I was the toddler glued to my Mum’s hip, the little girl who hid behind her skirt in the supermarket.

As the years folded by, I learnt to hold my own and be less afraid of the big wide world, yet I still don’t seek notoriety. I’d offer to play in your band, but as the drummer at the back of the stage, out of the spotlight. If you met me you’d never guess; outwardly I’m a very sociable person. But inwardly there are still moments in my life when I crave that skirt to hide behind. Perhaps that’s why writing suits me, tucked away from the world, lost in my stories?

Herein lies the problem: you may write the best prose in the world, but if people don’t hear about it, they’ll never read it, and the books won’t sell. I enjoy engaging in Twitter, Face book and writing blog posts, and will continue to do so. But now it’s time to embrace the human approach.

So – I arranged signings with two local book stores in May. In preparation, I’ve spent a few days working with a printer on design for posters incorporating my author picture to publicise, and been photographed for the local press. This forthcoming week, I have my first interview in a local BBC radio station.

In the past, even the prospect of presentations and public appearances in the day job filled me with dread. Strangely, I find myself excited and exhilarated by these events. Maybe it’s because I’m engaged in something I’m passionate about, or due to the fact that I know my subject matter. (If anything I’ll talk too much and bore them to death!) Perhaps, on the day, I’ll freeze, my mouth will dry up and pains will spike my chest. But I doubt that.

It is fascinating that our stories can introduce so many new experiences to our lives. As a Newbie, I never imagined being in this position. (I know it’s a cliche, but I really do still pinch myself everyday!) This is the reality of publishing our work. So, the skirt’s been tossed in the trash can. At the moment, I want to enjoy every single one of them.

Jane Isaac’s first novel, An Unfamiliar Murder, is out on Amazon.com, Amazon.uk and Kindle worldwide now. Jane is still very much a Newbie and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. You can catch up with her at www.janeisaac.co.uk

Hey all,

M.E. Franco was kind enough to add me to the Liebster Blog award list on her blog: http://mefrancoauthor.blogspot.com.au/

So a big thanks to her! Make sure you check out her blog and also buy her book:

So part of this is to pass on the award to 5 other bloggers. Here are my nominations!

Dionne Lister: http://dionnelisterwriter.wordpress.com/ (Fantasy author and host of Tweep Nation Podcast. Has a new book out! Visit her site for details.)

Amber Norrgard: http://amberjeromenorrgard.com/ (Poetry author and host of Tweep Nation Podcast, has a second poetry book out now! Make sure you visit her site for all the details.)

Catharine Bramkamp: http://www.yourbookstartshere.com (Co Host of the podcast, writing tutor, Author, Professor, lecturer, all round champion of the written word)

Justin Bogdanovitch: http://justinbog.com/ (Social media extraordinaire and author. Has a book coming out!)

Ciara Ballintyne: http://www.ciaraballintyne.com (Fantasy author and blogger)

3. Post the award on your blog.

**If any of you have won this award already let me know and I’ll sneak another deserving person in!**

Episode 31- Sci-Fi, Viruses and Messy Men

Special guest: Amy Rogers

Damiens rant about Mr Messy!

We talk about Sci-Fi, thrillers and what it’s like being a doctor!

What if bacteria turned all the gasoline in Los Angeles into vinegar?
Carmageddon doesn’t begin to describe it; Petroplague does.

UCLA graduate student Christina Gonzalez wanted to use biotechnology to free America from its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Instead, an act of eco-terrorism unleashes her genetically-modified bacteria into the fuel supply of Los Angeles, making petroleum useless.

With the city paralyzed and slipping toward anarchy, Christina must find a way to rein in the microscopic monster she created. But not everyone wants to cure the petroplague–and some will do whatever it takes to spread it. From the La Brea Tar Pits to university laboratories to the wilds of the Angeles National Forest, Christina and her cousin River struggle against enemies seen and unseen to stop the infection before it’s too late.
Set in the mountain-ringed Los Angeles basin, this terrifyingly plausible science thriller about good intentions, unexpected consequences, Peak Oil, climate change, experimental biofuels, and the astonishing power of microorganisms will give you pause every time you fill up your car.

From Paul McEuen, author of international bestseller Spiral:
“Petroplague is a terrific thriller debut and Amy Rogers really knows her science. From a killer premise—scientists create a bacterium that stops the industrial world in its tracks—Petroplague ratchets up the tension and danger with every chapter. The tense, tight plot and interesting characters kept me reading late into the night … Amy Rogers is one to watch—I can’t wait for her next book.”

