Ep 16 - Poetry, Perceptions and Writing Prompts with L.J. Keys

LJ Keys waxes poetics on perceptions and gets personal about how Before I Sleep: Poetry, Prose, and Peculiarity, her first book of poetry, came into being.

Find LJ here:
https://ljkeys.com/
Twitter - @ljandthekeys
Instagram - @ljandthekeys
Facebook - @ljandthekeys

Special Shout-Outs:
Luc Bardi - illustrator - @gabeathran
Rob Halhead - cover design - @rob_halhead
Stephen Parolini - editing - www.noveldoctor.com
Kraken Editing - proof reading - www.krakenediting.com
bookow.com - book formatting

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Transcript done by A.I. and may be subject to errors. 

Transcript

Romancing the Story Ep 16: Poetry, Perceptions, and Writing Prompts

Sarah: Hello Loves! I’m Sarah Gamez and you’re listening to Romancing the Story: a podcast centered around romance writing, reading, and finding love in story structure. We’re at episode #16. On today’s episode, I chat with LJ Keys about talking to yourself through poetry and writing about walls. 

With that said, let’s dive right into our discussion. 

Sarah: Welcome friend of the podcast, poet, and enthusiast of both spooky and whimsy, L.J. Keys. 

Liesl: Hello! Thank you so much for having me. 

Sarah: My pleasure! You are a first-time published author. 

Liesl: Correct. I am!

Sarah: and you are releasing a book of poetry called Before I Sleep: Poetry, Prose, and Pecularity – which comes out Friday, January 29th. First off, love the name. I already gives me an idea of what to expect in between the pages, but I know it is so daunting to put out your first book. 

Liesl: Oh baby. Yes. 

Sarah: and a book of poetry on top of that. Other genres are super hard, I completely concede to that. All genres are very hard to write, but poetry just ups the anty because it’s so person. 

Liesl: Yes, It is very personal. And I won’t beat around the bush, this book is a very, very personal piece of writing. So I’ve had to struggle with the idea that, you know, people are going to read it. But yea, I’m super excited.  

Sarah: It is exciting! I know it’s something you’ve been working on for 3 years, finally come to fruition to see it out in the world. 

Liesl: Yea, I kinda can’t believe it. I’ve been working on it for such a long time that there are moments where I look back at something from a previous revision, or something like that, and I’m like “why did I take that poem out? What? I want that poem back in. What was I thinking? Why did I take it out? But I’ve kind of learned to trust myself. To trust past me. If I had it in my mind, whatever moment I was in, that poem didn’t fit, I’m gonna trust that. When I’m removed from the work a little bit more then it’s like “oh no, this would totally fit”, but that’s because I’m not in it. I’m not living the writing at that moment.  

Sarah: I love that you said about trusting your past self, cause I I’ve been saying that a lot lately. “Thanks past-Sarah”. Thanks for thinking of that.

Liesl: Right?! Past Liesl has got it. She’s on it. 

Sarah: Exactly. Now, why pick poetry as a medium for the book?

Liesl: Well, I have always been a little extra - if you will. And I’ve always loved writing. I’ve always been very floral with my writing and maybe a little sing-songy. I like playing with rhythm. I actually don’t know that much about poetry. So I will preface this book with the fact that I did take a poetry class and they all hated my poetry. 

Sarah: I feel that in my soul. 

Liesl: Yea, they hated it with a fiery passion. But it was a really great experience because I was able to learn the very important lesson that I’m not writing for everybody.

Sarah: That’s a very important thing to learn.

Liesl: I went through that class. I took their feedback and I used it. I learned, you know. I was able to hone some of those skills. But when it boils down to it, the book is for me and for the people I care about. And they love it. I’m fine with that. 

Sarah: And that’s the important part right? As writers, we get lost in our own heads. 

Liesl: It’s so true. 

Sarah: It’s so hard cause we want everyone to like our writing, but the truth is, there are just some people who won’t gel or vibe with it. 

Liesl: And that’s so ok! That was so liberating and freeing when I really made that realization. Cause the first week in that class, I was like “oh my gosh, what am I doing with my life? My worst dreams have come true! I am a terrible writer!” And it’s like no, that’s not true. That’s not true for anybody listening to this. If you’re a writer, you write amazingly and your work is beautiful. I want to say that to everybody. 

Sarah: There ya go! If you take nothing else from this episode….

