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Friday, January 14, 2011

From the snow cottage

I’m still catching up on straightening my little world in the wake of flood and Christmas and company. More FAFSA and post-flood work and snow-shoveling (when will these flittering, glittering stars give us a rest?) and other things-that-simply-must-be-done lie ahead. Meanwhile I am still writing with much pleasure on my The Book of the Red King. But I need to be reading other manuscripts and galleys and revising the book I’ve promised to send out this month—and the month is almost half over without a start. Being a Southerner among the Yanks means that I get a lot of work done in winter, but I may have too much this year, even for the obsessed.

When I’m not busy and snow plows are not jingling past, I’m recording poems for magazines and for the 60th birthday retrospective of Clive Hicks-Jenkins with my new microphone—thank you, Paul Digby! Poems will be up soon in various places.

With three books of poetry and three books of fiction coming out, I feel that I grasp less than ever—given how fast marketing and promotion are changing with the death of tours and increase of online shenanigans—how to serve my books once they are published. I’m trying to think and plan in my little bits of empty time. Getting the word out: peddlerdom does not come naturally to me, and in the face of public events, such private efforts often feel like ashes, frail and insignificant.

I have made my gigantic author questionnaire for my next book, The Throne of Psyche, and I have collected review outlets and blurbers and so on. But I’m open to any bright new thoughts or to requests from bloggers and writers who want to mention the book or receive information about it (leave a note or email me.)

Off I whirl to rebound away my TMJ and Christmas cookies, to sort the mounds of household refuse, and best of all to write.

Peace to you!


Photograph: The snow igloo is courtesy of Michael Faes and sxc.hu. Thank you, Michael! He's in Switzerland, but his house of snow could be here in the low hills by the lake. I like its funny touque-shape and little, secretive door.

2 comments:

  1. I too love this snow house, and would love to curl up with a book inside it for a while, as I did as a child in my own inept efforts at snow architecture.
    RE: your book, you know I'll always do what I can to get it into the public eye. My blog is too sparsely read to do you much good, but if you think of anything else, or if I do, I'd be glad to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm still at the point of asking for advice and doing author questionnaires and making lists...

    Yes, it would be charming to play in that little house.

    ReplyDelete

Alas, I must once again remind large numbers of Chinese salesmen and other worldwide peddlers that if they fall into the Gulf of Spam, they will be eaten by roaming Balrogs. The rest of you, lovers of grace, poetry, and horses (nod to Yeats--you do not have to be fond of horses), feel free to leave fascinating missives and curious arguments.