My Books: Five Facts About Lover Mother Other : As the Bird flies... Travel, Writing, and Other Journeys

My latest book, Lover Mother Other has now been out in the world for one whole week. To acknowledge that and to give you a bit more insight into the book's journey and what it's about, here's a quick collection of five facts about Lover Mother Other: Poems about Love, Motherhood, and Everything Else Womxn Transcend.

Five Facts About Lover Mother Other

Nope, there are no commas in the title. This was intentional for a few reasons. I didn't want to make the distinction between the three names and identities. I wanted it to read like someone's name - First, Middle and Last Names - because that's how overlapping and integrated I want people to think about these identities. Yes, in the book they are
I nearly didn't publish this book - and I had made my peace with that. Despite feeling so much for the poetry I'd written, having a number of crises of confidence (MORE!!)
There are illustrations for the poems, drawn by the brilliant Nina of Smaracuja, but sadly they are not appearing in this first edition of the book. The formatting of a book like this with illustrations on some pages, but not all, of varying sizes and layouts was too much for my brain, and as mentioned above, I was trying to remove obstacles to this book's publication, not create more, so with a heavy heart, as the deadline for getting paperback books ready for launch date, I decided to just not have illustrations in both the paperback and the ebook. I also sadly didn't have budget to hire someone else to do this design for me. The hard thing about being an indie author is that
The cover for this book is hands down my favourite cover for one of my books ever. I love the colours, I love the writing, I love how it pops and how it's both so-called girlie but also daring and bright. I am so happy with how it looks and I hope that is also a feeling readers enjoy too.
This is my most personal book... yet. While many of my previous books had short stories that were deeply personal, none of them feel as personal as this collection of poetry.The Introduction for the book explains in much more depth why this was and is such a personal endeavour, but in short, it's very true that these poems were like therapy to me at a time when I really needed ALL the therapy of ALL kinds. While I have to hastily add that not all of the poems are about personal events and you really shouldn't assume every poem is based on a true story or even a real person, it's fair to say that they are true to life as I experience it. I hope that makes sense... and is also teasingly ambiguous!

Remember you can still buy a signed paperback copy, or get an ebook version via my shop. And all the Lover Mother Other merchandise is also still available. Find out more about these fun Lover Mother Other products here.