I’ll start with a confession.  I’ve never particularly liked poetry.  I read everything quickly, skipping words and phrases that seem extraneous.  I want to get right to the heart of a story, a description, an insight.  I rarely linger.  I rarely pause to reflect.  This is odd coming from an author whose novels tend to be long and descriptive, but my attention span is short.  My mind resembles a hummingbird. 

I was not a literature major in college, nor did I study writing, so my acquaintance with poetry is meager.  Then I had the good fortune to hear poet Billy Collins lecture at Chautauqua Institution several years ago.  I was entranced.

Recently my husband told me about an idea for daily meditation.  Read a poem, then find a word, a phrase, an idea to reflect on that day.  Note he did not say analyze or memorize, nor beat to death?  For many of us that’s all poetry has ever meant.  Tear a poem apart, word by word, find its inner essence by destroying it.  Agonize over the poet’s intent, then, in a sing-song voice, recite the words to a classroom of uninterested peers, stumbling with anxiety.

Billy Collins, who was our national poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, wants to change that.  In conjunction with the Library of Congress, he helped create the Poetry 180 website referring to the 180 classroom days in most American high schools.  Included on the website are a poem for each of those days, chosen with a high school audience in mind and chosen to be read out loud.  These are accessible poems, deep and meaningful but not meant to be dissected.  They are meant to be loved at first glance, caressed, absorbed.  They are meant to change us and change our understanding of the world and the genre.

Every Sunday I’d like to explore a poem on this blog.  For those of you who want to join us, I’ll be posting a link to a poem, either one from the Poetry 180 website, or perhaps one from The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor or another source.  We won’t be analyzing, and unless you’re so taken with a poem you can’t resist, we won’t be memorizing.  We’ll be reading and reflecting.

What’s your part?  Just slow down a little and come along for the read.  If you’d like to tell us what the poem means in your life, or what word or phrase you’ve chosen to reflect on, or where those reflections have taken you, we would be honored.  But there are no demands or imperatives.   The photo on today’s blog will appear each Sunday along with a poem’s link.  Out of respect for copyright, I won’t be posting the poem of the day on the blog, but it will be just one easy click away.  If I have something to add, I will.   If you have something to add, please do.

Today’s poem is entitled Introduction to Poetry, and it’s by Billy Collins himself.  Come “walk inside the poem’s room” with us today and every Sunday.  You will be welcome.

Today I’m on my way to Hamburg, Germany, where I’ll be doing publicity for my German TV movies, plus spending time with my German publisher, CORA Verlag.  I wrote this blog in preparation, but I’ll catch you up on my trip next Friday.  Meantime enjoy.

Let me tell you about my secret addiction.  Nothing illegal, mind you, not even shameful.   I’m hopelessly attached to the Merriam-Webster online game of the day.  Along with a cup of coffee, a half-hour walk with beagle Nemo, my daily email from my good friend Casey Daniels, a bowl of my husband’s muesli and a peek at my Facebook page, I have to play whatever Merriam-Webster cooked up for me that day before I can hunker down and write.

The M-W site has a cycle of five different games, and while we wait for the day’s game to load, we can peruse the site’s Top Ten Lists, their Trend Watch (did you know Charlie Sheen popularized the word “charlatan?”) or their Word Well Used.  Since writers love words, this pause in my day is a good one.

Recently the Top Ten List has been “Ten Rare and Amusing Insults.”  Always on a search for oaths my characters can mutter that will not get me in trouble with the Four-Letter-Word-Police–who are alive and well and happy to tell me how disappointed they are in my occasional lapse–I paged through, looking for new possibilities.

What springs to mind when you read “cockalorum?”  And yes, several things, but this is a G-rated blog.  For our purposes today a cockalorum is a boastful, strutting little fellow, like my rooster here.  I’d say Brownie Kefauver, in my Ministry is Murder series might deserve this one.  Level your finger and shout:  “You, cockalorum, you!”  Bring anybody to mind?  Do you know anybody in your immediate life who fits the cockalorum bill?  I’ve filed the word away, although something tells me I’ll have to write fantasy or at least medieval historicals to use it.  The word hails from an obsolete Dutch verb, and until I have an obsolete Dutchman strutting through my novel, cockalorum‘s probably going to stay on the shelf.

