Hello, dears!

I’m SUPER excited for this post, eep! I’ve been working on a secret project for the past little while, and today I’m going to reveal it! Ahem… GUYS, I WROTE A POEM BOOK.

AHHH I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! THIS IS SUCH A STRANGE FEELING, HELP. Introducing… unfurling: a little book of poems. *grins widely*

LOOK, THE COVER! AND THE BACK COVER! AND THE BARCODE, YAYYY! XD OKAY, OKAY. Let me settle down and I’ll explain a little more about it. *deep breath*

Ahem. Many months ago, my grandmother told me if I wanted to get her a gift sometime, she would love a book of my poems. I thought that was a great idea, since I’ve been wanting to print my poems anyway, but I kept the idea safely tucked away in the back of my mind until it was closer to her birthday.

Unfortunately, I started working on it a little TOO close to her birthday, so it came late, heh heh, but I did finish it, with the help of my amazing beta readers, Aria, Clara, and Amanda!

It contains 54 of my poems, old and new, and 35+ original illustrations. I think about 3/4 of the poems are new, as in you’ve never seen them on my blog, and all of the old ones are edited + sometimes significantly altered. You can see all the titles down below!

It really is “a little book of poems” at 75 pages, but it still turned out thicker than I expected. It’s hard to write enough poems to fill a book. O.o

Even though it’s small, it still looks like A REAL BOOK, AHHH. A title page and everything! EXCITING. 😛

I think writing the poems was the easiest part. XD The illustrations were surprisingly hard. It was difficult to decide on a style, but I ended up making loose, simple watercolor + pen illustrations that would compliment the poems instead of take away from them. I really like how they turned out!

After much deliberation, I decided on the title “unfurling.” I think it fits really well, because I try to write my poems in layers: an engaging, beautiful outer layer that you can see at first glance, but also a layer or two of deeper meaning and nuances you have to think about for a minute to understand to discover.

“A poem is a flower bud – such a small package, yet it holds so much in every petal, every word. When the outer layer unfurls, the old, familiar scales fall from your eyes, and everything is transformed. Perhaps that is what beauty is: a transformation.” [from the author’s note]

The hardest part was probably the formatting. That wasn’t too pleasant. I’m mostly happy with it, but for some reason the formatting of two poems got a little off when I ordered them, even though they looked fine in the document. *sigh* OH well.

And… yeah! I guess that about covers it! You can purchase a copy for $7.99 + shipping by clicking here, or by visiting the poem book page in my blog menu.  I don’t have a grand blog tour or anything planned, BUT, my friends Aria and Clara have kindly offered to make review-ish posts (with aesthetic book pictures and page sneak peeks!) on their respective blogs!

Look out for a book post on November 16th at Aria’s blog, and November 21st on Clara’s blog. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend following them because their blogs are two of my very favorites! ❤

Welp, I suppose that’s that! I do NOT know how to write a book launch post, since I don’t even really consider myself a writer. XD But hopefully this worked well enough!

Are you excited? Do you want to read it? What do you think of my cover and illustrations? Any tips for writing, illustrating, or formatting a book? (I’d love to know so next time it will be even better!)

Thank you SO much for reading, dears, and please have a lovely day!

***Allison***