I’ll be at the Locally Grown Words Book Fair at East End Market in Orlando’s Audubon Park next weekend with plenty of copies of Beauty Lessons, Flame and Behind Every Door for sale (Hold Still will not be out till March). Signed books make great holiday gifts, and dozens of local authors will be on hand. The event will be Sunday, Dec. 15, from noon to 4 p.m., at 3201 Corrine Drive. I hope to see you there. And it gets even better — a new independent bookstore, Bookmark It, is opening next month at East End Market. It will specialize in local authors.
Come celebrate the birth of my fourth book and help me kick off the spring season of Literature Out Loud’s Culture Pop series, which will be outdoors at the Maitland Art Center. It’s a lovely place my son and I used to explore during bike rides when we lived in Maitland, and I’ll read in the outdoor reading room. The evening’s theme will be “Roll, Repeat,” and it will feature the art of printmaking, with an art exhibit. And yes, my friends, there will be a cash bar. And a band!
Friday, March 14 — 7 to 11 p.m.
My fourth poetry collection, Hold Still, a full-length book at 73 pages, is coming out soon from Main Street Rag. It will be released in March 2014, but you can buy an advance copy at a discounted price of $9 plus shipping for a limited time if you order from the online bookstore at the link above and pay with PayPal. The regular price is $14. (You can also order with a credit card, but the discount isn’t much.) If I sell enough advance copies, the release date will be moved up. The link also takes you to sample poems.
If you’re local and would rather buy a signed copy from me, that’s fine. I’ll have a book release party and some exciting readings coming up, and I’ll share details when I have them. I hope to see many of you in the audience!
Hold Still means the world to me. Writing the poems helped me survive cancer, and I’m tickled that the publisher used a photo I took for the cover. I was learning to operate my fancy camera from work and went to the lake near my house to practice. I sat in the road to shoot a close-up of an agapanthus flower and a bee happened by. I am awfully fond of that bee!
I’ll be reading in the nation’s oldest city, at Flagler College, as part of the Florida Literary Arts Coalition’s Other Words Conference.
I’ll share the spotlight with talented poets Susan Lilley and Suzannah Gilman on Friday, Nov. 8, from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m. in the Solarium in Ponce Hall. Our reading will be sponsored by Finishing Line Press, which recently published chapbooks by the three of us (mine is Flame, Susan’s is Satellite Beach and Suzannah’s is I Will Meet You at the River).
Learn more about the Other Words conference here.