Liesl: Exactly! And if you love it, someone else is going to too. And honestly, I just really enjoy poetry and my mom really enjoys poetry and just words in general. She introduced me to Robert Frost when I was little. I know not everybody love Robert Frost either. You know, that’s fine with me. So that was kind of my introduction to poetry and there was something that really resonated with me. I wrote a lot of very angst poetry in high school as well. 

Sarah: I think we all did. Just a little. 

Liesl: Oh baby! It’s real bad. Oh man, it was actually a real fun experience to go back and read some of those recently. There are certain lines, I’m like “oh man, I would still so use that today”. I could have written that yesterday. And other parts that are like cringe. 

Sarah: Oh man. But on your blog, you mention that the poems were originally shared with friends in private. How did that process evolve from sharing with an inner circle to a published, illustrated book?        

Liesl: Uh, therapy. 

Sarah: Easy. Short answer: Therapy. 

Liesl: Yes, my one-word response to that: therapy. But also, my very, very supportive group of friends. You know, I joke that I’ll never know if my therapist is my biggest fan, best friend, or just the most amazing therapist in the world. And I’m fine with any of those. So she was a big proponent. She knew that I liked writing so she used a lot of prompts to get me to write about my emotions and kind of feel my way through certain things that I was having trouble working on. I would take in my poems and read them to her and she would be like “I love that”. With a lot of love coming at me from my people and learning to push that love from inside of me outward, the book came into being.  

Sarah: I think that’s an under-rated piece of the puzzle is advocates. Advocates for us and our writing. I’ve heard that before from a counselor that majority of the time, they’re your advocate. Friends are in that similar vein. 

Liesl: Let’s get real here. I have one friend where we are very candid with each other. In the beginning, she would let me know if she liked something or if she thought something could be changed. And that was fine and it worked. It was wonderful. But somewhere along the way, she just decided she was going to be my cheerleader. The critiques kinda stopped and she told what she loved about every piece I shared with her. 

I think that a really important place friends have, and I think it’s ok to ask that of your friends. To say: I can get critiques from these other people. I need an advocate. To even say to someone, “hey, can you read this and just dott on it?” It’s that whole when you put something out into the universe, it comes back to you. I think it’s ok to ask for that. Cause we all need that. We all need somebody who loves our writing. 

Sarah: And to keep us encouraged! Cause it can be really difficult and we can get very disillusioned with it. I’m with you. I have a whole group text with some writer girlfriends. We’ll just pop in there and say “we wrote 300 words today”. Yay! It’s there to help share our accomplishments and just get these positive vibes and feedback. 

Liesl: You know, I would be remiss in not mentioning the Writer’s Group at the Roanoke Public Library. I had joined that when I moved to Texas and those gals really changed things for me. I brough in a piece of writing and it wasn’t a piece of poetry. It was a piece of fiction that I was working on. They just loved it and loved on it. That was just the kind of group that we had. We would do critiques, but they were very loving with lots of perspective. And I don’t think I would have been able to share my work in the same way with the same confidence had it not been for that group and those people. Definitely big shout-out to them.  

Sarah: Here’s your PSA to join a writing group if you haven’t yet. 

Liesl: Yes! Join a writing group and there are different kinds of writer’s groups. You can join one where you will maybe walk away crying every week but you know your writing will be better – if that’s what you want. Or you can join a writer’s group that they pat you on the head and tell you how good you did and give you a treat. And that is what I needed. 

Sarah: Same here! That’s how I met my group of writer girlfriends in the group text. The writer’s group is what changed my mind from a hobby to this is something I want to get more serious about. It was kinda that lightbulb moment. 

Liesl: Yes! That’s exactly what happened in the writer’s group. I think that’s what a good writer’s group does. It propels people forward that want to be propelled forward. And there’s any kind of wrtier’s group inbetween too. Highly recommend. 

Sarah: Now we touched a little on it earlier, but the poems in Before I Sleep are crafted for a rich, visceral experience – all with varying degrees of the psychological. How did you decide on which poems made it into the book? Did you have to cut any? 

Liesl: Gosh, it was really difficult process. I ended up picking poems that I felt pertained to what is happening in the parts – the short story pieces of the book. And I say in the verbiage on the back of the book, the poems reflect pieces of my journey and Echo – the character in the book – her journey too. I don’t know if you saw the latest remake of Little Women, but there’s a scene where Jo is a writer and she spreads these papers out all over the floor. I was watching this as a writer – like “oh, that would be really helpful in certain circumstances”. Sure enough, when I was picking poems, I spread them all out on the floor. I actually have pictures of it – cause this is also very extra. I just spread everything out. I went through them. That was also how I put them in the order that I wanted them in and I kinda of looked at them as a sea and I was fishing. It was hard but really fun. 

