I used to say I wouldn’t read ebooks because I loved real books. Then I needed to read some because the books written by some friends were only available for Kindle. Before long, I needed larger font and a bit of backlighting. The last blow was that I was diagnosed with macular degeneration. Now I LOVE my Kindle, which is already an older model of Paperwhite.
These days I read much more on my Kindle than I do paperbacks. Yet all of my own books have only been available in paperback (and hard cover for Rooted and Winged). This is because the majority of poetry small presses continue to just offer paperback books.
But I started to wonder and then to investigate.
And now I have a book available as EPUB on Amazon!!! The publisher of Our Wolves was very helpful and willing to list the ebook on Amazon alongside the paperback. Available for $5.50, the price he chose. I am hoping that this makes the Red Riding Hood revision collection more accessible to more readers. (Fingers crossed that this version works well for most readers’ devices!!!)
P.S. update: I should have mentioned (humbly haha) that Our Wolves was First Runner-Up for the Eric Hoffer Award.
I hate vampire stories, but after seeing a show on the history channel I realized one of my ancestors could have been a “vampire.” Here’s a micro based on that realization!
Every once in a while I get an earworm that I can’t get out of my head. And it’s often an old song, sometimes one that I didn’t have the pleasure of hearing when it first came out.
My current earworm is 1985’s “The Highwayman” by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash. The song won a Grammy for songwriter Jimmy Webb in 1986. But it was written earlier and had been recorded by Webb and by Glen Campbell.
After I say my piece, I am posting a video of the song as well as the written lyrics. Two things I wanted to mention. First is that I love Willie, Kris, and Johnny. I still hold a grudge against Waylon after about forty years. Maybe longer. Maybe it was an alcohol thing (him, not me), I don’t know. But he gave a concert in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s been so long I can no longer be sure if he was the headliner or not. He was HORRIBLE to the audience. Just surly, churlish, and nasty.
The other thing I wanted to mention is while I love this song, I don’t get it. I understand the romantic notion of a highwayman, but he was a thief and caused a lot of grief to the victims of his crimes (speaking about it as if it were a fictional story, since that’s what it is). The other life roles/occupations are admirable. The sailor. Our world is held together by sailors. The dam builder. I’ve been to the Hoover Dam and heard how many men died building it. So I looked up the dam at Boulder. A minimum of 96 men died during construction. Heroes!!!! Martyrs!!!! And then a starship pilot or astronaut. Captain Kirk! Captain Jean-Luc Picard!
Does it have anything to do with a fine line between a villain and a hero? I don’t know!!! What do you think?
If you can’t see the following video, ugh. I will try to split the link apart and you can put it together.
***
https:
//youtu.be/aFkcAH-m9
W0?si=8x43JSpFkBZn9n5y
Here are the lyrics:
[Verse 1: Willie Nelson] I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of ’25
But I am still alive
***
[Verse 2: Kris Kristofferson] I was a sailor I was born upon the tide And with the sea I did abide I sailed a schooner around the Horn to Mexico I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed But I am living still
***
[Verse 3: Waylon Jennings & All] I was a dam builder
Across a river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder, on the wild Colorado I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that gray tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I’ll always be around And around, and around, and around
And around, and around, and around…
***
[Verse 4: Johnny Cash & All]
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I’ll be back again And again, and again, and again
And again, and again…
Do you like fairy tales and fantasy? If so, you might like my flash story, “Magic.” Editor Juan Re Crivello just published it at LatinosUSA – English Edition.
Note: Magic is something special that is often found in fairy tales and fantasy stories. In this story, magic is “personified” as a horse.
If you want to leave a comment, please do so after the story on the journal’s site. Thank you for reading!!!!!! and I hope you like it.
You might figure that someone who revised the classic tale of Red Riding Hood in her chapbook Our Wolves might be interested in fairy tales. And I am!!! Today I have three fairy tales I’d like to share with you. The first two are new publications, and the third is personal.
This flash story, “The Floromancy of Identification,” in Panoply is in the folk tale style, but puts a new spin on things. The whole issue is wonderful, and I think you can skip around from this link to mine to other poems and stories.
The second is in the new issue of Last Stanza Poetry Journal and responds to the cover image, an illustration by Swedish artist john Bauer and in the tradition of troll literature. The idea of a changeling has long fascinated me. Definition from Oxford: “child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents’ real child in infancy.” Trolls are also known for creating changelings by stealing human babies.
You should be able to click on the cover image below to get to Amazon.
Last Stanza Poetry Journal Issue #19: Fable
Now to the third fairy tale. The gardener and I are celebrating our FIFTIETH wedding anniversary this month. I know, wild, huh? And just like in fairy tales, we have had some real curveballs thrown at us by trolls, giants, and monsters (which are sometimes us).
But we prevailed, and here we are: fifty years out. It’s so hard to believe since I can remember all those early days so well.
The “kids” and baby grandson all took us out for a wonderful dinner and gave us a poster montage featuring the legendary (to our family) photo of the Holiday Inn where we had a dinner-dance reception (and even found some vintage postcards of the hotel). The marquee out front has our names on it. The kids love that photo, and my brother resends it to me every year!
