…that I have three actual honest-to-goodness print books in my house that I didn’t publish myself, but which nonetheless contain my name and my works. They all arrived at some point in 2016, mostly during a period when I was agonizing over my life choices and career path. It’s a funny old world, when you think about it.

The books in question are:

• The 2016 Rhysling Anthology, containing my nominated poems “Institutional Memory” and “Observations from the Black Ball Line Between Deimos and Callisto”. (http://amzn.to/1ZE4F7X)
• The 2016 edition of The Martian Wave, containing “Observations from the Black Ball Line Between Deimos and Callisto”. (http://amzn.to/1YhSfEi)
• Nights of the Round Table, a Circlet Press anthology of Arthurian erotica, containing my very long short story, “The Giving Game”, which retells the story of Gawain and the Green Knight as a bisexual polyamorous romance.

It’s possible I should be creating a trophy shelf of the sort some authors have, but the fact is, I wasn’t particularly pursuing print publication when I wrote or submitted these works. I wasn’t aware The Martian Wave would have a print edition. I knew it was possible for Circlet Press to take their books to print, but they’re primarily an e-publisher and the print edition is not something they announce when they solicit submissions. At the same time, I also feel like I have enough stuff in my house and in my life, and I don’t feel a strong connection to physical books. For accessibility and ease of use, I mostly read electronically.

But I know there are people who enjoy having a physical object, enjoy that tangible connection to artwork. So I’m going to try something out here: at the end of the first month in which I have 100 sponsors on my Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/alexandraerin), I will do a drawing of all the people who were paying sponsors that month. The winner will get my copy of The Martian Wave, with my signature on my (Rhysling-nominated!) poem.