Manuscript Update: March 5, 2014

I have a title for my book, or at least I think I do.  I am not one for a lot of tinkering with titles, so when I get a title I like, I tend to stick with it---sometimes to my embarrassment.  When I named my book, Hobble Creek Almanac, this was some time after I had heard of and read the marvelous book, Blood Almanac, by Sandy Longhorn.  The strange part was that this was the title.  It felt right.  It was and is right.  Still, I feel a little sheepish because I am certain the idea of an almanac came to me from an unrelated  direction but I know people are going to say, "yeah, right."  It happened to me before.  Another friend and another book.  I thought I had a great title and when my friend reminded me of her book title and how close mine was to hers, I immediately changed mine.  I was embarrassed to say the least.

This new book is going to be called:

Lake of Fire:

Landscape Meditation Poems

from the Great Basin Deserts of Nevada

I have approximately 45-50 pages complete, and the poems I am writing for the book now, are coming slowly, more methodically.  This is what usually happens to me towards the end of a manuscript.  

I have to make one final declaration before this goes a lot further.  About half of the poems from this manuscript, so far, are reclaimed poems---one offs I have been writing for quite a while.  Some were already ready to go when I found them again, but many have had to be re-tooled, re-imagined for what I have in mind for this book.  

I am also considering what good an introduction to the book might be, whether it will come off as an earnest attempt to say something about the book or an exercise in ego.  I am writing an introduction right now, but I do not know whether it will stick around or be gutted from the final edit of this book.  Who knows?  It may find its way in and out throughout the remainder of the process depending on my mood.