Category Archives: Publishing

by Luanne | February 27, 2023 · 5:15 am

Introduction to the Work and World of Kiki Suarez

This Sunday, March 5, is the launch of my new chapbook Our Wolves with its gorgeous cover art by Kiki Suarez.

In light of that event, I wanted to share a little bit about Kiki and her work.

Kiki was born in Germany, but ended up moving to Mexico where she has lived most of her adult life. She is an artist, a writer, and a psychotherapist. Check out her website, Kikimundo which shares her work, about her company, and a little bit about who she is. I first met Kiki online when we were both writing articles for a site called Cowbird. In a way, writing for Cowbird was like blog writing before I had a blog. Like WordPress, the international community that developed from our shared projects was wonderful, and many of us still stay in contact with each other online.

Here is some more stunning art from the same collection as the one I chose for Our Wolves.

On Facebook, Kiki writes long posts that tell stories about her life. And I noticed on her website that she has blog posts, which I did not realize until now. Here is a wonderful one about her father. Remember that these are written in Spanish, but Google translated for me. I hope it will for you, too.

Now I said that Kiki is a psychotherapist. Here she is in a space devoted to healing people. She says that she combines elements of Rogerian and Gestalt therapy, as well as many elements of Buddhist philosophy.

I owe a big thank you to Kiki for her gorgeous art for my chapbook, as well as making my life more enjoyable in general. I love to read her stories characterized by her big heart and to see the vibrant art she shares online.

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Filed under #poetrycommunity, #writingcommunity, Art and Music, Our Wolves, Poetry, Poetry book, Poetry Collection, Publishing, Writing

Tagged as #fracturedfairy, art, artist, cover art, Kiki Suarez, Our Wolves, poetry chapbook, poetry collection, Publishing

by Luanne | February 21, 2023 · 9:47 am

Thank You, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

I maybe have shared when my poem “Waterland” was first published by Open: Journal of Arts and Letters. Then it became part of my new full-length collection Rooted and Winged. Today I’m really tickled that editor Christine Klocek-Lim has published it in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. She expresses her thoughts about the poem at the end. I’m grateful for her enthusiasm for the poem.

https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/2023/02/21/waterland-by-luanne-castle/

This is the photo that inspired me to write this poem. Yes, that’s baby me with my pretty mom.

February Poem at Visual Verse

I am continuing to submit ekphrastic one-hour poems to Visual Verse. Here is #3, “When We drove Up to the Lake Home Dad Just Bought”:

https://visualverse.org/submissions/when-we-drove-up-to-the-lake-home-dad-just-bought/

This one is another in a long line of Luanne’s lake poems. Makes sense since I grew up in Michigan on and around various lakes.

Merril Smith and a couple of others poets I know also have lovely poems in the February issue.

Here are some new tags I made for my art journals.

Make it a great week!

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by Luanne | February 14, 2023 · 12:59 pm

Poem-A-Week at Sims Library of Poetry

I’m thrilled to have my poem,”Inside the House We Lived In When Dad Went Broke,” published as part of the Poem-A-Week project at the Sims Library of Poetry.

Sims Library of Poetry is a fabulous resource for inner city Los Angeles. This is a description from their website: “We are the first black-owned poetry library in the state of California. We aim to engage with the South L.A. community by offering a space to read, write, study, perform, and appreciate poetry.”

Here’s the poem:

https://www.simslibraryofpoetry.org/paw23/inside-the-house-we-lived-in-when-dad-went-broke

I’m so happy that Sims found my poem important enough to feature for a week on their website.

I’m taking a year-long art class with weekly lessons. This time I learned new ways to create depth in an abstract. I did this one in my journal.

Perry is taking lots of meds and supplements, and so far he doesn’t realize he isn’t well!

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Tagged as #ampublishing, #poetrycommunity, abstract, art journal, Don Quixote, Poem-A-Week, Poetry, Sims Library of Poetry

by Luanne | February 7, 2023 · 10:30 am

New News and an Anniversary Present

Don’t miss my interview yesterday with poet Millicent Borges Accardi: https://writersite.org/2023/02/06/from-mrs-virtue-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-an-interview-of-millicent-borges-accardi/ Millicent talks about the teacher who instilled her love of poetry as a kid. It so happened that the teacher was the daughter of a famous poet. She talks about her Portguguese heritage, both generally and the literature as well.

In January, I had another ekphrastic piece, this time a poem, taken at Visual-Verse. I neglected to mention last time that we only get one hour to write these to the art prompts. It’s a very intense process. https://visualverse.org/submissions/the-tournament/

Are you interested in a Giveaway for Rooted and Winged? LibraryThing is running one right now. https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/46725/Rooted-and-Winged

Main Street Rag has published my review of Justin Hamm’s Drinking Guinness with the Dead. While I can’t post a copy of the review as it’s a print issue, I can tell you I give it two thumbs up. Hamm’s work is really tied to the Midwest and its vast once-farmland, so while anyone would love it (I think), Midwesterners would especially cherish it.

My daughter’s wedding was a year ago this coming Sunday. So look what I made for daughter and son-in-law. A wedding junk journal.

I had to find this nifty little suitcase after I realized that with the fragility of the book (cuz junk) and their lifestyle the book wouldn’t last long without protection. I was able to add in their wooden ring boxes, little place cards, extra photos, and the napkins from their previous courthouse wedding where we drank blue prosecco and ate cookies. Last year’s wedding was the whole shebang because that’s what they like.

See inside on the left? That’s a little clutch I made out of plastic grocery bags to store the cassettes of their wedding music.

