The Making of Away With Words

   The first thing that I want to say about Away With Words is that I couldn’t have written and published this book without the loving encouragement and support of my beautiful bride, Gale. Though I did all of the actual creating and writing, Gale inspired most of the verse and helped me to proofread and edit the poetry that was included in Away With Words. When I began to put together Away With Words, it was my intention to transcend the process of making a book and turn it into a work of art. Gale jumped right in and helped me to gather and formulate the book’s content.

 Gale and I in Playa del Carmen, Mexico February 2004

  Initially, Away With Words was a few scattered verses that I wrote in a college course in the summer of 1998. That winter I wrote the first stanzas of The Price of Civilization: a lament and completed the epic in the spring of 1999. I continued to write a manuscript for a novel and a number of additional poems which, along with some of the poems I’d written in the college course, became Measured Metaphors. In the spring of 2000, I started to explore expression of thought through sonnets. The Shakespearean form was especially intriguing to me as my heritage is almost exclusively Celtic, and the classic format of three quatrains and a couplet  in iambic pentameter made sense to me almost immediately. In the spring of 2001, I put together the first version of Sonneteer as a PageMaker document. My family and friends became very excited about my work in Sonneteer and encouraged me to publish a book of verse.

   I chose 1^st Books (now Authorhouse) as a publisher because of 1^st Books’ cutting edge approach to publication, their versatility, and their extensive use of the internet. (I believe that the World Wide Web, despite the overwhelming occurrence of its tawdry porn element, is going to be the preferred method of business communication and transaction in the coming decades.) Step by step, 1^st Books walked me through the process of publication both electronically and in print; and they have followed through on all of their initial claims for every aspect of publishing and promoting the book. Beyond that, Away With Words, has turned out to be a great looking paperback!

   In addition to Gale, I’d like to mention that my brother Mark Liggett and nephew Shane Liggett have invested in the success of this project, and I thank both of them for their earnest support. In fact, all of my family has been extremely supportive.