pattern of fern shadows cast by candles playing into snug culmination rented theaters where hillsides tottered in the unspoken gamble of her slightest motion, some indication if anyone commenced singing against the walls and ceiling of an unclothed expanse of potential a warm hand broaches, scratching its initials on frosted windows and then a lower back arched for precision a cappella with the choir we clocked a blizzard of treetop squirrels far below whatever our season and there you have it . tenderly
Category: Arts & Letters
Long time no see Clio
tracing the contours of a phantom state accounted for relentless confessions her glances endorsed the mountain ice fields above clouds juggling a chaste topography climax or spring tide shattered in a brutal outburst of emancipated crescendos how swell I thought sonatas scaling the savage exhilarating tempests . still she sought cinematic relics shelved along slender promontories where I stood wary of early snowfall or lightning in countless triangles or gale-force gusting with sleet we barely escape being tossed overboard or disemboweled on crags above tree line, its keepsakes reminding of her mercy when she sat on my lap in echoing climax
Be among the first to read my new book … for free!
If you’re a reader of ebooks and fascinated by history, I’d love for you to get an advance copy of my new book, Quaking Dover.
In fact, as a follower of this blog, you’re getting a limited-time invitation to pick up a copy of the book for free.
All you have to do is speak up in the comments section of this post, and assuming that your address includes an email (visible only to me) or other contact info, I’ll send you a coupon to download the book in the digital format of your choice within the next 30 days.
It’s one of the advantages of ebook publication at Smashwords.com.
In the world of commercial book publishing, a printed edition typically appears in an Advanced Reading Copy run that allows reviewers, bookstore dealers, and other insiders a chance to hop on before the official publication. In the meantime, the author and editor have time to make fixes and set the stage for an auspicious opening day, one boosted by the buzz of the ARC readers.
So what I’m doing is the equivalent for a digital edition.
The release date on this book isn’t until September 8, but folks who preorder now can get in the front of the line at half-price. That strategy is one step for boosting the book in the crucial first-week sales algorithm.
Today’s offer, however, gives you a chance to own a copy now. In a way, you’ll even be getting involved with the preparations for the tiny city’s upcoming 400th anniversary.
My hope, of course, is that you’ll be excited by my story and happily post a brief review or two in response. If you don’t like it, of course, you can tell me directly and we’ll still have time to rectify that. It won’t even change my perception of you (insert Smiley Face.) From your end, it’s a no-risk proposition.
From my end, I might even gain a fan.
Now, who’s first?
What a joy to be finally rehearsing together in person
I had no idea how we’d sound as an ensemble or even whether I’d measure up. Officially, I’ve been a member of the choir more than a year now, but all of that time, we gathered only on Zoom. We soon learned to mute ourselves for even the warmups, and our director did accomplish a miracle in taking our individual home-recorded stabs at two pieces and blending them into a virtual performance that wound up sounding better than we had any right to expect, especially considering my horrid best efforts. I simply assumed he used only the finest voices in his studio note-by-note studio wizardry while mercifully sidelining the rest of us or at least me. I wouldn’t say that any of the other pieces recorded before Covid really offered a clue of what we’d be like now.
So Monday night was a kind of debut for us, our return to weekly live, in-the-flesh rehearsals at the arts center, nary a laptop in sight.
When we sat down in our semi-circle, just 15 of us, I had reason to be dubious. For starters, like the population in general around here, our median age skewers topside. Voices do change as they age. For another, a small body like this leaves no room for error, each member is more exposed and requires more precise breathing than we’d face in a group of 50 to 80, as I’d been privileged to have before. Five individuals were absent, all with decent excuses. Twenty can make for a fine professional chorus, but we’re amateurs of varying degrees.
I’d already met one of the basses and knew of a third, the one who can hit notes four steps lower than I’ll ever manage even with a heavy cold. And then, praise be, I was introduced to a fourth section member. Go team!
We were all masked as a Covid precaution, but even after ordering special singers’ coverings, we had no idea how freely we’d be able to breathe and enunciate.
I didn’t even know how well I could follow our conductor. You get adjusted to different styles of leadership and expression. On Zoom, he was always trying to juggle a keyboard, a score, maybe a screen-sharing insertion or a recorded track, plus beat time and throw cues to the little squares at the top of the screen while we wound up a half count off the beat as a consequence of delays in transmission or electronic hiccups.
All that was now irrelevant. Taa-taa! The time of launch arrived. We got our first pitch and then the upbeat, and when we opened our mouths and uttered the first notes, everything melted gloriously. And that was just in warmup exercises.
