I am a Midwestern farm boy, so, self-deprecating and wary by nature. I’m Generation X to boot but not the racist kind that voted for disassembling America. I’m more the cranky kind lacking in trust for most systems. So, it is with hesitation that I announce, let alone embrace, good news. That said…

After a decade of submitting manuscripts, I have not one but two poetry collections on the way this year. 

The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees, my earliest manuscript, was recently accepted for publication with Match Factory Editions and is slated for spring/summer 2025. 

Later this year, Beginning to Sense will come out on ELJ Editions—it had been delayed but is now back on track to be released in November 2025. 

I do still have the second manuscript* I wrote out on submission at a couple of presses who will probably eventually say no.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*I know this will eventually be the third book, but the way my brain works, I’ll probably always think of them in the order I wrote them. The first manuscript I wrote was on the submission circuit for ten years. (Really only seven, in a sense. The initial attempt was well received but also sent me back to the drawing board for 2-3 years.) I revised it many times since then, but The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees still largely resembles that earliest manuscript.

Beginning to Sense was the third manuscript I wrote, though some of the poems in both books are as many as 20 years old. (I think anything I wrote that’s older than that I buried mercifully in the pasture long ago.) Anyway, the first book has been a finalist a few times so it’s cool to see it finally coming your way in an actual book, as long as we still have actual books and some form of currency or economy with which to obtain or exchange them in a few months.

Sorry for what I’m sure will be an annoyingly large amount of promotion. It’s gonna seem like it all happened quickly, but believe me, it did not. It did not happen quickly at all, and we shall never discuss the total sum the older one accrued in submission fees. 

Thanks for coming along on the ride so far, and thanks in advance for putting up with me as I push the books on you all upon their arrivals!