Earlier this year I got word that my manuscript of poems - the one I had worked on last summer at a little cabin at a State Park, courtesy of an Individual Artist grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts - had been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press.
Oh, the excitement!
For the next couple months I worked on finding artwork for the cover (that gorgeous photo of the running dog, aka Hank the Wonder Dog, was one of many options from photographer Tricia Halvorson Lunski), writing a bio, and so on.
The pre-publication pre-ordering period began in June and continues until the end of July, and those numbers help determine how many total copies the press will print of the book itself - it has been exciting to get the sales reports each week and see the numbers of pre-orders climbing.
It still seems like a long time to wait - September 12 - until the book finally starts winging its way to everyone who has purchased a copy, and to all the other places it will go.
It is great to have poems published like this, and I've worked toward this for a long time, but to my surprise the greatest benefit may be the burst of energy it has given to my writing life. I don't think I had quite realized how fallow that part of me has lain since our move to ND. I've missed the frequent jolts of energy my writing groups in the Twin Cities gave me - apparently they were even more effective than I knew.
But, I feel jolted again now. I've been writing, looking into the market, submitting poems and more manuscripts. It feels good.
