The Goddess Speaks. Oil, 12” x 12”

I have been working on this manuscript for some time with the Norwegian Artist, Irene Christensen. The painting seen here, “The Goddess Speaks,” is a candidate for the cover art. There are more than 30 full-color paintings, many oil, that inspired my poems.

It was a challenge finding a publisher who wanted to publish the book because the four-color art is more expensive to produce than the average poetry collection. Not many publishers even publish visuals with poetry. The final cost of the book will be more thatn the average poetry book. We wound up submitting simultaneously to four publishers, and getting offers from two, Finishing Line Press and Shanti Arts. We decided to go with Shanti Arts.

For those of you who follow my blog, you have been with me on my journey to publication of this manuscript. It was important to me to publish this manuscript as it’s a complete collection of eco-poems, inspired by the paintings of women at the heart of the movement to preserve the environment. Like recycling and going with green energy, as an artist, I wanted to contribute to the literature on the environmental crisis.

I didn’t even want to tell people about my upcoming book publication until I had a signed contract. Now I do. The next step is refining the accepted manuscript and making it the best it can be. I rely on my writer friends to read and make suggestions. I don’t always use these suggestions, but it helps to have another pair of eyes looking at my poems and suggesting what’s strong and what’s stopped them as they were reading.

For those of you who followed my blog through the development of this manuscript, my first collaborative effort with an artist, continue to follow me though the final steps before publication and beyond.

I will blog about the publication process each week. Follow me here.