Surprise Book Announcement: Imperfect Lodgings Available Now!

This is almost as much of a surprise to me as it is to you, but I already have another book in the world. As usual with any kind of publishing news, I’m announcing it here first, so that both subscribers and casual readers of my blog are the first to know.

What is this book I speak of? As you can see in the cover image above, it’s a poetry collection called Imperfect Lodgings. Poetry has been a refuge for me since forever, and I knew I’d eventually get around to publishing a volume of my own poems (beyond the chapbook I printed years ago using the markup language LaTeX (the chapbook was titled Mood Swings and Other Wild Rides, by the way)). The thing is, I didn’t expect to publish Imperfect Lodgings until next year at the earliest.

What changed my mind? Put simply, I realized that the manuscript was complete and I had designed a perfectly serviceable cover. In other words, what was I waiting for? I think there might actually be an answer to that question, too. Though I’ve been publishing poetry and fiction for almost fifteen years, I’ve never put out a collection of my poetry before (Mood Swings was printed in a micro-batch and distributed only to a handful of close friends). It’s a little nerve-wracking because my poetry lays me bare in ways that my fiction doesn’t. Stir in the fact that there is a very small—though discerning—audience for poetry, and I'm left with precious little incentive to publish a collection like this.

The inescapable truth, however, is that I'm proud of the poems that make up Imperfect Lodgings, and now they want their freedom. That’s what publishing feels like to me, letting an imprisoned thing escape into a more brightly lit world than I can ever hope to provide.

For those of you who are drawn to the horror genre, I should point out that there are a number of horror-themed poems here. Two of them have been published in Poetry Showcase anthologies put out by the Horror Writers Association, and several of them first saw the light of day in the pages of various issues of The Literary Hatchet. So although I don’t think of Imperfect Lodgings as a collection of horror poetry through and through, the genre certainly is represented between its covers.

Now it’s time to let the collection speak for itself. I won’t be doing much promotion for this one, so if poetry is your cup of tea and you know others who are similarly afflicted, please don’t hesitate to spread the word. If you haven’t already clicked on any of the Imperfect Lodgings links above (or the one in this very sentence), feel free to click here or on the cover image above to be taken to the book’s order page on Amazon. As with all my books, you might be able to order a copy through your favorite independent bookstore as well.

The photograph I used for the cover, by the way, was taken at Highgate Cemetery in London over twenty years ago with a fixed-lens Zeiss Ikon that my dad taught me how to use. Who knew it would one day serve to lure people into a book of my poetry?