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A lofty place for authors, writers, and readers to connect |
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Vol. 5 Issue 6 |
Writers in the Sky Newsletter |
June 2009 |
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Whether you are a published author or a
writer-wanna-be, this e-zine is for you. Here, you will find
articles, book reviews, announcements, poetry, and information
about the craft and business of writing, publishing, and book
marketing written by our readers. Our goal is to connect the
writing and publishing community through networking. |
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Editor's Corner |
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A word from WITS owner Yvonne Perry |
What's in a Title? |
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by Barbara Milbourn |
Printing and Publishing Books: Counting the Costs |
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by Yvonne Perry |
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The Writing Life: A Look at an
Old Book |
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by JJ Murphy |
Book With a View |
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Read this month's book reviews |
Write from the Heart |
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by Joyce Shafer, LEC |
Poetry Corner |
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Poems from our readers |
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by Yvonne Perry
Welcome to the month that brings us summer sunshine and Sweet Farts. Keep reading and you'll understand that in a moment.
Any day now, my daughter will give birth to her first child, a son to be named Liam Owen. I’m sure her audio engineer husband,
Scott Kidd,
will take plenty of photos and send me video updates as things progress during labor. My excitement is heightened even more by the fact that my
son and his wife are due with their second son in July. By the way, Scott is the producer of Janet Riehl’s audio book
Sightlines: A Family Love
Story in Poetry and Music (see the video of how the audio book was created). Janet will be a guest on our podcast in July.
Speaking of the podcast, we have some very exciting guests this month. There will be four editors: LJ Sellers, Karen Reddick, and WITS’s
own Barbara Milbourn and yours truly. We will share tips and insight into grammar, punctuation, writing dialog, word choices, and style guides.
Then, we have Joe Lavelle sharing his business book, and Leo Abrami sharing his memoir as a young Jewish boy in France during World War II.
I’ve been a guest on two radio shows recently. Ella Curry, President /CEO of EDC Creations interviewed me on
Black Authors Network Radio Show where I read from my humorous book
Email Episodes. Jaxx interviewed me on her Blog Talk Radio Show
RealTalk~RealWoman. Our topic was
Revealing Barack Obama:
The Truth About Stem Cell Research. For a list of shows with links to interviews I have done on a variety of topics,
see http://writersinthesky.com/yvonne-perry-speaker.html.
This e-zine is proofread and edited
by Sarah Moore or Barbara Milbourn. I appreciate your contributions and
thank Sarah and Barbara for their hard work. I hope you enjoy this issue and will leave comments on our blogs.
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by Barbara Milbourn
As editors, Yvonne and I occasionally prickle when a new writer refers to a book entitled this or that. Yvonne likes to ask exactly what the book is entitled to.
In case you’re baffled, the correct word we’re looking for is titled—what is the book’s title?
But what's in a title?
Especially when writing for the children/juvenile market, it's attracting their attention, appealing to their interests, and creating anticipation—instantly,
obviously, and plentifully.
And what succeeds in doing this best with most kids?
A timeless fascination with bugs and buried treasure, secrets and wishes, far-off lands, villains and heroes/sheroes the readers' own age,
cupcakes, peanut butter, and farts. Yes, farts. Farts are funny. They're especially funny when you're a kid and hilarious when you're a boy.
I wouldn't be writing this had I not just finished reading Fiona Ingram's The Secret of the Sacred Scarab. Fiona is a first-time novelist who I will
interview on podcast May 21st. Her book lived up to its title and was a well-written tale of adventure in a far-away land. Fiona wrote it and promoted it so well that
it has been selected as a Finalist in the Children's/Juvenile Fiction category for the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Congratulations Fiona and take heart new writers!
Out of curiosity, I read the titles of the other finalists in the writing competition and found plenty of far-off lands, wishes, whispers, cupcakes, and peanut butter.
But it was the winning title that stopped me in my tracks. Sweet Farts.
The Ms. Prude in me was miffed, cried foul, but admitted Sweet Farts grabbed my attention and piqued my curiosity. What was being written out there for our
kids? I went to Amazon and read several favorable reviews, and then imagined grandma and little Joey going to Borders for his birthday.
"Wow, Grandma, this one looks cool," Joey cries.
A straight-laced grandma snatches Sweet Farts from his hands, bristling and determined to prove it is drivel not worthy of her precious
grandchild's attention. Instead, she finds a lot of sweet characters and a young boy her grandson's age farting up a storm at school. He has a problem,
there's sensitivity and insensitivity, there's humor, and there's a lesson. Grandma's won over and so will a throng of young readers be whose attention was grabbed by the title.
Don't underestimate the importance of titling. |
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Listening to Writers in the Sky Podcast on a computer is
easy. Just click this link:
http://yvonneperry.blogspot.com
and go to my blog. On the right sidebar there is a list of
archived shows. Click on the interview you would like to
hear and it will open a post that has a link to open the
audio file. For information about being a guest on Writers
in the Sky Podcast, see
www.writersinthesky.com/writing-podcast.htm |
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June 5
Karen Reddick is the author of two books: The
A-Z Guide: The Best Ways To Work With a VA
Grammar Done Right, a clear,
commonsense approach to grammar, usage, and style, which was recently released in a revised and expanded 2nd edition.
Karen was awarded the coveted designation of Master Virtual Author’s Assistant (MVAA) and Master Virtual Assistant (MVA),
both of which are considered the highest achievements in the virtual assistant industry. She will be sharing about
her life as a virtual assistant and giving us editing tips
from her book during this podcast interview with Yvonne
Perry. |
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June 12
Barbara Milbourn will be interviewing LJ Sellers—an award-winning journalist, editor, novelist, and occasional standup comic based in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of
the highly praised mystery/suspense novel, The Sex Club, and has a second Detective Jackson story,
Secrets to Die For, coming out in September.
Ms. Sellers is also an excellent editor and ghostwriter with a great sense of story structure, tension, and pacing. She is a member of the
popular editing blog,
The Blood Red Pencil. LJ Sellers will be discussing both the editing services she provides and her two novels.
Learn more about LJ Sellers and her work at
http://ljsellers.com. |
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June 19
Yvonne Perry will interview Joseph R Lavelle (Joe) about his new
book Act As If It
Were Impossible to Fail, The Employee Handbook That Your
Employer Hasn’t Given You.
Joe is an accomplished management consulting executive and business coach assisting with the technology
challenges of diverse organizations including health delivery networks, health plans, healthcare software vendors, and several
Fortune 500 companies. Joe has dedicated his career as a strategic business advisor to ensure that his clients achieve maximum performance.
He will share insight with our listeners. |
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June 26
Barbara Milbourn will share her discussion with Leo Abrami, author of the new book
Evading the Nazis.
