Lonesome Train

Lost and faraway lonesome train
I love to listen to your song
When I hear you I dream again
Of one I knew but do not know
The one I lost the one I long
To see who is but cannot be
Of whom the memory burns strong
I feel like you sing just for me
A distant echo of my pain
We may be lost but we are free
To weep together lonesome train

I never knew but I know now
That she is just like me tonight
I hear you through the clear moonlight
And I can hear her sing somehow
You may be lost but I have found
Her voice again within the sound
Of your song as you sing I see
Her face again within the moon
I know we are together still
And always will come very soon
I love her and I always will

When I hear you I dream again
Lost and faraway lonesome train

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMV

Stevie,

I really really really like this one. Very beautiful. Hope you are feeling better. I have a question for you. How do you go about getting published? Just curious, not that anyone will, but if I were wanting to try to publish my poetry how would I go about it. It has always been a dream of mine.

Nikki

Hi Nikki, and thank you so much for your encouragement and concern, as well as a very good question. I will try to answer as best I can.

Over many years I have published a lot of music with traditional publishers, both in choral octavo form and gathered into books; I got to be an expert at the traditional music publishing business over the years.

I was working with a small music publisher with which I enjoyed a very close relationship, and we had the idea to do a book just of my poetry as a thing-in-itself, just the words as it were with no music. I had done original texts for my choral motets over the years, and I have always written poetry, so this seemed like a good idea.

Well, the music publisher was an elderly lady who was very, very conservative, and she began to take offense at certain of my poems! She became uneasy about the project, which had been for a book of one hundred poems called Existential Hot Dogs. My sense of humor got a bit past her, and some of it she thought might be at her expense. To make a long story short, she decided to bail out, leaving the book project high and dry.

By now the poems were really piling up, too; in addition to well over the originally agreed-upon hundred, I was well into my series of Transcendental Sonnets. I have 1403 of those so far, but it was the twenty-first one which really made her mad somehow. In any case, she didn't get my jokes.

I was really depressed. I had taken care of first my mother and then my grandmother as they sickened and died, and then when Grandma died I had a two-year legal nightmare with this crazy uncle who tried to steal my inheritance. He got away with everything but the house, and for that I had to fight four lawsuits and win them, which I did. But I was really drained and disappointed to lose the support of my publisher.

I was with Silke at the time, and she undertook to try to find me a publisher in Europe. She was sick, but did her best, and our friend Sander Maltelid shopped the book all over Sweden. He was getting very close, but then, tragically, died under terrible circumstances. He was one of our original forum members here.

So now it looked hopeless. I looked into options in new technology, in "on-demand publishing," or POD. I did a web search and found Lulu.com, one of many such companies which manufacture books on demand, which is to say that the book is printed after the order is received, made to order. This service is free, and the author becomes, actually, the publisher, keeping most of the profits, just as publishers have always done!

But you really have to be techno-savvy, which I am not, and my first attempt to gather all my poems together and upload them to Lulu to create a book had some problems. I found formatting to be really hard, at least for me. Many people find this to be the case, so Lulu connected me with an editing company and an editor who solved my problem and made that first book turn out really nicely in the end.

While the publishing process is free and open, as a happy and tangible result and benefit of the digital revolution, one has to pay for an ISBN number and distribution. But the fees are not that large, about two hundred dollars gets your book out there all over the world on the Internet, on the Amazons, Barnes and Noble, Blackwell's, and so on. Editorial services are more expensive. My fifth book, which should be ready by Tuesday, cost me about five hundred for the formatting and uploading, including the creation of the covers, table of contents and other "front matter," all the things which make a book a book. Lulu--and there are a number of other companies as well--can recommend great providers of editorial services, who will handle all the details of the publishing process.

I hope this helps, Nikki. I am doing my fifth book right now, and others here on BrainMeta have done books through Lulu as well, including Hey Hey, Kevin (Windowmaker), and Megan (Rosediamond), among several of us. I guess I was the Guinea pig! But it turned out well, and others have had good results as well.

I would recommend you do a web search of on-demand publishers. I know Lulu works for me; I am not personally familiar with the others, but there are several.

Love,

+Stevie

Blessed Steven,

Thanks for the advice. I believe I will check out Lulu and see if that may be the avenue I want to travel. It has always been a dream of mine to publish my own work and do the cover art, so we shall see what becomes of it. I will certainly keep you in the loop. I thank you for your warmth and guidance Stevie. It means the world to me. I have a long way to go before I may even attempt this. I want to get lots more written first. I have dried up for now. I would imagine I have lots to write with the sorrow that overwhelms at times, but lately my brain seems empty. If it wasn't so bloody hot outside I would sit on my front porch and gather my inspiration for the craft. One day soon something maginificent will hit me and that will be lovely.

Take care of yourself chum,
Nikki

You are most welcome, Nikki, and I wish you all the best.

Kevin and Hey Hey have been able to do the necessary computer-friendly formatting necessary for successful uploading to Lulu themselves; they are better at that sort of thing than I am. So you might not need anyone else's help, depending on your computer skills. The editor only helps me with the computer stuff, not things like spelling and punctuation or poetic structure. Also, the Lulu site and processes keep evolving and may be much easier right now than when I had such a time with it all. For me it works best to hire someone else to do the computer stuff.

You can do your own art for the cover; creating covers is actually one of the more fun parts of it all. I did better at that than the insides of my first book. I used a beautiful mermaid drawing Silke had done, and it turned out really well.

Feel free to ask me any further questions you might have, anytime. I'm glad you asked this question tonight, as I hope my answer to you might answer some questions which others might have as well.

Luck and love,

+Stevie

I passed it along to Manders too. I think she may have that same feeling I do about putting a book together. That way we can help each other since she only lives 15 minutes away from me. I appreciate the support and help Steven. I am rather excited at the prospect of this. My mother was encouraging me to do this tonight and I was very negative like "Who would want to read your stuff?" or "They will probably think it's crap." I shook it off and then was really intrigued that I may actually be able to do this. I know Mandy will be just as thrilled about it. Any questions or concerns I have I know just who to go to. You have been a tremendous friend to me here Steven. You beautiful heart is unmatched. I thank you whole heartedly.

Take care,
Nikki

I'm just so happy to be able to help a little. I'm glad Mandy is interested too. You'd be surprised who might like to read your work!

I was just thinking, too, that if you have computer-savvy friends, or are savvy yourself, you could actually do the whole book without spending anything at all up front. You could do the book and upload it, and then at any time later add the ISBN number and distribution. Until you have the ISBN (international standard book number), you could sell your book through Lulu, you just wouldn't be able to get on Amazon and such. But, as I say, you could add it at any time later.

I wish you and Manders Flanders well with this, and with everything.

Blessings and love,

+Stevie