would love to hear from you, gain support through various means. I am happy with “likes,” comments, purchases, or even just a smily face! Feel free to tell me your thoughts, or suggestions. I would love feedback!
Without further ado here they are …
Rhetoric (Into Infinity) Parallels (Into Infinity)
Thank you all for your support throughout this past year and ALL of the inspiration that you have given me!
Bravo
Many “likes”, hugs, loud cheers and standing ovations for you my friend.
Bravo I’ll be purchasing both.
Always
Benjamin
Thank you so much Benjamin! Yay! I am happy dancing.
Congratulations! A like, a comment, purchases for my iPad and …:)
Greg
Woot! Thank you Greg! That is awesome!
Could you tell me how the formatting looks on the iPad? I am not sure how it looks on them. (If you get a chance that is.)
Looks good! The only visual difference between the iPad, in comparison to my DELL laptop and my desktop iMac, is that the iPad version (Parallels) indents the first line of each stanza. Centred text looks grand and flows well! Looks like your words are dancing!
‘Counting’ has one line ‘of my dreams…’ which is hilited in yellow only on the iPad. In Rhetoric, ‘Inspired’ has some random indents, seemingly the LAST line of 4 stanzas indented! And other poems also have some indents, but overall…it REALLY looks good, everywhere! Congratulations! Now you have to tell me how you published it!
Awesome! Thank you so much Greg! I appreciate you doing that very much.
My iPad will not download the Kindle app for some reason and will not let me preview or anything. Strange. I read that on other devices, besides the Kindle, that it could create off indentions and spaces on various ones. There is not much that can be done about it, at least so far what I have found in my research.
Yay! Dancing words I love that and I am SO glad to hear you enjoy the poems!
It was very easy to use Kindle publishing, here is the link https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin. Amazon also offers CreateSpace, (https://www.createspace.com/?ref=1119392&utm_id=6020) but there is a minimum that you have to charge for your book, but it does offer a print version. I did sign up for that, but I do not want to charge the amount they said I had to for my poetry books. I may have hard copies made in the future or if people were to request them, but as it goes ebooks are the way to go for authors nowadays. People like reading on their electronic devices.
I am a hard (soft cover too) book hoarder and love them, however, I do love my gadgets and computers!
The main issue with the process was putting it all together in the correct format. That took me several days to go through and try to fit it into a Kindle face. Other than that the Kindle site makes it fairly easy. I did read a great article that gave more insight about self-publishing, I will try to look it up for you. I changed out my desktop from a PC to a Mac Mini so I am trying to adjust to all of the changes!
Thank you again this is so helpful and encouraging!
WOW! THANK YOU for all the information Angel! A small dream would be to publish, or at least print, a hardcover book for my daughter! She actually has NO idea I have been writing, and I want it to be a birthday present for her this year! I actually downloaded Kindle on my iPad just before I bought your books, via the App Store and it only took a few seconds, along with a brief registration. I collect books, so I too am an insatiable bibliophile!
Greg
Greg,
Oh, that would be so great to do for your daughter! This would work perfect for you I think. I bet she will be so excited and thrilled with it. I still have not found that link for the article I read. :-/ I will though, because I cannot let it go and I need to read it again too!
I plan to use my daughter’s illustrations and create books with her. She has written several stories with illustrations I think it would be a good school project for her. (And me.) She has literally hundreds of dragon pictures that she has created I think we could come up with a dragon tale.
I wish I could get the download to work on my iPad. Since day one it has not worked on it. Oh, well I have plenty of other devices to use. Lol!
Books! Books! Love Books! I am such a bibliophile.
…and LOVE YOUR POEMS!
i LOVE YOUR POEMS!
I love your poems to dragongirl10! You keep sneaking comments to me, silly goose.
YOU are a silly goose.
Your hard work and perseverance has paid off…. that’s wonderful news!
And the book look gorgeous! Well done!
Thank you so much Poet Jena! Love to hear feedback!