Gary Lucero Writer

In Letting Go is a book I've spent the last year putting together with the help of my editor and book designer. It represents poetry written over the last 30+ years, as well as many poems written more recently. It's quite dreary in many ways, but it deals with the travails of life, something we all go through, as well as the inevitability of death, which we all have to look forward to.

 

While the first chapter of In Letting Go explores life, and the second, death, the third and last chapter shifts perspective to a fantasy world where nothing is black and white. There's good and evil, but the people in the world are flawed, their motives uncertain, and their failures apparent. It's a world not unlike our own, where we see danger, but have a tough time deciding how and when and why we should combat it.

 

Pre-orders are live on most online book sellers, including Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Google Play Books. They are also available from most local booksellers' websites.

 

The go-live date is October 1, 2024. Here is a single link that shows you everywhere you can pre-order it.

 

Note that In Letting Go is available in a deluxe paperback edition from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and from any local bookseller that will let you order it, and as an eBook from all the rest. 

 

If you have any questions, please let me know. You can use the contact page here or contact me on Facebook or Instagram.

Not everyone has the inclination or ability to create great works of art. Many people can play musical instruments, and some can write music as well as sing or dance, but not all of us can perform.

 

The fact is many of us are without creative talent. We can hum in the shower, and create rudimentary drawings, and that's it.

 

But this doesn't stop us from being creative beings. We strive to create, to express ourselves, and we often want others to consume our art, to acknowledge and enjoy it.

 

I have felt this desire my entire life. As a child, I immersed myself in drawing pictures, coloring, writing stories, taking photographs, and later, as a teen, writing poetry. I had no choice but to express myself, but for decades I denied that writing was the correct outlet for me.

 

I convinced myself that I could program software, release it, and that people would buy it, use it, and provide feedback so I could improve it. I tried for years to succeed at this, but I just didn't have the chops to write great software.

 

So I returned to writing. It wasn't like I had stopped, but I had given up on my dream of being published.

 

In late 2023 and early 2024, I sorted through all the poems I had created over the last few decades, graded them, and decided which ones to release. I published a book of poetry called When I Flew. It was a good book but didn't have a catchy cover, and it had limited success.

 

I unpublished not just that book, but several others, and decided to take publishing seriously. I found a great editor, someone I trust, and worked with her to refine my poems. I found someone to create an appropriate book cover and illustrations, as well as the entire book design, and I plan to publish the book we created together on October 1, 2024.

 

It's a book of dark themed poetry called In Letting Go.

 

How about you? Do you draw, or sing, or take photographs? Maybe you sew, or knit, and create all manner of home crafts?

 

Where do you expend your creative energy?

 

Please comment to this post or e-mail me, contact me on Facebook, or Instagram. I'm also available on YouTube.

Author AK Weller, well know for her thriller books and short stories, is an amazing graphic artist. She designed the cover and illustrations for In Letting Go, my book of poetry, and handled all the formatting and internal design.

 

She has a monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for here. In the latest issue, she introduced me as a writer and poet, and featured my new book! She has been very generous and is amazing to work with! If you need a great graphic artist, I recommend you check out her company, Westley Enterprises.

 

And for editing, I hightly recommend Lisa McCoy. She's another amazing person, a champion of self-published writers, and she's the one who turned me on to Westley Enterprises!