It’s funny how things come about. Some things can be quite organic, while others are pushed and pulled and squashed into submission.

But the Poems of a Musical Flavour series was incredibly organic. For the songs I started writing in 1989 and kept writing through to 1996, and then one final one in 2002, they came effortlessly.

Their origins were simple. Written in old school sized notebooks, because I had so many to spare, I went through five of them for my scribblings, and mention the progression in the blurb for the series as a little nod to it all.

In 1989 I was 15 years old and started writing song lyrics. Why? Because I wanted to be the Australian version of Debbie Gibson. I also started analysing lyrics, which I guess led me to analyse books…

Little did I know over the seven and a bit years I wrote songs that they were my practice for story-telling and much bigger and better scribblings, such as short stories, novellas, and mega novels.

Covering a wide range of topics from 1989 to 2002, I plagiarise myself a lot, so have a good laugh, especially over the witty one-liners and anecdotes about what was happening, who I wanted to be, or who I had a crush on. They are not perfect, nor meant to be; they’re just the musings of a young teenage girl with crushes and dreams.

Enjoy!

I always started on the right hand page and wrote to the left, ironically, the way I write my books these days, always write on the right hand side and make notes on the left. It was, I’d say, my earliest training. I would write the genre top right, add a name in a heart for who it was for, write down the song that inspired it.

I then wanted to write them out and put them in a folder, maybe the first incarnation of book form for me. For them to be neat and tidy, written out on one page full and straight. One song per page…mmm…that sounds like a familiar concept…

One song per page = OMNIBUS!

During the great overhaul of 2020, I debated shredding that paperwork, after all, they weren’t the originals, just copies of, so why did I need a second copy? Especially when I now have my books. And the folders could have been stored for future use, but at least I wouldn’t have 639 extra pieces of paper lying around for no real reason. But no, I kept them for prosperity.

When I decided to start writing under my own name in 2015, it was a natural thought process to consider turning them into books to have something else physical under my name instead of three non-fiction books and a kid’s story.

So in 2016 I started typing up those 639 songs and turning them into books and they made their debut as e-books in 2017 and paperbacks in 2018 under my own publishing house.

PAPERBACKS!

So in my 10th year of self-publishing, my 7th year of publishing under my own name, my 4th year of having my own publishing house and releasing Poems as e-books, and the 3rd year since the paperbacks were released, (because they were delayed by one year), I can now introduce the case laminate hardcovers of volumes 1-6 and the omnibus edition, which, quite frankly, I LOVE.LOVE.LOVE!

All will be available via Amazon, for those who use it, plus a million other online stores to order from, all for those who prefer hardcovers.

Retailing at $18.99US and $28.99AU for volumes 1-6, the omnibus edition is $39.99US and $59.99AU. Yep, expensive, but hardcovers are, unfortunately, and the omnibus does come in at 688 pages, so the AU price was necessary.

So there you go, Poems are finally out and done, so is #teenblogger, and hopefully I can now try and get new stuff written.

What have you guys been up to this month?