Sunday, March 28, 2004Ooh. By the way, my last post wasn't an advertisment or hint, I'm just mulling. It's also a gentle hint about something else: Don't quit yer day job, otherwise you'll be too busy trying to pick up spare change here and there and still stay at home to write. :D It's lovely madness, though, the whole thing. I've no complaints.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:52 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
|
I added some reviews, finally, to the General/Mainstream review section. This is the section where everything that's not mystery, romance, comics, fantasy or nonfiction gets put, so it's an odd combination of historical and world. Some of my favorite books are in this section...and I'm going to try and finsih it off soon since it's relatively short.
Right now Gotta Write is offering a page building service for authors/writers. For a one time fee they (well, she) will build and host a page for a writer. She's invited me to do it, and I'm wavering back and forth on it. It's a great idea...and it's a cheap way to get a web page, no domain name, no yearly fee (as of yet), but I don't know if I should go for it, because to try this would take an awful lot of time and dedication to get people interested.
But I am going to build a forum and chat room for the site, for the authors who already signed up to share.
I wish I hadn't broken my crystal ball in the move back here....
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:45 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
The Piper's Children
Saturday, March 27, 2004The Piper’s Children
by Cindy Lynn Speer
“…and they were never seen again.” – from The Pied Piper
The woods are dark and deep,
but the blackness,
and bleakness,
bother me no longer.
It did when I first entered them.
I was seven and the music,
that lovely sound,
gentle and coaxing like a warm river,
lead us all.
We were leaves,
spinning and turning on that magic current…
But without warning
the music was gone,
leaving us empty,
abandoned and hopeless.
I found a wide stream
and I waited
for the music to come again.
If I wait long enough,
maybe he’ll relent,
lift his pipe to his lips
and that beautiful tide will return.
It will rise and flow
and take us home.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:09 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
In Black and White
Friday, March 26, 2004I'm in a poetry mood, because I decided to cobble my short stories into an anthology manuscript, and thought a few poems would balance it out nicely. I used to be a poet. I wasn't ever a particularly good poet, but I was getting there. I'd sloughed off the worst conceits that all beginners have, I'd written myself out past the usual sentiments and garbage. You see, when we begin, we are all hackneyed, because everything is new to us. Sure, we read it a million times, but still coming out through the fingers, everything feels soul jarring original because it's the way we said it. We all need to write, write, until we're through that, until we've gotten it all out of our system and can really write the things that are new and original...or at least as n&o as it gets.
Then I got mairried. Life took over. I wrote poems, sometimes, and shoved them away, but I was no longer quite a poet. At lot of my news stuff is cribbed on the back of Interlibrary Loan print outs and fax request forms, even a few on my old stand by, paper towels. My filing cabinet is filled with files, bulging with folded up menus, placemats, napkins, various used library forms, scraps of note paper, tatooed in a rainbow of inks. If you spread out all of my poems, in date order (as most of them are dated) you would find the map of my life. If I ever truly wanted to find myself, I suppose that's what I would do.
Then I got divorced. Everything's seared shut and now, when I try to write poems, I don't feel comfortable in my own skin anymore, my brain doesn't want to think in poem shapes, and even my attempts at reclaiming the poet that I was, such as the Nuemonic Devices I post from time to time, fail unless I allow them to fit into blocky paragraph shapes and left justified wisdom. Before, Neumonic Devices were short, few lines, that grasped a thought, a situation, a poem of simple power and now they're, when we're being generous, proems. I'll have to look up some of my better devices and post them. They went over well at poetry soirees, where I'd get up, nerve myself with too many cookies, and stand behind a podium to read my poems. And people, strangers, seemed to generally/genuinely like them, as did my friends, but, then, you expect kindness from those you love.
You know, I was able to get up and read for the same reason that I can mail my stories and books to publishers. Because I know I'm not that bad. I'm not that grand, either, and could be better, but really, in context, I'm not that bad.
This poem was part of a class exercise, believe it or not. The prof. showed us a a black and white picture, and urged us to write something on it. To this day I like to use that as an exercise.
In Black and White
By Cindy Lynn Speer
In black and white
He remembers
The shadows of children
Dancing, playing,
The reflected light of louvers
And a million shades of grey.
A millions shades of grey
And not one spark
Of dapple greens
And slender browns
Or how the sun shines golden
On water and rocks.
On water and rocks
Like the ones that formed the path
The bright shimmering ribbon
That ran to the shadows
And the cement arch hidden
By leaves and weeds.
