Category: poetry

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Through the Pages {a giveaway and a thank-you}

It’s been almost a year since this story started, but it’s far from finished. 
I want to hug all the people who’ve helped spread the word about Through the Pages, but most of them aren’t in my immediate range of hugability. 
So instead, I’d like to give away one of my Collector’s Boxes. 
In this giveaway, you’ll receive a paper back copy of Through the Pages…
A paper back replica of Harper South’s Journal, available ONLY in these special bundles…

Five art prints…
And maybe a random bonus gift!
The Collector’s Boxes will be available on my website when I have more books in stock! In the meantime, why not enter the giveaway?
International Winners: unfortunately, lack of funds prohibits me from shipping internationally. So instead, for international winners ONLY, I have an e-book copy of Through the Pages in your choice of Kindle, PDF, or ePub. 

And in closing, a random landscape shot. This is my hometown, ladies and gents.

Good luck! -Annie

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Through the Pages {my first novel}

Once upon a time, not too long ago, in fact, a little less than a year ago…

{August 19th, 2017}

“Hey, Annie, remember how you were asking, ‘what will I write next’ the other day?”

I did ask that question, after finishing Jump: The Things I Remind Myself. But when God asks a question like that, I’ve found He tends to have ulterior motives behind it. So I very cautiously said, “yeah, I remember… what about it?”

“Well, I’ve got one for you. Write a book for your mom.”

Cue wide eyes and a heck of a lot of confusion. And a scrambled message to my girl’s group. “I think I’m supposed to write a book for my mom. Help!”

Go figure, they all thought it was a brilliant idea.

“Hey Annie,” came the somewhat amused voice from the upstairs regions of the cosmos. “It’s for her birthday next year, by the way. And it’s about books. The interior will be cream paper, with an artistic book drawing for underneath the chapter headers. The cover will be purple.”

And that is the story of why I had a meltdown from August 19th to August 21st.

This was uncharted territory for me. I was pretty sure it would be a novel, not one of my short stories or a novella or something easy. (I’ve never completed a first draft of a novel, only a lot of partial first drafts.) And I had less than a year. And I needed to keep it a secret from everyone around me. (I’m horrible at keeping exciting things secret.)

{the journey}

The rest of August, September, and October were spent in a weird sort of stasis. I didn’t write a whole lot, at least, not that I remember. I did a lot of thinking. I spent a lot of time with books, and with my mom. And by mid October I had a pretty solid idea of what this story was supposed to look like.

November came around and I used NaNoWriMo as my excuse to pound out a 50k novel in a very short period of time. For the first time, I had a whole, finished, novel. And I couldn’t tell anyone.

Well, not quite true. I told my girl’s group (after making them swear to secrecy). I told Missie. And in June of 2018, I told my pen pal/adopted grandmother/great-aunt about it, because she asked what I was working on, and I was pretty darn sure that she wouldn’t tell anyone. 
The hardest thing this whole time has been keeping it a secret from everyone. Hannah helped; I had to tell her because I was in the middle of a stress-induced panic attack of “I can’t do this!” and needed help getting myself out. I told Jeremy because I conscripted him to receive the packages so my mother wouldn’t suspect anything. I made my cover designer, my editor, my beta readers, and my girl’s group swear themselves to secrecy, and… 
…here we are. 

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from this story:

“That’s the thing, Miranda, you never get over the butterflies if it’s the right person. They just settle down a bit. If it’s the right person, you just go your whole life being all tangled up with the butterflies in your stomach and the love in your heart.” 

Through the Pages
Annie Louise Twitchell

LOOK AT THIS COVER
*all the heart eyes to That Book Gal for this amazing design*
Available at Amazon

Fun Fact: I had the hardest time finding an editor until I was actually ready to see about hiring one. At that point, Facebook hiccuped and showed me a notification for a post from an editing page I’d been following and hadn’t done much looking into. If you’re in the US, I highly recommend Lemons to Lemonade Editing. Not only did she do a wonderful job with my line edits, but she works on paper, meaning I had a marked up paper copy to make my changes from. That was perfect for how my head works and the way I prefer to do things, and made my process of fixing things so much easier.

Fun Fact #2: I’m still a bit giddy that I actually did this thing. I will probably be varying degrees of giddy for the next two months.

Fun Fact #3: I’ve actually been so overwhelmed since I gave the book to my mom on the 5th that I’ve had two or three headaches and gone swimming a lot and written almost nothing. Just this blog post. I’ll get back in my groove eventually. I think.

The Bunny approves. This is important.

~Annie

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Consumed {poem}

I wasn’t going to share this one at all, but it scared me so much that I sent it to one of my writing groups, and Miss Rebekah {Rebekah DeVall} said “oooooooooooooooooh I like that”, or something like that, so… here it is.




Consumed
Annie Louise Twitchell


Don’t let me fall,

please.
Grab my hand and draw me back.
I’m too small.