Mr. Abrami was taken by his mother to hide with farmers in Normandy, France during World War II to avoid the inevitable
persecution by the Nazis. Although Jewish, he pretended to be Catholic and lived safely with his adoptive family until
France was liberated by the Allies. Evading the Nazis tells Mr. Abrami’s
story of survival during the war and his determination to
investigate his family and cultural history once he was
free. Tune into this discussion to learn more about one
boy’s amazing experience during war, and the man’s later
determination to speak for others who could not.
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WITS publicity is an affordable and effective source for marketing your book or business.
Choose two or more services and get a 10% discount on the total project price
if you mention seeing this ad in our newsletter!
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Printing and Publishing Books: Counting the Costs |
by Yvonne Perry
My visit to Published by Westview proved to be a great learning experience. While I’m accustomed to how the publishing industry operates, I did not know much about the printers that publishers work with.
Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI) is probably the most popular printer for books. Having LSI print a book means automatic distribution through Ingram. That doesn’t mean your books will be on the shelves at your local bookstore, but it does mean that the store can order your book for a client because it will be listed in the Ingram catalog. It also means your book will be available through Amazon.com. This is something you may or may not want. Let me explain.
During the first printing of the Sid Series, I discovered that color pages are about three times more expensive to print than black and white pages. But, I couldn’t offer a children’s picture book and not have it in color. The heavier, glossy paper I used for the cover cost extra and so did having them stapled in the center. Had I selected a non-standard size for my book, that would have cost more too. There were about eighteen to twenty pages in each book, so my first print cost me about $6 per book. I could not justify selling such a small book for more than $7, so I ended up losing money on them by the time I paid tax and shipping. I kept the stock in my office closet. Because these books were self-published, I had to manually create mailing labels and stuff envelopes whenever a customer placed an order. The books were only available on my Web site.
When I sold out of the first print run, I did not reorder because I had written another nine books for the series by then and I couldn’t afford individual printing of all twelve books. So, I offered the stories as e-books and put the project on hold until I could get all of the stories illustrated. These are still available on my Web site and I will be adding the new stories once they are illustrated.
I’ve decided to put all twelve stories into one print book and republish them. I don’t want to self-publish because I don’t want to handle printed distribution this time. I thought I would go with a publish-on-demand company so the books could be listed in Ingram’s catalog.
That’s when I started my research with Published by Westview. Mary Catherine walked me through my options. I could print with LSI for about the same price as I could print with another company. However, LSI does not offer glossy pages; the other printers do. LSI offers Ingram distribution; the other printers do not. The drawback is that my book will be listed on Amazon.com. You may not
think of that as a drawback, but if you consider that Amazon purchases your book for 55 percent off your list price (bookstores only charge 45 percent), you will make no money in the transaction.
Let’s say your book retails for $15 and Amazon buys it from you for $6.75. It cost you $9 (plus tax and shipping) per book to print in paperback (hard cover would be $10 per book), so you just lost 75 cents on that paperback book sale. If you price the book at $20, you would break even on a soft cover. If you go much higher on the retail price of your book, you lose your market because no one wants to pay much more than $20 for a 48-page book. I can’t keep Amazon from selling my book. They can even offer it in e-book format for their Kindle Reader. If I don’t go with LSI, I get to pack and ship my own books again. What’s an author to do?
First of all, more research is needed. Therefore, I’m going to a used and new book store to compare paper, finished size, and average price for this genre, and to see how certain bindings hold up after use. Afterward, I should have a better idea of which route to go and whether or not the market will pay enough per book to cover my expenses and perhaps allow me to make a profit. I
will share with you what I learn.
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Add your announcement or brag about your
writing accomplishment. Tell us about your book or business.
Share information and ideas or send articles or advertorial
for the next issue by contacting us on our Web site
www.writersinthesky.com/contact.php . Here are some
announcements from our readers this month: |
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Heidi M. Thomas will be conducting a book tour through Montana June 1-15. Her novel,
Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother who rode steers in MT rodeos during the 1920s.
“Cowgirl Dreams is a heart-warming read for all ages…” Jane Kirkpatrick, author
A Tendering in the Storm, WILLA Literary Award winner.
Heidi is a writer, freelance editor, and writing teacher living in the Pacific Northwest. See
http://www.heidimthomas.com
Julie Achterhoff's debut novel Quantum Earth is now available at
Amazon.com. It's about a team of metaphysical
scientists dedicated to finding out why the Earth is in crisis. The rate, size, and destructive power of hurricanes,
tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions is out of control. All of these acts of nature have become more devastating
to human life than ever before in history, but why? Is the Earth cleansing itself of humanity? Or could it be that human thought
is the true cause? This is what the team is asking; the hardest question of all: Do we create our own reality?
The Service Journey
Author: Susan Hoekstra
Publisher: Aventine Press (2009)
ISBN: 1-59330-587-7
http://www.theservicejourney.com
Do the secrets to delivering excellent service seem elusive and impossible? Have you done everything you
can think of to improve your service delivery with mixed results? This no-nonsense, straightforward approach to
delivering excellent service will give you the direction and confidence needed to get you and keep you on track.
Peppered with humor and the chagrin that only real service experiences can provide, Susan shows how to align your organization's
behavior with your vision, avoid missteps and develop a customized 12-step service strategy that differentiates your firm, business,
or department's service delivery from your competition.
Susan Hoekstra is an experienced senior manager and consultant who spent the past 25 years working with multi-sized, fast-paced,
highly volatile companies in the manufacturing, distribution, membership services, franchise, and financial services industries.
Over the years, she has developed a penchant for developing strategic service initiatives that drive growth and value to clients,
employees and shareholders. Susan owns her own service consulting company.
The lovely month of May is abloom in more than one way for me. I have three releases coming to The Wild Rose Press. These novels will also be available in
e-book and paperback from online booksellers. Local bookstores can order them in.
Daughter of the Wind ~ Historical/light paranormal romance with strong Native American elements
Autumn. 1784: A tragic secret from Karin McNeal's past haunts the young Scots-Irish woman who longs to know more of her mother’s death and the mysterious father no one will name. The elusive voices she hears in the wind hint at the dramatic changes soon to unfold in her life among the Scot’s settled in the mist-shrouded Alleghenies. Jack McCray, a wounded stranger who staggers through the door on the eve of her twentieth birthday and anniversary of her mother’s death, holds the key to unlocking the past. Will she let this handsome frontiersman lead her to the truth and into his arms, or seek the shelter of her fiercely possessive grandfather? Is it only her imagination or does something, or someone, wait beyond the brooding ridges—for her?
