Uvi Poznansky's Blog, page 139

A place where sirens call your name

Kick off your flip-flops and take my handSink your toes in warm sandIn each shell, a story hidesA secret whispers under crash of tides
In the distance, waves are breakingWet, slippery rocks are shakingIf you listen, you'll be sweptTo where no ship has yet wrecked
A place for which there is no frameA place where sirens call your name

Summertime is almost here... Get ready for beach reading
Four full-length, captivating novels:At Odds with Destiny★ Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★★ Kobo ★ Smashwords ★

At this time of year, it’s much too steamy in the office

“Really,” says Bathsheba. “I thought I spotted you standing by your window, with your sword aimed at me.”To which I explain, “I could not see a thing through the glass. It became cloudy, or something. At this time of day, even though it is only the beginning of summer, it’s much too steamy in the office.”She rolls her eyes. “I’ve had it with men.”I can find nothing to say, and perhaps there is no need to. She can tell, can’t she, how desperately I ache for her.“My life is scandal-free at the moment,” she says. “It feels nice for a change.”Which brings me back up to my feet, because thinking about her reputation, the reputation of a soldier’s wife, makes me hot all over. I have no idea who her husband might be. More precisely, I do not want to figure it out. All I know is this: when he is away serving the country, serving me, this woman must have found her own way to compensate. Loneliness is a steady companion, one that ugly women can rely upon. Not so for her. And she must see—even through my royal garb—how hard I am becoming. She is in hot water—but I am the one boiling over.“Give me that towel,” she tells me, as if I were her servant.And I say, “What—”And she says, “The towel. Yes, that one. Quick, give it to me.”And with that, she rises up from the frothy surface. 
I wipe my eyes. How shall I begin to describe her? In the patches between the soapsuds, her skin seems to glow. The rays of the setting sun are playing all over her creamy flesh: first one nipple, then the other. 
David in Rise to Power


★ Love giving gifts? Give The David Chronicles ★

The complete trilogy:The David Chronicles (Boxed Set) 
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Volume I: Rise to PowerEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume II: A Peek at BathshebaEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume III: The Edge of RevoltEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback Amazon ★ Barnes&Noble


"The miracle of Uvi Poznansky's writing is her uncanny ability to return to old stories and make them brilliantly fresh"-Grady Harp, Hall of Fame reviewer

Summertime... And the livin’ was easy

She scribbled something for him inside his paper napkin and, taking a quick peek, he found her name, her phone number and a little doodle of a heart. Both Leonard and Lana got up to leave at the same time: halfway through dessert. Little did he know that a week from now they would be sitting at the front row of the music center hall, holding hands and absorbing a heavenly soprano voice that filled the air with Summertime. She would know to tell him that George Gershwin found the inspiration to write this aria in a simple Ukrainian lullaby, and Leonard would believe her. A month from now he would rent an apartment, and they would be moving in together. But at this moment—on his way out, just about to open the door for Lana—he knew one thing, and one thing only: he was walking on air. So elated was his state of mind, so grand was his happiness, his heart swelled in him with such a powerful pulse, that nothing else mattered. Catching sight of the host winking an eye at the other guests, and hearing some muted giggles behind his back, all that left absolutely no impression in him—none whatsoever. He ignored that wink and those giggles, and closed the door. The whole thing flew right out of his mind until a full year later.
One Year Later.Leonard ate his breakfast glancing, from time to time, at that note that Lana had left for him. He was torn between a need to unfold the paper and an urge to crumple it. Either way, he found himself suddenly with the realization that now was the first time in a long while—a full year, in fact—that he was alone. Completely alone. A certain feeling was throbbing in his heart—something between relief, anger, sadness and above all, amazement that she was gone and he was free. Leonard turned on the record player and sank into the sofa, determined to spin away the hours to the tune of cheerful melodies. He kicked off his slippers, stretched his legs across the top of the coffee table and closed his eyes, so that the sight of things would not distract him from listening. The room disappeared. It was Summertime. His ears started moving at the sides of his head like agitated seismographs, registering every minute reverberation, every note. On the inside of his eyelids, space started to sway around him, gently at first. It was marked by intervals, time intervals that flowed from the lyrics and swept over him, opening and closing in an increasingly complex sequence.  Summertime. It reminded him of their first date, and of the time that passed since then. True, Lana was a good companion. He loved her. He could find nothing to complain about. And the livin’ was easy... 
For a whole year, she accompanied him dutifully to the Opera. And yet, time laid bare the fact that she was bored to tears sitting there, trying to entertain herself somehow by studying the costumes, the lighting, and the scenery—everything that for him was secondary. Only now did he realize that her proclaimed love of music was as real as the blond streaks in her hair.
Lenny in The White Piano