When we turned to the pieces we’ve been practicing at home, we were joined by a pianist who had already impressed me with a recent recital. Our director could turn his full attention to leading us cleanly and expressively. Yes, his mask prevented his mouth from conveying the words, but not every conductor does that anyway.
There were rough edges and other imperfections, but there was also a palpable feeling of support through the presence of each other and a certainty that we can accomplish what needs to be reached in time for two concert performances a month from now.
It’s exciting. Making music with them was one of the big reasons I had moved to Eastport. I liked their repertoire, akin to what I’d done in Boston, and I like the fact I can walk to our performance space. Learning something new about music, my own abilities, and us as a community is invigorating.
What are you especially enjoying as we come out of Covid restrictions?
Within a sixteen-bar chorus
down for weeks on our heels constantly, commiserate how those children realize the glee of self-deception having lives of their own or a loving minute of introduction four-part cappella singing “Jesus Loves Me” at the reform school and then winter meeting in Fort Lauderdale lunch with Rukeyser and flew off to Chicago in windy subzero January the weekend the Los Angeles Rams stayed at our hotel before being trounced by the Bears and the city went ecstatic seemed appropriate to be flying out of town in that kind of hoopla for I was in new love, Praise the Lord, really, kiddos
Take a sneak peek at my next book’s cover
For several months now, you’ve been getting tastes of my upcoming book, but I have kept much of project under wraps, including the title.
The curtain goes up on that right now.
So roll the drums, please, and take a deep breath of anticipation. Here’s what I’m rolling out:
Do the title and image intrigue you? Pique your curiosity? Hold you for more than a split-second?
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, book covers – and magazines, too – are a specialized design challenge.
The ebook version has to work as a postage stamp, sizewise.
Print editions often get cluttered with pitches of all sorts, just in case one hooks a reader.
An effective title, of course, is a huge consideration, but not the only one.
~*~
Creating a compelling image that matches the content has been especially difficult in this case. The book spans more than 400 years, and I couldn’t find anything that quite reflected the place or its people, now or then, or that extended an appropriate emotional appeal.
A seismograph didn’t do it, though several geometric zig-zag patterns looked cool.
One design that excited me featured a portrait of John Greenleaf Whittier’s mother, but others saw her as forbidding. What I saw calm and collected they viewed as sorrowful and inhibited. Oh, well.
But then, while going through my own photos, I came across a late-autumn photo of the Cochecho River, scene of much of the action. I loved its timeless mystery and beauty and the fact it didn’t look generic to just about anywhere else in the world.
One of my earlier posts pointed out that the cover should promise the reader something rather than mirror the story. It’s a matter of eliciting a gut-level attraction.
Somehow, I hope you feel this cover leads backward into time, with the drama of a storm on the way. Just what is around that bend, anyway?
~*~
Please stay tuned for the release details in the days ahead.
Sweet Bev
should I have let all the correspondence lest it expire right there they’d mostly fall away in any case, too quickly ignoring the besotted side of Santa Claus beneath the chipper vocalizations, no dispatch of cards or presents the holidays came upon me to quickly, perhaps in part just constantly on the road; then, too, this felt so contrived and coerced compared to Christ’s power and expansive love I could see Christmas as an especially wicked flu to carry in such travels, wake up, voiceless, coughing and sore when we need rest more than carols and ditties, do tell
Whazup
after several attempts to figure out how I’d list only what time and last-minute barreling impulses or friendships I wouldn’t want to lose these connections of phone calls and homespun meals in the absence of wild affection I’d lap up even distant lines as in conversation overheard ditto worship to lasso random thoughts and outline a start, so in the mailbox and an income besides to say nothing absolutely nothing about Jesus or just so many wildcards you keep some order re: the recording clerk, both our annual budget and a reminder the dues are due chock full of gossip I’d veer in adoration toward lunacy any day
For that round face both puzzled and kind
to catch up on the overdue exchange rather than taping up all those goodies and it’s still good to be home just two days into a lunatic week already a day behind whatever gets no better all housework’s piles of homework and up in the midst of keyboarding with a broom a general epistle to all who send cards or other missives & ought to be acknowledged, at least this could be personalized hey, you! unlike those photocopies everyone loved that one remarkable year, finally we’re coming round to sunshine
Say now, Augie
no piano sounds more like transactions of harpsichord or organ this postulation halfway finishing business drafts describing new goods so you want to tell what’s Kosher with jottings of what remains pressing all kinds of mental jumping about, on the way of continuation just writing and writing, the notes falling all in due time polishing or dashing to editors or agents or Winona in response to a beautiful letter hopefully corresponding to annals and her invitation to follow through on an earlier intent to respond to queries sent off to my overseers and elders, this exercise easily, now, back to you, so what’s playing next
Jnana's Red Barn 