Well, I am on a ball. So I have been considering what I should do with “Death of Neverland ” and the other Novella “Madness & Truth” that I nearly have done. Mind you both are releases from Serena Mossgraves. I have put in a good bit of thought. While I am fine with releasing a Novella for the Kindle as a stand alone, doing such for paperback is not something I feel comfortable with. However, I will release a paperback with both Novellas instead.
Likely to be released around the same time as Madness & Truth. I will do a update closer to the release. I was merely wanting to share the cover idea for now. Madness & Truth should be ready for the editor by the end of June. I will be hopefully able to release it by the end of July. Check back for further information as I am able.
Poetic license
Recently I asked for advice on my poetry… And it got me thinking. The advice was given that I need to add smilies and metaphors in my poetry, because there is no poetry with out it. Now mind you I added some images, but some poems just do not work with either. I feel like I am missing something by refusing to accept that all poetry must have either of the two options. But, then I start to question… Who is writing the poem?
Yes, I employ both in my poems, but not always. Some poems are just emotions in written form. If all poetry was just comparison then where is the original ideas? Images do not have to be a comparison to be evocative. Sometimes the more you compare the emotional state with something else, the more you lose of the original idea.
Do not get me wrong… I am grateful for the opinions offered, after all it made me look closer at what I was writing and add more imagery. I however am not sure that I am willing to completely change my voice because it doesn’t fit another person’s idea of what poetry should be.
What do you expect when you read poems? Which of the poetry styles /rules are a hard and fast thing for you? Please do respond. I would love to discuss this idea further.
Who you are vs. Who you want to be
Fail and keep failing
Source: Fail and keep failing
Music soothes the mad poet…
*image found on Google and only used for inspiration.
Recently I read a blog done about music and the effect it had on the life of the blogs writer. It got me thinking. So often life for me has revolved around the music. The sounds of life have always been a rich and full part of who I am. I remember my Dad’s deep baritone singing “Amazing Grace” to me as a child. I remember going to see my great grandfather at his radio station and being enamored by it all. I loved the poetry in the songs, how it felt like your soul was understood by the person singing.
Grandma Ethel, my Mom’s mom, used to sit and listen to stories from her youth and she would share those with me. Radio shows from another era. She taught me to enjoy classical music, how to close my eyes and visualize the music.
Music for my mom was such a rigid thing. If it was not country, she would not listen to it. And as a child, in her house I was not supposed to listen to anything else either. But daddy had records of all manner of song. Stray cats, and soft rock like it. She would eventually learn to bend, she grew to enjoy some bubble gum rock along with the country.
I still remember the first time I heard real rock. My soon to be step brother had a cassette tape of Dr Feelgood. I was eleven. It felt wild and I was hooked. I still enjoy country, but I am eclectic in my music tastes.
Mind you I am skipping over bits of music and memory. I am trying not to ramble here. The next influence was my first day of high school. I was six weeks late because I had a child at fourteen. I was scared to death of what high school would be. My elder step brother was dating this chick, and man I looked up to her. She was confident and sexy and badass. All of the things I knew I would never be. Well she met me at the cafeteria doors holding a boom box. It was blasting so loudly that the windows in the building were rattling. Pink Floyd; Another Brick in the wall part 3…Aka We Don’t Need No Education. I can’t tell you how much better I felt about high school. It was not that school was actually any better. In truth it was a nightmare. I just suddenly felt braver, more secure.
Looking back, every person who was ever a intimate in my life has a song. My playlist is often a minefield of memories. Some of which I have not even explained to my boyfriend of over twenty one years. Not because of anything other than the fact that I am done with the one who was once attached to the memory.
I may have been a singer and put my love of music to use, except for the fact that I am unfortunately tone deaf. I was not gifted with the beautiful singing voice that I would have loved. It has not stopped me, i sang to my daughter. I refused to deny her that bond, both with me and with music. She still will ask for her lullabies when she is feeling bad.
