Laurie Perez's Blog, page 2
July 31, 2021
Hard to Believe These Kindle Stats
As far as Kindle's concerned, zero pages have been read so far by zero people.
Hard to believe, especially when real-life readers are sending me notes exclaiming, "it's like reading a movie!" and "hooked me in straight away..!!!"
When is it time to ignore the stats—and trust the universe? If you're reading Virga now, I dare you not to fall in love with Dennis Corbel.
Virga in Death Valley
My latest novella - released this summer!
Harleys, 1970s, growing up on the open road.
Take the ride: start reading Virga in Death Valley
“When he remembers that night, Dennis swears the man leaned down and whispered in his ear, 'Life's a test. Keep failing 'til you win.' In the moment, though, the only thing he's sure of is that they fought a minute, then started over. While they re-racked and cued up, he crawled back and forth, picking up those overpriced coins.” ~from Virga
June 25, 2021
Books Are Our Superpower: Marvelous New Review of THE LOOK
There are some books that just send your mind to a labyrinth. Once you begin contemplating the events, characters, or concepts presented, you know your life will never be the same. For me, some speculative fiction books or mystical stories have this effect on me. The ideas in these stories inspire me to write, to imagine beyond the earthly realm, and keep my brain working hard to stretch my current understandings of reality.
These “wonder tales,” as Margaret Atwood calls them, are my favorite kinds of books to read.
~from A Book That Offers Mind Yoga Is My Kind of Book
Samantha Lazar's review of THE LOOK is a celebration of the many ways a book can profoundly impact your life and state of mind. As she reflects on the novel, Lazar processes the reading experience in wise, deeply meaningful ways. I really hope you'll read her article and be moved by what she shared.
The LOOK of Amie Martine
It is hard for me to describe, but my mind loves this kind of yoga. Through Amie’s relationships with some very interesting characters, Laurie Perez tells her story in such a delicious way. It is so believable and fantastical at the same time, and it is hard to put down. However, I had such profound thoughts, I often reread parts to re-experience and meditate on the possibilities.~Samantha Lazar
June 18, 2021
New Novella Free on Kindle this Weekend
To celebrate, the ebook will be free beginning at midnight 6/19/21 through early next week.
I've loved this character for decades, since he showed up and stole the show a bit in my first novel. Been "saving" Dennis's story for a screenplay - but w/a massive novel to finish this year, that could mean waiting too long. It's time for this unique origin story to leave the nest.
Virga in Death Valley
VIRGA in Death Valley is an intimate character sketch focused on the early life of Dennis Corbel, artist and photographer. Events take place in the 1970s across locales he and his father roll through on a Harley. Dennis appears again twenty years later in the novel, TORPOR.
"It’s the job of the soul to stretch out across the body of the desert and touch, without skin or fingers or nerves, the hidden creek that wets our knowledge of who we are. Who we are before and after. Who we are when we’re alone and a goddess looks into our eyes, looks into our dreams and says, yes. I see you clearly."
~from Virga
FREE this weekend on Kindle
August 31, 2018
The Ruby Dares Me
Spoken word version of a poem by D Dodds Berry, featured in The Amie Series novels. All images, music and words (c) Laurie Perez.
A quick note from the author: D is an Irish poet, raised in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, now teaching in the wilds of Arizona in the western US. Someday I’d LOVE to hear his lines spoken by an Irish actor… if that’s you, consider yourself invited: send me a track.
FULL TEXT OF THE POEM:
Colors don’t lurk in you, needing
to be turned this way and that,
begging harsh light to call them forth.
Frivolous diamonds expect you to bend
and squint and seek refraction from greedy
elusive facets keeping
all their vibrant secrets hidden
in the hard chisel of war-born crystal.
That won’t do.
For you it must be real.
Juicy, ripe, fired from Earth for
being too brilliant to abide our dust.
Not cold and distant like a taunting star
you’ll never reach within a lifetime,
but perfervid, nucleic fusion
burning away borrowed echoes
of self-limiting stars across all time
to venerate newness in a gem.
Like your pulse, the ruby dares
me daily to remember: we are
for each other alive
and alive for each other.
D Dodds Berry, in The POWER of Amie Martine, sequel to The LOOK http://mybook.to/the-look ISBN 1523664339
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August 21, 2018
desire accelerates
submitting to the spell of a flickering story
August 18, 2018
It's all very entertaining, a real turn-on
I'm *not* the first person to say this: attentive enthusiasm - I mean very simply listening while someone shares what's on their mind (even if it's just some small reflection on what they did today) wow - such excellent foreplay.
Take care *not* to
seduce your inner demons this way.
Our lives run on stories, beginning with all that smalltalk hosted by the 24/7 cocktail party of the brain. How you talk to yourself - and how you listen to and honor that chatter - it's all very entertaining, a real turn-on. Be a little more selective about which lines you buy and which stories you tell You.
:
(Lovers: listen to your partners! Friend: listen to your friend! Self: listen to your soul - it knows how worthy and good-in-life You are and wants to do more with what you've got than just talk.)
July 28, 2018
a new kind of superpower
from StarTalk Radio https://www.startalkradio.net/show/the-geekiverse-with-kevin-smith/
THIS is the episode in which Neil deGrasse Tyson and Kevin Smith speculated on a radical superpower. They were excited by the concept, even though Chuck Nice thought it might “kill comic books.” They all spoke as if the concept had never been developed. I was excited, too — because it HAS been developed — in two novels I’ve published! I want them to know these books exist.
The Superpower Kevin Smith told Neil deGrasse Tyson he wants: that’s The LOOK! 