By leaves and weeds
And sapling trees
The wizard knows his navigation home.
All that he needs is courage
That he, too, may take up his staff
And pick his way.
And pick his way
Off the cracked asphalt,
Over the rope of rusted guardrail,
And down to the dragon’s tail.
Ankle deep in emerald scales he’ll turn away
From the world of black and white.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:09 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
Wednesday, March 24, 2004Lo. And right next to the thing that stabbed me, a quote that I scribbled down on the back of a library fine print out....
"Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positve outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day."
-- Kazuo Ishyuro, The Remains of the Day
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 8:17 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
|
Here is a rule that is absolutely writ in stone: no matter how many times you go through your possessions, no matter how many times you rake through notebooks and poems and stories and fragments, you will always find something about the ones you gave your heart to, the ones you left behind, and even if you're over it, it will still stab you.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 8:12 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
|
Inspired by a line from Dante, it's a poem that's been published twice on the web, once by a friend with her own spectacular poems, once by Flipside magazine, (in the print version as well) an award winning college literary magazine that I, like a lot of people, invested a lot of myself into...and is now, sadly, defunct. It is also one of the few poems of mine that I actually like, that reminds me that I was once someone who wrote poetry that meant something.
Nor in memory held
by Cindy Lynn Speer
It is dark and cold.
I sit on the heating vent in my kitchen floor,
thinking only of
the smoothness of the glass I hold,
the hum of the refrigerator...
mundane, I know,
cut to the chase.
You see, nothing major happened today,
I didn't have a friend die of AIDS,
or wreck my car.
But the feeling I have
is incomprehensible...
It's the feeling you get when your husband's
no longer your best friend,
or you realized that the girl you thought
was your sister in college wasn't ever going to call,
or write, or even remember you.
Nor in memory held,
you sit in the darkness and feel sorry for yourself,
happy for the warm air across belly and breasts,
for the dusky bitter taste of orange juice,
and the frost defracting into jewels on the window.
That is why I cry,
for beauty not...
Nor in memory held.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 6:45 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
Monday, March 22, 2004I accidentally told Technocrati that I'd updated my blog, so I though, shoot, I better update it, then.
I'm always trying to find ways to drag more of you in here. This is not really vanity on my part (yesitisyesitis) as much as a desire to have as many people read, and maybe if I'm lucky, respond, to my addled thoughts, as is humanly possible.
I've not actually written anything much beside book reviews in ages. I need to sert up a real system, here, to get everything done. Maybe get up at 8 am, too. Do you think that would work? Probably doesn't matter. What's really taken the wind out of my sails lately is the attempt to get a real job. People don't seem to think that working as a freelance editor constitues as a real previous job, though. Anyway, when I look for work, everything takes on a why bother quality, mixed with a "Get it don, done now while you have time because you won't have time soon." mentality that tends to short circuit my brain.
I did, however, manage to get some of the review sections set up again...mystery and fantasy have some reviews up, and will son have several more.
Now I'll go write a review to Time's Eye by Clarke and Baxter.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 5:19 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
Wednesday, March 17, 2004I have been out of words for the past several days, hence the silence. Then I threw all my words back out into the world, and wrote nine reviews and a half...the half being for The Well of Lost Plots, which I left to last because I loved it and knew I'd remeber it the easiest, after R.A. Salvatore's The Highwayman, but ran out of steam, so that'll be for later.
Then I realized, I havn't done any review updates. So, quick and dirty...
Mostly Fiction only has one review from me..sob! (I've just sent in four, with the offer of another, so that won't be for long...) I reviewed The Kills.
Fantastica Daily -- I sent in Sara Douglass' God's Concubine last week, this week you'll have The Emerald Cavern by Mitchell Graham and the afore emntioined Highwayman. These will come out Wednesday and Thursday, as far as I know.
The SFsite has : Son of Avonar by Carol Berg,
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison, and Deathstalker Returns by Simon Green.
Gotta Write has my reviews of Fudoki by Kij Johnson, Betnoni's Prophecy by Elizabeth A. Merz, From Within the Mist by Deron J. Douglas and
Dance with the Dragon By E.F. Watkins.
I was so out of words that Sunday, when I went with my friends to see Hidalgo, I could barekly speak in what I felt was an intelligently coherent way. Didn't stop me, though, where it should have. Actually it wasn't that bad, not quite. Something you have to understand is, generally, (Unless I'm peeved at someone else more than I am at myself) that I am quite self depreiciating. Hopefully not ion the Uriah Heap way, but still, I tend to be hard on myself. I don't know why. I think because I think it's funny, and I'd rather make fun of myself than anyone else.