Enemy of the King ~May 8th
Fast-paced historical romance with light paranormal element. My version of The Patriot with flavors of Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca. 1780, South Carolina: While Loyalist Meriwether Steele recovers from illness in the stately home of her beloved guardian, Jeremiah Jordan, she senses the haunting presence of his late wife. When she learns that Jeremiah is a Patriot spy and shoots Captain Vaughan, the British officer sent to arrest him, she is caught up on a wild ride into Carolina back country, pursued both by the impassioned captain and the vindictive ghost. Will she remain loyal to her king and Tory twin brother or risk a traitor’s death fighting for Jeremiah? If Captain Vaughan snatches her away, he won’t give her a choice.
Through the Fire ~ May 22nd
Fast-paced historical romance with a The Last of the Mohicans flavor and a mystical weave. At the height of the French and Indian War, a young English widow ventures into the colonial frontier in search of a fresh start. She never expects to find it in the arms of the half-Shawnee, half-French warrior who makes her his prisoner in the raging battle to possess a continent––or to be aided by a mysterious white wolf and a holy man. For more on my work please visit
www.bethtrissel.com.
Beth Trissel
Special Offer! Learn how to effortlessly write promotional materials that build relationship with readers and associates in the
Reinvent Yourself eCourse materials available for a Web Store discount at
http://www.freewebs.com/coach4lifebalance.
Reviews available at lulu.com. Author Joyce Shafer, LEC (jls1422@yahoo.com) is the creator of the Reinvent Yourself:
Refuse to Settle for Less in Life and Business coaching program.
Janet Grace Riehl's 4- disc audio book
Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music is reviewed on Story Circle Network's book reviews. See the eight-video You
Tube series on how to produce an audio book. You'll also hear from the key players attending the Nashville audio book
launch dinner including
Suzy Bogguss, Nashville music star. Follow the Sightlines blog tour in June and July by signing up
for updates at www.riehlife.com
where you'll find a 10-minute sample clip. Get the audio
book at CD Baby
http://cdbaby.com/cd/janetgraceriehl
See the
video documentary
series of how this audio book was created over a one-year time period.
Join @LatinoBookNews
on Twitter for the latest in Latino authors and their
books; find out about contests, awards, and book publishing
news. Learn what is new and relevant in Latino
Literature. Submit your book news, awards, and publishing triumphs to
BronzeWord1@yahoo.com and let the world know about your successes. Bragging rights open to all.
We need people to publish
PEARLS Magazine in every neighborhood.
We are seeking PEARLS affiliate publishers in every area,
from middle Tennessee to central Alabama.
As a PEARLS affiliate publisher, you would find stories, take pictures, contribute
to our calendar of events, and offer local merchants advertising opportunities. You will have your own community
Web site, and be able to offer the citizens of your community free classifieds,
coupons, auctions, a calendar of events, and a free forum for the exchange of news and information.
PEARLS can be a part-time or a fulltime opportunity. There is no investment required, you can publish
as often as you want, and your only expense is the papers you distribute.
Call 615-516-5678 or email Paul Erland for more info.
Kari Thomas' paranormal romance Hunted Mate
www.blacklyonpublishing.com,
won the Golden Rose Award for
Best Erotica Romance for 2008 Books!
It is available in Print and e-book at all stores and
online. Readers can check out more info at
www.authorkari.com
The Dream Quest One Poetry & Writing Contest is open to anyone who loves arranging words into the beautiful art
of poetry or writing a short story that is worth telling everyone! And to all who have the ability to dream... Write a
poem 30 lines or fewer on any subject or a short story, 5 pages maximum on any theme for a chance to win up to $500.00 in cash
prizes. All works must be original.
http://www.dreamquestone.com
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Cherie Burbach has released her latest book titled, 21 Simple Things You Can Do
to Help Someone with Diabetes.
Your diabetic friend or relative counts on you to be the person in their life that "gets it" when no one else does.
This book will tell you what you can do to help. Things like what you should (and shouldn't) say, what you should learn to
truly be supportive, and even how you can help in the fight for a cure.
21 Simple Things You Can Do to Help Someone with Diabetes
will point you in the right direction so you can truly support your diabetic friend. For more info, visit Cherie's Web site:
http://www.cherieburbach.com/menu.html.
BronzeWord Latino Authors opened on May 18 with the Top Ten Days of Crafty Chica Kathy Cano-Murillo. What used to be BronzeWord’s Blog
has moved and is thriving on BronzeWord Latino Authors at
http://authorslatino.com/wordpress. Come and read about your Latino authors and
their accomplishments. Learn about contests, the publishing world, and about agents/editors. We celebrate you with the Top Ten Days of different
Latino authors with ten days of interviews, book reviews,
and articles by the author. We are creating the first ever Latino Virtual Book Tour.
Join us and become a host for this major event. Latino bloggers are going to be highlighted every Saturday on BronzeWord Latino Authors.
Blog carnivals are in sight just down the road. La famila awaits you. BronzeWord Latino Authors: the clearinghouse for all things Latino
literature.
Book Promo 201: Harness the Power of the Internet with Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing by Nikki Leigh
Order Your Copy Now!
Have you heard of Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing? Many people on the
Internet are using these. Are you on Facebook or Twitter?
Did you ever Digg a Web page? Those are examples of Web 2.0 and social media
marketing. There are many social networking Web sites, but a
key is knowing which sites are beneficial for you. Another key is understanding how and why to use them. These are a couple of the topics discussed in
this book along with over 1,200 links to resources (almost all are free). You will turn to this book again and again to create an expanded and effective presence
on the Internet to promote yourself and your books.
More information about
Book Promo 201
Dear Yvonne, I’m with a new company called FiledBy, and we’ve just launched the most comprehensive online marketing platform and author directory on the
Internet. I’ve noticed on your blog – Writer's in the Sky - that you provide your readers with information about freelance writing and publishing, and we would like to pass along some information about our new
Web site that might be of interest.
Kristen
FiledBy Adds More Than 1 Million New Sites for Co-authors, Illustrators, Photographers, Artists, Editors, Translators, and Others
FiledBy (http://www.filedby.com)
has expanded its online author directory by adding and linking together sites for co-authors, illustrators, artists, photographers, and others who contributed to the publication of a book.
“The contribution of illustrators, photographers, artists and many other creators are important to the publication of books in a wide range of formats and subject categories,” said Peter Clifton, FiledBy CEO and president. “FiledBy now offers a platform for further expansion of their ideas and creativity on the web.”
FiledBy featured 1.8 million author sites in its directory before the latest expansion, which adds more than 1 million contributors whose efforts led to a published work.