Available on amazon! http://www.amazon.com/Petroplague-ebook/dp/B005IK4WEC

Amy Rogers, M.D., Ph.D., writes thrilling science-themed novels that pose frightening what if? questions. Compelling characters and fictionalized science—not science fiction—make Amy’s books page-turners that open the reader’s eyes to threats they never imagined before. Harvard-educated and relentlessly curious, Amy is passionate about scientific literacy and nature education for kids. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children.

In addition to writing her own fiction and medical nonfiction, Amy reads every science- or medical-themed thriller she can and reviews these books at her website ScienceThrillers.

Tell us about your web site www.sciencethrillers.com

I liked your ratings of Sci/Med content using biohazard Symbols
What do you think are some of the pitfalls of science or science fiction (in the pure definition) writing?

Do writers need to be doctors or physicists to write a good Science Thriller?

What are the good elements for a science Thriller besides the plot/strong character mantra?

You are running a writing contest:

Submit any work of fiction (including, but not limited to, short stories, poetry, fables, and short graphic works/comics) that meets the following criteria:
The work is suitable for a youth audience (grades 4-12)
The work contains accurate scientific content
The scientific content should feel entertaining but secretly be educational.
The work should be between a few hundred and a few thousand words in length. Maximum length: 4,000 words.
If entry includes artwork, figures, or images they must be the original work of the contestant and must be submitted in digital format
Nonfiction entries are also permitted if the story is presented in a thrilling or entertaining style (for example, Richard Preston’s THE HOT ZONE).
ENTRY FEE: $5
PRIZES: (these are guaranteed minimums, prizes may be increased)
1st place: $100
2nd place: $50
3rd place: $25
WHEN:
Submissions will be accepted until June 30, 2012.  Winners will be chosen by August 1st, 2012.

Why? And tells us more about this.

Writing Prompt

Choose not to do something today, breath in at that very moment you are not doing it and say with great relish and no regret: Wow, I could be A. stuck in traffic B. Stuck in line at Target C. Stuck in a conversation with people I don’t really like. Enjoy the fact that you are here and not there.
Okay, okay, say you can’t avoid any of the above, what if you could? Write about it, relish it in fantasy.
Vow to not do it later.

Word of the Week

www.worldwidewords.org
HONEYFUGGLE

The great tradition of expressive American terms of the nineteenth century brought forth this verb, which has now vanished from daily life. It means to deceive by flattery or sweet talk, to swindle or cheat.

It has been variously spelt down the decades, with honey-fugle or honeyfugle being common variants. The flattery was usually assumed to be with an ulterior purpose, as here in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861:

His habit of ‘log-rolling,’ or, as the extreme Westerners call it, ‘honey-fugling’ for votes and support, had so grown upon him, that his sincere friends feared lest he would sink too low, and in the end defeat himself.

Among its last public appearances was one in the Syracuse Herald in 1934, in which President Roosevelt was described as “the prize honeyfugler of his time”. One of the reasons why it dropped out of common usage may have been that a sense grew up of sexual activity with young women (with fuggle being a modification of fuck), as a semi-euphemistic version of another, unambiguous, term.

The honey part is easy to link with sweet-talking, but the rest is puzzling. It’s usually assumed to be a variation on an English dialect word coneyfugle, to hoodwink or cajole by flattery, where coney is the old word for an adult rabbit and fugle is an even more enigmatic term that means to cheat. But how the two words came to be put together in order to have that meaning is unknown.

Bring out Your Dead

Mediocre at best.
D.Boath

Be good at one thing, mediocre at the rest.
Be ashamed once in a while, it prevents arrogance.
Be yourself but not always. People will think you weird otherwise.
Be average for an overachiever often burns out.

Try something new, but not to make you feel awkward
Try to cook fantastically, but only eggs and bacon.
Try to improve, but failing is acceptable.
Try to begin again something you though complete.

Take your wife on a date, but not someone else’s.
Take your mind off of here and float towards then.
Take a breath but exhale slowly.
Take a minute, then take a week.

Sit with someone old, and laugh with someone young.
Sit by yourself and listen to your thoughts.
Sit with strangers and ask someone a question.
Sit in front of a mirror and try to be yourself.

