A Poetry Sample

Horses in the Mist

When just before the day breaks free
Rips loose the ragged reign of night
The clouds descend to hug the land
Obscure the image from my sight
Of pastures where the grass is kissed
With dew, graze horses in the mist

I pause to see their equine grace
In stately stance or joyous run
With wisps of gray they're cloaked until
A morning breeze reveals the sun
As tendrils of the fog persist
Subdue the horses in the mist

This poem is not in my book. It is in the poetry anthology Sailing in the Mist of Time which was compiled from the Margaret Reid Traditional Poetry Contest. I don't have any punctuation in it mostly because I am lazy about such things. I think I did include it in the version I submitted to the contest.

This style is a rather classical, traditional style of poetry. I write in many different styles. Though I lean more toward rhyme, every now and then I like to let a good freeverse rip! The *rip* really refers to my writing it - not necessarily its impact. :-)

The inspiration for this poem came when I drove by a pasture one misty morning where horses were grazing. First thought to come to mind was - 'horses in the mist', that would be a nice poem title. Then the whole thing started pouring out. I finished it at work that morning.

The Pitfalls of Publish-On-Demand

Here are some things I learned during my attempts to get published. Poetry isn't a particularly hot genre in the publishing world. It has a niche of people that enjoy it, but it's not as mainstream as novels by, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. There are poetry and literary magazines that invite writers to submit works for review, but unless you 1. know the type of poetry they usually accept for publication, and 2. are considered worthy of being in their publication, it will be a difficult road to travel.

There are a lot of contests a writer can submit to. A good resource site for contests is WinningWriters.com. If you happen to go there, tell Adam I said "hi!" There are contests that are free to enter, but they may be demographically targeted to very narrow groups - like left-handed, 80-year old motorcycle owners of Mexican descent. There are also contests where you will be required to pay a reading fee, often based on the number of lines in your poems. If you go that route, get your entries in early as the judges literally read thousands of these and many people wait til the last minute to enter.

Another route for publishing is the vanity press. This is where the writer will pay a printer to publish his/her book. It can become quite costly as you might imagine.

Then there is the Publish-On-Demand printer. Some well known PODs are PublishAmerica, Lulu, AuthorHouse and others. You can find them on the internet.

This is how they work:

You submit your manuscript to them via email. They send you a hearty congratulations telling you they want to publish you. You are beside yourself with excitement and agree. They then send you a contract to read over and a time frame in which to ask questions. PublishAmerica's contract typically requires you to relinquish publishing rights to them for 7 years upon which time you are required to contact them and let them know you are done with them. If you don't, the contract stipulates that the rights are renewed for another 7 years automatically. That is pitfall Number One.

Number Two: you have the option of having the publisher edit your book, or you can do it. If you edit it yourself, you will have to get it done in a timeframe prescribed by the publisher. If you allow them to do it, they don't guarantee publication any sooner than 8-12 months. I didn't have a problem with this, as I preferred to do it myself anyway. My wife is a good editor as well, so she was a help with it.

PublishAmerica doesn't charge you for publishing your book as a vanity press would. They don't promote your book either. It will be up to you to do that. They will make sure it appears on Amazon, Books A Million and Barnes and Noble's websites; they will register the copyright and get you an ISBN number. They will even send out a mailer to any and all names and addresses you provide to announce your great accomplishment. This is marketing to friends and family. But they won't do anything else. There won't be any bookstore placement. There will be no PR blitz. This is pitfall Number Three, particularly for those who have no idea how to promote themselves.

PODs don't have a very good reputation with retailers for reasons I won't go into right now. Ostensibly, some of those reasons have been rectified. However, negative first impressions don't go away easily.

I have no empirical evidence of this, but I suspect it greatly: POD's standards of acceptance are probably not as high as a traditional publisher. Why should they be? They have a captive market in family and friends, right?

I found out a lot of this after I signed the contract. I went ahead with the process based on this - a common saying is when you finish your first book, put it away and get the second one published. The thinking is that the second will benefit greatly from going through the learning process of the first. I decided to get my first published anyway, and as it didn't cost me anything it seems to be a no-brainer. However, when I get my next one done, I will attempt a more traditional route - rejection letters from 100s of publishers. lol.

Happy New Year and get writing!

Cheers, Jeff

Trying to Start a Writing Career

Like many people, I have been writing since childhood. Most of the things I remember writing were for school assignments, however my mother still has samples of poetry that I wrote on a whim. I look at those today and laugh a little for their simplicity and inexperience, but everyone starts somewhere, right?

I've dabbled here and there in writing through the years. I've taken the high school and college courses in creative writing, journalism and so on. But it wasn't until last year that I actually started writing with any sort of purpose. I published my first book, From Here to Never: Time Travels from Maine, through the print-on-demand publisher, PublishAmerica.com. I'll be writing more on that later.

From Here to Never is a compilation of poems, song lyrics, and prose. It is over 180 pages long. I created the cover for it and did all the editing. You can find more information about it here: www.thejeffhowe.com. Since publication, I have accumulated enough work to fill a second book. I am still in the process of trying to market the first book, though, so I won't be launching any new publishing projects soon.

Additionally, I have started writing a story. Short story? Novel? I don't know yet, and really won't until it develops further. Til next time, cheers! Jeff