Each contributor now has a free site that he or she can claim and enhance with photographs, a biography, links and multimedia (video, podcast or PDF). All sites are now linked to relevant contributors on FiledBy and include pages for each of their books. Finding and connecting with new audiences on the web is critical for authors and creators to be successful. FiledBy provides a marketing platform for those who do not have a web presence and provides additional value for those that do.
FiledBy has three valuable benefits. It is the largest online directory organized by authors and contributors. It offers any author or contributor a free
Web site where they can connect with fans and peers as well as promote their work. And it offers authors and contributors affordable digital marketing tools to enhance their online presence.
The platform is ideal for any author or contributor who needs a low-cost and effective web presence. Author and contributor sites can integrate photographs, biographies, video, podcasts, press kits, blogs, event listings and more. For others, it is an online platform that complements and links to existing author
Web sites, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, publisher pages or blogs.
Authors and books on FiledBy cover all subject and publishing categories including general trade, academic and professional. In addition to author and contributor sites, FiledBy features more than 7.5 million books. All books are available for sale through Amazon, Amazon Canada, B&N.com, Powells, Borders, Indigo and Indiebound.
The data used on the site is licensed from trusted industry sources and supplemented by data from publishers and content provided by authors and contributors.
FiledBy is the largest online directory of author sites providing web tools, e-commerce and community-building solutions for published book authors and contributors — co-authors, illustrators, photographers, artists, translators and editors. FiledBy provides authors and readers with social tools to connect with each other and can be discovered through a single database.
The Tuareg: Blue Man of the Sahara by George DiGuido. will be released June 20th. The Tuareg is a fantastic summer read (great for the beach). The Tuareg: (1828-1830) sweeps you into the life and times of a young Virginia plantation woman, a dashing aristocratic Frenchman, and a semi-civilized Tuareg chieftain of the desert.
This masterfully told story takes place in exotic and diverse locals such as London; the tents of nomadic tribes; the decadent, intrigue-filled Turkish kasbah at Algiers, and the savannah-land country of Africa’s premier slave king. Voyage across three continents, through the beautiful yet cruel Sahara and into the heart of Africa. The book has received rave reviews so far, here are a few excerpts:
“This novel will delight a broad spectrum of readers: historians, ethnographists, geographers, political scientists, adventure-lovers and hardcore romantics. In short, the novel has the fascination of The Sheik and the intellectual depth and scope of Lawrence of Arabia.
“Get this book and put on your nightstand, but don’t expect to get much sleep.” -Dr. Thomas Wolfram, Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Missouri-Columbia; and author of two novels, and one book
“The Tuareg: Blue Man of Sahara by George DiGuido is a dynamic book from page one till the end, you will sit on the edge of your seat in anticipation, yet you will learn much about this culture.” -Reviewed by Carol Hoyer, PhD, for Reader Views
“The thought and care that Mr. DiGuido has put into this novel is incredible… History has collided with fiction to form this terrific book.” -Reviewed by Kimberly, Coffee Time Romance
The book is currently
available for pre-order on our
Web site.
Your announcement could be here. Check out the
submission guidelines
and send us your blurb.
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The Writing Life:
Longevity of Books |
by JJ Murphy
The Writing Life Book Review:
I’m holding a 1906 copy of How to Know the Wild Flowers, originally published in 1893 by Mrs. William Starr Dana. More about the author later.
What’s incredible, besides the fact that it is the first wildflower field guide published in the USA, is that the field information is as
relevant to day as it was 116 yeas ago. I can’t name a current nonfiction book with that kind of longevity.
The subtitle: A Guide to the Names, Haunts and Habits of Our Common Wild Flowers
is an accurate description of what you’ll find in the book.
But I think the subtitle should be: When Field Guides Were Fun. Each section covers the plants with flowers of the same color, which makes it “field friendly.”
After a factual description of root, stem, leaf, flower, and seeds or fruit, the author launches into a bit of poetry, a folk remedy or
some other phrase that brings me right into the woods with her. The line drawings of the majority of wild flowers are so detailed that I forget
they’re not in color. The 50 color plates almost leap off the page.
For comparison’s sake, I went to the library and checked out the 1963 version of
How to Know the Wild Flowers.
Just holding them, I notice that the 1906 book is bulkier and the paper and binding sturdier. There are no color plates in the 1963 edition.
It makes me wonder what a book published in 1893 looks and feels like.
My brief count-up of the indexed plants shows that the 1906 book has about 750 plants listed, but the 1963 version lists over 1,000 plants.
Since the author died in 1952, I wonder who added the 250 plants. A deeper look into the book reveals that plants were not simply added,
some were deleted or their names were changed. Botanical names change frequently as knowledge is discovered. In the last 5-10 years,
the application of DNA evidence has revealed that some plants formerly thought to be members of different families share DNA.
Although I may be reading different names for the same plant, that still doesn’t change
the physical appearance, habitat, or growth pattern of the plant in the field.
This author of many field guides was not allowed to publish under her own name in 1893, hence the author credit “Mrs. William Starr Dana.”
She was widowed and then remarried and her name became Frances Theodora Parsons. A respected and accomplished botanist, her acquaintances
included Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling. In the 21st Century it’s easy to take our economic and social power for granted and forget
what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers have fought for and gained since the 19th Century.
It’s also easy to forget the pleasures of holding a book in this age of Kindle, e-books, and scribd.com. Call me a Luddite, but
a field guide is meant to be taken into the field, where I often cannot receive a WI-FI signal anyway.
JJ Murphy is a freelance nature writer, photographer, blogging hiker, forager, locavore, and tree-hugger with more than 50 years
of eco-centric living experience. Visit www.WriterByNature.com
if you need relevant content that captures your personal style and tone. |
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The Secret of the Sacred Scarab
Author: Fiona Ingram
ISBN: Paperback 978-0-595-45716-8/Cloth 978-0-595-71977-8/
E-book 978-0-595-90017-6
Publisher: iUniverse, 2008
Pages: 258
Reviewed by: Barbara Milbourn for Writers in the Sky
Author Fiona Ingram understands that young readers have no patience for long, drawn-out prologues. At the first sentence—a one-word exclamation—of The Secret of the Sacred Scarab, she jettisons readers off on an adventure to a far-away land with two young cousins.
Justin and Adam are leaving the comforts of home and the family dog for a one-week adventure in Egypt with ace writer/researcher Aunt Isabel and their loveable and zany Gran. In exchange for missing school, their assignment is to keep a daily record of things they’ve seen and learned along the way. It so happens that their aunt’s current project and the boys’ recent history lessons coincide and set the reader on firm footing before they even lift off.
Aunt Isabel has guaranteed their maximum travel experience and personal safety by booking them on a tour with a host of entertaining fellow sojourners and a tour-guide who is suspected of knowing far more than she shares with the group. Safety vanishes early in the hot, still air of a marketplace when the boys are encountered by a ragged peddler who bestows upon them four scarabs; one of which is particularly ancient and coveted.
