Stormy and Sunny Skies

It's been awhile since I wrote a blog post. My life got a bit upset in May.  I managed to try to promote my published poetry book for prime days in July.  It wasn't a success except to let you all know I didn't completely disappear. I struggle with some mental health stuff, which I think we all do. I suppose it's a little cliché that I'm a poet with mental health struggles. It hasn't been all bad as I hope you can tell from my some of my former blog posts. I did stop working on my next poetry book which I am planning on getting back to soon. I have been doing reviews and I have continued to get reviews on "Un-Clenched Emotion". I received the best one the other day.  There are both storms and sunny skies in life. The review says this:

DAUNTLESS-SECRETS OF THE ANDES

5.0 out of 5 stars This Author truly understands nature!

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

What a wonderful collection of poems! If you love creation like I do, you will enjoy how the author puts her feelings of appreciation and discovery into words that sound like home. These poems are not only beautiful, but most of them are quite uplifting (except for the middle collection called "Despairing") My favorite begins with the words, "The day I fell in love with night..." We even took her writings to share around a beach campfire and covered the first section titled, "Enjoying". It was a memorable experience for everyone! The last portion, called "Philosophizing" also had some exceptional entries, but the ones I'll always revisit, are those that centered on understanding and appreciating the wonder of nature.

Isn't that awesome!? People read my writings around a beach! That's especially cool since the cover is a
photo of an ocean in Oregon.  I don't know if it's related to some more good news I got: Someone finally bought my book.  'Bought it', so I actually made a couple of dollars instead of a few cents from Kindle Unlimited.  It could be that this person liked my book so much they bought the print copy, or it might be related to yet more good news I received.

"Un-Clenched Emotion" got accepted on the BiblioBoard Library mobile and web platform. This is through Indie Washington, a collection of local indie author books. (An indie author is someone who self published their work). So my book is available to library patrons across the state. I've fantasized about having my book in libraries and now it's a reality. They don't just take any books either, I had to be accepted into this and I am so glad I was. They also gave me the following logo to proudly display on my website:

I'm not sure if they or another library had to purchase my book in order to make it available. A note on the logo:  in case you didn't know, I live in western Washington State, USA. However, I am happy to say "Un-Clenched Emotion" has traveled the world. Thank you for visiting my blog!

What Is a Wonderful Problem?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Basically a wonderful problem is something that is overall a good thing, but that you need to do extra things to keep the problem a good thing. It's needing to buy clothes because you lost weight. You have to spend money to keep yourself covered appropriately. You lost weight but it's a hassle to have to spend money because of your weight loss. Unfortunately, that is not my wonderful problem at the moment (it was in the past) My current wonderful problem is that I have too many good reviews for my book now to post!

I just got a good review from Reader's Favorite. They can't post to Amazon because Amazon does not let professional companies to post reviews. I have been waiting for years to get this review, I think since 2016 when I published "Un-Clenched Emotion". It's as follows:

Reviewed by Diana Lopez for Readers' Favorite

Un-Clenched Emotion: A Collection of Poems has original and creative content. Natasha Gruss explores many different topics while maintaining a high level of attention to detail. She conveys her thoughts vividly as she describes the landscape and other elements of nature. She writes about the sea and the sky, expressing appreciation for everything around us. She continues with the topic of despair, where she examines dreams and feelings. She continually alludes to nature, which remains a background theme. Gruss concludes with a section on philosophizing, where she provides her perspective on situations such as the passing of time and facing life. With its inspirational verses, this collection will give you much food for thought.

I wish Un-Clenched Emotion had been longer. I enjoyed all of the poems because Natasha Gruss describes sensations, aromas, and objects concisely, without losing the central message that she is conveying. The language is simple and honest, without pretension, which is why I think everyone will enjoy this collection. Enjoying was my favorite part because it has the most descriptive poems and covers many emotions and situations. By sharing her thoughts, Gruss awakens the reader’s imagination. Her outlook is uplifting as she talks about feeling good and enjoying life, but she doesn't avoid expressing herself on matters such as confusion or loneliness. This is the ideal collection to savor during a peaceful moment.

Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash

So how did I get so many good and honest reviews? I first started getting reviews from chatting with other authors on Goodreads through the Author Program and Goodreads Groups. Unfortunately, the author's there could only post to Goodreads at first.  You can find my Goodreads reviews at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32320363-un-clenched-emotion and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32282264-un-clenched-emotion I gave honest reviews to get my own good reviews. Fortunately for me, there is too much to my story in getting book reviews in a blog post. I do want to mention that I was going to post just the 5 star reviews of "Un-Clenched Emotion" on my review page here, but there are too many of those to post.  What a wonderful problem!

