America’s Birthday!

About a month an a half until things get really, real, real! First, my third release will be out as an ebook Aug 18. “That Which Gets in the Way” began as a tiny collection of ten poems at the very beginning of 2017. I never had plans to publish it, but it grew into my largest collection yet, and I don’t want to rob the world of… whatever it provides, I guess. It’s all recent and new. Not only that, but it gets about as dark as dark can get.

I feel like I should explain a little bit of the context surrounding this. My first ebook/paperback, “Couch to Couch”, was a collection of poems from a long time ago. Back when I wrote it, the tools didn’t exist to publish it in the way that I was able to do this year. Having even a single paperback on Amazon is a monumental step for me. I don’t give a shit if it’s just self published.

The second ebook I put out, “Four”, is another work that I wrote a long time before these tools were available. It went from pencil on paper to being slowly typed up years later, and now it’s available on those weird little almost tablet reader things across the globe. Soon, that will be on paperback, too.

I’m definitely excited about those two works being available to the public. “That Which Gets in the Way”, though, is all new stuff. I skipped the backlog of poetry I have strewn about my apartment and went with something totally fresh. These poems were all written in 2017. My favorite thing about them is that they were written during one hell of an emotional roller coaster. The first ten poems were written when I was deep within the pits of depression. As a side tidbit, instead of using the word “sucks”, my grandmother would say “That’s the pits.”, which I think holds much more meaning.

Anyway, I just wanted to convey the weight that this new collection carries. It documents an epic emotional journey. It walks you step by step through my grappling with reality and trying to find the way back to being able to access the Truth, then put it on paper. It had been a long time since I’d written poetry before I started work on this. I feel like, now that I’ve worked all that out, my next collection of poems will be better than anything before it.

That said, while I’ll always be writing poetry, the upcoming months (or year?) are about finishing my novels and short stories. I know this has turned into a “what to expect from X” post, but it’s all relevant to my pushing forth. I’ve got one more ebook and two paperbacks to publish this year. Once we’ve all gracefully transitioned into 2018, we’ll hopefully see at least one of those novels and the collection of short stories.

Thanks for keeping up on all this!