★ Love reading? Get this series ★Still Life with Memories
Volume I & II, woven together: Apart from LoveEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume I: My Own VoiceEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume II: The White PianoEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume III: The Music of UsEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: ★ Amazon ★ Audible ★ iTunes

Ghosts arise out of debris

Perhaps I need less caffeineTo deal with Friday the ThirteenA mass of black clouds hangs over meGhosts arise out of debris
The strike of thunder, lightning glare, I'm jittery, it's such a scareThe only thing that soothes meIs reading At Odds with Destiny 

Let in the dog and let out the cat, for this box holds dangers of the most rarefied kind!
Get it nowAt Odds with Destiny★ Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★★ Kobo ★ Smashwords ★

Here you'll find hair-raising fun

Double, double misfortune, trouble Burning coal and blackening rubbleLet the blood in my caldron boilFeed the flames... Oh, such a toil!Tonight it's Friday the thirteenI'm a witch... Boy am I mean!

Listen, dear, no need to fretAnd I promise, no regret:Spellbinding stories, here at last.Get them now, and do it fast!
Here you'll find hair-raising fun
Stories twisted, stories spun

Love Romance? Get this amazing collectionKindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ Smashwords

We won and it's all your fault! Thank you

Thanking you--yes, you!--and all my readers and the guests of my recent event, Call to Arms, for your support. Your vote counted, and our romance boxed set, A Touch of Passion (containing 12 amazing romance novels) has just won:

This is the announcement from The Romance Reviews:
We are pleased to inform you that the book, A Touch Of Passion by Uvi Poznansky; Mimi Barbour; Elizabeth Marx; Tamara Ferguson; Regina Puckett; B. J. Robinson; Suzanne Jenkins; Laura Taylor; Cynthia Woolf; Lisa Gillis; Traci Hall; Donna Fasano, is the winner for the category Anthology!

Carole
The Romance Reviews


Love Romance? Get this amazing collectionKindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ Smashwords

What inspired The Music of Us?

Natasha, the renowned pianist suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's in my book Apart from Love (volume I and II of the series, woven together) kept coming back to haunt me. Her character was not an easy one to develop. The primary challenge is that she has no voice. She is utterly silent, which makes her son Ben hope—at first—that she can be reached, that he can, somehow, save her. 
“There is no way to tell if she has heard me. Her gaze is fixed, as steadily as before, on the same small pane of glass, through which the sun is blazing; which makes it hard to figure out what she sees out there. I push forward, aiming to view it, somehow, from her angle, which at first, is too hard to imagine: In my mind I try, I see a map, the entire map of her travels around the world. A whole history. It has been folded over and again, collapsed like a thin tissue, into a square; which is suspended there—right in front of her—a tiny, obscure dot on that window. And inside that dot, the path of her journey crisscrosses itself in intricate patterns, stacked in so many papery layers. And the names of the places, in which she performed back then, in the past—London, Paris, Jerusalem, San Petersburg, New York, Tokyo—have become scrambled, illegible even, because by now, she can no longer look past that thing, that dot. She cannot see out of herself. She is, I suppose, confined.”
My new novel, The Music of Us (volume III in the series) gives voice to her.
“Once I find my way back, my confusion will dissipate, somehow. I  will sit down in front of my instrument, raise my hand, and let it hover, touching-not-touching the black and white keys. In turn they will start their dance, rising and sinking under my fingers. Music will come back, as it always does, flowing through my flesh, making my skin tingle. It will reverberate not only through my body but also through the air, glancing off every surface, making walls vanish, allowing my mind to soar.Then I will stop asking myself, Where am I, because the answer will present itself at once. This is home. This, my bench. The dent in its leather cushion has my shape. Here I am, at times turbulent, at times serene. I am ready to play. I am music.”
This novel starts out at 1970, when she starts to succumb to her illness, and goes a generation back, to 1941, the time that she and Lenny first fell in love. This is their story.

