What’s on your imaginary bookshelf?

Connie May Fowler has several volumes on my Inspiration Shelf.

I have several special bookshelves in my office. One holds my inspiration books, volumes by writers I admire, whom I turn to now and then to figure out a writing issue or to get ginned up on words in preparation for a writing marathon. Another special shelf holds all the lit mags and anthologies where my work has been published. One very special shelf is part reality, part imaginary—the place where my own books, those I’ve already written and published, and those I hope to publish in the future, reside. However, all those volumes have names:

My book shelf:

Eve’s Garden

Sa-co-in-ge/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians

Bird Talk

Chocolate and Roses (also known as The Man Who Loved Chocolate)

The Fruit of Queens

Provenance

A Journey of Moths

Weed Sugar and Other Stories

A Gypsy Poet Walked into a Coffeeshop

Mountain Girls Play Jazz

They’re not wholly imaginary. The first three are reality, already in print. Each of the others have at least an outline, while the last two are collections of poems ive published separately over the years, for which I’m now seeking a publisher. Weed Sugar is, similarly, a collection of short stories and hybrid forms.

I really want to know what’s on your bookshelves. Do you also keep an inspiration shelf? What’s on your future dream shelf?

This one’s a reality.