A Baby Picture, Author Photos, & My Second Book has been Published!

so my first book was published in 2008. the book has no author photo (my publisher said i was too ugly). but one day i received an email requesting an author photo. i had just come from the gym so i randomly decided to snap a pic with my computer's 'photo booth,' and this has become my standard author photo:

don't i look like such a cute ethnic baby in that picture! ah, i was so young and innocent and didnt even know that i was entering a poetry world where crazy people freak out about baby pictures. anyhoo, so a few days ago, i was emailed again with a request for a author photo. i had just come back from the gym so i sat down, and snapped another pic using 'photo booth':

do you notice the difference? besides the fact that i'm two years older & two years wiser, i'm holding my second collection of poetry! hot off the press from Omnidawn Publishing! although my book is a Fall 2010 publication, it's available--in advance--from the Omnidawn website here! i hope you will purchase a copy for your reading pleasure.

i've been working on my second book for the past three years and am so excited to share this news with harriet & all you harrieteers! since we've talked about blurbs, here's the first blurb for the book:

from unincorporated territory [saina] continues Craig Santos Perez’s epic investigation of Chamorro culture, language, and identity. It is by turns ferocious and elegiac, historical and lyrical; it is a book of generations, of sedimentary language, of the ability and power to say “us,” of how a human family might actually be claimed. Filled with tidal spaces, broken by waves, garlanded by islands of brilliant attention and sub-surface groundings, Perez’s poem convenes an oceanic poetics. But if the indigenous canoe that sails through the book is freighted with immigration and emigration, colonialism and national piracies, its real cargo remains cultural authority and the incontestable wonder of origin. Ancestors weep and dance to have generated such creative reclamation as this poem achieves. Perez inherits, inhabits… and a great poem flows…

–Aaron Shurin, author of King of Shadows

[to read the other blurbs, as well as the publisher's description of the book, go to my Omnidawn page here]

i must admit, i love my second book. it has a nice weight to it: 136 pages! i have a close relationship with my publisher (who lives like 15 minutes from me!).my favorite designer, jeff clark of Quemadura, did the typesetting and designed the amazing cover:

not only that, but the book was printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc--which not only prints high quality books, but they are also a part of the Green Press Initiative ("committed to advancing sustainable patterns of production and consumption within the U.S. book and newspaper industries and within the paper industry at large").

if you liked my first book, you will definitely like my second book. if you havent read my first book, then that's probably why your life feels so empty.

as always, i need your advice:

how did you transition from your first book to your second? how was it different? did you try to get readings at the same venues that you read at before? during readings, did you read from both book 1 & book 2? did you send book 2 to the same review venues? were you more or less active in promotions? Were there things you thought would happen that didn't? Surprises? How did your second book change your life, if at all? did you start right away working on the third book?

any other advice that you would give to a second book author? any warnings?

as a reader, what do you expect from a second book?

*

[p.s. no refunds]