Sarah: I didn't realize the book had kind of been a serious work in progress for about 3 years and I like how you’ve broken out the book into different sections. Can you tell me a bit more about that? 

Liesl: I wrote chunks of it at various times. I really piecemealed it all together, even Steve, my editor, the novel doctor.com, he edited the first 10,000 words of my short story that’s in the book, like two and a half years ago, long time ago. So the book is kind of set up with a prologue, which is a very poem/ short story about like caving and it's basically a metaphor for therapy. Then the woods is the initial story. In the woods is where I talk about myself as a child and I do some inner child work and kind of sort through some of those big emotions, some past traumas, things like that. And then go into a chunk of poetry. Then in the Garden is where I meet myself as an old woman and it's kind of looking at what kind of person I wanna be, what I want my life to look like, all of those kind of things, things that I need to work on in order to get myself there. And then another chunk of poems and then in the Rooms is kind of me dealing with the perceptions of what I think other people's perceptions are of me.

It's still kind of this thing where it's all happening within my head. So it's not actually these other people, it's my interpretation of these people. Cuz you know, there's always what someone actually feels about you. I have always had issues with self worth and things like that. It's kind of like sometimes you can get lost in what you think someone else is thinking about you rather than what they actually are thinking about you. And so kind of dealing with that and like the perception of that and kind of letting go some of those things. Then another chunk of poems and then in the Mirror the part four is where I am dealing with myself present day. You know, I'm basically dealing with my own reflection and kind of what that looks like, you know, to actually have a conversation with yourself.

Sarah: And so was it the mirrors section that you took that amazing author bio photo?

Liesl: Yeah. Oh my gosh, it was so funny because I went into the room and was like, okay, I'm just gonna be in the room. Just don't think I'm weird. I'm just gonna close the door. So I set up this mirror and I just decided to be super weird and like emo for a little while. Turn off all the lights just lit my candle and just like stared myself in the mirror. 

Sarah: Like my 13 year old self understands exactly where you're coming from. 

Liesl: I know, but it was kind of for a lot of different reasons. Like I wanted to see like how the light played on my face, how I see things out of the corner of my eye and the low lighting. I just kind of wanted to get myself in the head space. Cuz there was a part of that I was struggling with. But, of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity for a photo. 

Sarah: It was really amazing light and I love that it goes very much in line with the theme. So I mean it's perfect. It really is.

Liesl: I played with the idea of using like an actual image of myself. Cuz I did have some pictures taken a while back for this kind of thing, you know, there's some of them on my blog. But then I just had that one and it was like, no, I'm just gonna be my angsty teenage self. 

Sarah: I appreciate that. I love when people get a little playful instead of just a very standard smiley pick. I mean, I appreciate those too, but it goes along so well. And the fact that he was in the midst of that writing. 

Liesl: It was so much fun. And I do have to say, I think that all of the people that I did work with on this book helped me make it look so polished and so professional and like all of that, I felt like I could get away with doing this fun thing. I don't feel like I have to talk up the book in those regards because everything is breathtaking, you know to look at it, which I had nothing to do with how it looks. The writing is me, but everything else is these other wonderful people. 

Sarah: Like your illustrator? Who’d posted on Instagram some of the illustrations he’d worked on for your book.

Liesl: Yeah. I just found him on Instagram and it's been really fun cuz he's in France. It made me feel all fancy. I liked his stuff on Instagram though and I reached out to him. He was like, I would love to do a commission. It's incredible. He does amazing work. 

And initially, this was two separate projects. So the stories, the parts as I call them, were actually a separate entity that were gonna be like a full length novel. And they changed over the course. Well, actually, I should say their inception was actually a therapy prompt. I kept coming up against this wall in therapy and I just couldn't get around it.

And so my therapist was like, Hey, you should write about the wall. And I don't know what that means. What do you mean write about a wall? It’s there's. It's stone or something. But I'm extra enough that I was able to just kind of run with that concept. And I ended up writing this story about a girl who's wandering through the woods and kind of gets lost and meets herself as a child. She sees the wall first. She comes upon this wall and it's so tall. She can't see the top, it’s so wide. She can't see either end of it. She walks a super long way. Both directions can't find a way through it. Then she meets this little girl and the story continues.

