S. Scott Whitaker's Blog, page 20

Seven Days on the Mountain Book Trailer

The trailer is out. Check it. Clips provided and purchased via VidLab. Trailer is intellectual property of S Scott Whitaker. Music composed by Proxy17, S Scott Whitaker using Garageband App & Soundcloud.

Buy the book here.

Book Trailer for the YA action "Chase Novel" Seven Days on the Mountain

The trailer is out. Check it. Clips purchased and provided by VidLab. Trailer is intellectual property of S Scott Whitaker. Music composed by S Scott Whitaker using Garageband App & Soundcloud.

Brief Response to "Poetry Slam" by Mark Edmundson

We
have heard your answer and will meet it with chops.
Find us beyond the lea,
in southern country where tongues like wicks
do so many pleasurable motions with our mouths.
We
make blush a continuous virtue. You could not lie
when faced with so much desire. We
know this is true. We
know what it is like to have love returned to us
like an arm in a box from a botched military operation.
The limb packed in dry ice and neatly washed
as if it could just attach itself to any body
with need. We
know what to do with such rituals, we have two celebrations,
one for the body and the other for the lonely part
that only wants to be reunited,
back to we, back to love, back to art.

We
keepers, we misers, our club of a club,
our ivy board club. Poetry is a dialogue
between the poet and the breath,
any more is good bread indeed.

Quotidian Project is done! Thanks for reading. Now for weird speculative fiction.

The quotidian project closed last month. Read a little about it here, and here. It's been fun. Which was the heart of the whole project in the first place. The Black Narrows is available.

It's summer. No more daily writing of poems,but I'm revising and editing, which is where the real work lies.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and discussing the poems or the project. I'll still post poems and short stories on Figment and Wattpad regularly, I promise. Special thanks to Seasofme and Lisaner, especially for their kind Wattpad comments, and occasional editorial notes.

I'll be grinding out some YA/Speculative Fiction of the big and broad and magical variety. It's been cooking and all I can really say is: sharks, giant spiders, mermaids, airships, and a house that forgot it was a boat. Stay tuned.

Soon there will be a book trailer for my first, well reviewed, but hardly read Seven Days on the Mountain. It's cool making movies. Takes time. Lots of it. Working on the music for the trailer and the fine editing details. Will post it as soon as possible.

For budding writers, students and anyone wanting to get their pen on:I write daily for many jobs, and am happy to answer any questions through Wattpad or Figment. Don't be shy. Just be patient.

It's a day, go out and have an adventure. In your head. Go on, I dare you.

An Interview with me on FIGMENT about my new boom of poems.

An Interview with Author S. Whitaker

The Black Narrows, forthcoming from Broadkill Press, this summer.

Hello all.

I'm thankful and grateful for the hardworking folks at the Broadkill Press who have slaved over my new chapbook, The Black Narrows, which will be published soon. The chapbook is a series of loosely connected poems about a world seeped in a black market economy, generational poverty, alcoholism, and working on the water, or with the land. These are common themes in my work, however, these are inspired by Steampunk imagery, neo-Victorian imagery, and the landscape of the Delmarva pennisula.

The chapbook will be ten ducats, reasonably priced, and can be had over on the Broadkill Press website.

Figment, the writing social network, will feature a short profile on me and my chapbook to coincide with its release, which will be seen by thousands of readers as they log in to the webpage.

I'm wrapping up my quotidian project, which has been fun, rewarding, and at times overwhelming. This summer will find me organzing all the "new" poems and perhaps even adding tags and descriptions to my Figment and Wattpad pages where the quotidian drafts can be found. If you have not at least checked out Figment and Wattpad, they are great ways to connect with new readers. I can honestly say I have found more new readers with these two social networks than with any other "traditional" method of finding new readers. When project quotidian wraps up, I'll review both sites for you, dear reader, and you can decide yourself.

And I'll be back to working on fiction. Well, actually I'm already back to working with fiction. I've been writing some connective tissue for the Castaways book I've had on the back burner for three years. That will constitute the bulk of my summer writing work.

Also, you'll be seeing a lot of my self-promoting tweets, tumblr-logs, and facebook status updates as I will be donating time and poetry to Tupelo Press for their 30/30 project. I will also be using some new social network promotional tools to promote my YA fiction and dystopian short stories on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Until next time...keep ya head up.