★ Love reading? Get this series ★Still Life with Memories
Volume I & II, woven together: Apart from LoveEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume I: My Own VoiceEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume II: The White PianoEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume III: The Music of UsEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: ★ Amazon ★ Audible ★ iTunes

What are you planning to make of yourself, young man?

Over the mantle hung three formal family pictures. When Natasha came back from the kitchen I asked her about them. At once, her Mama cut in. “My daughter comes from a long line of musicians,” she said, in her heavy Russian accent.“Mama,” said the girl. “I can speak for myself.”I pointed at the first picture. “Who’s this?”“This,” said Natasha, “Is my great grandfather, the famous Abraham Horowitz, who graduated from the Kiev Conservatory at the turn of the century. He rose to stardom rapidly and toured from Moscow to Rostov-on-the-Don, where he was often paid with bread, butter and chocolate, rather than money, because these were tough times.”“And this?” “This is Joseph Horowitz, my grandfather. He aspired to become a violin player, but his hand was damaged for life, when the riffraff attacked him during a pogrom in Odessa. So instead he became a music teacher. Later, he developed a method, a unique method to memorize long passages of music, by practicing the notes back to front.”“And this,” she said, reaching up to touch the third picture, “this is my Papa, Benjamin Horowitz. When he came to the states he became a conductor. Meanwhile he took that method one step further. Instead of the traditional way of playing through the passage repeatedly, you would commit it to memory, or rather to your subconscious mind, by means of performing it every night before falling asleep—without holding the instrument in your hands.”“A spendthrift, that’s what he was,” Mrs. Horowitz blurted out all of a sudden.“Now, Mama, don’t start!” said the girl.“Who’s starting?” the older woman threw her hands in the air. “I’m already in the middle of talking!”“Then please, please stop—”“What, I’m not allowed to tell the truth? The only inheritance your Pa left us is a dream, the dream of you becoming famous one day, and oh yes, how could I forget, also a bunch of heavy loans on the house, without any means of paying them off.”“Why complain so much, Mama? It was fun for you, wasn’t it, while it lasted—”“Which wasn’t too long, the way he gambled away his money! By the time his illness started, we were already hopelessly in debt.”“Mama!”Undeterred, Mrs. Horowitz shook her head, which in turn shook her bird-nest style hairdo. “Years earlier,” she said, “before he asked me to marry him, everyone was so, so very impressed with his talent. They predicted such a bright future for him. Where are all of them now?”“But Mama,” said the girl, “what does the bright future he had in the past have to do with the present?”“It has everything to do with here and now. You,” said Mrs. Horowitz, turning upon me, “yes, I’m talking to you! What’s your idea of the future? What are you planning to make of yourself, young man?”
Lenny in The Music of Us


★ Love reading? Get this series ★Still Life with Memories
Volume I & II, woven together: Apart from LoveEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume I: My Own VoiceEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume II: The White PianoEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible
Volume III: The Music of UsEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: ★ Amazon ★ Audible ★ iTunes

Happy Mother's Day: what to expect

Can't wait for our celebration to begin...Can you? 
Come join Happy Mother's Day

In the spirit of Mother's Day, we have stories to tell youAnd audiobooks to giveWho will the winners be? It may be you!Want to increase your chances to win? Then come to the party and engage with usLike, comment, and share our excerpts!
Sharing our storiesStarts Thursday, May 5 @ 2:00pm PST ✿ 5:00pm ESTUntil Saturday, May 7 @ 3:00pm PST ✿ 6:00pm EST
Grand FinaleStarts Sunday, May 7 @ 4:00pm PST ✿ 7:00pm EST

Let's celebrate Mothers by giving you our audiobooks!

