Hello, hello, friends! It’s another beautiful Saturday!
Today, we’re talking about author meet and greets and my new book.
As yet, I haven’t been able to attend a meet and greet simply because I started publishing books in the middle of Covid, and very few places are allowing in-person meet and greets or book signings to happen. That’s fine. Better to be safe than sorry, I suppose. However, these meet and greets have been at the top of my list of things to do to promote myself and my work, and now I am getting the opportunity, though rather unconventionally.
If you know me personally or know where I’m from, you’ll know that there is a highway that runs through the southern edge of my hometown: Highway 36. Every year, there is a big “Treasure Hunt” set up that runs the entirety of Highway 36, and towns along and near the highway have garage sales all weekend long. It’s honestly a pretty big deal, and there are people from all over that travel quite a distance along the highway to search for treasures at these garage sales.
This year, since my parents have started a new business, they’re setting up a booth, and I was asked to help my mother man it. At first, I was just going to sit there for three days. Later, though, I realized that this could be a great opportunity for me to meet some people and perhaps spread the word about my book. Thus, I will be having my first every author meet and greet during this Highway 36 Treasure Hunt. Unconventional? Yes. I’m excited nonetheless! Check out my flyer below if you’d like more details or information.
So, in my excitement about this new adventure into the meet and greet world, I made merch. Along with copies of my books that you can purchase (signed upon request), there will be a sample booklet for sale that contains one of my short stories from Unfettered. I am hand-crafting artsy cards with poetry excerpts from The Secrets Behind My Eyes and my upcoming release, Dear You, that you can purchase if you’d like. You’ll have to come and find me at my meet and greet to see what they look like. Or check my social media. I’ll probably upload a few photos there. Additionally, I made up bookmarks and business cards, and I will have special little merch baggies made up, too. Pictures of everything and updates about the meet and greet will be posted on my social media next weekend during the Treasure Hunt. You can’t tell that I’m excited, can you?
This is, of course, your formal invitation (not that you needed one) to come and see me during the Treasure Hunt! I look forward to meeting all of you! And who knows? If this goes well, perhaps I’ll do some more events this fall as time allows. 😊
Now, on to my new book. You may or may not have seen my post on social media this week, but I am releasing a poetry book, like I mentioned above, this fall. October is the tentative month as of now, and I’m not releasing a specific date until the end of September as I have a few more details to iron out. Assuming all goes according to plan, though, you should know the release date in a few weeks, and we will have a full cover reveal shortly as well.
I want to specifically talk about Dear You for a few minutes, because it’s much, much different from The Secrets Behind My Eyes in two very specific ways. One of the biggest differences is the fact that each poem is a letter.
Now, if you’ll remember, in The Secrets Behind My Eyes, there is a poem entitled Dear You. You’ll notice that this poem shares the name of my new book, and that is because this new book was inspired by that poem. After the release (over a year ago! Can you believe that?), Dear You was the poem I kept coming back to over and over because I liked it so much. I liked that format of talking in a relatively generic way to the reader while still sharing a relatable point or topic. So, after much consideration and questioning whether or not this would work, I decided to write a book that is only letters written to an unnamed “you,” from “me.” One of my goals with this book is to give my readers the ability to address these poems to their own unnamed “you,” whoever fits the topic of each poem in their own lives.
How, you ask? Well, that’s where the other major difference comes in. While The Secrets Behind My Eyes was a mishmash of poetry styles and rhyming schemes, Dear You is different. It’s written with performance poetry in mind and contains a lot of mid-line rhyming, making it more melodic and dynamic as it is read aloud. So, yes. That does mean that this book is being written with the intent of being read aloud. That doesn’t mean you have to, but I hope that you’ll want to experience what the poetry sounds as spoken word.
Which means that getting the audio version of this book done will be very important to me. Yes, I still need to finish the audio for Unfettered, and I will. I started on it right before we moved, and I’m anxious to be able to finish it. It may have to take a backseat, though, while I work on audio for Dear You as I want to market this new book with audio, much like I’ve done with some of the poetry from my first book. Fun fact: For newsletter subscribers, I’ll be putting together a poetry reading video, and I am in the process of considering what it might take to set up a YouTube channel and/or Tik Tok page. I have a really good feeling about this concept and idea, so I’m hoping to get my readers as excited as I am.
Well, now that I’ve written far more and given you many more pictures than I believe I ever have for a blog post, I’ll let you get back to your day. Thanks for sticking around and reading. I hope to see you at my meet and greet this coming weekend, and I’ll be back with a new blog post in a few weeks. Have a great day!