Full disclosure: above photo is at the 42nd anniversary point . . . . But I kinda like it.
It’s been hard to juggle baby care with everything else that I’ve had going on. That’s why I’ve been an on-and-off blogger lately. I have a lot of catching up to do on blog reading.
But I am happy that the baby is doing well. He’s now 4.5 months old and started to teethe. He actually started Thursday afternoon. He was cranky, which is unusual for him as he’s a very chill little soul. Mid-morning he chewed in his sleep. He drooled. Awake he put his hand in his mouth. His bib in his mouth. The burp cloth. His toys. His books. My clothes. Then he wouldn’t sleep, but just fussed. Finally the thought of teething hit me. So I soaked a baby washcloth in very cold water and put a corner of it in his mouth. Within a minute or so he fell asleep! That’s when I was 99.9% sure he was teething. Before he went home I felt his gums and sure enough on his top gum I found a little sharp point . . . .
I’ve been watching him for over three months now! Hope I can keep this up as he gets heavier. He weighs 15 1/2 pounds now. You might think that I would get stronger with the gradual increase of weight, but NO HAHA.
On another note, why do babies need such massive amounts of equipment and supplies?! The gardener keeps saying, that’s enough now, but it’s never enough because he keeps growing and developing.
Unfortunately, I introduced Hudson to the original Baby Shark song, and now I can’t get it out of my mind. EAR WORM. If I ask him if he’s Baby Shark, he laughs. If I say, “I’m Grandma Shark,” he laughs even harder.
I did participate in something this weekend that was not very time-consuming. That is the Flash Flood 2024 Write-In. Have you ever heard of Flash Flood? https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/flash-flood/ If you write flash stories you can submit early in the year (check website for dates) and then a weekend they publish them one at a time. That weekend was this past one this year.
Then they also have the write-in where they post a writing prompt every hour for 24 hours. https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/ I decided to do that this year, although I couldn’t do all 24 as we had a big family party for the baby. I wrote ten stories and was pretty excited that they chose nine of ten to publish. Keep in mind, I spent about 15 minutes on each story, so they are really more like highly pressurized rough drafts. But I feel pretty good about how I did. Here they are:
Doesn’t it sound fun to participate? You should try it next time!
Just as I go to hit PUBLISH on this post, I feel the symptoms coming on of a bug that the Gardener has been wrestling with since Saturday night. Oh no.
Yes, I’m pretty stoked, I’ll admit that. My wee chapbook Our Wolves is on the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize (grand as in a $5,000 check to the big winner) SHORT LIST alongside the big books.
Yesterday, Kathleen Cassen Mickelson coincidentally interviewed me about Our Wolves. She provides a great idea of what the collection is all about.
Kathleen Cassen Mickelson graciously interviewed me about my poetry collection Our Wolves. I hope you enjoy the exchange. If you would like to comment, please do so at One Minnesota Crone to keep Kathleen in the loop! Thanks for reading :).
Writer, poet, and critic Elizabeth Gauffreau has written a magnificently brilliant review of my new chapbook Our Wolves. Her reviews are as engaging to read as any poetry or fiction.
This week, Colleen’s #TankaTuesday prompt is to write a syllabic poem inspired by your Celtic tree. I had never heard of this before. It seems similar to an astrological sign in that your birthday determines the tree. My tree is holly, which I had never thought about before. I mean, I know the holly berries and leaves design for Christmas decorations, but that is about it. I discovered:
HOLLY – THE RULER
JULY 8 – AUGUST 4
Among the Celtic tree astrology signs, the Holly is one of regal status. Noble, and high-minded, Holly signs take on positions of leadership and power. If you are a Holly sign you take on challenges easily and overcome obstacles with rare skill and tact. When you encounter setbacks, you remain vigilant to obtain your end goals. People look up to you and follow you as their leader as you are rarely defeated. You are competitive and ambitious even in the most casual settings. You are quite generous, kind and affectionate. Highly intelligent, you skate through academics where others may struggle. Holly signs may look to Ash and Elder signs for balance and partnership.
No doubt these descriptions are set up to flatter, but there are aspects of this description I can relate to. Taking on challenges, (trying to be) kind, things like that. But the ruler? My husband would laugh himself silly because we both agree that while some are leaders, some are followers, there are those like me that are neither. I don’t like being a boss as in: do this, do that, don’t do that, I’ll judge you, etc. I do like the “noble and high-minded” thing, though. Whether it’s simple flattery or something more, I can take a guess 😉 but one of my literary role models (and here I use literature to mean Broadway musical haha) is King Arthur in Camelot. He has to choose between the legal choice for the good of the country (meaning lots of people) or his love for his wife. Really really admire that character.
I thought I would try a tectractys today, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. So here it is:
Your
ruling
quality
must come from tact
and the ability to see both sides.
Tectractys is a five-line poem with this syllabic configuration: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10.
The literary journal Does It Have Pockets? has published a Red Riding Hood story of mine that is darker than anything found in my chapbook Our Wolves. “Why I Always Wear Red” is flash fiction that finishes with a tectractys, making it a hybrid genre. You can read it here:
