This evening I was googling the title of my new book to see whether it was on Amazon yet (it is), when I came across a link to a major poetry competition, The Margaret Reid (which is entered by thousands of poets) and into which I had entered six of the poems from my manuscript last year. To my surprise and delight, all six poems had received Commendations! They were:

Reflections on Healing

Messages in Water

Wind Voyager

Eternal Sparrow

Sonnet: Beyond, Behind, Before, Above

The Wonderful Wizard.

I feel very pleased with myself. I wish I had checked months ago. I could have been insufferably smug for soooooo much longer!

One of my clients has a son who regularly visits the States. She is ordering the book and organising him to collect it on his next trip. Friends are telling me that they are forwarding on the press release to their friends, too. I popped in to my local booksellers, Muswell Hill Books, and the lovely manager, Tim Robinson, remembered me from my last book. A Year Of Spirituality: a seasonal guide to new awareness had sold very well, he remembered, and is going to order lots of copies of Eternal Sparrow for the shop.

We are beginning to meet potential students for next year's course of Soul Therapy. Kathryn has met a gynaecologist who sounds very interested in acquiring a nationally accredited qualification in healing, which is what the course centres around. I have met a couple of jewellers and a Feng Shui Consultant who are also very interested and can see the benefit of adding healing and psychotherapy as well as a knowledge of other major subtle energy techniques (which combination defines Soul Therapy) to enrich their work. We are delighted that last year our curriculum and the standard of our tutors were accepted by UK Healers (National Professional body) as having reached the highest level (Stage 4) of national accreditation for professionally qualified spiritual healers.

I re-read my dear friend (Nick's cousin) Anna's book of poetry, called "Poems for People," today. She is a warm and wise woman in her 70s from the Scottish side of his family, a spirit medium, graphologist and palmist who has lived in Israel since the 1950s. When she published her book and generously gave me a copy, I was fascinated to read it but had no idea of the effort and the love that had been necessary to produce it. Isn't it interesting how, until you experience a process first hand, the understanding can only be limited. It is not until I am going through the same process myself - albeit with a different kind of publishers who do all the publicity and marketing for me - that I can truly appreciate what it entailed and all its attendant emotions.

In the hall at the moment there are some big, beautiful, white lilies whose perfume is just heavenly. In Anna'a book, there is a poem for her sister, Laura, who is a gifted concert pianist and composer, to the effect that she wishes her poems could soar off the page just as Laura can play a piece by Brahms. I also think for instance that it is the fate of the poet not to be fully able to recreate exquisite perfumes either. My attempt to do just that appears in my anthology "Eternal Sparrow" entitled, "A Passion for Perfume." Loads of words where just one sniff takes you into the most amazing altered state of ecstasy!

I create individual signature perfumes for people, and I am aware that experiencing perfumes is an activity that begins to develop at the latest at birth and certainly way before we master language. For this reason, and the fact that a scent's information goes straight to the brain from the nasal passages, without having to be carried a long way by the nervous system, our likes and dislikes are immediate, visceral. Every perfume I design with a client is different and, when finished, couldn't be a better expression of that person's soul. It never fails to delight me, and for the client seems to produce a new understanding of themselves in a dimension hitherto unused. Commercially mass produced perfume never can quite cut it, because along with all the fragrances a person recognises and chooses, there are always those that they haven't chosen and it becomes a "good enough" compromise. When I make a perfume for them, they choose every single component and absolutely love to wear it. It speaks where no words can.

At last, the Galley Proof of my book, Eternal Sparrow: poetry for love, laughter and life, has arrived in the post today (see above, front and back cover.) Giovanna's design is beautiful, and shows off the title and text really well. This is one step nearer to publication and I am so happy with the finished article. I have sent a list of names and emails to Strategic Books, so they can alert people when the book is ready.

Another two reasons to celebrate:

A new client with a bunch of debilitating allergies, whom I saw yesterday for the first time, rang me today to say that she felt brilliant and hadn't felt this well for ages.

Our friend Fru's aunt, whose doctors gave 48 hours to live a week ago, is not only still with us but is now conscious, sitting up and taking food. We have all been sending healing to her and it seems like it's working.

Welcome to my blog. I am delighted to have you here. This could be the start of something small....

Just received word from my publishers that the galley proofs of my book, Eternal Sparrow, are in the post. Can't wait! I love the whole process of publishing, and there is something so satisfying about holding a newly published book in my hand.

I still remember the thrill when my first book, A Year Of Spirituality, was published. I recommend the experience to you, so if you haven't already written it, go and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It is a complex, scrambled set of emotions, a mixture of bliss, relief, fear (what if it doesn't sell?), vulnerability, pride (this has to be a best-seller!) and courage. Courage at the exposing of my innermost thoughts and fantasies, pride that my publishers, Strategic Book Publishing, considered my manuscript worth taking a gamble on. In my "day job" as a Soul Therapist , my clients see in me whatever it is necessary for them to think I am. With the publication of Eternal Sparrow, this is nearer to the reality.

Having said that, poetry - the new rock 'n' roll? - is a distillation of who I am, plus an enormous amount of discipline in the crafting of each piece until it satisfies my super-critical ear. I hope that the birth pangs and agony are not in evidence (a swan glides over the water but we don't see the feet paddling madly underneath) and that each poem reads easily and, as Shakespeare said, speaks trippingly off the tongue.

Apart from everything else, bringing out a new book is one wonderful excuse to have a party.

I've been meaning to get to grips with blogging for ages but thought that it was some mystical, powerful entity that only the young and computer-savvy knew how to create. Now, I am thrilled to have created this blog at last. Chuffed up to the tickle mark, in fact.