Then there’s lickspittle.  I’ve heard that one, haven’t you?  The definition is pretty easy to come up with if you break it into two words.  Know any lickspittles?  Actually, now that I think about it, poor Brownie Kefauver (this is “Dump on Brownie” day) fits this one, as well.  When he’s not strutting he’s, well, licking spittle. 

Smellfungus was word number three, an excessive fault-finder.  I like this one for Brownie’s wife, Hazel, who, alas (this is a mystery series, remember) didn’t live past book three. 

Snollygoster was word number four.  Now that’s a word I could sink my teeth into.  “You wretched snollygoster, Bernie Madoff, you took my home, my income, and my little dog Blue, all because I trusted you with Granny’s millions!”  Of course Bernie Madoff is no joke and deserved a worse insult, but he fits the “unprincipled but shrewd,” definition like his hands fit his kidskin gloves.  Pettifogger, another word on the list, is similar, only it refers to lawyers.  Since I have three (lawyers, not pettifoggers)  in my immediate family, I will not comment further.

There are more words, and more lists at the Merriam Webster website.  If you love words, have fun with these.  Maybe I’ll meet you between “Ten Unusually Long and Interesting Words,” and “Ten Words with Remarkable Origins.”  Just don’t expect to see too many of these wonderful words used in my novels.  I’m not a ninnyhammer or a mumpsimus, but I do believe in clarity and brevity.  I don’t want you to read my work with a dictionary in hand.  Not even a Merriam-Webster.

Last Friday at Southern Exposure I posted the original covers of my novels Once More With Feeling and Twice Upon A Time, and showed the way the eBook cover for Twice Upon A Time grew from stock photography to finished product.

Twice Upon A Time was the easiest.  I immediately found several photographs I liked, including one of a pregnant woman holding a sunflower over her swollen belly. It might well have been a good fit, but there were two problems.  One, it didn’t suggest the hard-won “victory” of Mary Kate’s new life.  The second problem would have been harder.  We wanted two photos that were connected, at least in composition.  Finding a photo with a segment of a woman’s body (to mirror the pregnant belly) that said anything important and was also visually intriguing?  Very difficult.

After we chose the photograph for Twice, we started a search for a photo with similarities for Once.  One, we wanted a woman with her back turned, the way Mary Kate’s turned away.  Two, instead of a sunflower field, we needed a city view.  In Once More With Feeling, the heroine finds herself living the life of a sexy news anchor she has admired, even envied.  She leaves behind her mid-life crisis, and the upper-class Long Island existence that revolves around her famous architect husband, and plummets into the world of tabloid television news.  Of course, “leaves behind” isn’t quite true–but you have to read the book to see how that unfolds.

Initial Idea

After serious searching, we found this photo.  It was “on sale,” though still quite expensive, and I grabbed it so we wouldn’t lose it.  Then the problems began.  The woman isn’t dressed stylishly enough, and she’s not the seductress that Gypsy Dugan, my news anchor is.  Plus the more we looked at the photo, the less it suggested Manhattan and the more a city in Eastern Europe.  Nothing Tina could do to it gave us the feeling we wanted.

Goodbye photograph, hello lesson on not jumping at sales.

Right woman but not the right scene

Next we found this one.   The woman looks to be the right age.  Her hair’s dark and the way she’s holding it off her neck is interesting, and seductive.  But the scene?  Nothing interesting or arresting about it.   Tina promised that wasn’t a problem.  Find a Manhattan skyline scene I liked and we’d combine the two.  I showed our first take to my friend author Diane Chamberlain who thought our model was scratching her head.  Yes, indeed, the finger does look as if she’s digging it into her scalp.  Yikes!  Tina said, no problem, she could fix this, as well, and she did.

Skyline Photo used on cover

We found the perfect sunset skyline scene only to discover that it, like the rejected initial idea, was extremely expensive.  We found another that was more reasonable, and the result was just as pleasing.  Tina worked her magic with fonts and editing and the new Once More With Feeling was ready for publication.

Current eBook cover of Once More With Feeling

We’ve learned a lot in the process.  For one thing night covers are difficult to see once they’ve been “shrunk” to the size of an Amazon or Barnes and Noble thumbnail.  While the cover of Once More With Feeling perfectly captures the story, and looks wonderful full size, the smallest versions blur.  Of course, all along the way, my patient, forbearing daughter-in-law pitched in, made changes without complaining and suggestions with tact and style.  I was supremely lucky to have her talents at my disposal as well as those of Ted at Dellaster Design, who formatted the books for the Nook and the Kindle.

