by Thomas Davis
At the Door County Published Author Book Fair last weekend, I was amazed. Four different people came up and told me that In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams was the best book they have ever read. One person told me that The Prophecy of the Wolf was their favorite book. Ethel’s new book, The Woman and the Whale, was also popular, especially with her pastel on the cover, and, I suspect, outsold any other poetry book at the fair.
I remember spending so many years writing and writing and having absolutely no luck at all. If either Ethel and I had sold five books at that point in our lives, we would have been so excited that we would have probably floated into the air and shined more brightly than the sun. These days those days seem like a distant past, but this blog was established partially because we both wanted readers. Our beloved son Kevin (Alazanto) Davis had died, and we felt lost in a bewilderment of emotions. When we started getting readers and then more readers, some as eminent as John Looker, the wonderful English poet, we started to believe in our writing with more optimism in our spirits.
Both of us have always written from childhood on. Ethel’s art and poetry has always been a magic part of who she is. I published my first poem in The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado during my first year at Mesa College. With Richard Brenneman, I had also helped put together a small poetry journal in Grand Junction called The Rimrock Poets Magazine that included work by Ethel. Sometimes during those years, a poem would appear in a literary journal or magazine, but those were rare, rather than common instances, even though Ethel was, and clearly is, a major, major talent as a poet.
Not long after founding this blog, Ethel decided we would publish her first book using the new ability to self publish. I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico was quickly followed up by White Ermine Across Her Shoulders. I kept trying to get published with little success until I wrote the epic poem, The Weirding Storm (a book that I still think is perhaps some of my best writing), which was published by Bennison Press in Great Britain. By then our blogging friend, John Looker, had introduced me to Bennison Press, and I took a wild chance and sent the manuscript to Deborah Bennison, the publisher.
I love selling books to people person to person at book fairs and book events at book stores and other places. I suspect my father’s spirit gave me that love when he had us boys work at the grocery store he and my mother ran for all the years we were at home. I wish I had some skill at marketing beyond that skill. Still, these days I feel like I have arrived as a writer, especially in the Sturgeon Bay area where we now live and the part of New Mexico where we used to live. What a wonderful joy that has become in my life.
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