The story flies forward from there as the boys put together fortuitous pieces of a puzzle in quest of a legendary tomb of an ancient Egyptian ruler and a missing archeologist. Ingram writes the landscape and the legend vividly and keeps the boys barely one step ahead of death and dismemberment at the hands of men in black, the fangs of a giant cobra, and all manner of danger that lurks in caves, shifting sands, and things hidden in deep, dark places.
The Secret of the Sacred Scarab is entertainment for readers up to around age fourteen and for those who wish they were fourteen again. It is at once adventure and history, art and architecture, humor and redemption, travel writing and social studies, and great fun. Fiona Ingram presents this as her first of seven in a series titled Chronicles of the Stone.
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The Starfish People
Author: Leann Marshall
ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4257-6871-3. Softcover 978-1-4257-6861-4
Publisher: Xlibris in 2007
Pages: 138
Reviewed by: Barbara Milbourn
While it isn’t unusual to experience recurring dreams over intervals of time, it is unusual for them to nightly—from a point back as far as can be remembered—shake us awake from a wet and inky darkness gasping for air. Theories abound concerning such persistent dreams and most of them point to unresolved matters in our conscious and subconscious mind (past and present) that are trying to get our attention. But what about back in time farther than is comfortable to fathom, much less reach?
Enter Sera, the protagonist in first person, nearly 200 years into the future. She’s an exhausted, withdrawn, under-achiever frazzled from lack of sleep and ready to pull the plug on years of therapy with her trusted doctor who is trying to help her understand and stop the nightmare cycle.
In The Starfish People, Leann Marshall places us into an evolved world where food is primarily a diet from the sea, clothing and adornment is a sprayed-on light show, and shelter remotely resembles a gigantic and more-complex London Eye. There are light cars, biometrics, energy signatures, and time travel. Then again, there are the constants of family, friends, and relationships not fully realized or expressed.
When her forward-thinking doctor recommends a last, radical experiment with a narrow window of time that may transport her patient to the actual origin of her nightmare, Sera makes ready to step into the past.
In a small North Carolina town on the Atlantic shore she seeks to encounter her former self and accomplish what she must. A cast of characters present themselves a chapter at a time taking the reader deeper and deeper into the person of Sera and her world. Time and people lap and overlap as naturally as waves on the shore, revealing a well-thought out plot with plenty of drama, tension, and surprises.
Leann Marshall has a lively imagination with good attention to detail and a knack for the interesting and unexpected. The Starfish People held me captive for nearly nine hours as I flew across its setting—the inky dark Atlantic.
The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Successful Social Marketing
By Dana Lynn Smith
E-book
Publisher: Texana Publishing, 2009
Nonfiction//Writing/Marketing
Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com
Understanding Frugal and Effective Social Marketing: Veteran Marketer and Author Benefits Promotion-minded Authors
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This Is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracing, a chapbook of poetry, and the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers.
I am an avid social marketer, even though I don't consider myself an expert. There is just so much to know and so much new coming down the Internet avenue each day.
Having said that, many books I've read are way too techy. They use terms I don't understand. And they tell me how to do things I'll never need. So I thought I'd share a book I loved with WITS subscribers. The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Successful Social Marketing by Dana Lynn Smith that can't be said in one sentence is basic and clear enough for writers just beginning to use social marketing as a marketing tool but complete enough that even veteran social marketers will find new applications and new marketing ideas within its pages.
As an example, I had just been disbarred (they say disabled but I think the term a bit strong!) from Facebook for simply answering too many invitations at a time. I'd save up my invitations for a day and answer anywhere from two to six at once. I like answering personally so I used the message link on the friends request page. Wrong! Their algorithms interpreted that as SPAM even though I used different messages for each one. So, once accepted back into the fold I was trying to avoid the same situation by painstakingly answering each friend request as it came to my e-mail box. I sure didn't want to go through that disbarred thing again and lose hundreds of friends!
Dana Lynn Smith to the rescue. She gave me a better way to send those thank you notes to people who had befriended me because it is well...more public. Networking is what Facebook is about after all! But this other method I learned is also a lot more friendly and faster.
This book is well organized and even includes calls to action at the end of each major section as an extra help. I would have wished for a real in-the-hand book because that's the way I am, but with something as explosive as social marketing, an e-book is perfect. Smith will find it easy to keep her book and its multitude of links fresh for you with new online developments. I'll be recommending it to those taking my marketing classes at UCLA for sure.
If you've been saying "I don't 'get' Twitter," this is the book for you.
Get your copy now!
Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This Is the Place, has won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction Harkening, won three. A UCLA Writers' Program instructor, she is also the author of another book essential for writers, USA Book News' Best Professional Book of 2004, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't. The second in her HowToDoItFrugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success also a USA Book News pick and winner of Reader Views Literary Award and the New Generation Award for Marketing. Learn more at
www.howtodoitfrugally.com.
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President Barack Obama’s Dreams From His Father
Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 2004
ISBN: 9781400082773
Reviewed by Maryanne Raphael
Available on Amazon.com
In Dreams From My Father, Obama wrote of his efforts to understand his family, the leaps through time and the collision of cultures hoping to shine light
on the question of identity and race in the America experience.
He described the “underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want, between modern and ancient cultures.”
He admired those “who embrace our teeming, colliding irksome diversity while insisting on values that bind us together.”
And he feared “those who seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, to justify cruelty towards those not like us.”
The book shows how powerlessness twists children’s lives in Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way it does on Chicago’s south side
and how quickly despair slips into violence. It discusses how the powerful respond with a dull complacency until violence threatens them and they
then use force, (longer prison sentences and more sophisticated hardware) inadequate to the task.
He struggles constantly to understand this problem and his place in it. He is now professionally engaged in a broader public debate
that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come.
If he had known his mother was dying so young, he would have written a
different book, less a meditation of the absent parent and more a celebration of
the one who was the single constant in his life. He shares some of the stories
his mother and her parents told him when he was a child.
Obama feels we have all seen too much to take his parents’ brief union—a black man and a white woman an African and an American—at face value.
He says when black or white people who don’t know him well, discover his background they no longer know who he is.
This is the record of a personal interior journey, a boy’s search for his father and a workable meaning for his life as a black American.
Obama says, “I can embrace my black brothers and sisters whether in this country or in Africa and affirm a common destiny without pretending
to speak for all our various struggles.”
Much of this book is based on journals or oral histories of his family. Obama
says he tried to write an honest account of a particular province of his life.
Without the love and support of his family, his mother, his grandparents and his siblings, stretched across oceans and continents he could never have finished it.
