FORTHCOMING: A GRAY VALENTINE'S DAY

As I'm not going to be able to avoid comment on this, let me say that, Yes, Universal Studios is set to release the movie based on my book on Valentine's Day.  There've been some early releases out there, including to Kim Kardashian who apparently tweeted today "OMG it's so gooooood."  Whatever.  But let it be known that -- and this is not unusual -- the book author or the book often bears little relationship to the Hollywood version of the story.  So maybe you might want to check out my book first to see what the narrative was supposed to be: 5 SHADES OF GRAY.

Jest sayin'...

NOT EVEN FOR A GOOD CAUSE COULD I ...

Our local community has an annual massive rummage sale that raises funds to support orphanages in Russia and Uganda.  Like many in the community, I donate what stuff I can and then return the day of the rummage sale planning to cheerfully buy them in triple price.  Well, I don't actually end up buying the objects I usually loosened from the house with much relief (this year, clothes I haven't worn in years, some of Mom's objects that I can finally let go and books I didn't enjoy enough to want to retain).  What I do usually end up buying are mostly books.

Pickings were slim for me as I arrived after the crowds who lined up early had done their pickings.  But, bearing in mind an upcoming trip to Spain, I decided to look for disposable books -- I mean, when I go on vacation, my brain wants to come along to vacate itself.  So I look for light reading, especially books I can leave behind as soon as I finish reading them and thus lighten the baggage returning home.  Thus, this summer's travel reading will include (click on images to enlarge):

I also picked this to record results of an upcoming summer trip to Spanish wine country:

But what I couldn't bring myself to buy (donating money instead for the good cause) were these three global bestsellers:

I just ... couldn't ...

... even though I moiself wrote THIS.

MOI POETRY MUSES

My poetry Muses are real to me.  If you've been reading my blogs for a while, you may recall in prior blogs that I've described the Muses as "fallen angels, smoking cigars and playing poker at the upper left corner of any room I currently inhabit."  They're greedy for my attention.  I can write a gazillion poems -- and I have -- and such is never enough for them.  Greedy muscled angels -- big breasts (though not human boobs so much as a bird's oversize chest for flight) as well as huge steely biceps to operate those huge wings.  Colorless or color-replete eyes, depending on your point of view, in that heated light rather than color emanate from their long-lashed orbs.  I can continue, but you get the point.  They exist and they are not benign -- found the above image in the internet and while it's not quite what I always envisioned with my Muses, it shares with my Muses the sense of a lack of stability even as love exists.  Poetry can't be stable.

So, when I finally shook off the perfumed steel feathers my poetry Muses kept dropping on me and work, instead, on a novel, I wondered how the poetry Muses would react.  

Well, I got my first response this morning.  And I'm relieved.  They're not mad.  Moreover, they will continue to be generous because, while I was sneezing through their feathers, I honored Poetry.  That's my take anyway.  My take on what happened this morning, which is that I wrote a new chapter that was scaffolded by one of my poetry books, 5 SHADES OF GRAY. Another scaffolding was the "I Forgot" structure of one of the two poems in Tom Beckett's new and fabulous release, DIPSTICK/DIPTYCH. Which is all to say, poetry is facilitating my efforts to write MY RUSSIAN NOVEL.  

I'm so relieved.  

Entonces: Onward!