Who knew becoming my own publisher would turn out to be such a challenge? After all this?  Now Tina and I are in the process of redesigning the cover for Once More with Feeling because, despite being the first of the two books, it’s not selling as well. I asked my Facebook readers to give their opinion, and the majority felt a cheerier cover was in order.

Back to the “drawing” board.

But this is one of the beauties of eBooks.  I can try new things because a new cover is easy to add.  I can take your comments into consideration and watch sales dwindle or grow.  So I’ve just found a new photo I love, which works for the book but has the brighter, happier feel of the Twice Upon A Time cover. Tina loves it, too–and she hasn’t even tried to divorce me.  Can you divorce a mother-in-law?

Stay tuned. . .  I’ll post the new cover just as soon as we’re satisfied.

Meantime, you can find the Kindle Versions here and here.  The Nook versions are available here.  For all other formats, visit Smashwords.com.  All  three stores have free samples available.

Original Cover

I’ll confess of the more than sixty books I’ve written, I’ve had good covers and not-so-good covers.  I’ve had a few great ones, too.  Not surprisingly, those books sold the best.  Have I made my point succinctly?  Covers make a difference.  A very big difference.  And sometimes it’s hard to get them right.

Original Cover

When I decided to publish my two out-of-print Avon releases from the mid 1990s as eBooks, I had an ace in the hole.  My lovely and talented daughter-in-law who just happens to be a graphic designer.  Tina was excited about the chance to create new covers, and I was even more excited about letting her do them.

You might ask why I didn’t just use the originals, which, while a bit outdated are still quite lovely?  While I own the “words” and received the rights back to them once the novel went out of print, I never owned the art.  So it was up to us to create our own.

I learned immediately that “concepts” aren’t as easy to show as they are to verbalize.  The two novels have a “fantasy” twist of sorts.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to wake up in another person’s life.  Haven’t you wished you could walk through someone else’s days, just to see what the world looks like from a different perspective?  In Once More With Feeling and Twice Upon A Time, I imagined just that.  So when it came to covers, I thought of shadows and blurred images.  Something to show the “fantasy” premise of the stories. 

Two problems cropped up immediately.  First, my idea was nearly impossible to show in a way that would make sense to a reader looking for a book to buy.  Second, although the premise is unusual, and let’s face it, impossible in real life, the stories are classic women’s fiction.  The premise is the only fantasy element.  The stories are about women discovering who they are and what they love.

Art from iStock Photo

The covers, then, needed to show the stories for what they really were.  Tina and I searched for photographs that would convey the feel of the novels.  Twice Upon A Time was the easiest by far.  In the novel, Mary Kate McKenzie, who wakes up after a near-death experience to discover a completely unfamiliar life, also discovers that she’s in charge of a community garden run by a group of nuns, a vocation she once aspired to.  The problem, of course, is that Mary Kate despises dirt and, apparently, loves men, since she finds she is mysteriously pregnant  with no father  in sight.  Mary Kate’s transformation is, I hope, poignant, romantic and humorous.  Since much of it takes place in the garden among a patch of sunflowers, the moment we stumbled on this photo at istockphoto.com, we knew we had our background.  The photo said everything about Mary Kate’s new life.

From that point on, Tina worked her magic.  Mary Kate is a redhead with curly hair.  Tina touched up the photo so the woman’s longer blonde hair doesn’t show under the hat, and created more sky for the title.  Next the font for my name.  We settled on one similar to the one used by Mira Books, to provide some continuity.  She chose an italic for the title and tag line that was similar to title fonts of my other books, but not identical.  The idea was for readers to recognize this as an Emilie Richards cover, without mimicking. 

eBook Cover

 The result was exactly what I’d hoped for.

Once More With Feeling, the first book of the two connected stories, was much harder.  For the most part, Once More is an urban novel taking place on Long Island and Manhattan.  I wanted contrast between the two books, but the same basic feel.   Easier said than done.

Next Friday I’ll show you our journey and the magic Tina worked to make those ideas spring to life.  Can you tell this has been a learning experience?  I have a new respect  for the cover art department at my publisher.  Now I know just how hard they work.  One thing’s for certain, though, I couldn’t have been luckier.  Working with my daughter-in-law was a dream come true.  I’m looking forward to more collaborative ventures in our future.