Don’t let me fade,

please.
Bring your crayons and color the lines of me.
I’m so afraid.

My heart pounds,

seeking escape from hollowed-out ribs.
My heart likes to believe it is a butterfly,
but butterflies are not only lovely things.
Butterflies consume flesh and flowers alike
the same way my heart consumes me, flesh and flower alike.

Don’t let me slip,

please.
Steady my wobbling mind and keep me from insanity.
I am a sinking ship.

Don’t let me fall,

please.


Copyright 2017 by Annie Louise Twitchell

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The Ocean And I {Release Party}

Here is the link to the Facebook event: {party!}

I got my order of ten of these beauties this week! You can order one from Amazon, or…
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ON SUNDAY OCTOBER 8TH, YOU CAN ORDER AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OFF MY WEBSITE.

THAT’S RIGHT, DARLINGS.

annielouisetwitchell.com

In fact, my three paperback books are all available there. I do have limited stock, but THERE THEY ARE.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks working on getting it set up, and I’m proud to announce it’s almost ready! Don’t worry, I’ll still be blogging here – so if you’re subscribed to my emails, you’re all good. If you’re not, maybe you should be, so you can be overwhelmed with a lot of bubbly Annie talk almost every week. Totally up to you, though.

Hey, so I’ll be running some giveaways and games at my event. What would you like to see? Let me know in the comments!

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Jump: The Things I Remind Myself

Jump: The Things I Remind Myself is here! Order your copy on Amazon, in paperback or Kindle format (or both!)

Here’s some of my posts from the Facebook launch party:


So the title of the book is Jump: The Things I Remind Myself

I picked this title because of one of the poems in the book, the only one of my own that I have actually memorized. It’s called Jump:
All she wanted

was a hand to holdas she jumped off the cliffuntil she learned that maybejumping off the cliff was really justthe metaphor for taking a stepall by herselfwithout a hand to hold.

As some of you may know, I have anxiety, and I go between being super excited about all this adult stuff and doing my writing and presenting it to the world, and completely losing my mind in endless worries and meltdowns over it. I wrote the poem Jump almost a year ago. Actually, it sort of wrote itself. I looked down at my paper and there it was. I have always remembered it since then, without really sitting down to memorize it.

As some of my brothers can tell you, we used to go jumping off this little cliff at my aunt’s house when we were little. (That was one of the things my dad wished I hadn’t told him, about twelve years after the fact.) It wasn’t a cliff, exactly, it was this steep bank in a gravel pit. We would jump out, and about three feet down we’d hit the bank and slide down the rest of the way. Those few seconds in midair were heaven. I felt like a butterfly, like I could just drift off on a passing breeze.
At some point I got scared of jumping. I got scared of testing things. I got scared of trying out new things and exploring and poking at things with a stick (or my bare hands) and just generally being curious. And while I’m working over that, and I’ll tell you about the adventure I had yesterday when I temporarily misplaced myself, I’m still can be nervous about people. I’m not nearly as bad as I was about Spinner of Secrets, but it is still a process.
This book has been a stretch. It’s been pushing myself. To do Spinner of Secrets, I had to learn to let other people help me. To do Jump, I had to do it myself. I had to just sit down and do it. It was hard. It’s been so incredibly worth it, and this is the first day the book is public.
Anyway. Here’s a pair of butterflies. (I did take this one myself.)




What’s up next?

The Ocean And I is a short scrapbook type collection of poetry, prose, and photos. Not 100% sure when that will be coming out, but it should be in the next few weeks.

No Dragons, Please! is a children’s short story I wrote for my youngest brother a couple years ago, that I’m revising for publication in November. Here’s my absolute favorite line from that one:


“I told you, I don’t know how to fight a dragon! The last thing I want to do is get killed!”

“If you’re avoiding death, maybe you should have considered an occupation other than a knight,” Ninnia muttered.

Amazon – Jump: The Things I Remind Myself

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Jump: Release Party!

Jump: The Things I Remind Myself releases on August 20th (assuming the last bug with the cover format works out – cross your fingers!)

I’ll be posting videos, answers questions, and running a giveaway, over on my Facebook page. The event runs from 7pm to 8pm EDT, but I will probably leave the giveaway open for a couple days for those who can’t make it.

Jump: The Things I Remind Myself also includes ten pencil sketches! I’m so happy with the quality of the printing job, and excited to share them with you!
This event is all online, so if you mark that you’re attending the party, you’ll get notified when I make a post in the discussion for you to interact with. 
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Stuff and Things

I’ve been loudly absent this month, which is interesting because it was July last year that I was pretty absent too. Maybe I should just take July off.