That project was loads of fun, but now I’m about hearted and laced and sweetthinged out.

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Tagged as #ampublished, #amwriting, art journal, book review, interview, junk journal, Poem, Poetry, wedding journal

by Luanne | January 31, 2023 · 2:20 pm

Cover Reveal of OUR WOLVES!

Alien Buddha Press, the publisher for my new chapbook, Our Wolves, has just revealed the cover! Let me know what you think!

The gorgeous cover art is by German-Mexican artist Kiki Suarez. I’ll be telling you more about Kiki and her work later.

The book’s release date(s) is/are March 5/6. It needs two days–one for Red and one for the wolf haha.

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Tagged as #poetrycommunity, Alien Buddha Press, cover reveal, Little Red Riding Hood, Luanne Castle, Our Wolves, Poetry, poetry chapbook, poetry collection

by Luanne | January 5, 2023 · 5:15 am

Two Poems Up at The Wise Owl

The January issue of The Wise Owl is devoted to the poetic form, the haibun. I really like this form because it’s a prose poem that is completed by an ending haiku. I like how the prose poem goes into detail and then the haiku has the ability to comment on or reinforce the prose poem.

Two of my poems are published in this issue–a big thank you to Editor Rachna Singh. The first one, “When You Knew,” is a poem about my father being a twin. The second one, “Chicken Vision,” began because I became fascinated with the fact that chickens have mono-vision, which means that the left eye is far-sighted, and right is near-sighted. Isn’t that the coolest piece of info?! Here is the link (and ignore the bio which is somewhat incorrect–especially the word especially).

https://www.thewiseowl.art/luanne-castle

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Tagged as #ampublishing, #poetrycommunity, chickens, poems about animals, poems about twins, Poetry, The Wise Owl

by Luanne | January 2, 2023 · 5:15 am

New Poems Up at Book of Matches

I’m so happy that Book of Matches has published two of the poems from my upcoming chapbook Our Wolves. A big thank you to editors Kelli and Nicholas! These are both persona poems–one from the perspective of the wolf in the Little Red stories, the other from that of the so-called rescuer character–in this case, a woodsman.

Here is the link to “You All Been Waiting for a Wolf Confession” on page 6 and “I’m a Woodcutter, Dammit” on page 39. Here is the link so you can check out the whole issue which is chockful of good writing:

https://online.fliphtml5.com/qoqiq/drun/

Here are screenshots of my poems for your convenience.

While I was eager to kick 2022 to the curb (as I know a lot of you were), I had news at the end of 2022 that will make 2023 a pretty grim year again. It’s about my boy Perry, and here is a link to that story.

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Tagged as #ampublishing, #poetrycommunity, art journal, Book of Matches, fairy tale poem, Little Red Riding Hood, Poetry, Wolf poem

by Luanne | December 6, 2022 · 9:45 am

Some Art Fun for Rooted and Winged

Artist Kelsey Montague has painted art wings all over the country (and elsewhere). One of her murals is at the Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. When my daughter and I had lunch at the mall, she took my pic with the wings to celebrate the 2022 publication of my poetry collection Rooted and Winged.

You can purchase a copy of my book here: https://www.amazon.com/Rooted-Winged-Luanne-Castle/dp/1646628632/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RCAIJJKAUOVE&keywords=rooted+and+winged&qid=1670344522&sprefix=rooted+and+wi%2Caps%2C394&sr=8-1

Book description:

The poems of Rooted and Winged explore the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. They are of the earth, the place of fertile origins, and of the dream world we observe and imagine when we look upward. Golems and ghosts that emerge from the ground, as well as the birds and angels that live above us, inhabit the collection. We will always be striving for flight, even as we feel most comfortable closest to the earth.

There are poems about Arizona, California, and the lakes of Michigan. My maternal grandparents are the characters that most inhabit this book.

The poems of Luanne Castle’s Rooted and Winged are embedded in land and weather. “Bluegills snap up larvae in slivers of illusory light,” she writes early in the collection, hinting at the sensibilities of the companionable speaker who will usher us through the book.

—Diane Seuss (2022, Pulitzer for poetry)

Cover art: Leonard Cowgill

Is it Real Life or is it Fiction?

Six years ago, I published a piece of flash fiction at The Story Shack called “Parking Lot Superhero.” I posted a link on this blog and yadda yaddaed about fiction giving me more freedom for structure. The story was one of the first flash pieces I wrote.

Here’s a confession. I don’t even know why I wrote that about freedom because the truth is that this story is completely true except for the names. So maybe the freedom actually came from changing the names. And by changing the names I was able to change the structure and how I ended up structuring it made all the difference. So, yes, I submitted nonfiction as fiction by changing the names.

colorful cars on parking lot — Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.com

Is this a character defect? Or is it just a genre, like a roman à clef (novel where real people occur, but their names are changed)?

Have you ever written nonfiction and disguised it as fiction?

If you have read this blog for a long time, you might remember the story, but here it is: https://thestoryshack.com/flash-fiction/drama/luanne-castle-parking-lot-superhero/

This story is not one of my most well-written (and at some point I might revise it), but it’s still one of my favorites because the hero of the story (not me) was such a larger-than-life character in real life.

Going back to my title–Is it Real Life or is it Fiction?–maybe fiction is often real life, just many different aspects of real life glued together in a different combination and order.

One more thing. Why did I want to come clean about this story being true? Although I published it as fiction to protect “Jack” and his family story, I have felt guilt at not giving him credit for being a hero. I still won’t publish his name, but I feel better letting you know that he is a real living hero.

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Tagged as Creative writing, fiction, Flash Fiction, Nonfiction, Short story, Writing