It's 250 plus days into the quotidian project. I rather e...

It's 250 plus days into the quotidian project.

I rather enjoy it; the freedom of throwing absolute care out the window and writing a poem based on a day's rhythms and images, or not. Character poems. Personae. Dramatis Personae. I like a good lyric. Short, compact, musical. I enjoy iams, and rhyme. I've had fun letting the throat rag itself out a bit.

There's plenty of bad poems, and mis-fires. Those looking for a little Schadenfreude will find much to chuckle about. Still, lots of drafts and lots of potential.

For those fascinated with the Accomack county serial arsonists there are several poems set in the emotional landscape of the county during the height of the arsons.

Broadkill Press will issue Black Narrows (potential cover art above*), a collection of poems centered in a fictionalized marshpunk black market community. Death is a prominent feature, as is loss, generational poverty, the marsh, steampunk motiffs, and moments that I hope transcend marshlife and communicate in the present.

Figment.com will feature a short on the chapbook. I've chronicled the quotidian project on Figment all year, and have spent a lot of time reading teenagers stories and poems and offering what I hope to be encouraging words. There's talent out there. And lots of interest in storytelling. Very hopeful.

The summer will be spent organizing poems, revising another YA novel, tentatively titled Castaways, and reviewing poetry.

May National Poetry Month find you well.

S

*Pirates dredge oysters at night. Harpers Weekly. 1896. Public Domain

Project Q Continues

My daily time with words varies during the week. This week I had to double post because the hour grew too late for me to post the work on Figment and  Wattpad, which is to be expected on busy school days. Lately the urge to forgo punctuation or at least play with standards and expectations of punctuations are common, often throwing capitalization and lately, commas, out the proverbial window.

Marshpunk is the newest trend, as a narrative touchstone, or setting helps me get into the groove after teaching, coaching, and then working with my own children before writing. Black Narrows, a marsh city of shacks and black market traders. Throw some wild engineers in the mix, the ever present watermen, and the Narrows boils with seediness. Deadwood on the marsh perhaps.

As far as writing on an ipad is concerned, unless you work with google drive’s/tumblr/html editor, there is no great word processor. Google drive, however, dependent on the internet connectivity speed, is a hassle when M is watching her shows on Netflix and Thor is watching his youtube video game channels. I still haven’t mastered copying and pasting large chunks of text from drive to figment or wattpad, and find that a computer is faster for transferring the poem to the publishing outlets. And forget about adding your own cover from an ipad. For that, which is what so many people love about Figment and Wattpad--the design of their cover, you’ll need a computer.

Wattpad is by far the fastest way to publish. Figment requires the poster to deposit information across four pages (content, details, cover, page type), where Wattpad requires two (content and info, cover). [image error]

"Dinner at Henri" hits the airwaves in McFadden podcast

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My old friend Nate McFadden recorded the poem, “Dinner at Henri's”, from News from the Front (my latest chapbook, published by the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, here) for his podcast. He performs a smashing reading, nailing the tone. The poem, inspired by the French Resistance, and a life long love of radio, is one of my personal favs; it reads well with audiences, more than others. It's nice to hear someone besides me read it, like most of you I do not like the way I sound to others.

Actively, I try to squeeze some kind of poem, or poetic work out every day. It keeps me sane, healthy, and engaged with language. During the busy school year I can least give myself a twenty minute period of time when I can be in my own voice, so to speak, and work my talent. I'm documenting the quotidian over at Figment and Wattpad, two social media sites that deal with writing. Granted, most of the work on the site is written solely so the author can post a cool, hip cover, but both sites are packed full of creative types that wish to share, create, & craft the written word (think deviant art for writers—Figment geared towards YA lit, Wattpad towards an older crowd).

One of the biggest reasons I have chosen these mediums is so that I can see patterns, cycles, or themes emerge in a public space. I am very fond of the revision process and find the writing process interesting. I am not sure if I can offer anything new by making the process visible, but who knows. Furthermore I can help anyone who wants it along the way (like FB or Twitter, you can follow writers and share comments or critiques) and give back what I learned over the years.

W/r/t fiction: new draft in the works of Castaways, and look for a short story collection ( I hope ) via e-book this fall.

 

Happy trails.

Henri.mp3 Listen on Posterous