~Guest Post by Anna Sullivan
In one of the first poems of She Tastes Like Possibility: a Collection of Empowered Poetry, Nicole Perriella-Rehmke writes, “The poetry is scratching at my window.”
This image, poetry as a physical thing that begs for attention, could be considered a metaphor for Perriella-Rehmke’s lifelong relationship to writing. She’s lived in Snoqualmie for seven years, but she’s known forever that she’s a writer, even if somewhere along the way, she “received the message that writers don’t make any money, so I should choose something else.”
She became a teacher and a mother. Writing remained.
A few years ago, she decided it was time to publish a book. She had noticed unique things about her daughter, who was sensitive to loud noises. “We would go to a play date or something, and if someone laughed too loud, she would cry,” she says. Except for All that Noise, a children’s book celebrating difference, was born.
Perriella-Rehmke spent 18 months trying to publish the traditional way. “You spend so much time researching,” she remembers. “I even took a course through UW for people wanting to write children’s books. And I learned a ton. I also learned something about myself, which is that I’m such a social, extroverted person that I can’t do anything just alone by myself, in a room.”
This is where I first noticed the bright thread woven through Perriella-Rehmke’s work. The poetry may be scratching at her window, but it is ultimately a vehicle. Both within and beside the act of writing, Perriella-Rehmke is inviting us in.
She launched a podcast, Manifesting Book Magic, sharing her journey with others even though she laughs, “Technically, I hadn’t really done anything yet.” She wanted to share the process of what she was trying and what steps she was taking. The podcast became its own creative outlet. “It was so fun for me,” she says, “but the most important part was that it started to bring people along with me on this journey of publishing my book.”
The publishing process dragged on. Perriella-Rehmke became burnt out and frustrated; she decided to take a break. But the book continued to tug at her. “I thought, you know what? Forget it. I’m going to self-publish this thing.” She asked her friend and artist Alicia Messner to collaborate. “I hadn’t even considered finding someone who had never illustrated before to work with a new author who had never published before. Like, why don’t we just figure this out together?”
As Messner got to work, Perriella-Rehmke prepared to self-publish. She took classes and courses, watched YouTube videos, and made journals she began selling on Amazon. She talked about her book endlessly, getting people invested in the project and its path to release. “I was sharing on the podcast. I was sharing on Instagram. I was sharing on Facebook. I was sharing in real life. And so, inadvertently, I kind of whipped up this frenzy around this book.”
When Except for All That Noise launched, it shot to the #1 new release in all three of its categories.
When I ask Perriella-Rehmke about how she considers connection in her work, she points to the Snoqualmie Valley.
“The beauty…inspires me daily,” she says. “Walking in nature ignites my creativity and helps me form new connections. My local community empowers and uplifts me.” Through COVID, she says, “my neighbors…saved my sanity, my health, and my wellbeing,” providing “the safety [to explore] creative expression and expansion.”
Creative expansion is a fitting description for Perriella-Rehmke’s second book, released earlier this year. She Tastes Like Possibility: a Collection of Empowered Poetry is a project she calls raw, personal, and intense. “I had a lot of internal blocks to work through writing that book because I had a lot of limiting beliefs around what a teacher is, what a mother is, and trying to stay in that little box. Writing this book and putting all these feelings out there: the angry ones, the intense ones…I felt like I was doing something wrong… I was nervous about who would read it. I didn’t talk about it with everyone like I did with the children’s book.”
She didn’t have the hype or the lead time, but once again, she hit publish. And once again, her book hit #1 in its categories.
Today, Nicole Perriella-Rehmke has no plans to slow her writing—or community building. She’s recently begun coaching new authors (“I coined myself the ‘self-publishing book doula!’”) and will launch her third book this month.
Set for release on December 10, 2024, Manifesting Book Magic: a Workbook for Self-Publishing combines Perriella-Rehmke’s love for journaling, affirmations, and self-publishing to support writers on their own journey. Filled with “pages of information, pages of support and encouragement, and tons of journal prompts so people can write their ideas as they go,” the workbook is a guide through the opaque self-publishing landscape. Once completed, a writer will have the information to confidently press publish.
The ability to support writers, especially female writers, to birth their words into the world truly lights up Perriella-Rehmke. “I am so passionate about teaching women how to use the free tools at their disposal,” she shares. “The fact that we can publish our own books and share our own stories globally with just a laptop and an internet connection is a powerful opportunity that we cannot let slip by.”
“We have to use our voices. We have to share our diverse stories and leave a legacy for all the little girls coming up behind us. We have to show them examples of what women can do and be in this world.”
~Nicole Perriella-Rehmke is a writer, coach, mother, and WIN Reading and Language teacher at Snoqualmie Elementary School. Her books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and her podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts. Manifesting Book Magic: A Workbook for Self-Publishing is scheduled for release on December 10, 2024.
