Sometimes Plans Change

Here it is, finally!

Originally, I wanted this project to be traditionally published. I wanted the validation and perceived credibility of having an agent who believed it was worthy of being seen and who championed it with publishers who then confirmed her beliefs and mine and took the chance and put it out there. For years I worked toward that goal and never really got any traction—in no small part because I just didn’t seem to know the right places to go to find it. I entered poetry competitions with my favorite pieces only to stack up the rejection e-mails. I crafted query letters for agents and edited and edited and edited some more. I tried to build a meager social media following, something I discovered publishers wanted a writer to have in advance, and it seemed like at every turn someone was asking if I had considered self-publishing.

Earlier this year I was at a local bookstore and just stood and looked around for a few minutes. How many thousands of different books stood on the shelves before me? How many amazing books hid in those stacks but would sell only modest numbers because the stars just didn’t align quite right for that story? As I stood there, I thought about how many brilliant stories really never even made it out of the writer’s hard drive for one reason or another, how many never even got the chance to sit on those shelves, and that was when my nihilistic bend took over, and I made up my mind to just do it myself. Even if the project were picked up by a traditional publisher, most poetry books just don’t sell many copies. So what the heck, why not just publish it myself? So I did, and here it is.

I have written poetry for as long as I can remember, some of it worthy of sharing, some of it not. Depending on the day I read it, that judgement changes. Regardless, over the years, writing poetry has become a catharsis for me, a method for processing change and a way of expressing grief and wonder and awe.

Hemingway’s famous quote, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” rings true for my poetry. Those collections of words are, in many ways, my heart and soul laid bare. Presenting them to the reader feels vulnerable but also inevitable.

With each loss I have weathered, with each of life’s trials, I have considered what purpose it might serve. At times I have accepted the heartache as a natural part of life. At others, I have wailed at the injustice and questioned the nature of the cosmos. “There is no why. There only is.” became a mantra for me for a long while. On this side of the river, though, I have found a purpose in it all, whether it is the purpose originally intended or no.

Because I have lived through heartache—because I have traveled through the night and seen that precious pink light creep over the distant horizon—I can, with confidence, tell someone who is so far buried in the darkness that there really is light again one day if only they choose to put one step in front of the other. Sometimes, I might even be able to hold their hand as they go through it. That is why I choose to share the works in Fragile Things. No one can traverse the darkness for us. We have to take each painful step ourselves, but we do not have to take it alone.

Fragile Things is my way of reminding you that you are not alone. It is also a celebration of all the things that are that pink light on the horizon, the things that kept me going along the way.

If it sounds like something that might resonate with you, pick up your copy in the store.

*****

Many thanks to Marc Cameron for the blurb on the back. He is the author of the Arliss Cutter series, and the Jericho Quinn series, and wrote the Tom Clancy novels from 2017-2023. He and his lovely wife continue to be some of the nicest, most generous people I have come across in the book world.