Shout outs:

Scott Fletcher: www.mrscottfletcher.com
Kevin Mcleod: www.incompetech.com
Steven Myers and his fantastic email.
Sharon Hamilton who featured me on her blog. Beth Baranay who is masterminding a writer’s intensive workshop May 19th and 20th in Oakland.

This week I’d love to give a shout out to my mum. For my birthday last week she made me this fabulous eeep cake, although she was a little upset that the glasses ended up looking a tad Dame Edna-ish.

My kids didn’t mind; they gobbled up most of the blue fondant icing and ignored the cake inside.

Thanks Mum! (Even if my kids did have blue pee for a few days.)

————————————————————————————
Emma is a freelance editor and writer who got her start at Newbie Writers two years ago. In her previous career she was an accountant, but escaped the numbers game to envelop herself in the literary world.

Emma’s Exceptional Editing & Proofreading
info@exceptionalediting.com.au
www.exceptionalediting.com.au
Follow me on Twitter: @EEEandP

Episode 30

Books on Writing- Special guest Ciara Ballintyne.

Ciara chats about creative writing in law. How to avoid turning your fantasy fiction piece into a stilted legal document. The ins and outs of why lawyers write like they do!

www.ciaraballintyne.com

Ciara is currently having her latest book offering beta tested. If you would like to participate check out her website and send through your contact details.

We ask all these questions and many stupid ones (well Damien anyway)!

Bring Out Your Dead:

BALLINTYNE Ciara (1981 – 2081) – Arrived, lived and departed loudly. Born argumentative, then became a lawyer, so nothing changed as she aged. Ciara never hesitated to point out when someone was wrong, and she was always right. She never really did decide whether to use her powers for good or for evil.
Ciara devoted her life to the literary arts in the genre of high fantasy. She is survived by her daughters, Aurora and Anya, and a host of imaginary and largely insane and homicidal characters, some of whom may have played a part in her death. Her last book will be released posthumously. As always, she had the last word.

Word of the week:

HANDFASTING
At one time, betrothal — the solemn exchange of vows of intention to marry — was as important a step as marriage itself. Some of the ceremony once common in betrothal — such as exchanging rings or a formal kiss — later became part of the marriage service as that progressively became more important.

We don’t know a lot about the rules in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest, but the betrothal ceremony seems to have been marked by the happy couple joining hands. This was the handfast — the holding fast of hands.

It seems that in Northern England and Scotland, handfasting marked a first stage of marriage, a temporary contract that lasted a year and a day. If at the end of that time no child had been born and the couple didn’t want to continue, the betrothal lapsed.

The ceremony’s name has become known again in recent decades because it has been adopted by modern Pagans such as Wiccans. The culmination of the modern ceremony often takes the form of a couple jumping together over a broom, another borrowing from ancient custom. For today’s Pagans, however, the ceremony is marriage, not betrothal. Some have a complementary divorce rite called handparting.

www.worldwidewords.org

Prompt

My birthday is a high holiday.
My husband, fortunately, has it circled on his calendar with red markers and little sticky stars.   Oh, that may have been me.
What do you do on your birthday?  What do you wish you could do on your birthday?
What kind of attitude does your character have about his or her birthday?  Is it all about them?  Are they disappointed when their loved ones don’t come through with surprise parties?  Is there a surprise party?
What happens at the surprise party?
You can take birthdays to a great degree.
Me?  I spoke at a conference but managed to eat cake all day.

Shout out:

Beth Baranay,  Natalie Goldberg and Eric Maisel who started me on this path, even though he doesn’t know it.

Shadows of the Realm: Book 1 of the Circle of Talia
-Dionne Lister.

Bronwyn and Blayke are two strangers being drawn into the same war. Their world is facing invasion from the Third Realm. While they move unknowingly toward each other, they are watched, hunted, and sabotaged. When the Dragon God interferes, it seems their world, Talia, will succumb to the threat. Can they learn enough of the tricks of the Realms before it’s too late, or will everything they love be destroyed?

The young Realmists’ journey pushes them away from all they’ve known, to walk in the shadows toward Vellonia, city of the dragons, where an even darker shadow awaits.

www.dionnelisterwriter.wordpress.com

There is ebook and paper version on smashwords and amazon

Twitter:

Ciara: @CiaraBallintyne
Catharine: @cbramkamp
Damien: @newbiewriters

Last night I witnessed one of the most amazing acts of brotherly love I have ever seen. I’ve been obsessing over it, trying to find just the right words to describe what I witnessed but they’re still not quite right.

