Here's the publisher's draft cover for The Conversation, and I think those wild turkey feathers in that inkwell are lovely, though in the real world probably not suitable for quills, a metaphor that I am going to stop pursuing now.

It is quite exciting to have two books coming out so close together, but I'm also getting a bit rattled about how to juggle the publicity issue. On the one hand, both books focus on poetry. On the other hand, one is instructional and the other is a collection. On the third hand, they're coming out from different publishers, and on the fourth hand, small publishers need authors to help with sales, and on the fifth hand, all my blog visitors and Facebook friends are sick to death of hearing me hawk my books and are secretly begging me to post more cat photos, and on the sixth hand, I actually think my new books aren't half-bad as far as books go and it would make me happy if you would consider reading them if you had time and inclination, and on the seventh hand, my cold-weather-Protestant soul is constantly slapping me upside the head. Here's how Alice Munro describes that soul in her story "No Advantages":

Self-dramatization got short shrift in our family. Though now that I come to think of it, it wasn't exactly that word they used. They spoke of calling attention. Calling attention to yourself. The opposite of which was not exactly modesty but a strenuous dignity and control, a sort of refusal. The refusal to feel any need to turn your life into a story, either for other people or yourself. And when I study the people I know about in the family, it does seem that some of us have that need in large and irresistible measure--enough so as to make the others cringe with embarrassment and apprehension. That's why the judgment had to be given out so frequently.

My friend Angela told me this week, "You have a super-strong work ethic with Calvinistic overtones. Very similar to mine, but Catholics drank more, and had all those statues and stuff."