He was born in Hawaii, lived several years in Indonesia then lived in New York City where he went to Columbia University.
In 1983, he was a Chicago community organizer and a civil rights lawyer. His Aunt Jane, whom he had never met, called him from Kenya to say his father was killed in an auto accident. His parents had
divorced when he was two years old and he had only seen his father for one month when he came to visit Obama and his mother in Hawaii.
When he went to Kenya his half sister Auma and his Auntie Zeitumi met him
They took him to meet Aunt Jane and other African family members. Family seemed to be everywhere in Kenya and Obama found himself
meditating on just what is a family He sat on his father’s grave and spoke with him through Africa ’s red soil.
When he returned to America he met Michelle, who had been raised in Chicago. After their engagement he took her to Kenya to meet his
family there they returned to the United States and married.
This is an absorbing and moving tale of a man who takes a journey to where
his father
lived much of his life and died. Obama re-evaluates his relationship with the myth of his father and the meaning of his own life. It
is a quiet but intense examination of a man’s past and his son’s attempt to understand it.
Examining his family’s life and thinking about his own, Obama finds a certain relief reliving times and behavior that had
slipped into the undifferentiated past and finally arrives at some kind of understanding.
The writing style is exciting, a well written blend of memoir and history. The rich narrative and interesting characters keep
the reader turning pages. Obama’s sensual descriptions bring to life the south side of Chicago, Harlem, Indonesia,
and
Kenya. You see the people, hear their voices, taste and smell the food, feel the breeze, and smell the ocean.
This is a book I would have enjoyed even if had not been written by a well-known, fascinating man beginning to put his mark on the world. |
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Evading the Nazis: The Story of a Hidden Child in Normandy
Author: Leo Michel Abrami
ISBN: 978-1-4327-3429-9
Publisher: Outskirts Press in 2009
Pages: 207
Reviewed by: Barbara Milbourn for Writers in the Sky
Evading the Nazis: The Story of a Hidden Child in Normandy is no walk in the park, but it is the walk that author Leo Michel Abrami began as a young Jewish boy in France during World War II. His family’s literal and prolonged evasion was necessary to stay alive. It was a condition none would choose voluntarily, and one that no one would wish to have imposed upon them by others, yet Abrami does not regale the reader with grandiose or overly sentimental tales. There is no artificial flourish or flair, only his appropriately stark and, I believe, deeply honest memories—memoir—written with the hope that (by the act of writing) he would be liberated “from the shackles of their recollection.”
While entire segments of the population—communists, gypsies, homosexuals, and members of the underground—were targets of persecution during the war, none were pursued in such great numbers and with such intense ferocity as the Jews. In France alone there were 80,000 of which more than 15,000 were children.
The author begins speaking from his eight-year-old heart. Fatherless and innocent he labors to understand his people and their history. How earnestly he wants to defend against being called cheater, liar, dirty kike; how heavy is his constant burden of wariness to not give himself or his family’s secret away; how wild his admiration for his mother’s bravery and tenacity; how wretched his youthfulness in its futility to fight and make change for good; and how great his loneliness as he comes to live among, but apart from, a family who takes him in until the war is over.
The atrocities of war are portrayed clearly and intelligently as the author cites people, places, and events. At the same time, we journey deeply inside the psyche of this young man who, once the war is over, becomes free to pursue the quest of his entire self—his religious and familial heritage and his future. His hunger for knowledge is great, his scars deep, and his desire to know and practice the highest truth in his community exemplary.
Lest you fear the book sounds too depressing, take heart that the spirit of human kindness shines from the most unexpected places. Evading the Nazis, like
The Cellist of Sarajevo brought me close to the horrors of war and shows in a touching and highly personal way how people are changed by it and how powerful and admirable is the will to survive.
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Surviving a House Full of Whispers
Sharon Wallace
Modern History Press (2009)
ISBN 9781932690903
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (4/09)
The author, Sharon Wallace, was the victim of both physical and sexual abuse of her stepfather while her mother was in denial and contributed emotional abuse as well. No one would believe her story. Tired of being treated like an outcast by her family and friends, she goes to Social Services for assistance. Feeling totally frustrated because they also don’t believe her story, she presents herself as a very angry, volatile teenager. Inside, she is a child screaming for someone to rescue her and to believe her story.
To escape, Sharon takes on several jobs; most of them involve being a nanny. Not all of her experiences are positive; however, she is relieved to be out of her house. Not knowing how to recover from being abused, she takes on some negative behaviors such as cutting herself and eating disorders. Sharon also learns that she can defend herself. This makes her stronger, however, the intensity of anger that she feels when she is attacked, also scares her.
Down the road, Sharon finds a wonderful, patient man that loves her. He believes her story. His love and support help her on her path to healing and finding herself. When she becomes a mother, she is fearful for her children and initially finds herself being overprotective. Learning to trust her own judgment, she learns who she can trust to be around her and her family. Along the way, Sharon continues to try to salvage her relationships with her family. She realizes that her mother is a very sick woman. Her stepfather is still around, which is horrible for Sharon. This man, whom she refers to as “The Night Devil” delights in the fact that he got away with his abuse.
When Sharon’s husband develops a disabling health issue, the family is rocked by having to watch him decline and their financial situation becomes dire. Still Sharon is able to hold them together. When she experiences her own health crises she suffers greatly. Still Sharon stays strong.
I found Sharon’s story painful to read. It is horrible that both the family and the whole system would fail to protect an innocent child from abuse. It was heart wrenching to feel the pain that she was experiencing. I was so happy when she found a wonderful man to love her. I truly feel that people experiencing abuse, survivors of abuse, abusers and people who work with these people, should read
Surviving a House Full of Whispers. Sharon’s story needs to be read, so that people learn from it.
Upon realizing that history does not have to be repeated, Sharon says, “ …we don’t have to own the misery of our childhoods. We can refuse it and return it to its rightful owner, the abuser.” I am thankful that Sharon Wallace is willing to share her story in Surviving a House Full of Whispers.
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Talk Radio Wants You: An Intimate Guide to 700 Shows and How to Get Invited
Francine Silverman
ISBN - 9 780786 440337
Publisher - McFarland & Co
Pub Date: April 2009
314 pages
Price: $75
Reviewer's Name: Victor Volkman of Authors Access
Imagine being able to sit down with a coffee and discuss with hundreds of radio hosts what their shows are about and what kind of guests they’d like to book. You can do just that with Francine Silverman’s new book Talk Radio Wants You: An Intimate Guide to 700 Shows and How to Get Invited. I have paid $300 or more for talk radio show databases that had far less information than Francine presents in her highly-competitively priced book.