Until I can arrange my written words to convey the tenderness I saw, I’m writing this blog post as a permanent reminder so I can keep revisiting the scene to one day do it justice.

Miss 2 and Master 4 share a bedroom but they have different bedtimes. I’m happy to say that my kids are generally quite good about going to bed when they’re told and thankfully we don’t have too many dramas in that regard. So last night, as we do every night, we took Violet to bed, read her a story and said goodnight. When she’s as tired as she was last night she is often asleep before I even reach the door to leave.

A little later it was Lockie’s turn to go to bed. He made a half-hearted attempt at the usual delaying tactics that children pull, but quite soon gathered his things and headed to his bedroom. I noticed that in addition to his teddy-bear and water bottle he had Violet’s life-sized doll, Baby, tucked under one arm. (She hasn’t exactly got a vivid imagination when it comes to naming her toys; she’s also got a blue teddy-bear called, you guessed it, Blue Bear.)

I trailed behind as Lockie navigated the minefield of lego pieces, matchbox cars and toy trains. Making his way over to Violet’s bed where she was sprawled awkwardly, her tiny toddler limbs somehow covering the entire bed, Lockie gingerly tucked Baby underneath one of Violet’s arms so that when she awoke she would be looking into her beloved baby’s eyes.

Just as I thought to myself, “Awww, isn’t that adorable,” he leaned down and gave both Violet and Baby a kiss on the forehead and whispered “Goodnight” to them both. Then he proceeded to climb over to his own bed to arrange his pillow, blanket and a few teddy-bears around him.

As I turned to shut the door Lockie, who is going through a ‘scared-of-the-dark’ phase, reassured me, “Don’t worry Mum, I’ll protect them from the big, bad wolf. I’m very brave in the dark.”

Every time I think of this brief two-minute event I can’t help but smile. Perhaps the reason I can’t get the words just right is because I’ve been obsessing over it. So I’ll take a break from the keyboard and push this scene aside for now as I wait for inspiration to strike.

————————————————————————————
Emma is a freelance editor and writer who got her start at Newbie Writers two years ago. In her previous career she was an accountant, but escaped the numbers game to envelop herself in the literary world.

Emma’s Exceptional Editing & Proofreading
info@exceptionalediting.com.au
www.exceptionalediting.com.au
Follow me on Twitter: @EEEandP

Many of us Newbies balance our writing with family commitments and day jobs. When I wrote my first book, it was my hobby and I was able to devote what little spare time I had to it, undivided.

These days, times have moved on. With a book published, I am required to utilise social media to promote it regularly. Now, anyone that knows me will know that I’m a Twitter convert. I love meeting other writers, readers, and the world at large, and having a chat. This combined with regular blog posts and the fact that my favourite pastime is procrastination (I learned long ago that I’m fundamentally lazy) means that there aren’t many hours left in the day.

Also, my daughter is now eleven. I’m very aware that time is passing quickly and there’ll soon come a time when she will want to spend more time with her friends and less with me. The day approaches when she will leave home, move out to make her own way in the world. Although natural, like many parents, this thought places a lump in my throat and an ache in my heart. I feel the urge to spend as much ‘quality’ time with her as possible while she is still young enough to seek my attention.

Whether you’ve written a book, are engaged in writing one, or are dipping your toe into the short story or freelance market, these days we are all encouraged to build and maintain a writer’s platform. But how do we fit this in with our real love: writing?

It took me 18 months to write An Unfamiliar Murder. And the sequel is looking to be about the same. But with less time to devote to it – what is the answer? I’m at a loss. I’ve tried to make myself write first, then use social media as my treat. But forced writing isn’t conducive to making the words flow and quite frankly, doesn’t work for me.

I know I’m not alone. One of my great Twitter friends recently debated this issue. So, I’d like to open it up to everyone here. How do you find the time?

Jane Isaac’s first novel, An Unfamiliar Murder, is out on Amazon.com, Amazon.uk and Kindle worldwide now. Jane is still very much a Newbie and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. You can catch up with her at www.janeisaac.co.uk

Episode 29 Newbie Writers Podcast

Blurbs

Poetry Update:

Damien fills us in on the progress of his poetry find and what to do with them.

