Bones of a Nightingale Update

For months now I have been talking about the poetry book I plan to self-publish on Lulu.com called Bones of a Nightingale. I said about three months ago that it would be done by the end of January.

Sad to say, it's not done yet. Not my fault.

Ok maybe it is.

The stumbling block is finding time. Not to write, all the poems are done, in fact all (I hope) of the formatting is done as well.

It's the cover. Niall and I went out to Ikea a month and a half ago (?) and took awesome pictures, if you haven't seen them check out the photo album "Niall Takes Pictures of Nathan" on my Facebook. If we're not friends, why the hell are you reading this?

Sorry. If we're not friends, I'm happy you're here.

Anyway.

The photos came out amazing, but Niall and I just haven't gotten around to taking the cover shot yet, which I'm actually happy for because he has been working really hard on other photos and learning how to age pictures and put really cool textures on them (if you haven't seen them go to hamskies.blogspot.com or click on "Petitioning the Open Sky" at the bottom of this blog). The aged look is what I really want for my cover, so I'm happy he's been working on that.

Niall actually told me yesterday that he plans to devote this week to me and while that hasn't happened yet, it most likely will either tomorrow or on Friday.

More to come on that.

So the title I actually really like (am I allowed to say "actually really"? Two words ending in "ly" right next to each other sound weird. Oh well, I'm the English Lit Major. As Alex says, "I do what I want!").

The title comes from two of my favorite quotes about writing. The first is from the song "The Engine Driver" by the Decemberists. It says:

"And I am a writer, writer of fictions

And I am the heart that you call home

And I've written pages, upon pages

Trying to rid you from my bones."

Originally I liked the title To Rid My Bones, but then Natalie Hewitt showed us this really cool quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

"A Poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."

Thus, Bones of a Nightingale came to be. And now I'm waiting to take a picture of an empty gold-leafed frame with a gray polaroid inside.

Completely unrelated. Yet not. You'll have to read the book to understand.

And no, you cannot have a free copy. Lulu has to make money somehow.

Updates will follow. Hopefully the cover picture will be posted by Monday.

Sigh.