Our poetry imprint at Not From This Planet has five titles from four authors, and there are more titles planned for 2025.
We have two books by Catriona Messenger,life dealer and hope dealer. (She as since published love dealer, under her own imprint) They are beautiful poems of love, hope, grief and sadness, and are illustrated by Catriona too. Catriona is a beautiful soul who used poetry to get through a tragic event which changed her life forever.
We have two books from Elizabeth Lockwood, and another on the way in January. Waves of Stardustis a breathtakingly sad yet beautiful book filled with illustrations and poems about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, birth and loss of her beautiful baby boy, Osian. After the loss, Elizabeth continued to write poetry to cope with the grief while she continued to care for and raise her three other children, and that became Rain and Leaves. In January 2025, her latest collection will be available, called Ghosts of the Water.
The fifth poetry title is Duelling Poets, by myself and a poet and retired journalist, Victor Keegan. For 30 days we both wrote a poem each day with the same title, and in the book, they aren’t credited, so you can vote for your favourite, then at the end of the book, see which poet is your winner!
I wrote a lot of poetry as a teenager, mostly to process emotions I didn’t know how to cope with, and to explore concepts and ideas of other worlds or dimensions. Sometimes the words would just arrive and I would jot them down, not really sure of their meaning. Poetry has got me through some tough times, and I know for Elizabeth and Catriona, it has done the same. On our NFTP Instagram, we post monthly poetry prompts, and because we love a haiku, we also do a haiku competition with them. So if you fancy having a go at penning a poem, do check out the prompts and join in!
Here’s one of my haikus that I wrote for one of the October prompts. Keep an eye on my stories for more throughout December.
The latest book from Amber Beetle Books, the children’s imprint of Not From This Planet, is called War Bear, and has been written and illustrated by Matthew Wiggans. It tells the story of war refugees through the eyes of a teddy bear left behind. The illustrations are stunning, and the story is inspiring, and we at Not From This Planet are very proud to have published it, and to have partnered with the charity War Child. For every copy of the book sold, £1 will go to War Child. You can get your copy in paperback, hardback or on Kindle here!
Earlier this year, we also published another children’s picture book, written and illustrated by Christina Chard, called Verity Soap and the Silver Candle Snuffer. Christina has been writing and creating the illustrations for this gorgeous book for years, and I think it would make an excellent Christmas gift with the wintery theme and all the wonderful animals in the story. You can get your copy in paperback and hardback here.
The Magical Doorway Series is my own children’s novels, and there are three so far, with more on the way! (Soon, hopefully!) The Magical Faerie Door, The Magical Mermaid Portal and The Magical Dragon Mirror are stories of brave young children who venture into other worlds and dimensions to help magical beings. They are suitable for any age, but have a reading age of 8 to 12. You can get them on Kindle and in paperback and hardback here.
I look forward to expanding our children’s imprint in the next few years, so do keep an eye out for new releases in the future!
As I mentioned in my post a couple of days ago, in 2018, my oldest friend and I started our publishing house, Not From This Planet. But that wasn’t our first business together. Before that, we ran Purple Self Publishing, and helped authors to publish their books. But Not From This Planet was different, because we wanted to create a new, collaborative model of publishing. (Which consequently, many other publishers have now used a similar structure, realising that working with the author, and paying fair royalties, is a lot better than trying to rip them off.)
We had big plans for NFTP, and set about creating our imprints, of which there are seven (although not all the imprints have books published under them yet) and one of our very first books was Elizabeth’s memoir, Little Something, which we published under our non-fiction imprint, Labradorite Press. All of my Earth Angel novels created the spiritual fiction imprint, The Amethyst Angel, and in total across the imprints we now have 31 titles.
During this time, we have both gone through quite a bit! Elizabeth has been growing her family, she now has four living children, and a beautiful Angel child, and I have had many more jobs, house moves and relentless relationship ups and downs!
So I am very proud of the books that we have brought to life together, of the authors who have joined our publishing family, and I am very glad that I didn’t listen to the naysayers who said it was a bad idea.
The imprints that we have books under so far, are:
And over the next few days, I will do a post on each imprint, and the books under them, because been so long since I shouted about them.
Just as a fun bit of info, the reason there are 7 imprints is to reflect the 7 chakras. So each imprint is a crystal of the right colour. Starting at the crown, Amethyst (purple) then third eye, Labradorite (dark blue) then the throat, Turquoise, then the heart chakra will be our romance imprint (coming soon!) then the solar plexus is Amber (yellow) the sacral (orange) is TBD, and then Jasper (red) is the root.
So there you are, the ultra-spiritual explanation for our imprints!
