Published on Kindle

I finally completed the formatting of my poetry book and it is available through Amazon.  This is the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KKRUOF4

The poetry in this book is from a very turbulent period in my life, 1979-1985, when I was at the end of my marriage.  By clicking on the link on Amazon, you can read the introduction and first few poems.  The full ebook is $2.99.  I also have an excerpt available there for $.99.

The cover artwork reflects my time living in Belgium (1969-1974). The words come from one of my poems when I was in a reflective mood, thinking about that time.  The original is an acrylic painting, 11" X 14".

Poetry Excerpt on Kindle

Excerpt - this link will take you to the Amazon site where you can buy the book (on Kindle)

I have spent some time this week learning how to convert my text to a format for an e-book.  I decided to put up an excerpt first since the original book (from 1990) is quite long and out of print. I did a presentation recently to a high school group on my journey to creativity and included a poetry reading as well as talking about my earlier life.  I showed the students my paintings and spoke about turning negatives into positive actions and the effect of choices on life.

I took some books out of the library on e-book publishing but did not find them that helpful. I bought the book "Publishing E-Books for Dummies" by Ali Luke and that inspired me to take action myself.  Now that I have the book excerpt on Kindle (my first goal), I will continue with making it available on Nook and in other formats.

Eventually I hope to convert the full book to e-book form as well as my chapbook. I found the formatting to take more time than I expected.  I kept finding little glitches that the conversion software did not get right.  I'm glad I know some HTML code so I could see what was going on. (It did not like hyphens and copyright symbols.)

While my original book and chapbook contain poetry from many years ago, I plan on compiling the more recent poems into small collections and making them available on e-book as well. Meanwhile, I worked a bit more on my painting of the catalpa blossoms (last post) and hope to have it finished for the next one. I'm not sure what I'll start on next, but the ideas are flowing . . .

The painting on the cover is my acrylic painting of a canal in Leuven, Belgium. The title of the collection is from one of my poems that is a reflection of my time living there (1969-1974).