Shilling Your Emotional Trauma for Fun and Profit

or: Zach has a new poetry chapbook.

Hi, friends!

I’m excited to announce that I have a new poetry chapbook out. It’s called Say a Long Goodbye and you can find it here: https://amzn.to/35MVykj

How do you say goodbye to somebody you loved?

When you're a poet, there's only one way to do it. You write, over and over again, when everything is spiraling around you, when all of the dreams and plans that you made are lost. There's nothing left but the loss, the ache, the missing. And if you're not careful, it can swallow your life.

This collection of poetry spans thirteen years of grief and healing: the uneven process, the setbacks, the hurt, the whole cycle of it, over and over again. Love is messy; losing it is messier--and healing is never a pretty process. This collection is a poet's attempt to piece himself together, one stitch at a time.

It’s a very personal collection of poetry, and it’s one that I’ve been sitting on for a long time. It’s only in the last few months, since working with my Ninja Writers chapbook class, that I’ve mastered the courage to finishing pulling it together and put it out into the world.

Honestly, until I hit the publish button last night, I wasn’t sure that I would. But now that I have, I’m in the position where I need to put it out there in the world.

That means thinking about keywords, and marketing, and how I can give it the best chance for people to find it.

That means sharing with Facebook, and Twitter, and Medium, and my mailing list, and my Substack, and Instagram, and wherever else I can think to message it. It means coming up with hashtags and slick marketing copy, and thinking about it as a product.

That means, essentially, grabbing my scuffed-up briefcase and going from door to virtual door, trying to sell my packaged trauma like a used vacuum salesman.

Or, at least, that’s how it feels.

I feel like a hack trying to market this book. I feel like a hack trying to market any book, but this one in particular is especially difficult.

I’m not going to lie. I feel particularly cheap trying to hawk this. But, you know, it’s out there. Maybe it will help someone. Maybe its existence will do some good.

That’s all I can hope for.