Newsletter #39 — Add a Poem
July 15, 2022
Newsletter #39 — Add a Poem
Authors Guild Webinar — Last month I attended an Authors Guild webinar focusing on author newsletters and how to provide content that people enjoy reading. At one point one of the panelists suggested something like: "If all else fails, throw in a poem."
That made me laugh.
But, just in case occasional poems are what newsletter readers crave, here's a poem I wrote years ago.
Brain Games
Crossword's cagey,
clues oblique.
Scrabble's tricky,
tiles sleek.
Sudoku's scheming
numbers scattered.
Ken Ken's crushing —
brain is battered.
Reader Review — In this recent Goodreads review I like that the reviewer is a person who doesn't usually read YA, but who read The F Words and loved it.
Exit Velocity — I wrote to thirteen publishers about my adult novel Exit Velocity. This is not a lot: I often write to thirty publishers about a particular title. But I found only thirteen who I thought would be interested in a contemporary novel in which the protagonist is a Marxist. Thus far two publishers have said no to the query letter; two have gone past their respond-by deadline, which means they aren't interested; and two have asked for the manuscript. That leaves seven I haven't heard from. Yet.
My Writing Life: 3 — In my July 1 blog I talk about my experiences in writing filmstrips and listening to narrators mispronounce "mayor."
The F Words: The Gift of Fire — My July 15 blog is, I think, an important one, talking about how one generation passes experience on to the next.