Notes From:http://thepenguinblog.typepad.com/the_penguin_blog/2007/02/penguin_writers.html

February 19, 2007

How to write a blurb

At most publishers the editors – and sometimes the authors – commonly write the copy that appears on the jackets of their books. There are two good reasons for this: they tend to know their books’ strengths better than anyone and it is cheaper than paying someone else to do it.
For a long time Penguin has taken a different view to the industry standard and has employed copywriters across all its divisions to write the blurbs that appear on our books. Why? For one thing, copywriters are dedicated wordsmiths who are able to get a message across in a very short space. Secondly, copywriters are able to bring a freshness and vitality to a blurb that an editor or author who has been immersed for months and sometimes years in a book may find in short supply. Lastly, any copywriter worth her or his salt thinks first and foremost about their audience: the person they hope to reach in the bookshop.
Blurb writing is not scientific, different copywriters take very different approaches to how and what they write. And different writers will produce widely divergent blurbs while trying to achieve the same overall effect – i.e. convincing a bookshop customer to buy the book in their hands.
So how do you write a good blurb?
Over the next week, the copywriters at Penguin would like to share with you their thoughts on how to write a blurb. The views you’ll see are as different as they are similar … but this blurb has already become far too long already. Step up, Sarah from Puffin, Penguin’s children’s division.
Colin Brush
Senior Copywriter, Penguin General

Or, how to read a manuscript, note down words and quotes and phrases with instant appeal, atmosphere, an air of mystery, a sense of character, a sense of place and put them all together in a coherent and exciting way. So that whoever picks up the book reads the blurb and thinks ‘I must read this book. I must have this book in my life, to the till we shall go. Immediately.’

No pressure then.

I love writing blurbs. I love it when that flash of inspiration strikes and transforms a blurb which initially began as a ‘join the dots’ – first this happened and then this happened, and then out of nowhere disaster struck but then something wonderful happened – or did it? Cue actual dot dot dots. That is one way not to write a blurb. It’s not formulaic. It’s about the individual story and bringing it to life in a very short space during a very short time in which the potential reader is pondering to buy or not to buy.

I write blurbs for children’s books, so in a morning I can be thinking about pirates and monsters and unicorns and remembering what it was like to be 8, and in the afternoon trying to blurb a sweeping epic set in apocalyptic Britain in between re-reading The BFG. It’s never same old same old, that’s for sure. And that’s what I always try to remember about my blurbs. Keep them varied, keep them lively, keep them inviting. Keep the book in their hands in the shop and (hopefully) keep it in their hearts forever.
Sarah Kettle
Creative Copywriter, Puffin

Prompt

Write a blurb about your day. Maybe your week. Treat your experiences like a story or a movie trailer and see what you come up with. I’d like to read some. Send some to podcast@newbiewriters.com

Word of the Week.

COLOPHONIAN
Colophon, a weird-enough word in its own right, is the name for the inscription at the end of a book that gives facts about its publication or design — hence the old saying “from title page to colophon”, from beginning to end. These days the data is more frequently on the title page and its reverse and the word is often used instead for a publisher’s emblem or imprint on the spine or title page.
The adjective colophonian, which might seem to be connected, has an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only to say that its appearance in some dictionaries of the late nineteenth century to refer to a publisher’s colophon was actually an error based on a misreading of a book of 1678. The word was actually Colophonian (with a capital C), which refers to an inhabitant of Colophon, a town in Lydia that is part of modern Turkey.
However, it might still come in useful — there isn’t a word in the language that means “relating to a colophon” (even though there is the, admittedly extremely rare, colophonize, to supply a book with a colophon), and colophonian is as good a candidate as any.
Colophon and its relatives come ultimately from a Greek word meaning a finishing touch or summit. None is to be confused with colophony, a pine resin which is named after ancient Colophon.

www.worldwidewords.org

Bring Out Your Dead.

From Dionne Lister’s upcoming book: Shadows of the Realm: Book one of The Circle of Talia

Version 1

Bronwyn and Blayke’s world is at the mercy of an invasion from the Third Realm. They are being watched, hunted and sabotaged. When the Dragon God interferes, it seems the world of Talia, will succumb to the threat. Can they learn enough of the tricks of the Realms before it’s too late, or will all they love be destroyed?

