signed/sealed/delivered.

So I signed the contract for my second book of poetry this week.

Palimpsest Press will be publishing How to Pack Without Overpacking in spring 2014.

I'm greatly looking forward to working with poet/publisher Dawn Kresan again, to adding my book to what's becoming a really great list. (Go Palimpsest go!)

Now, How to Pack Without Overpacking is the title we used on the contract, but it feels very much like a working title and not THE title.

I'm usually pretty good with titles. They usually arrive just as the piece of writing is in its last stages.

Given that the manuscript isn't yet in it's final stages - I'll likely begin working with an editor in mid to late 2013 - maybe it's a good thing to not have a title yet.

Maybe. 

I had the title for Hump pretty early on. And it WAS the right title. (Dawn told me that the LPG sales reps giggled when they heard the name...) But I spent a fair bit of time preparing to defend it, first from poet/editor Jeanette Lynes and later from poet/publisher Dawn Kresan. But neither of them said anything. Not a peep! (When I finally asked, Jeanette said, "I figured you knew what you were doing...")

As you've probably guessed, this collection will have HEAPS of how to poems, including those in the 2011 JackPine chapbook, How to Prepare for Flooding. But there are also large chunks of poems that aren't quite so bossy. So IMPERATIVE.

Shaping the manuscript has been great fun so far.  (The kind of great fun that turns your brain into a scratchy am radio station. Which is to say: messages everywhere! snatches of lyrics you remember fondly! much static!)

In the meantime, I'm working on edits to my Kalamalka chapbook, which should be out this spring...and then there's that whole Xmas thing.

Yay! Fun!