I've talked about in the past that I got through the wall and that's all in part one. So now, there's three more parts after that, which were unexpected. But that's a therapy thing - like you always think that this is the layer that you're gonna be done. “I'm done with therapy now.” Oh, there's always another layer. I had these poems and I was gonna do just a straight book of poetry. And because I was writing about the same topics in the poems and the stories, I just had the thought, like, why not combine them.

And then when I started looking at how to do that initially, I had the entire story altogether and then just all the poems. Somewhere along the way, I thought it might be kind of cool to intersperse them so the poems are broken up into sections in the beginning, present, the ongoing, and home. And so each of the poems that kind of reflect some kind of movement forward for both me and for the character.

Sarah: Well, I love that. And I love that the fact that you actually incorporated a theme to it and a through line so we have a character that we get to follow. So I have someone to follow and gravitate to.

Liesl: I'm interested to see how people react to it because I think that, for some of my beta readers, it was kind of like breaking it up - breaks up the story for the reader too. So it kind of pulls you out, but for me personally, I'm the same. I think the same way. Sometimes in a poetry book, I get a little lost myself. Cuz you can kind of pick it up and read one here and there. And that's also what I love about a poetry book. But this one, it kind of offers you the best of both worlds - to me personally.

Sarah: I love this idea of like something that's kind of interconnected, but you can enjoy on its own. You can appreciate on its own. Right. But has like a little thread just kind of woven through it ever since slightly to keep them all together. It's a beautiful tapestry - if we use some imagery there. I didn’t know that it was a therapy prompt that kind of got you to this place of writing more about the poetry. Because it's so funny. As writers, we sometimes write down our ideas and we think it's a throwaway idea. And sure enough, it comes back or it sticks with you and you find yourself writing a whole story or book of poetry around this one idea. It reminds me of Stephen King’s On Writing. 

Liesl: Oh my gosh. I love that book. Everybody read it! 

Sarah: Go check it out at your local library. It’s amazing. But it reminds me of the story of Carrie, his first book that really set his career off. It was a throwaway idea. He typed it out. Didn't like the idea and like where it was going. And threw it away. His wife fished it out of the trash, read it, and she says, no, you have something here. It just kind of goes back to what we were saying about having advocates. You think sometimes ideas are prompts or throwaways and you need someone to help push you along with those ideas. 

Which makes me think: Being a writer and all, do you also have a love affair with notebooks? Or journals?

Liesl: Oh my gosh. It's such a problem. So not only notebooks and stationary and paper, but like just basically all office supplies. Oh, it's bad. Notebooks are definitely the worst. I've actually had to like, pretend I don't like them anymore so that people stop getting them for me because I have so many right now. I still buy them for myself because I'm a crazy person. But yeah, so many. 

Sarah: So do you have any tips for capturing those inspirational ideas? 

Liesl: I think don't be afraid to take a minute and write something down. Because even if you're in a rush to go somewhere, you're in front of people, whatever. You're never gonna regret taking the time to write down something really quick. If somebody makes a big deal about you doing that, you're a writer and if they're not, maybe they don't understand. But you are and that's what you do. That's a part of your job is keeping track of those things. And I also think something that kind of took some pressure off for me is the whole concept that “what is for you, won't pass you by”. And so I'll jot things down and I try not to think about them too hard as I'm writing them down. Because I know that when they're meant to, they're gonna come back up for me. I'll come back to that notebook at some point. Because it just happens time and time. Again, I, I will forget about something and then some weird thing happens and I like clean out my purse and there's this notebook and it's like three months after I even wrote it down and it's like, oh my gosh, that would be a perfect poem. 

Don't put pressure on yourself to like write down the exact perfect thing or to use it that day or to make something with it. You can just jot it down. 

Sarah: I love that piece of advice and I completely agree with you because sometimes we’ve talked about on the podcast is having the right experience. We have a great idea but may not be able to write it yet. We need the right tools in our tool belt.

Liesl: That is basically this entire book. Like I wrote so many of these poems when I first moved to Texas and we moved away from family and friends. So I was kind of secluded and just very in my head and all these kind of things. And as I started to make friends here and find a community, it was like suddenly I had the tools to like continue that process. And the revisions of the poems were like, for me personally, it was like this epic experience. Because I wrote these ideas and I just got to watch them like set on fire in front of me - like in the most awesome way. Because it was like, I learned this technique or I really liked this part of this book that I read. I’m gonna incorporate that concept. And just as I dove more into writing and more into my psyche also in therapy the more tools I had to kind of hone what it was, I wanted to say to myself.