Broken down into top-level categories, you can browse for shows in your genre, including politics, health & fitness, food, sports, self-help, women’s issues, and even authors. I would expect most people can find a dozen hot prospects for making their pitch in under half-an-hour, that is if you can stop yourself from endlessly browsing the fascinating entries! Francine doesn’t stop with AM/FM; also included are satellite radio and podcasts, which can reach thousands of interested listeners you would never get from terrestrial radio.
Each entry includes critical info such as desired guests, host bio, and full contact info so you can tailor your pitch perfectly. I can’t recommend this book strongly enough for any author who wants to get into this high-profile, low-cost method of marketing. Only a couple of downsides to mention: if you’re looking for gay & lesbian, military/veteran, or science-fiction oriented shows you will not find enough listings to make it worthwhile. Also, I feel like the “What is your guest from hell?” entries were a bit repetitive. Everyone knows that hosts want an articulate, on-time, and well-spoken guest. If I know Francine, she will amend these in future editions.
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Act As If It Were Impossible to Fail, The Employee Handbook That Your Employer Hasn’t Given You
Author: Joe Lavelle
ISBN: 9781439240724
Publisher: Booksurge, July 2009
Link to purchase: Amazon.com
Reviewer: Yvonne Perry
Understanding Your Role in Career Success
I’ve always been driven to succeed and achieve. I don’t know if it comes from my upbringing or if I learned it at school, or it if is in-born, but I am task-driven and love marking things off my to-do list. Even when I was a stay-at-home mom, I organized my daily activities to optimize my day and make sure I accomplished everything I wanted to do while the kids were in school. However, I have not always lived with the attitude that I could “act as if it were impossible to fail.” That would surely have changed things!
In my younger years, I was afraid of failure and rejection. It kept me from being honest with myself and others because I did not want to be seen as a failure. I suppose that is why Joe Lavelle’s book,
Act As If It Were Impossible to Fail, The Employee Handbook That Your Employer Hasn’t Given You, appeals so much to me.
In it, he says, “Yes, failure is a fact of life; however, you can learn to view failure as an important lesson rather than feeling disappointment and resignation.” Part of being successful is being able to recover from your mistakes and not allowing animosity, doubt, and negativity to creep in.
Joe gives pertinent examples using everyday comparisons such as how making mayonnaise is a lot like your boss’s job. You’ll have to read the book to understand what he means by that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Once I started my own business, I had to believe in myself and my abilities, or else I would have given up. Somehow, through trial and error, I kept going even when things didn’t turn out how I had hoped. Miraculously, I learned from the mistakes I made. Can that skill be taught? Yes, what I learned on the fly can be learned in Joe’s book. He teaches how to clearly define your role in your first 90 days on a job by setting clear and realistic goals. Beyond making a good first impression, a new employee should actively communicate his or her style and expectations. This could apply to anything in life—not just a career.
Have you ever heard of greenspace in an office environment? I hadn’t. When I read this in the table of contents, I thought Joe was either talking about getting some outdoor exercise in a space known as a greenway, or maybe he was referring to recycling and reusing office resources such as paper. According to Joe, greenspace consists of all the necessary tasks in the office that are not assigned to anyone specifically. He says that by taking on additional duties and responsibilities, you show leadership and determination that will improve your chances of advancing your career more quickly.
Another case Joe makes is for a better understanding of the role of
the human resources department and how mentoring programs and succession planning play an important role in long-term career success as well as the long-term success of a company. There’s an entire chapter on effective networking, and another chapter that defines how and why return on investment (ROI) is so important to a company and how to use it to your advantage as an employee. Communication, education, and play—yes, play!—are an important part of a successful corporate environment.
Each chapter ends with a summary that makes finding key facts easier. Each chapter also has “Act As If Success Steps” that give you examples of things you can do to apply what you read in the text. What I learned from Joe’s book is that our beliefs become our reality, and our expectations have a direct result on the outcome of any given situation.
Joe writes, “When you act as if failure were impossible, your actions make that belief a reality.” With that mantra and the lessons modeled in this book, the world—and especially corporate America—would be a much different and nicer place!
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by Joyce Shafer, LEC
No one engages the art and craft of writing unless they have a passion and commitment to either entertain or inform. Dedicated writers learn the creative and technical aspects, work with an editor, and involve themselves in every action that gets them published and read.
Let’s say you’ve done all of the above. The other part of this is promotion. This can get tricky for many people. Whether you write your own promotional materials or work with someone who’s an expert, what’s key to long-term success is to build a relationship with readers. The best way to build a relationship is to write from the heart.
A first step is to identify who your ideal readers are. New writers wish their audience included everyone, but it doesn’t happen that way. If you know your niche, you have a starting place you can expand over time.
People want to know why they should engage with you. When you write from the heart, you shift from telling to being. People get to know and interact with the real you, not a commercial version. When you’re clear about who you are and what you offer (what’s unique about you), and if you understand what your people look for and how you provide it, finding the right words to reach them is far easier. Write from the heart and you shift from selling to serving. This creates connection, and this connection creates relationship.
Here are some key questions to ask when you’re creating or approving promotional materials:
What are your ideal readers interested in?
How can you serve, benefit, co-create, or co-partner with them?
What do you feel when you think of them?
How do you want them to feel when they think of you?
Do you appreciate and value them? Do they feel this way about you?
Writing, just as creating true connection with others, is an outer-level experience, but both start at the inner level. You can ask yourself right questions to get clear about every aspect of being a writer and promoter. You can get clear on how, who, and what your ideals are then never settle for less from yourself and others based on this understanding.
When you approach your ideal readers from the heart of who you are, they’ll respond. Trust gets established. A relationship starts and grows, right from the heart.
Make Shift Happen! Joyce Shafer, LEC (jls1422@yahoo.com) is an author and creator of the Reinvent Yourself: Refuse to Settle for Less in Life and Business coaching program:
http://www.freewebs.com/coach4lifebalance. Want the program materials, but not the coaching? Reinvent Yourself eCourse available at lulu.com (discounted at her Web
store).
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Problem Solving
Problems don’t just go away
or change on a specific date.
Unless we deal with them
they will only escalate.
Exercising the muscles strengthens us to make us strong.
Problems help us to grow, but our entire focus
should not be on what went wrong.
When we don’t learn from our problems
and correct our mistakes.
It’s like a racecar driver,
racing over and over not expecting to win a race.
Some problems are beyond our control and we
don’t know exactly know what to do.
Let us seek answers from the one who created you.
Let us focus on the solution or the next thing we must do.
You will get the answer and the peace will arise on the
inside of you.
Tanya Tucker Blowe is the author of the Inspirational Writings from the Living Water.
This inspirational poetry book captures the hearts of people and lifts the hearts and spirits of those who require spiritual fulfillment.