The young realmists’ journey pushes them away from all they’ve known, to walk in the shadows towards Vellonia, city of the dragons, where an even darker shadow awaits.

Version 2:

Apprentice realmists, Bronwyn and Blayke, are only beginning to learn the secrets of syphoning power from the Second Realm when they are thrust into life-threatening danger. Their world, Talia, is under threat from the demonic Gormons, and The Circle must call on all its resources to defend against them. Blake and Bronwyn are sent to Vellonia, city of the dragons, in desperate search of a solution. The Gormon priests are already breaking through the magical barriers, on the verge of bringing death and terror to Talia, and they will do anything to stop Bronwyn and Blake.

The young realmists must call on all their cunning and resources to stay one step ahead of the Gormon priests. Then one of their own is murdered. Not knowing who to trust, and just when they think things can’t get any worse, the capricious dragon god, Drakon, forces Bronwyn into an untenable decision: jeopardize her life, and those she loves, or do nothing and leave Talia at the mercy of the Gormons. Bronwyn must act, knowing either choice could mean the destruction of all they love.

Shout Outs

Dionne Lister.

Episode 28
Newbie Writers
Poetry

April is National Poetry Month

To open, a poem by Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry:

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.
Permissions information.
Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission.

Sometimes poetry is rejected or thought mysterious because we spent too much time in school flogging it with rubber hoses.
What can poetry be and what can it do?

Think of poetry as a moment
Or an expression of something that is too fragile or transitory for prose.
Poetry demands precise language and a precise command of the language.

It doesn’t need to rhyme and now a days doesn’t. So if you are intimidated by thinking your work must scan ababa cdcdc and all the lines must be in iambic pentameter, never fear, that requirement is gone.

I like haiku and Tanka poems, haiku is the infamous three lines with 5 – 7 – 5 but think of haiku in a more expansive way – it’s about nature, and the last line is surprise.

Tanka is an extension of Haiku, five lines, 5-7-5-7-7
If you need more room for your moment or to set up your surprise.
We all know that haiku and Tanka are chinese, but did you know that the beat poets were fascinated by these forms? Jack Kerouac, he of On The Road fame, wrote whole books on Haiku:

Cold crisp October morning
the cats fighting
in the weeds.

Our favorite poems:

Damiens’

The Listeners- Walter De La Mare

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:–
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Catharine’s from the Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock – TS Eliot

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Another favorite of mine:

Reflections on Ice breaking
Ogden Nash

Candy
Is Dandy
But Liquor
Is quicker.

Prompt

The prompt is to, of course, write your own poem. If you are uninspired, look around you, do you hear birds? Do you feel the coming of winter? Or Summer? Changes in seasons are profound and not to be dismissed. Watch a child and either remember what it was like, or marvel at how little you remember.

Word of the Week.

CURTAIN LECTURE
Curtain lecture may be simply defined as a censorious lecture by a wife to her husband, often while in bed. It has almost, but not quite totally, vanished from the language; anyone coming across it now might wrongly associate it with a talk preceding a performance in a theatre. The direct mental link between beds and curtains has disappeared because the four-poster, with its canopy and curtain creating an intimate enclosure, is no longer a standard item of domestic furniture.
www.worldwidewords.org

Bring out your dead.

Damien’s Dead:

So much effort just to stay,
I want to feel them take me away.
Arms wide, I wonder why
Why to live, instead of die?

The sounds in my mind tell me what to do;
How can I tell which one is true?
They tell me to kill everyone
To rid myself the touch of the sun.

Take my place within the darkness,
Feel my insanity’s sweet caress.
These are the last things I’ll par-take.
I can feel my mind about to break.

Take a look inside this hell,
The life I have been forced to dwell.
I shall show you all the glory;
So with my death, thus ends my story.

Catharine’s Dead that she just wrote during her thirty poems in Thirty Day challenge

I mixed up a batch of comfort
Fortunately there were no witnesses
save the dog
and he vowed silence

Recipe
(for comfort only)
double the ingredients
then
double the chocolate
then
consume
half in its pre-baked
version
this stage will kill me
because of the eggs

If I am to go
the sticky, chippy
doughy, sweet
clinging that serving spoon
with a hard clean edge
can be the last thing I do.

I left you two cookies.

Shout Outs

Amber Norrgard:  Link to Amazon:  Color Of Dawn by Amber Norrgard Buy this.