This Currently Small Thing With No Working Title

With youthful passion

I scattered my heart out, raw,

on the pages of the first volume,

an offering to appease

those who wanted me,

understandable, in one piece.

Actors for my next volume?

Life lands on these pages,

like a reality show, requiring

most of all, a brave voice,

keen observation, thoughtful –

Kim Hill perhaps my choice.

 

“Verbal snapshots of a female Kiwi”

could bring agencies clamouring.

Yeah, right. 

The tui's wings beat in my ears,

my flightless self accepts

the first draft could take years.

I am far from comfortable

in this blinding spotlight,

revealing my blind spot.

It is difficult to find,

in the comfort of my night,

others of my kind.

My senses sustain me,

as I happily poke the dirt,

my vulnerability can reflect

yours in the glass

if you are still long enough

to allow me to pass.

BY JEANETTE JONES

The above poem is my playful (or evasive?) response to the following questions:

1. What's the working title for your book?
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
3. What category does your book fall under?
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
8. What other books would you compare this to in your genre?
9. What inspired you to write this book?
10. What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

My book?  Did someone say I was writing a book?  AAARRGH!

 

Dawn Picken, a writer and Mum living in Mount Maunganui who I met at this year's Writers' Retreat, has tagged me and four others to answer these questions in her recent blog titled "The Next Big Thing". I want to bags a copy of Marcel Currin's next collection of poetry on fatherhood and family life - see his response to "The Next Big Thing" nomination here.  Dawn and Marcel would be my first two nominations for "The Next Big Thing" - a kind of (as Marcel puts it) "pay-it-forward online game in which writers nominate other writers as the next big thing".  Yes, I am a fledgling with few contacts.  So 50% of my nominations consist of a tagback and a retag.  :-)

 

The other 50% of my nominations do not have a blog and are not members of Facebook (as far as I know), which makes the nomination a little more difficult for them to respond to, but does not necessarily reflect their potential of being "The Next Big Thing":

Warren Parkinson - just launched his book "101 Hot Tips for Health and Happiness" - Warren, really enjoyed the first one - have you got another one in the making?

Elizabeth Jones - a woman who has my admiration for her life experience and wisdom, Elizabeth is planning to write a book about her father's experiences in World War I. 

(If they have no other publishing medium, I may publish their response here as part of a future blog).