Turquoise Quill Press

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 Stardust is 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.

Amber Beetle Books

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!

Not From This Planet

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:

The Amethyst Angel (metaphysical/spiritual fiction)
Labradorite Press (non-fiction)
Turquoise Quill Press (poetry)
Amber Beetle Books (children’s fiction)
Jasper Tree Press (general fiction)

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 🙂

Duelling Poets – Coming Soon!

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.

May the best poet win!

Book 9 Cover Release

Only 10 more sleeps! And then you will be able to read The Twin Flame Reignition!

I have the final covers, and wanted to share them with you.

The cover that won the vote for the US edition:

 

The UK Edition:

The Twin Flame Reignition will be available worldwide on the 20th January 2018, on Amazon, (paperback and Kindle) and through other online retailers. I will be launching it at the following event:

 

This instalment of the Earth Angel Series was a really exciting one to write, I can’t wait to hear what you all think!

I need your help!

Good news! Book nine is now finished, and it is in the process of being edited, and I want to first of all announce the release date, which is…

20th January 2018!

I’m considering it a birthday gift to myself! In case you haven’t seen my videos on FB, the title of the book is

The Twin Flame Reignition

Now, I need your help. I have got six possible covers for the US Edition of the book, and I am asking people to vote for their favourite! I have already posted them on Facebook and Instagram, but I would love your input! Please comment on the post with the number of your favourite. I am planning to announce the winning cover by Christmas.

Here they are!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

 

Vote now!

Gallery

The Twin Flame Rebellion is here!

This gallery contains 2 photos.

Earth Angels! The wait is over! The 8th book in the Earth Angel Series is now available! Of course, you jammy souls in Australia will have received your preorders already! The UK editions of the series are also now available, … Continue reading

Gallery

The Twin Flame Rebellion

This gallery contains 4 photos.

The eighth book in the Earth Angel Series is now available for pre-order on Kindle! When you pre-order, it will magically appear on your device on the day of release, which is the 9th June! The paperback editions, in the … Continue reading

Gallery

An Earth Angel Makeover

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Hello! Before you ask, no, it’s not me whose had a makeover! The Earth Angel Series has! While the books are currently available on Amazon, and in bookstores in the US, they weren’t available in bookstores in the UK or … Continue reading

Don’t Wait for Perfection – Start Now!

I know it can be an enticing idea, to wait for the perfect moment, to wait until you have the right experience, or money, or connections before starting something. After all, you want whatever you do to be perfect, right?

The problem is, it may never be the right moment. So just start. Wherever you are, with whatever resources you have, get started. And then be prepared to grow, evolve and change as you go along. I guarantee that you will look back at the early days and you will wonder what possessed you to do things the way you did, but chances are, if you hadn’t, then you would never have evolved to the place you currently are.

I used to use the example of my bears when I told students not to worry about being perfect in the beginning, and now I can use the example of my book covers. If I had waited until I could have the beautiful cover I have had created for the 5 Year Anniversary Edition, then it might never have happened at all. I started where I was, with the resources I had, and I took the plunge. It’s been five years of learning, growing, evolving and getting better and better at my crafts of writing and publishing.

Of course, if you have the resources to make your creation breath-taking from the outset, then please do that! If you have people willing to help you, who have the knowledge and skills, then please take them up on their help. Do everything in your power to make it the best it can possibly be from the beginning.

Here are the covers of The Earth Angel Training Academy, from first edition to fifth. Each cover has a place in my heart, for it shows my own evolution over the last five years too.

13052464_10153374775122163_255106978_o

Don’t wait another year, another five years, another ten years before beginning. And whatever you do, DO NOT wait until you retire! Write that book now. Paint that art now. Write songs now. Learn an instrument now. Whatever your soul is calling, begging you to do, do it now.

I promise you won’t regret it.