Renee Carter Hall's Blog, page 15

Friday Finds: Four poems

This week's finds are poems. I used to read a lot more poetry than I do now (and certainly wrote much more of it than I do now), but these really caught my attention and made me feel they were worth sharing.

The first two were posted by readers to the greatpoets community on LiveJournal:

"Library," by Albert Goldbarth:
http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3243336.html

"Changeling" by Loren Eiseley:
http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3243102.html

Incidentally, the DW community poetry also has a lot of good stuff posted that's worth checking out. Here are two that were posted there:

"How to Read a Poem: A Beginner's Manual," by Pamela Spiro Wagner:
http://poetry.dreamwidth.org/150643.html

"Ravens," by Theodora Goss:
http://poetry.dreamwidth.org/146946.html

comments

Color quiz

Man, how long has it been since I took an online quiz? I used to wind up doing those things practically on a daily basis in my early days on LiveJournal -- what character from Lord of the Rings are you, your hobbit name, your elf name, what animal are you, what book are you, on and on and on.

Anyway...

you are lightskyblue
#87CEFA
Your dominant hues are cyan and blue. You like people and enjoy making friends. You're conservative and like to make sure things make sense before you step into them, especially in relationships. You are curious but respected for your opinions by people who you sometimes wouldn't even suspect.

Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan.

Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.
the spacefem.com html color quiz

Took this the other day and wound up with steel blue, which was fairly similar, I think, in terms of the description. The "finishing projects" thing is definitely on target, though I think I do stress over things far more than this would imply. :)

comments

"Real Dragons" 50% off!

Smashwords is having a site-wide sale during July, and I've added my fantasy novelette Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters to the promotion. This means that through July 31, if you enter the code SSW50 at checkout, you can get "Real Dragons" for half price -- just 99 cents. So if you haven't downloaded your copy yet, now's the time!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

Now available: Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters

Once upon a time (Tuesday before last), there lived a dragon. He was not the sort of dragon you are probably thinking of. He did have wings, and a long pointy tail with a long neck to match, and even little lumps where horns would be, just in front of his ears. Unfortunately, that was where his resemblance to most dragons ended, because he was roughly the same size as a Chihuahua, his wings were so tiny that the effect was downright comical, and he was the precise shade of pastel pink that lip gloss manufacturers would call Cotton Dandy and paint manufacturers would call Wistful Dream.

To top it all off, he was fuzzy. Holding him was like holding a warm, slightly squirmy peach.

He was not, as you may have already guessed, a wild dragon. Wild dragons were crimson or ebony or emerald. They were giant, scaly fire-breathers who lived in caves in dramatic-looking cliffs and slept on huge piles of gold. He lived in an apartment with his owner and slept in a little basket with a powder-blue cushion.

She called him Dinkums.

My novelette "Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters" is now available via Smashwords, in every format they offer except plain text -- meaning you can read it on your computer, your Kindle, your Palm thingie, your Nook doohickey, and all those other newfangled things they make for reading books these days. (In my day, we had to read books on paper! And sometimes it would even cut you! And that was the way it was, and we LIKED IT!)

Erm. Anyway. Check it out here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

Greetings!

Finally decided to start a new blog here instead of simply mirroring one. It makes for more work, but for the moment I like the idea of being able to tailor content for particular audiences. So if you already keep up with me elsewhere, apologies in advance for things you might hear about more than once. :)

First, I do keep a writing-related journal over at Dreamwidth:

http://poetigress.dreamwidth.org

Calling it a "blog" isn't entirely accurate, though I have called it that just for simplicity's sake. It's a place where I check in with my writing goals, post about what I'm working on, make announcements about new publications of my work, and share the occasional link or video.

The reason I say it's not entirely a blog is that I don't do what it seems like most authors do with their blogs. I don't write long articles on how to write, or how to get an agent, or how to create characters, or things along those lines. For starters, I don't even feel qualified to write on some of those topics, and generally I'd rather be a writer than a writing teacher or coach. There are tons of great books, magazines, websites -- and, yes, blogs -- about writing, and as far as general writing advice is concerned, I don't feel I could say anything better or different than what's already been put out there by writers far better at what they do than I am.

Now, if my talking about what I do helps other writers in some way, that's great, and I can understand wanting to network with other writers for various reasons. On the whole, though, I'd like to connect with readers as much as other writers, and sometimes I wonder if readers who don't write get a little tired of author blogs always going on about the finer points of writing. (As I think Diana Peterfreund pointed out once when talking about interviews, nonfiction authors are expected to talk about their subject. Fiction authors seem to get asked mostly about how they got published. I don't know why this is, but I think it winds up also being a good summation of the author blogosphere.)

At any rate, I hope I'll be able to announce all sorts of fun things here over the coming months. At the moment, my current project is getting a fantasy novelette called "Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters" ready to be my first offering for sale on Smashwords. Expect to hear more about that in the next several weeks. :)