If you would like to see my Amazon reviews they are at: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Collection-Poems/dp/1537725327 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZNVH4Y/  Admittedly, there are not many reviews on the first link (at the moment) which is to the print version of my book. I am still having a hard time selling that. Maybe someday! Like how now the Kindle version of my book is at a good number of reviews. I want to mention these are only the U.S.A. reviews. I also have reviews from Canada, the U.K., and right now one from Australia, Amazon pages.

Photo by Anastasiia Rozumna on Unsplash

There are a couple of shout outs I want to add to this. First to Diabolic Shrimp. This is an Author who offered to do Amazon reviews for a copy of a free book. He gave me my first Amazon review which was 5 stars. It took him a few years to do this. His link is: https://diabolicshrimp.com/the-reef/. Second I want to thank Sandra who runs a wonderful, honest, review site. Authors can upload their books to be reviewed at: https://sandrasbookclub.blogspot.com/2019/09/read-review-program.html You have to review another book in order to get in the program. There is no guarantee that you will get reviewed but I was lucky enough to get a lot of reviews from her program! Sandra also helps run a Secret Santa Exchange group on Facebook. I'll let you look that up on your own if you're interested. Authors are guaranteed to get an Honest (could be 1 star) review from here if they give an honest review to another book first and within half a month's time frame. 

There are many more authors who I have connected with throughout this journey, and I thank them all and apologize for not adding your name and information here.  I want to say I am not doing reviews for anyone right now. Not unless you are on the Facebook Secret Santa or another Facebook group that's by invite only (sorry, I don't have the power to invite for this group.) I will stop rambling now.  I wish for all of you to obtain your own wonderful problems!

Free Ebook For Easter

 

Happy Easter and Happy Poetry Month. To celebrate, I am once again offering my kindle ebook, 'Un-Clenched Emotion', free to everyone! The promotion for this book runs from Friday April 7th, 2023 to April 11th, 2023.  Last time I offered my book for free, I gave away 6 books. I'm not sure if I'll run this promotion again, right now I am not planning on it.  The link for the this is:   https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y Of course the link is all over the site. I'm sorry to bombard you, but I want to make it easy for you to get my book!

I don't make any royalties ($) when I give out my book for free.  I do make some pennies when someone downloads and reads my book on Kindle Unlimited. You heard me right, cents, not dollars. I also recieve a few cents a month for being enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program. When someone actually buys the book, I get a couple of dollars. And my Sales Ranking goes up.  So of course I am always hoping to sale. I haven't sold many copies, but I have sold some. For me, that's reason to celebrate! 

I also believe the reviews I have received for "Un-Clenched Emotion" is reason to celebrate. Right now I have an average rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 (out of 25 ratings). That's pretty great! I've received so many honest reviews by belonging to review programs myself. Right now my favorite review program is Sandra's Book Club. It's at: http://sandrasbookclub.blogspot.com/ It is awesome, and if you are an author and decide to join, please mention my name. Anyway, one of my favorite 5 star reviews for my book is as follows:

If you want to know what's inside the book, here are a few of my YouTube teasers:

I hope you seize this opportunity to get my book for free and I hope you enjoy!

What to do for Poetry Month

It is the month of April, and the month of April is poetry month.  There are many things people can do besides write poetry.  Most obviously, they can read poetry.  Of course, you can read the classics like Shakespeare or Dickon's, but you can read current day poets too, (like me).  If you read a poet's work on your kindle, they would appreciate a review or at least a star rating.  All you have to do is click a star.  I decided to read a poetry book for this April.  

This month I decided to read Misha Collins poetry book: "Some Things I Still Can't Tell You."  Misha Collins is not famous for being a poet.  He is famous for playing the character Castielle (an Angel), on the T.V. show Supernatural.  I was very excited when I found out he was into poetry.  I saw him recite some on my Instagram account, thought it was great, and asked my husband for his book for Christmas. My husband got for it me!  Misha Collins is a very good poet, and I am very glad that I have his writing in my possession.

If you are a poet, and are published with Amazon, you can give your book away for free for up to five days.  You won't get any royalties when you do this, but you might spread your work around the world a little more.  I chose to give my book away for 3 days at the beginning this month.  Four people took advantage of the offer.  I may give "Un-Clenched Emotion" more free days in following months.  It is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you have that, it is always free.  I found out that I do get royalties if someone buys my book that way.

Naturally, if you would like to, you can write your own poetry in the month of April.  There are many poetry challenges online where they ask you to write a poem a day for the whole month of April.  I have done this in years past, but did not do a poem a day this year.  I did write a few poems this month, which I plan to submit to publication.  They are speculative poems, poems that follow a fantasy or science fiction theme.  I have a title for the other poetry chapbook, (or perhaps whole book), this time, and some more of this book to put together. The theme for this book is the Seasons. I still have a long way to go to get this finished.

I challenge you to read and/or write poetry this month.  Promote what you have already written, or write a review for an author you have read.