A large factor in my absence has been my emotions and mental state. I’ve been swirling from anxious to depressed to hyper-actively happy and right back around again. It’s been hard. While I’ve been safe the whole time, interacting with people has been a struggle, and most days it’s been as much as I can do to get out of bed and do my normal daily chores. Sitting down to write has been difficult, because by the time I’ve trudged through the day and have time, all I want to do is sleep. I’ve lost count of how many meltdowns I’ve had, one of them at 3am and a girl online talked me through it so I could go back to sleep. It’s been okay, the stuff I’ve been anxious about has been able to be resolved, and my family has been really great. But even though it’s been okay, it’s been hard. Tiring. I want to just sleep for three days straight (except I tried that once and I lasted three hours.)

It feels like years since I published Spinner, not two and a half months. It was six weeks ago that I talked to the classrooms – what? No, I’m 98% sure that was two years ago. I’m disoriented by how time is passing, probably because I’ve been doing so much more on a daily basis since April 1st than I have my entire life. Every day is twice or three times longer and busier than they ever have been, and I’ve been having a hard time finding my balance. In addition, I have another part job. That comes with its own stresses, especially trying to find my balance with my boss. The last time I worked under someone, it went downhill fast and I ended up badly burned. So I’m trying to figure out how to keep my boss happy while still doing the best job I can do while still staying sane. If I can’t stay sane, it’s not worth it, even though the money is good. It’s complicated.

Life’s complicated.

But, I’m feeling like I’m over the worst of this period, and will be able to start August on a better foot. Here’s hoping.

NEWS:

I have a poetry book coming out! I’m planning a Facebook party on August 20th.

Copyright 2017 by Annie Louise Twitchell

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Something





Something
Annie Louise Twitchell
There’s something I have to say
I have to say
I have to say
I don’t remember what it is
The thoughts slipped through my mind –
Curse this sieve that is my brain! –
And I can’t remember –
can’t remember.
I can’t remember.
I have to find the words.
Back track,
walk through the house,
back to the kitchen where I was when
I realized that I had something to say.
I was grinding pepper into the pot of chicken soup.
Grind some more –
too much pepper,
still no memory
There is something I have to say!
But I can’t remember the words.
Words are so much a part of me
that I take them for granted
the same way I take myself for granted.
I forget them the same way I forget myself.
The words are gone and
all that’s left is a racing, raging sense of urgency.
Something I have to say –
I have to say
something.
I don’t know what it was that I had to say,
and I can’t think of anything else;
just those words that I can almost taste
but can’t remember.
There was something I wanted to say.
Something I needed to say.
And all I can remember is,
I love you.



Copyright 2017 by Annie Louise Twitchell
Video by Kathy Twitchell

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The Reasons I Like You






The Reasons I Like You
Annie Louise Twitchell
I think the reason I like you so much is 
because you make me forget that 
I cried myself to sleep last night. 
I think the reason I like you so much is 
because you make me laugh so hard
that my muscles go limp, like the spaghetti
I cooked a minute too long because
I was distracted texting you.
You make me laugh all the way through my body,
not just the giggling that I’m so well known for,
but you make me happy all the way down to my toes
and all the way in to my bones. You make my bones laugh,
and I love that you don’t look at me like I’m nuts
when I say something like that.
Laughing bones?
I think the reason I like you so much is
because you don’t tell me to be happy;
because sometimes no matter how hard I try, I just can’t be.
You understand, and I love that about you.
I think the reason I like you so much is
because you just roll your eyes and let me
drag you outside to play in the rain and
stomp through puddles as if we were six years old,
because I can’t find anything else to do with this 
explosion of life that floods through my veins
in a torrent of blood and laughter.
I think the reason I like you so much is
because you hold me close so I can hear
your heartbeat pounding against your ribs
and I can get lost in the rhythm, because
sometimes I get lost in my head and I need 
you to capture me and bring me out of the 
universes that live there and drive me insane.
I think the reason I like you so much is 
because you are you;
you complete me in ways that I didn’t know were incomplete,
and I really really really hope I can 
be the piece that completes you.
I’m scared that I won’t be, you know.
I’m scared of a lot of things,
and the biggest is that I’m not enough.
I think the reason I like you so much is
because when I catch your eye as I’m rambling about
my latest words, I don’t see a bored look. 
I feel safe somehow, like maybe I can be enough
and maybe what you want is five feet three inches of glitter,

stardust, and me.


Copyright 2017 by Annie Louise Twitchell
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My Silence Is My Destruction




My Silence Is My Destruction

Annie Louise Twitchell


My silence is my destruction.

Once upon a time you knew that.

You taught me how to have a voice 

and how to sing
but now your hand is around my throat,
stifling my words into a hoarse scream 
because the words I would speak 
are not the words you want to hear tonight.
They are fire,
they are branded on your skin,
a shrieking howl in your ears,
but I will not be silent for your comfort.
My silence is my destruction.
I will scream my words out loud 
until they fill the air between us 
because you told me to have a voice
and now you say that my voice 
is only for your validation.
Only to be used when it agrees with yours.
Only to be valued when it makes you comfortable.

My silence is my destruction.

And I will not be silent.




Copyright 2017 by Annie Louise Twitchell
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