I would like to thank Jeyran Main for being part of Your Words Your World blog tour and many thanks to Serena at Poetic Book Tours for organizing such a great one. What an amazing opportunity!

For anyone who has read my first poetry book, you know how I stumbled into writing, sort of. After a few poems, I wanted to find out is they were as good as I thought they were. I had recently met some people online at a Small Group I was attending. We became good friends and one of then turned out to be an author who recently self published a book and he helped me a great deal.

A couple of months after the publication of Your Words, my first collection, I was talking to a family member who told me how he was looking forward to future books. I remember saying: “Eh, I’m not sure about that!” Publishing Your Words had been quite an accomplishment already and self-publishing turned out to be a lot of hard work, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself through that again. Writing was so new to me and, let’s face it, what did I know about being an author, promoting and selling books? Not much. 🙂 But I have been a reader since forever and I did have some ideas written down for future poems. I needed time and see what I wanted to do next.

As the weeks turned to months, I missed writing. I missed when an idea grabs you and you just know it is a very good one, something worth writing about. Letting your imagination take over, like a movie in your head, seeing the story or the image you want to describe. Finding the right words for the emotion you feel. Write the message you want to give the world, or give the reader pause to think about a particular subject.

So, I sat down once again in front of my computer screen in August 2020 and started writing Your Words Your World, one poem at a time, one idea at a time, one emotion at a time…

Like the saying goes, you get better with practice; this new collection shows how much I’ve grown as an author.

You will read poems from a place of hurt where the poetry has more depth. For example, my father passed away 40 years ago and last Easter, I missed him terribly. From that pain, “Zoom to Heaven” was born, as I imagine what it would be like to Zoom with my dad. A powerful poem that helped me get through the pain. A poem that became readers’ favorite. They felt the same emotion as I did while reading it.

Other poems are stories that came out of the blue; I woke up one morning and heard a noise outside. A thought made room for another till my mind stopped at: Funny, sounds like the wind is banging on the window. Let me in! It doesn’t want to be outside in the rain…oh…wow…that is good! That afternoon, “A war erupted” made its appearance on the page.

Another thought came from all the love songs we hear, how they are everywhere, you can’t escape them… The thought process continued until it ended with “The most beautiful love poem”.

As I continued writing I connected with other authors on the various sites where I was promoting Your Words. These connections were, and are still, very important and it’s the key you need. They know when you don’t, and they are willing to share their experience and you learn. I remember googling ARC one day because I didn’t know what that was. It makes me smile thinking about it, I have learned so much and there is always more to learn.

Then, there is God. His love for us, what He did, and my relationship with Him. I enjoy writing spiritual poetry, it brings me closer to Him, and I treasure the intimacy.

In June 2021, the ideas well suddenly went dry. The writing was done. It was time to move to the next phase; time to choose the photographs among my collection, to complement the poetry. In case you

didn’t know, the choices are never random, there is always a connection between the poem and the photograph next to it.

I, once again, took the route of self-publishing with Your Words Your World. It was easier the second time around since I had experience. But a book needs a team behind it. It’s best not to do it alone. Your need people, before publication, to read your work, to catch the mistakes your missed, to improve it… I had (and still have) people like that in my life, and I was (and still is), very grateful for their constant help.

I also learned about different websites to expand the number of stores where you can sell your books and sites where readers can find ARC copies to generate feedback and reviews.

I learned about book tours and here we are. 🙂

Writing is my passion, I am also eager to learn, I love trying new things. Not all of them has generated the anticipated results, others did more than I expected. The beauty of surprises.

Each review is dear to me. I love when a reader shares their favorite poems. Many have told me that they felt a sense of peace while reading my poetry. All felt encouraged. This gives me great joy.

As I write this guest post, a third book is in the works, a few poems have been written so far. Stay tuned, hoping to publish a new collection in 2022.

Thank you so much for your time. I hope to hear from you, once you have read and enjoy Your Words Your World to share your favorite poems. 🙂

Written by Louise Bélanger