Hidalgo was...I don't know. I think I liked it. It was a lot of fun.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 6:35 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
Everything you’ll ever need to know about Family Circle, Woman’s Day and similar magazines.
Saturday, March 06, 2004So, awhile back, my mother and I were given a bunch of FC and WD magazines for cheap at a library sale, and over the past month or so I’ve been reading what amounts to as a two year span of said magazines, and it occurred to me that you could summarize them all, thus saving people every where tons and tons of money and time. Sure, I don’t have the purty, glossy full colored adverts, but I can tell you, in a short amount of time, everything you’re liable to learn from them.
Relationships:
Listen carefully to what the person is saying, don’t fake with nodding and occasional eye contact. Be ready to comment helpfully in such a way that proves you truly did listen, but wait until they’ve actually stopped talking and aren’t just pausing for breath. Don’t be judgmental. Don’t say I and me so much. Your dress is lovely is better than I love your dress. To get your husband to help more, don’t complain, (You never take out the garbage, you jerk!) ask him to help (Amazing stud muffin, please take the garbage outside?). Praise people who help you. Sex is very, very important. More so to the man than to the woman. Oh, and be honest, be honest, be honest...but not too honest, lest your friend's heart grow...well, whatever.
Home:
Throw things out all the time to keep down clutter. Organize yard sales so that your neighbors think of you as a combination of Martha Stewart and Adolph Hitler. Organize your house. Use clear plastic boxes. Use baskets on the shelves in your closet and such like under the bed. Try to do a little housework every day so that it doesn’t over whelm you and turn passing out the chores into a positive family experience by not threatening the little bas... er...mites when they whine about cleaning the bathroom. To give your home a facelift change the curtains, paint the room and rearrange the furniture. Don’t be afraid to experiment by doing weird things that if one of your friends did all on her own you’d think was interesting and congratulate her on her efforts but just seem like abject boredom on the editor’s part.
Example: Take a perfectly nice, tall, round table and glue old fashioned close pins around the edge, then paint it all a loud shade of green, finishing the whole off with little dots of blue on the pin heads. This project fits the bill of these magazines because it a) is different, and maybe not in a good way b) creates a piece of furniture that is much harder to use and will catch your clothes every time you walk by, and c) is nigh undoable. To decorate think of new ways to do old things, and think of new ways to use every day things. Shake up tradition.
Also, remember that the cute craft things we tell you to do with egg cartons, etc., are cool this issue, but will be considered declasse the next.
For food, all the recipes are either something you need to live near the shore or a specialty store for, or are cheats that we either got off of the back of a box or brought home in a box. (Personally, save the money from not buying a subscription to one of these and go to Border’s or similar bookstore where you can really spend time with the book. Go find your self one really good, really wide ranging cook book that covers the basics. Buy yourself a world cook book for adventure. As for the back of the box stuff, places like Kraft, Progresso, etc, often put out cook books...do not buy them until they end up at an outlet store or the Dollar store.) The secret is, like in everything, be willing to experiment. For example, a lot of their “meals in under 30 minutes” were nothing more than buying things pre-made at the store, some of which seems pretty pricey to me. Here, then, is Cindy Lynn’s meals in under 30 minutes recipe. Buy four TV dinners of the same kind. Now, if you’ve been married for around a year or more, Banquet will do. Swanson or even Marie Callander’s meals are strictly when you want something from the person you're having dinner with, such a as wedding ring. Oh, that’s right, I’m supposed to be a today’s woman. Such as sex, then. Though really, I’d rather have a good back rub. Anyway, arrange on plates to suit. Remeber, candles make it hard to see what you're eating. Throw boxes, etc. away OUTSIDE, or failing that, hide in the trunk of your car for later disposal.
Shopping: You can save a lot of money if you: buy bulk, buy things when they’re on sale, buy more than one thing that’s on sale if it’s something you use, look at the end of the aisles and the front of the store for sales, look at the top and bottom shelves because all the whorishly bright and expensive stuff is placed at eye level. Read labels.
Health/Beauty
Running and walking and other exercises are a good way to loose weight. Eat really “reasonable” (re: small) portions and skip pretty much everything that you really really like because it’s probably not good for you, except once in a while. Indulge yourself semi-often! Take naps. Play with your kids to lose weight. Soak your feet, and do things that make you happy, like just sit and listen to music, or cuddle up with a good book. Get up early to maximize the “you” time. Breathe. Chocolate does not, I repeat not, give you zits.
