At Last

[image error]After a long slog, I’ve finally issued the second edition of my poetry collection, Fault Lines. Perhaps it took longer than it should have. Perhaps it took exactly as long as it needed. There were three things that slowed down the process. One was my own foot-dragging when it came to the hard work. And my foot dragging came from two impulses: fear (that I wouldn’t be up to the task) and a simple dread of the drudgery of endless editing and proofreading. A second cause was the steep learning curve, in regards to cover design, formattting, uploading, dealing with ISBNs, vendors and all the rest. While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books, articles and blogs available to teach me all this, none of them were quite adequate for the job. There was always some missing step, or fuzzy explanation, combined with the fact that it all changes by the minute and much of what I read no longer applied. The third factor was my own near-perfectionism. I really wanted to get it right this time, and not end up with the typos, omissions and other issues with the first edition. I wanted a product I could be proud of, now and into the future. Of course, with all my efforts, there are still a few things I now would change, a few steps I would (will) do differently next time. That just means I’ve learned something (well, many things, actually). Hooray! Anything I learn, any hard work, just better prepares me for the next challenge. So, here it is. I hope you like it.