If you go to Lulu you will be able to order my Otoliths collection of mathemaku (April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now for the PRE-PUBLICATION price just $21.45, $3.50 less than it will cost in a week of two when it will be officially launched! Please, someone buy a copy!

I was relieved when I saw my proof copy of it, which arrived today. I was starting to worry that the reproduction (due entirely to the poor copies from me the printer had to work with) might be poor. It's certainly not perfect in every case, but it looks fine to me in most cases, and adequate in the others (of works I only wanted to give a good gist of). The book has 56 of my pieces, by the way, plus an introduction I wrote about how I came to make them and what I hoped to do with them.

In some ways the book makes me uneasy. It is my first "real" collection of poetry. I've only had one chapbook collection, the edition of Of Poem Geof Huth's press did some years ago, and four mini-chapbook collections that John Martone's tel-let press did. And Mary Veazey has done a nice Internet chapbook of my stuff. Anny Ballardini has a mini-chapbook of my work at her website, too. So, while it makes me feel really good, it disconcerts me a little to realize how late in my life such a publication of my work is taking place.

On the other hand, I do now have three full-length books in print, aside from my Otoliths collection. But all of them have been self-published.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my book. One idea is to use it to sell prints of pieces in it. I should be able to get some gallery to keep a copy on hand--for a cut of whatever I make from prints ordered as a result. I have to make a Powerpoint presentation on it, too. I expect to have some kind of book-signing here in Port Charlotte when I get my ten author's copies. Hmmm, maybe I could have a print-signing party somewhere, too. Gotta think this out. . . .