As well as publishing books under our imprints, I have also published a few dozen books for authors under their own imprints, and I will be featuring them over the coming weeks too. Needless to say, though I may not have been blogging for the last 6 years, I have certainly been busy, so I hope you forgive my absence, but I’m hoping to be back here more often now.
Oh and kudos to my amazing sister, Liz, at Madapple Designs for all the many covers she has created for us, and for the logos for NFTP. I will feature her soon too, I promise 🙂
I might have said too much in my post yesterday, but as I said, my ability to pretend has gone. Whether it’s because of hormones or just getting older, or just being so tired, I don’t know.
For a long time I have presented to the world a version of myself who is happy, successful, and has their shit together. But goodness that couldn’t be further than the truth. A friend asked me how my book sales were going, and I was honest – they’re terrible. I stopped marketing and posting six years ago, so of course my sales have tanked, and if I make £30 a month from the sales of all 23 books, it’s a good month.
She was surprised. She had assumed that my sales must be amazing. I don’t know what gave her that impression, maybe it was because I had just launched book 11 in my series, or was posting positive stuff.
I am a believer that it’s better to focus on the positive, to attract more positive, and I’m not a fan of the ‘poor me, please buy my book’ posts, that seem particularly prevalent on Threads at the moment. But by pretending I’m doing well and selling loads of books, I also cut off any possibility of people helping me by sharing my posts or recommending my books to others. Because honestly, who thinks to help a successful author? Clearly they don’t need it?
But I do need help, and I am terrible at asking for help, or accepting help when it is offered, though I am improving a bit on that front. I might initially resist, but often I can switch tack and accept the help. Because the thing is, I love helping others, and am always quick to offer my time or support, and I would be upset to think that someone is rejecting my help because they don’t believe they deserve it, or will feel weirdly indebted to me. I help others because it brings me joy, not because I expect anything in return, and I would hope anyone offering me help would feel the same way.
Why do we feel the need to ‘make it’ on our own? Or is that a neurodivergent thing? Clearly, any major success is the work of many people, a team with the same goal. For one single person on their own the big dreams or goals just aren’t possible.
My dreams? To sell millions of copies of my books. To have the adapted for TV and cinema. To create audiobooks. To make a living from my own creations.
But I can’t do it on my own. I need a team. I need support. So that’s something I am working on, because my stories deserve to be read, and heard, and seen.
If you have ideas, drop my a line. Or if you just simply want to share your dreams with me, I’d love to hear about them.
One of my very first fairs. I had four books and three oracle decks. This was just 12 years ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself just how much I have managed to achieve so far! (And that maybe it’s time to get a new tablecloth?)
So last year, (how was it that long ago?!) I started blogging again, determined to get back into writing posts regularly, and strengthening my writing muscles while connecting with you, my readers.
But somehow, it’s been nearly a year since my last post. What the actual?
To be fair, it’s been very busy, I have published several more books for clients, become a step-grandma, moved my print studio and opened a shop, and published book 3 in my children’s series, The Magical Dragon Mirror.
So it’s not like I’ve been particularly lazy, but goodness, I wish I could stick to the things I’ve decided to do!
But I have also filled my time with random shit that I didn’t need to be doing, like scrolling insta, watching reels, and zoning out in front of Netflix/prime/disney. I once had an app on my phone that calculated how much time I spent on apps. I worked out that in one month, I wasted the equivelant amount of time that I could have written 150k words.
My whole life, I have thought that I was just a bit crap with making good habits, with sticking with things (I’m most definitely a quitter) and then, thanks to my hours and hours of scrolling, I started to realise that actually, the likelihood is that I have ADHD.
Now I’m not a label fan, and I’m not rushing to get an official diagnosis (nothing against it, just not something that would help or benefit me personally) but the realisation and the understanding of the underlying reasons for certain behaviours has helped me immensely. Mainly with just being a bit kinder to myself. I’ve also stepped up my supplement game and found that I’m not quite so exhausted, and I can recognise the approaching burnout and rest before I get ill.
I have gone through periods of anger and mourning. Anger that no one ever saw it, including me. Yet when I say it to people I know, their response is ‘well of course!’ And mourning for all the lost potential, and for the support that I could have had, that might have meant my finances weren’t such an atrocious mess for so long.
But then, the flip side is that not knowing meant that I pushed myself harder to do the things I found so difficult. I set deadlines and wrote whole novels. I completed projects after the initial dopamine hit wore off. I pushed through the tiredness and exhaustion. So, in essence, I got things done that many with ADHD cannot.
Because I assumed I was a regular human with a terrible memory and little sticking power, so I had to override these things. Now there’s a reason for it, I do find myself not pushing so hard, so of course, things don’t get done.
