Team,
I have e-mailed my portion of an anthology I am participating in for your review. It is to be published in April using Amazon's Create Space.
A Read Local group was created in Jamestown last year with two other local authors and we decided to create
BBK, Three Authors of Jamestown, A Collection of Poetry, Essays and Short Fiction. I am providing the poetry.
I attached a pdf draft of my section. I also attached drafts of the front and back cover for reference. The photos were taken in my library and 20% of what we sell will go to the libraries capital campaign.
This has been an amazing experience and I encourage everyone of you to look to local partners for sharing publishing ideas. Keith Norman, the K in the title, has published a number of books with Create Space and took over the design and formatting process. We will have our first reading at the University of Jamestown on April 9th.
I am very interested in what you have to say about the concept, the cover design, and my work. The poetry covers 1972 to 2015.
About 25 pages of stuff.
Bill
I love the concept of, “Three Authors of Jamestown: A collection of poetry, essays and short fiction.” This is a wonderful path to your local audience. I also like the pic on the back. You guys look like trouble, but in a good way. I want to know what three gents who look like that have to say. Are you the respectable one? Or is that tie and clean cut look deceiving?
ReplyDeleteThe big BBK on the front has a nice ring to it. I like the library books in the background since the library will be benefiting from any sales. I think I also like that the books are slightly out of focus so you can tell what they are, but you leave the focus on the authors. I wondered how it would look if it were less focused than the cover with white text but more in focus than the cover with black text. I’m not a graphic artist but I also wonder if there is something more that can be done with author's names emphasize them a bit more and make them look more interesting. I don’t know what, maybe some kind of shading or shadow effect?
I don’t why, but I liked the cover with the white text more than the cover with black text. Was it because the text was at an angle? Was it that the pic was more in focus? That white stuck out more in this case? I don’t know. It just appealed more to my particular amateur eyes.
I’m not a poet but I like what you have. When my wife married me she was excited that she was marrying a guy who liked to write because she looked forward to getting love poems. After all our years of marriage, this Valentine’s Day she got my best work. “You look good in red, you look good in pink, life without you would really stink.” So although I may not be qualified to comment on you poetry I’ll give you some impressions. First of all, 1972 to 2015 is quite a spread of work. Congratulations! Your poetry in general leaves me with the impression that you are very much in tune with who you are, like really, as in you don’t have any doubt. Maybe that’s not true but that’s how it comes across to me. You are also not afraid to express in your poetry how you see the world based upon who you are. You also use cool words like, Velikovsky as in, “Evolution and Velikovsky.” I wanted to know what the heck a velikovsky was so I searched it. Are you referring to Immanuel Velikovsky the Russion-Jewish scholar. Interesting guy.
“The Boy, The Crow, The Giant” has wonderful themes. Kids will identify with the need for friendship, and with coping with loss. Perhaps it’s because I identify with this story so well that it strikes me as some of the best writing of yours that I’ve read.
Alan, Thank you, thank you. One quick response concerning Velikovsky. His book intrigued me. "Worlds in Collision" was first published in 1950. The book postulated that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth (an actual collision is not mentioned). The object changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes that were mentioned in early mythologies and religions around the world.*Wikipedia. By the way, there is no scientific that EV was correct.
ReplyDeleteBill,
ReplyDeleteI have fond, vivid memories from my first couple of residencies of listening to you read from THE BOY, THE CROW, THE GIANT--and now that I've had it before me to read, I know why! (BTW, have I read any of this story before for WriteFu?) This story has an almost mythic feel to it, with sunflower fields (I've seen small sunflower fields and they dazzled my mind, so to read about them here is awesome!) and a boy who can perhaps move things with his mind and who calls himself "Magic Man." There's a crow that can talk in many voices but is searching for his own, it seems. And there's a giant of a boy whose size has been more of a curse, it seems, than a blessing (costing him, according to his father, his brother and mother, as well as the friends he made in the circus). The time (circa 1940) and setting also add to this mythic feel, and so does the fact that these three characters are all dealing with death and grief. I get the sense that these three characters need each other.
I also love that how each of these first three chapters leads up to the moments in the graveyard when these three characters meet. It's so awesome how the story returns to this moment and then carries the story forward a bit. Very cool.
Have you sent this book out at all? I'd have kept reading beyond these three chapters, that's for sure!
I think it's a great idea that you talk about--and show--translating prose into poetry. Anyone reading the book would get a sense of how you'd teach or lead a group during a visit. And I like that you use your own brilliant writing to show what translating prose into poetry can result in.
Also, I must add that the writing in this three chapters is gorgeous.
I really enjoyed your poetry, too--so many lines and images to savor! I was wondering, the phrase "small sailor" seems to be one of special significance. Perhaps write a poem about it? Also, there a couple of great short poems, so I thought I'd mention the Lilliput Review--it's a tiny journal that takes short poems (9 lines or less, I think).
This looks like a great book--as Alan said, a wonderful path to your local audience, and to anyone who gets their hands on it! How are you going about marketing it?
Great work, Bill, and thank you for sharing!
Andy,
ReplyDeleteAs a result of your comments, I just sent a query to Jodell Sadler. Any suggestions for other agents or publishers?
Thanks for the comments and the suggestion of the Lilliput Review.
Bill
That's awesome you sent a query to Jodell!
ReplyDeleteOff the top of my head, I think of the book I'm reading (and really, really liking)--"Hoodoo" by Ronald Smith. It has some similar qualities to yours--it's historical (set in the 1930s, I think) and has some possibly fantastic elements. It's a Clarion book. So maybe the editor might find your story appealing? Let me think about that one more, though, and get back to you.
I'd be more than happy to read the full manuscript and give you feedback!
Bill,
ReplyDeleteYou are an amazing poet! Two pieces in particular haunted me. "Who Lives Here Now" is just so moving, so poignant. "Armor," on the other hand, I've read over and over, trying to puzzle out exactly what it means. I wonder if the "two ironclad ships with the same armor
that I wear" are two parents and a child, all protecting their emotions with a kind of armor; the family destroyed by some event: "they had a life before worlds collided..." But then I read the last stanza and think I've missed the point entirely. Your other poems are much more literal and maybe this one is, too.
So happy to see another version of the Corvus/Ivan/Lucas story! I remember workshopping it. The sunflowers give this such an otherworldly, yes, mythic feel. I love the idea of them turning to watch events. Within the book, I love how you followed the chapters with the poems, giving us the three characters' first-person wind-across-the-back-of-the-neck experience. Will you do some kind of prose to poetry exercise at your reading? I hope so!!
I would love to read more of this book. I'm sure my reading wouldn't be as close as Andy's but perhaps I could offer something.
Carolyn