Announcing my first book of poetry – plus the WriteNow!@King experience

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At the beginning of April, my poetry manuscript, When the Earth, was accepted for publication. The night I found out, my husband poured me a scotch and I was so calm. I expected to stay calm, but by the next morning, the excitement was intense. Nerve-wracking and thrilling.   

My poetry editor explained that it's not too late to add some additional poems to the manuscript - but I have a fairly small window. My book is already available for preorder! 

In the midst of all this, I had my first speaking engagement coming up at WriteNow!@King – the writers’ group that meets at the King City Library. It took a lot more time to plan the talk than I imagined – from handouts to researching hot leads. I did get a bit side-tracked in my research, but it was worth it.

I had one link that looked interesting about how to make a free book trailer. Free book trailer? Fantastic. But I thought I'd better check it out thoroughly before I recommended it to the group. The result? I made a book trailer. But it wasn't free.


This past week, I finally headed out to the King City Library. As soon as I walked in, a reporter from a community newspaper came up and asked, "Are you the author?"

Uh, am I? Not technically, I told him. My book's not out yet. He took my picture for the paper and we had a quick talk about writing. I felt calmer about the workshop after I'd fielded a few questions from him. It was like a mini-warm-up to the event.

On the drive over, I was concerned I might be a disastrous speaker. I had left a few key things up in the air. For example, I hadn't timed my talk and had no idea how long it would take. But by the halfway mark, I realized my timing was going to be fine. I managed to cover all the information I'd hoped to.

There were about sixteen of us around the table. My friend, who invited me to the group, introduced me, which was a nice surprise. I’d expected to have to introduce myself and hurriedly wrote a bio on a scrap piece of paper. Her introduction was very well thought out – and as it turns out – she knows my poetry editor. And the founder of the writers' group knows Ken Klonsky – the man who the Quattro Novella Contest is named after. 

What a warm group of writers. It was an inspiring experience. Writers are passionate. Writers are good to be around.


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