Sarah: I think we underestimate that a lot of times that sometimes we have amazing ideas, but they don't have to utilize at that very moment. I think we fear that it's gonna, you know, it it's gonna run away from us if we don't use it at that moment but maybe we're not quite ready. 

Liesl: Absolutely. And again, it comes back to what I use as a mantra. “What is for me will not pass me by”. Because it is the truth, I know that's like probably little Pollyanna because then you don't have to worry about things as much, but for me, it's just such a good reminder that as you're moving forward, you can. It gives you freedom to follow your gut, to let yourself be led in a direction, you know? And when that happens, you're gonna find the pieces to put the puzzle together. 

Sarah: And were you lead to a theme before writing or did it appear during the writing process?

Liesl: It definitely appeared during the writing process. Because as we talked about, they were all kind of these separate entities where I was working through things in therapy and all that. I mean, if I had to pick a theme, I would say catharsis. Cuz over the past three years, you know, I've had some big changes in my personal life and learning how to cope with those things and things from when I was a kid too. That’s something that I would love to say to people as well, is that: you know, you can have a great childhood and have loving families and people in your life and there are still things that you're gonna need to heal from. 

You know, there are still things that you will need to work through because we're all just humans. Our parents are too. So I think that it's a good thing to remember that, you know, nobody has it figured out - literally no one. There are just always things that we can take a closer look at inside of ourselves. That's really what I was doing. In this whole process, I was just peeling back layers of myself and getting to know myself better, learning what it was that made me tick.

Sarah: I think that’s why I enjoy poetry mostly is because it does have the power to look inward, as opposed to outward. I feel like when you write a novel or almost any other genre, you look more outward for inspiration. Poetry though is like the looking of inward to youand sometimes you're surprised where it goes. 

Liesl: Honestly the more random, the better for a prompt. Especially with poetry, that has been some of my absolute favorite things have been when I was just sitting and looking around a room and something caught my eye and I just focused on that thing and wrote a poem about it. It's amazing cuz I would say there's an entire story housed in like this tiny poem. Even very short poems, they have a beginning, middle and end. It’s so compact though. Cuz you are being so much more careful with your words to fit into these certain houses that are familiar within poetry. That's the other thing is this is very non-traditional poetry in my book. But yeah, it's really fun when it just kind of goes off the rails. That's like one of my favorite things. And it's always cool when it goes off in a way that still leads you to a place that where you can like call back the beginning.

Actually in the poem that I'd love to share, it's one of those where it kind of starts out in this way and then it goes to this very dark weird place. And then it kind of has this comedic relief right at the end, you know? So it's a journey. 

Sarah: Do you wanna go ahead and read that poem? 

Liesl: Sure, absolutely. This is called: My molasses cookies and other things I'm good at.

Melted Margarin, refined sugar, a beaten egg mixed smooth – sand after a wave. 

Cloves, remind me of Christmas. Ground ginger, yellow raindrops on white flour. 

Cinnamon smells like big red gum, filling my kitchen with the spiced smoke of a memory.

Molasses slips out of my hands, broken glass. Prismed pool of day, old blood slipping down grout lines or seeping up. 

I am also under the kitchen floor reaching through the sticky sugar and tile, a corpse oozing, sweet, hot sludge, holding my own ankle, struggling to write poems on the kickboards where only I will see 

about time wasted and pretending I'm wasted on non-alcoholic wine spritzers mixing and baking my legendary cookies using Susan's recipe from Pinterest. 

Sarah: I do like the ending.  Just – chef’s kiss - perfection.

Liesl: So that kind of goes all over the place. I feel like that that poem in particular is a really good one because first you're in the kitchen, it's just a normal day. It's maybe like a little bit of a flowery description of baking cookies, and then all of a sudden something happens and there's blood on the floor. What? and then, you're under the floor and reaching up. This is another one too, where the artist - his name is Luke Bardi, and he's on Instagram - He's got some really gorgeous work on there too, but he did all of the internal illustrations in the book and he just really did a great job with this image. And I gave him prompts for the images and kind of took little sections out of the writing. And I sent him this poem and he has the sludge on the ground and it's reaching up and also writing on the kickboards and holding the ankle. It's just so cool. But then at the end of the poem, because it it's so intense, it's like this jarring moment of like Susan's recipe from Pinterest. It's so silly, but I love it.

Sarah: I love how you subvert the expectation. Because you set it up to be like this kind of like very homey, quintessential baking moment and then it takes a turn.