I sang four main ones to her. “Hush little baby “,”the greatest love of all “(slightly mangled as i forget one verse), “rockabye baby ” (altered so mama catches as the original bothered me) and the last is called the puzzle song.
Lyrics for the puzzle song: *note I learned this is a chorus class in school and have no freaking clue who wrote it.
I gave my love a cherry that had no stone, I gave my love a chicken that had no bone, I gave my love a ring that had no end, And I gave my love a baby with no cry-in.
How can there be a cherry with no stone? How can there be a chicken with no bone? How can there be a ring with no end? And how can there be a baby with no cry-in?
A cherry when it is blooming, it has no stone, A chicken when it is peeping it has no bone, a ring when it is rolling it has no end and a baby when it is sleeping has no cry-in.
What songs have made a difference in your life? I would love to hear about them.
It’s not what you think
Very well said.
If People Talked About Other Things the Way They Talked About Gender Identity.
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If People Talked About Other Things the Way They Talked About Gender Identity.
Fiction: “It’s either a short story or a novel. There’s no such thing as a novella.”
Subatomic particles: “Now they’re saying they discovered ‘tetraquarks’ and ‘pentaquarks’. How many combinations of quarks are there? I can’t even keep up these days. What ever happened to just talking about good old atoms?”
Cats: “A Manx is not a cat. Cats are defined as having tails. Maybe it’s a koala.”
Ice cream: “Avocado is not a valid ice cream flavor because I’ve never heard of it and it does not appeal to me.”
Language: “I don’t care what linguists say, I know a dialect when I see one, and Pennsylvania Dutch English is not a dialect.”
Water: “Water is H20. Ice might parade around pretending to be something different, but we all know that it’s…
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Struggles, Beginnings and the peace gained
This is the garage door that started the journey for me. I took this picture yesterday. Six days from now I will have been with my boyfriend for twenty one years. Some days that feels like a century… But I digress. When we first got together, his “grandma” (who was actually his adopted mother) let us live in her garage. She had a bathroom put in on the back porch of her house (and had him pay her back for it to teach the twenty one year old us about bills) but she never charged us for the utilities. At the time I was to headstrong to see the gift that she was giving us… She was stern and slightly scary to me. I have learned that she really was an amazing woman since.
I can say that it was a struggle to make the garage into a home. We ran gas lines for a stove. We acquired a refrigerator from a local mission. He and I slept on a large sofa we were given. I failed to appreciate the struggle then, because at twenty one I was ignorant of the way of the world. I had seen the darkness in man, but I had really never had to do the housing thing. When my family didn’t have a home I lived with my grandma. So I always had a roof over my head. The garage wasn’t even the worst place I have ever lived. I have lived ten people in a two bedroom trailer with no running water. That is another story though.
Now Joe is working on getting the house. He inherited a fourth of it and his adopted sister is giving him her share. So we have only two halves to buy before it is ours. This is a convoluted and stressful time for me. I want to keep the memories of this house. I want the stability for my family that the house will provide. But the house also has baggage. Baggage in the form from of people who are currently in the house. People who we are trying to get settled. There is a lot involved with this. Add the fact that we are not able to settle in and you have the chaos of my life.
Then I looked at the garage door and felt like it had come full circle. Which is why I took the picture. The feeling of peace came through in the picture.
Stress and the results
We all go through moments of stress. How we deal with said stress is how we are as a person. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not judging anyone for the way that they deal with the stress in their life. All that I am saying is that we as a society tend to see dealing with stress as a character definition.
However sometimes it is beyond our capacity to deal with. Then stress becomes mental illness and nervous breakdowns. There becomes physical symptoms. And it varies by the person. Stress is not something that is wanted by anyone. It does however, on occasion sharpen the mind and make clarity easier to achieve.
I, myself, have found that for example the stress of a deadline can get the creative juices flowing in some. I have also seen others who freeze when placed under such stress. How do you handle stress? And what are some relaxation techniques you have for dealing with stress when it shows up?
Pattimouse 