Tanya’s heartfelt writings give words of wisdom, instruction, and answers that are valuable tools for life.
www.tanyablowe.com
Touching the World with Light
Ocean waves laugh as they roll
slowly to shore,
in their depths they begin to boil,
crash forth in an angry tide.
Sometimes a star ignites
and streaks across the sky
in a fiery blaze as it falls.
A wind blowing softly
lends giant trees gracefulness
as they sway to and fro,
suddenly turns furious,
in its wrath
causing them to bend and twist
limbs breaking in pain.
Darkness covers the night sky.
Heaven’s door opens,
a thousand stars burst forth
to touch the world with light.
Gail Livesay loves to write poetry and is revising her memoir about growing up with bipolar disease, which was neither known and/or recognized. Gail has been published in
Poetry as Prayer, Appalachian Women Speak, Appalachian Connection, Oncology Review, USAdeepsouth and
Writers in the Sky E-zine.
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A Conscious Painting
I Paint In Fragments
That Change
In Contrast
I Move From Canvas
To Canvas Expressing
The Desire
To Be A Conscious Painting
Of Inner Consciousness
The Ink Well
Of Acceptance Dries
In The Air
Of Separation
My Brush Dips
Itself in Blood
As Mental Enzymes
Turn Into Human Thoughts
Copied From Memory
Unique Mysteries Drizzle
My Outer Edges
With Magical Desires
Fresh Beliefs Become
A Colorful Vibration
Of Expression
And My Nucleus
Entertains
A Family Of
Nuances
That Shade Themselves
In Dreams
An Art Form
Of Timeless Motion
Captures My Multiplicity
In Free Style
And I Rest
On A Easel
Of Eternity
www.shortsleeves.net
http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/
To Touch Your Heart
By Dennis S. Martin
There is no easy way
To get it done,
To say convincingly
You’re my only one.
No one to whisper in my ear,
Tell me where to start
To find those simple words
To touch your heart.
I’ve tried a million times
To let you know
Just how my love for you
Continues to grow.
But I can’t find the words
That will truly impart,
Words that spring from my soul
To touch your heart.
Maybe it’s not just the words that I speak
That send the real message your way.
Actions speak louder they say in the end,
And I try to show you every day.
I’ll keep on looking,
Searching my soul,
Maybe buy a dictionary,
Make it my goal
To find the right phrases
Both tender and smart,
The right words
To touch your heart.
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Still Life: Empty, Needing Fish
For NG in Boca Raton; i.m. Robert Browning
Upstairs in the shower stall, Ryan rinsed a conch.
I half expected him, Jack or Ralph-like, to blow on it.
We had no colander on the kitchen hooks.
It’s not first lover stuff.
Shower stalls are.
So too are large aquaria, worth the dough for show.
We stood there, glass tank at our feet,
mutely debating,
smeary glass door wide
with coral and conch in hair-washing spray.
The shower head fizzed into sand-weighted water.
From a foot away, I watched, wondering.
A foot from the fizz.
Could now we say we had showered together;
would that be no lie?
Almost accurate was it,
nearly truthful that we’d reached what?
That turning point in our relationship
we had anticipated,
the turning point where showering
together is routine, even
if both of us stay fully clothed.
“Sure we did it,” we can say
to ourselves and each other, at least.
And nobody saw.
In Sex & the City our eyes would have met.
Close-up. Chemistry.
Same thought crackling electrically,
coursing me to Ryan, he to me.
Tank gone. Removed. Totally out of mind.
Merely a McGuffin to get us to where
clothes fell away beneath urgent hands,
effortlessly, no fumbling this time.
A magic wand translates us into McQueen and Dunaway after chess.
Shower stall extends enough to contain us comfortably. Miracle in mind.
Water as hot as we like? An unlimited supply.
No stumbling, slipping,
fumbling, or odd grunts.
Call of the conch should be so smooth.
Shower stall to be our consummate
ease spot for a moment. I think,
but with the conch properly rinsed,
the last of the sand from it has gone.
Now it’s more than a week ago.
More than a week has passed since that night.
There is the tank, babbling like a brook.
It is empty, needing fish.
Writer: Duke Barrett (nom de plume).
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There Was Ecstasy
Jan Bossing © 2009, Joelton, Tennessee
Breaking news on Channel 2;
SWAT in a stand-off on 10th Avenue.
Guy inside is an ex-cop; too risky to enter, send the robot.
Karen called me. “Have you heard?” she said.
“Poor ole Bobby is probably dead.”
We had known he was walking on the dark side of the street.
We tried to pull him back; he was too far down to reach.
We had known he was sinking in the quick-sand of meth.
We tried to pull him back from that awful path to death.
There was crack. There was crank. There was ecstasy.
Meth-y-lene-di-ox-y-meth-am-phet-a-mine.
On the screen, we saw his house, SWAT van in the street.
In the driveway was a body, covered with a sheet.
The neighbors saw him shoot her; they called 9 -1-1.
He was holed up in the house; and he had a gun.
What could have made him do it? He was one of us.
Good cop, gone bad cop; but not as bad as this.
There were woods behind the house; had he slipped away?
SWAT sent the robot in; it saw him where he lay.
There was crack. There was crank. There was ecstasy.
Meth-y-lene-di-ox-y-meth-am-phet-a-mine.
We had known he was sinking in the quick-sand of meth.
We tried to pull him back from that awful path to death.
We had known he was walking on the dark side of the street.
We tried to pull him back; he was too far down to reach.
At the end of the day, I said,
“I just keep remembering how smart he was, and how funny, and how fun.”
And Karen said,
“Yeah, and don’t forget he was a good cop, too. At least he didn’t make SWAT do it.
The Phone Call
She sits on a park bench
Cell phone on her lap
Watching the minutes go by
Hoping and praying he will call.
Kids are playing nearby
She does not hear them
The scent of hot dogs fill the air
She's not hungry as she waits for the phone
to ring.
Too bad. Too Sad.
He's not coming back
He has another love
Younger than she
That's life.
Love is blind!
She can't see the forest
The trees are in the way
And bird's sing to deaf ears
as her tears fall onto her lap.
Sleep overtakes her
Dreaming of a day gone by
When love was new and exciting
He wanted her then
Now he doesn't call at all
Irene Brodsky, Author of
Poetry Unplugged
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necessarily the views held by Yvonne Perry or Writers in the
Sky. While we try to inspect the validity of each entry, we may
occasionally miss something, and therefore, cannot guarantee the
accuracy of any announcements or opportunities.
Yvonne Perry and Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services
will not be held liable for any direct or indirect losses or
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you agree to indemnify and hold all owners and representative
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your use of Writers in the Sky material. Use of our Web site,
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© 2009 Yvonne Perry
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