Liesl: I think that it's, it's interesting. Like, am I the person cooking? Am I the person that's under the floorboards? What's real and what's not? I like the line too, about like pretending I'm drunk on non-alcoholic wine spritzers. I also liked exploring the idea of what a housewife is and you know, what the darker side of that might be too. I just kind of was exploring a lot of different themes with that one.

Sarah: As you were writing some of these poems, did you have any like discoveries about your writing? 

Liesl: Oh my gosh. Thousands. I'm not even sure how to narrow it. I discovered that you know, there are different ways that I like to write poetry. So you'll see some of them in this book are very rhyme-y and maybe more traditional and some of them don't rhyme at all. The lines are broken in a way that sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. I definitely write by feeling, which I think is why it resonates with some people and doesn't with others. And in my experience so far - people that have read it - if they like it, they love it. Cuz it hits you where you're where feelings are born. Or they just hate it cuz it doesn't follow any of the constructs of poetry. 

Sarah: But I think that's kind of the point of poetry – it’s supposed to hit a nerve. I think so too. It's gotta resonate on some level.

Liesl: Absolutely. And I think there's a lot of discomfort in this book. I kind of like that about it too, because there are certain things that pull you out of the writing, but that's what I want. I want you to be back in your body at the same time that you're feeling my emotions, you know. There's something I love about that. It's always that thing when someone else reads your book. 

Sarah: And you bring up a good point. I know you offer services, a freelance editor, how do you edit poetry in regards to that emotional piece?

Liesl: So I think that editing poetry is particularly challenging. And I think that, you know, as an editor, myself, one of my main focus focuses in editing is to maintain the voice of the author. And I think that with poetry, it is very easy to remove that voice. And so there needs to be a lot of communication, I think when editing poetry. The editor and the proofreader that I worked with thankfully were both incredibly thoughtful humans and were able to kind of look at the work as a greater piece. And kind of like look at them, not just whether it's grammatically correct or not, but whether you feel it in your heart, you know.

Or there's different thinking about the rhythm of a sentence. It's really interesting. You think about music. How many different kinds of music there are and different beats and all of these things. And certain ones, people like, and others don't like. Even some of the beats in the poetry, I would receive a suggestion and kind of be like, I can't change that. I think that's also important as a writer to remember that these editors are making suggestions. I say this to my clients every time is that, I am giving you information. It is up to you, what you do with that. You can throw my work out the window, if you want. I will not be offended because that's your baby. You have to do what you think is best for that piece. All I'm doing is giving you this information. And so I think it's important to remember as a writer. You get to make the final decision.

Also just finding the editor that works with you. One editor versus another, you could have a completely different story completely different poem, completely different book, you know, everything. So taking your time when picking an editor too, I think is good. I know for me personally, I'm never upset if someone decides not to work with me because I think that if anyone forced themselves to work with me, but we didn't really connect, it would be a nightmare for both of us. So I don’t ever worry about that. There's plenty of other people that are going to click and you work with those people. 

Sarah: So now that people knew all about your poetry and where can people find your book? 

Liesl: So it is available through Ingram spark but I will be posting it on my blog. So there will be a link through there, which is www LJKeys.com. You can also follow me on Instagram. I will have stuff up on there and that's @LJandthekeys. So I will be posting on there. That is my personal Instagram account, but I post a lot of stuff for the book on there as well. And for my blog. So yeah, those are the two places. 

Sarah: And did you wanna shout out anyone else? 

Liesl: I would love to shout out some people. So I think you said that you were gonna put 'em in the notes on the podcast anyway, so I'll just say Luc Bardi who's on Instagram, did my internal illustrations and they are just amazing. Breathtaking, I love them. 

Rob Halhead head did my cover and just gorgeous artwork. Stephen Parolini did my editing noveldoctor.com. He's great. 

Kraken editing did my proof reading and then bookow.com did my formatting and type setting and especially with the poetry book, you know, that can get a little wacky and they were very patient with me. All of these people were so incredibly patient with me and are all so ridiculously talented. I am just, I am wildly honored to have been able to bring them into this project. So thank you to them. 

Sarah: Fantastic! Thank you for being part of the podcast!

Liesl: Thank you so much for having me! This was so fun!

Sarah: Congratulations to LJ Keys on the book launch. Always a blast to chat about poetry and a little bit of the strange and unusual. 

Book recommendations for this episode: Before I Sleep: Poetry, Prose, and Peculiarity by LJ Keys.