The last morning I spend with my mother

After a while, she stirs. Her hand hangs, for a moment, in midair, a motion designed to reach out to me, and hug me, perhaps, in her own manner. Yet I can see that it is only herself, in the end, that she embraces. “On me your sin,” she smiles sweetly, placing a hand on her breast, where the heart can be found. “Let your curse be on me.” The sleeve, meanwhile, continues to climb, as if of its own accord, over my shoulder. By now it is covering the entire length of my arm. To my amazement, a part of me seems to have disappeared. Esav’s arm is beginning to take shape in place of mine.She leans over me and with a sharp eye, threads her needle. But for some reason, we cannot bear to look at each other eye to eye. “Give me one minute, let me mend it,” she says, removed from me, smiling to herself. “We don’t have much time, I’m afraid. Your brother is on the hunt, and so are we.”I sit there at her feet watching her work. My mother is so skillful in manipulating that sleeve. Inside of it, my limb feels hot, suffocated. I let her control me, control my hand. It is no longer my hand. By and by, a perfect calm comes upon me. I have no thought in my head, no clue that this is to be the last sunrise, the last morning that I spend with my mother; no premonition that our time together is running out, and that I should kiss her, and hug her, and bid her farewell. Yet for some reason, glancing around me, I commit to memory every aspect of this scene, every detail: The vivid pattern of the rug, spread across the dirt floor. The embroidered silk pillows, leaning against the woven headrest. The little blemish, barely visible in the corner of the blanket. The silver thread coming apart, at one point, at the bottom of the canvas. The jug of water, half hidden behind the curved leg of the bed.I can hear little noises: The occasional cry of a newborn baby, searching blindly for his mother’s breast. The light snores of the maidservants, some of whom are just starting to wake up, only to fall asleep again. The yawns of the shepherd boys, stretching their limbs lazily under the sheepskins in the neighboring tents. The unrest of the sheep, the lambs, the kids, the goats, all eager to go out there, to graze in the sun-flooded fields.  Meanwhile the needle flies back and forth, forth and back, over my shoulder, catching the light in its path. I am transfixed. I wish I could stay here forever. This place is so full of charms. This hour is so intimate; so sweet, and it is fast coming to its bitter conclusion. 
Yankle, in A Favorite Son


I have long been fascinated with the story of Jacob and Esav. To me, it captures several layers of emotions which we all go through in our families: a rivalry between brothers, the way a mother’s love, unevenly divided, can spur them to action, to crime, even; and how in time, even in the absence of regret, a punishment eventually ripens. 

The story had been brewing in me for several years before I put pen to paper. Being an artist, I had expressed it through sculpture long before I wrote the words. So here you can see Yankle and his mother Becky, plotting to cheat the father. Out of a sense of shame, they are unable to look each other in the eye. 
Having been cheated, I found that the character I wish to explore is not the victim of the crime, but rather the perpetrator. What are his motives? Has regret set in? Does he love his father even as he is cheating him? Does he long for the early years when he still had a bond with his twin brother? 
I wrote the first chapter, Lentil Stew, and thought I got the story out of my system. But no, Yankle kept chatting it my head, demanding that I record his thoughts. I wrote the second chapter, and the same thing continued to happen. It was not until I wrote the last chapter, The Curse of the Striped Shirt, where I find a ‘poetic justice’ to conclude the story, that Yankle finally fell silent...
So when reading my story, do not seek clear distinction between heroes and villains: no one is wholly sacred, because--like Yankle, the main character here--we are all made of lights and shadows, and most of all, doubt.
My clay sculptures of Jacob, asking, "What if my father touches me?" 
and of his mother, saying, "On me your sin, my son"
★ Love reading? Get this book ★A Favorite SonEbook: Kindle ★ Nook ★ Apple ★ Kobo ★ SmashwordsPaperback: Amazon ★ Barnes&NobleAudiobook: iTunes ★ Amazon ★ Audible 


"I can't praise the writing enough; the author has an incredible voice"