M.R. Graham's Blog, page 11

The Self-Congratulatory Photopalooza — Scifi Edition

It’s that time again, dear readers! You should all be expecting it, by now, as it is tradition. And for The Siren, the traditional hat is back. This time, it’s a Harris tweed construction, souvenir of my recent sojourn in London (of which there shall soon be a full recounting and further photopalooza).

So, first I was like… “Dignity. Always dignity.”

Then I was like… “Okay, yes, I’ll admit it’s pretty brilliant.”

Then I was inordinately pleased with myself…

And all was right with the world.

The volume itself, in all its perfection:

Coelacanth – a poem

We crawled from the water

like the first legged creatures,

young vertebrates gasping in the sharp air.

Yearning for flight,

we hugged the ground fearfully

and thrust fingers into the raw soil,

mimicking the roots all around us,

but we did not grow.

Darkness stroked the moon-streaked sky,

where stars and rain fell as one.

We saw none of this with our blind cavern eyes,

but we felt the lights sparkle against our upturned faces,

and we swore one day, we would see.

Storm – a poem

Rain on the horizon

the brindled Texas sky

Predator-striped

Stalks

Charges

The unsuspecting land below.

Here it comes!

It’s on its way, guys! The Siren will be here tomorrow, which makes today the last day to preorder it at $0.99! (It’s going to be going up to $2.99, which still isn’t heinous, but does give you some incentive to order right now… hint hint.)

And let me tell you, it’s a relief. It’s a huge relief. I started this book around the end of 2011. It was inspired by a comment on a music video on YouTube. The particular video seems to be gone, now, and the comment with it, but you can still look up Opera No. 2 by Vitas and understand why someone might have said something to the effect of “This guy can’t possibly be human. He’s too good.” Because I’m not even a little bit normal, I sat and stewed on that one tiny little comment for the entire duration of a five-hour car trip. I contemplated the nature of music. I contemplated the nature of sound. Sonic technologies. Human emotion. And when I finally pulled into the garage and turned off the engine, there was most of a book idea recorded in the voice memos of my iPod.

It was slow going, about a thousand words a week for a couple of months. And then, in the miserable, stinking dawn of 2012, my grandfather died. I spent a week virtually living in the ICU, alternating between staring into space and numbly, lifelessly pounding out chapters of The Siren, and by the time it was over, I hated this book with every inch of my soul. I let it sink to the bottom of my hard drive, because I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I fully intended to let it rot.

I did poke at it every now and then, because it was a good idea. I had posted draft chapters on DeviantART as I finished them, and the people who had been following along were disappointed when the flow dried up, so I sat and stared at a blinking cursor every now and again, wishing it didn’t hurt so much.

I wrote maybe a hundred words over the rest of 2012 and all of 2013.

Then I found that song again, Opera No. 2 by Vitas, and something changed. Given the plot of The Siren, I think it’s rather appropriate that it was the power of music that made the story open back up to me. I realized that, yes, that story for me would always be tied to that horrible week in the ICU, but it didn’t have to be part of a bad memory. The story was what got me through that week, and I owed it to the characters, to John and Sandie and Mike and Connie and Nacho, to finish it.

And I finished it, and here it is.

Maybe it’ll touch someone.

Enjoy.

Lost Knowledge ebooks are now free on Kindle Unlimited

Call it an experiment. I’m curious about Kindle Unlimited and want to try out their system. I had used it previously, but didn’t stay with it, and there have been a number of changes implemented since then that may make all the difference in the way it actually works for me and tBoLK.

The immediate result is that tBoLK are all now free to read for anyone who has a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

The other immediate result is that tBoLK ebooks are now exclusively on Amazon – they no longer appear on any other retail site.

I really don’t know yet whether this is a temporary change or a permanent one, but it will be 90 days long at the very least. I shall provide further updates when and if something interesting happens!

As always, Lost Knowledge can be found on my author page, here.

Papalotes – Texas poetry

The poetic ethnography is published, and up next is a book for my wild Lone Star State. I don’t say that it will be published any time soon; it’s still very much in the works. But it is close to my heart, and for now, I am calling it Papalotes – Windmills.

Holy Land

The sun-drenched hills

are golden and gray,

robed in cedars dark as night,

fragrant with juniper.

In another world, this land was holy.

This soil caked prophets’ feet.

These rivers baptized.

These skies rained fire.

These trees raised martyrs.

In another world, these winds spoke truths,

and pilgrims passed in silence

between the chalky cliffs

Versos is here!

In digital and paperback.

And the really extraordinary thing… It’s Amazon’s #1 new release in Place Poetry! How about that? Must be because it’s my birthday.

Versos release is tomorrow!

And I am excited!

You can pick up your Kindle copy on Amazon here. The paper edition will be appearing there sometime tomorrow.

XV

The schoolyard is a place of dust,

apple cores,

chamoy,

salty and sour.

And trumpets blast triumph

from smartphone speakers.

It’s a Very Particular Book Blog!

For the fun of it, and because I’ve never found a book blog catering to my specific tastes, I’ve started my own at qui est in libris.

It might not go anywhere – heck, I don’t know whether anybody actually shares my very particular specific tastes – but it’ll be a place for me to collect. The first review is already up.

Summertime releases!

As the academic year is winding down, my writing year is heating up.The two volumes that have been in the works for so long, creeping along at a snail’s pace, are finally ready and on their way.

 First, on May 31 (my birthday!), my poetic ethnography will be released.

What is a poetic ethnography, exactly? I realize I haven’t really explained that adequately. An ethnography is a written record of a culture – its values, daily habits, artifacts, rituals, beliefs, preferences, taboos, collective history, and the ways it has changed and is changing.

What is this poetic ethnography about? The Rio Grande Valley, where I moved a few years ago, and which I have been studying since. This place is very different from anywhere else I have ever lived. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s unique on the face of the planet. The culture here is a very specific, utterly unique blend of USA and Mexico. At the same time, it’s not so much a mix as a product, much as two chemical reagents do not combine and produce a blend of the two, but something different. Or perhaps a better analogy would be that of two parents producing a unique individual, rather than a halfway point between themselves.

Why is it poetic? Well, what better way to address one tiny element of something than with a tiny, elemental verse?

You can click on the cover on the left to be taken to the Amazon preorder page.

The Siren

Secondly, The Siren will be coming on June 30. It’s been sitting in my “Works in Progress” page for far too long, which is a little misleading, because for a very long time, it wasn’t really progressing at all.

Well, it’s done, now, and it’s coming.

What’s it about?

“There was a dead body on Sandie’s back porch, and it was trying to get in.”

But this is no zombie; something stranger is hiding inside the rotting shell. What do you do when you meet an injured alien spirit that feeds on emotion and can play human feelings like a violin? Name it John Doe, give it a guitar, and move heaven and earth to help it get home, if Sandie has her way. She doesn’t realize that babysitting an alien could result in such a weird collision of music, emotion, and faith.

And Sandie must tread with care, because this thing has the power to manipulate minds, and even the creature itself doesn’t know what will happen when it finally heals.

Click on the image to go to the Amazon preorder page. (And please do preorder; I haven’t used that feature before, and I’m curious to see whether there are any particular differences.)

Up Next

The writing list groweth ever longer, but for the moment, I’m focusing on The Eye of the Crow and the next Liminality book, which will be called The Mage. I’m shooting for mid-2016 with the first, and late 2016 with the second.

Later, gators. I must get started!