I’m still learning so much about myself, still learning the ways that work for me, how to best take care of myself, and how to not annoy the people around me. But I know that the label won’t do anything for me other than help my understanding of how I approach life, and how I interact with the world.
So I’m not going to promise to write this thing regularly, because I hate breaking promises, even though I seem to do it a lot.
And I’m not going to say that book 11 is coming soon, or the six other books I want to write. To be honest, I’m just doing my very best to keep creating an income, keep surviving, and not burn out. So, really, any content I create is a bonus, because honestly? Writing has not been a lucrative thing for me. I don’t make my living from it. In fact, it’s probably cost me more than it has made.
Of course, that’s because I suck at marketing and find it completely impossible to do anything consistently, which I think I’ve demonstrated with this blog!
So if you want to read more of what I write, please buy my books, if you already own them, buy them as gifts! Or you can just chuck me a few quid to paypal.me/theamethystangel
Or if you live near Hereford, pop to my new shop and buy some cards. Would love to see you! My insta is @wishyouwerehere.store
So that was a bit of a rambling info dump, but hey, welcome back to my blog! There may or may not be another new post soon.
Just in case no one has told you this recently. Xx
So happy and excited to reveal the cover for my newest book, The Magical Mermaid Portal! Here it is! It will be available in paperback, hardback and Kindle on the 20th July, 2022. I will get the pre-order online as soon as possible, and am planning a special pre-order of signed copies (signed by me and illustrator Lucja Fratczak-Kay) with a little gift, so do keep an eye out for that announcement!
Here is the full cover!
I really can’t wait to get this book out! I will be releasing some excerpts on videos on Instagram over the next couple of weeks, will reveal a few more details about it. Though the reading age is aimed at 8-12, this story really is perfect for all ages. Fans of The Magical Faerie Door range from age 6 to 66!
What do you think of the cover? Are you excited? Let me know!
The series is expanding! Finally! The Magical Faerie Door was released in 2018, and now, finally, book 2 is underway. The cover and release date for The Magical Mermaid Portal will be revealed on the 10th May 2022!
You can also now get The Magical Faerie Door in paperback as well as in hardback and on kindle. The audiobook is still on the list, but I promise it will happen!
We are even talking about book 3 in the series, so watch this space!
What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in a different reality that was better for you, but not for those you loved?
Caru loves to make things. And collect things. And give gifts. She loves to print, sew, knit, paint. Her life is full of unfinished projects, yet devoid of financial stability and romance. Though she loves her life, she finds herself disappointing people and struggling to keep everyone happy.
So when Caru wishes life could be simpler, and then finds herself in a completely different world, where her life is easy, money is abundant, and her long-term boyfriend is the most fabulous cook, she can’t quite believe her luck.
But will all her wishes come true? Or will the dream turn into a nightmare?
The Girl Who Loved Too Much is a modern day ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.
The Girl Who Loved Too Much is my brand new novel, published by Jasper Tree Press. It will be available in eBook and paperback, but I am also doing a special edition hardback, with a letterpress printed dust jacket and bookmark, which you can pre-order only from my website here.
In the summer of 2012, I duelled with another poet, Victor Keegan, for 30 days. each day, we chose a topic to write about, and then wrote a poem each. We took it in turns to choose the topics, and they got pretty random at times! Now, a mere 8 years later (!) we are finally ready to release those poems, and we are asking that you, the reader, choose the winner!
The poems are not credited, so you simply read them all, tick the boxes under your favourites, then tally up the points at the end. Then you can declare your winner on Twitter, using the hashtags #duellingpoets and either #michellewinstheduel or #victorwinstheduel
The book will be available to buy as a paperback and on Kindle, from the 20th February 2020.
What a year 2019 has been! (I’m aware it’s not over yet, but I also can’t understand how it’s October already?!)
I haven’t been as active online this year as I have been busy working on some amazing projects. As well as a brand new business which I am hoping will reshape the way publishing works.
My editor, Liz Lockwood, and I have been plotting, and we have created a whole new publishing model that we are very excited about. This new model seeks to blend the best bits of both traditional and indie publishing, in a way that the author feels supported and it works financially for both publisher and author. Working closely with authors to create books that they adore feels like the best way forward, and so, we have begun our own publishing house, Not From This Planet.
Under this cosmic umbrella, we are creating several imprints to cover different genres, and so far we have four – The Amethyst Angel (Visionary and metaphysical fiction), Labradorite Press (non-fiction), Amber Beetle Books (children’s) and Jasper Tree Press (General fiction).
We are releasing new books before Christmas, please do check out our website and Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates, and if you are interested in finding out more about how our new model works, do get in touch!
The Winter’s Sleep by Monica Cafferky published by Jasper Tree Press
Twin Flame Blog 