For a makeover, chop your hair. This is what they always do when they give people makeovers, chop and fluff the hair. Buy one set of as expensive as you can get without your loved one killing you make up. Use it with great care and subtlety. And dye your hair. Viola.
Clothes are very. very expensive, even when you get them “cheap.”
Children: See relationships and add that they are very expensive little creatures, they like to say no a lot, and need to be dealt with with subtlety and craftiness. Spend lots of time with them but be willing to give them privacy. Babies cry when they need things. A good book on what to do if they start screaming the theme song to Turandot or what to do if their poo is blue is only needed if you don’t have a good mother to turn to. Bed sheets, garbage bags and old clothes make great Halloween costumes.
Pets: See children.
In short, if you live your life honestly, in an organized manner with lots of common sense and remember to take care of yourself as well as those around you you can use the $2.00 an issue cover price to do something else...like buy everyone a hot fudge sundae.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 5:52 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
Wednesday, March 03, 2004I read Deborah Crombie's And Justice There is None for the SfSite, but since it has no fantasy, or SF, or even horror in it, I'll not be actually reviewing it. So I will say that I liked it; that Gemma is a pleasant and interesting investigator to hang out with, that the police procedural is well done, that I guessed who the killer was on page 406 of 436, just a few pages before it was revealed, (which is good) and that as a British detective novel it rates highly, making me rather relived since I've, for no reason I could tell you, have been collecting her books when I see them at library sales and have not read a one of them.
I have a lot of books like that. It doesn't stop me from buying books, especially at library book sales. The other day I bought a slew of paperbacks that I will never get to, but cost me only .05 cents a peice. I don't want to pass them up, because I dearly want to read them and plan on doing so Someday When I Have Time. Since I don't plan on not being a reviewer any time soon I figure, sadly, Someday When I Have Time will come about the time when I am a Nerveless Old Hack Who Can No Longer Review Books Because She Repeats Herself. And so I buy books mostly by approximate guesses.
I should be writing, but I'm doing the deer-in-the-headlights thing. I should be editing my girl & unicorn story. (Actually, it's called "What Do I Do Know That the Dream is Over?" but it's called girl and unicorn because that's what I neamed the file. I do this all the time, so that soemtimes people don't know what story I'm talking about. "The Fortunate Ones" is called Pixie after the fact that that's what one of the minor characters is, Diamond is the file name for "Every Word I speak", my take on the fairy tale where the girl spits up a diamond or a flower with ever word she says.) I should be writing on Water's Edge. Or writing some reviews so I can second draft them Saturday. But I'm all boggley and stopped and I can't seem to get started in any direction. Then I make things worse by getting mad at myself. "What kind of writer are you? No wonder you're not published, you have no drive." I manage, by the end of it, that the most I'm good at is hiding in my bed and reading (i.e., making more reviews to write) and pretending that the computer isn't over here, waiting expectantly.
I look at other people's carreers. At the sheer amount of short stories, novels, articles, etc, that some people have written. And I wonder, is that my problem? Should I buckle down and produce, produce, constantly? But how do these people do it? Not just the time, but the quality? Bernard Corwell seems to write about two a year...a Sharpe's for spring, something else for fall. Andre Norton's list of books and such streatches for miles down the shelf. I'm not happy with anything I've done unless I get to go over it again months later...and even then, I've often re-editing things a year or so later...look at the time I spent re-editing both the books when I thought I was done and had already begun sending them out.
Eh. If I keep thinking about this, I'll be wrecked for a week. The only answer, I suppose, is to keep plugging away.
I did submit two reviews this week to Fantastica Daily. They're both up: White Devils, a creepy biotech thriller, and Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire, a novel where he tells the stories of twelve people who all live in North Hampton, through out the years, starting with a cave boy. My favorite story was the one told from the point of veiw of a skull that had been hung up on a wall.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 4:41 PM
0 comments
|
0 Comments:
11/01/2001 - 12/01/2001
03/01/2002 - 04/01/2002
04/01/2002 - 05/01/2002
05/01/2002 - 06/01/2002
06/01/2002 - 07/01/2002
07/01/2002 - 08/01/2002
08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002
09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002
12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003
01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003
02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003
03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003
04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003
05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003
06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003
07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003
08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003
10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003
11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003
12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004
01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007
01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007
11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008
01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008