July 1, 2018
silent men
“Too many silent men have ruined themselves in themselves.” –Maria, in Torpor
The last guest left at sunrise. Pedro and I were having hot chocolate in the kitchen, at his asking. I had not cleaned at all. The floor was a painting of brown sauces, salsas verde and rojo, corn crumbs and wine stains. The air sang heavy with warm fruit and garlic and cilantro and beer and pepper. I looked at that little one across from me and I said:
You talk to me now. Maybe you don’t talk to anyone else. But you will talk to me. Too many silent men have ruined themselves in themselves. ~Maria, in TORPOR
Peter Arellano – or Pedro, as his grandmother calls him – grew up in the shadow of his father’s demons. Maria made serious mistakes with her son, Carlos – mistakes she hopes she can undo through his son.
Set in L.A., Phoenix, Sonora & Nayarit Mexico 
TORPOR: Though the Heart is Warm is a novel about spells we allow family to imprint on us – spells we must learn to break.
http://mybook.to/torpor-perez | ISBN 1453684751 | This is Peter’s story – read it with a good tequila or mescal.
June 22, 2018
in that motion of divine stupidity
Orpheus by Franz von Stuck 1891 [rights free usage] – Both Orpheus and Eurydice are pivotal characters in The Amie Series by Laurie Perez
“At the last minute, he broke the rule and he looked. He was so rapt in his view of the light at the end of the tunnel, he got excited, tuned up, he got crazy nervous and for a second he wavered in his confidence and he looked! To confirm or affirm or just firm up,” students laughing, “his manly love for her and in that motion of divine stupidity, he killed her dead forever with a glance. Hades ripped her back into his den and that was, proverbially, that.”
A girl across from me says bitterly, “No second, second chance for Orpheus.”
“He was fucked,” D continues, nodding. “Not because the gods were heartless, but because he fucked up. The guilt of that. Can you imagine? Spent the rest of his pathetic days wallowing, lamenting, composing (or was it decomposing?) heartbreaking tunes upon his lyre, dissolving in grief and music and art, never being the least bit happy or lovable. The saddest sap of all. How do we tell a story like that without being sappy? Oh woe! How do we shape into lines our most harrowing mistakes and losses without drenching them in sticky poetic sap?”
scene from D’s MFA classThe LOOK of Amie Martine | novel | ISBN 1523664339
http://mybook.to/the-look amazon | #amiemartine
June 21, 2018
who’s better: library or amazon?
OK – it’s an absurd question. We love libraries — in Arizona, we have some of the most compelling bibliophilic architecture I’ve encountered in all of my travels. Libraries are blessings! And we love amazon. I remember when it was new in the realm of book-lovers — in the days of noisy dial-up modems and Usenet — it rocked my world.
I was writing my first novel, living on a dirt road at the foot of the Huachuca Mountains in Southeastern Arizona, a short drive from the boarder of Mexico. The nearest big bookstores were two hours away in Tucson and the closest cool bookshop was an hour away in Bisbee. Having stacks of craved books and obscure titles arriving at my door was pure bliss. Yeah. I worshipped amazon.
These days I’m grateful for amazon because it carries my own novels. And I lament amazon because it buries them in the maze of more aggressively marketed titles.
Yesterday I learned a local library refused to stock one of my novels because it “doesn’t have many reviews on amazon.”A Phoenix Public Library patron filled out an online form asking the library to purchase The LOOK. The response they gave baffled him: in a pithy email, a person explained they had rejected his request because “it hasn’t been professionally reviewed yet” and because it didn’t meet an unspecified number equating to “many reviews on amazon.”
This news came to me in the wake of another confounding experience — amazon’s algorithm deleted a cluster of positive reviews from the book’s listing over the weekend. The reviews were legitimate and they were glowing. Now they’re gone — five remain. Sadly, the library in my city would have thought they were important.
It would make sense had the library replied it has a limited budget and can’t stock new items right now. It would have made (semi)sense if they’d come back to him saying they don’t stock paperbacks, or applied some other technical justification. But to say they depend on the number of amazon reviews to make their decision…? It feels wrong.
I have no desire to be the romanticized underdog in a competitive landscape.
I’ve written the books I wanted most to read — books I myself would buy when I discovered them on amazon. Fans have written to me privately expressing gratitude and deep insights received after reading and re-reading the books. They haven’t rated them publicly, but they’ve confirmed to me my love of Amie is not one in a million, but one among many.
Helping a novel and its characters reach a wider audience is important. From the moment it’s published, the novel belongs on shelves the author has never seen. It belongs in readers’ hearts and minds the author may never get to know personally. I have no doubt The LOOK and its sequels belong to the universe of readers who want to experience what Amie and Sunny and D and The Actor and Eurydice and Attar and Connor and Kate and Sammy and Faas and Orpheus go through as their lives fall apart and come together.
The person who rejected the library patron’s request has not read the book and has no clue why the patron thought it was worthy of being listed in their catalog. Someday, that will change. Amie’s world and the reading world will interweave and expand unlimited.
Arabian Library in Scottsdale, AZ – image by richärd+bauer architects
Since I mentioned them above: here’s a small sample of the gorgeous libraries we enjoy in the Sonoran Desert. If you’re in town, be sure to check them out.
Desert Broom Library in Phoenix, AZ – photo by richärd+bauer
Burton Barr Library in downtown Phoenix – image via Will Bruder Architects
Burton Barr Library in Downtown Phoenix
Thank you for reading today!Readers make the imagined world possible.
