Uvi’s Comments (group member since Apr 09, 2012)

Uvi’s comments from the The Creative Spark with Uvi Poznansky group.

Did you notice the new slideshow feature on my blog? Right at the very top?

If you are reading any one of my books--Apart From Love, Home, or A Favorite Son (in either Kindle or print edition) I will gladly feature your image here!

To learn more, click here: Your Image at the Very Top!

Aniruddha wrote: "Sure, I'll post 2-3 paras next time.."

Looking forward to read more from your pen!

Author Brian Bigelow, originally from Minnesota, currently lives in Colorado with his wife, a cat and a very protective Chihuahua. I find it so rewarding to find his short and sweet review for my poetry book, Home:

★★★★★ Excellent collection., May 17, 2013
By Brian Bigelow "Brian Bigelow" (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Home (Kindle Edition)

I've had a copy of this book since November and finally was able to get to reading it. This is an exception collection of poetry and prose. Thought it was quite wonderful as I was entranced in the verse. Would recommend it to any poetry lover.

Aniruddha wrote: "You always every time have something new within your thread. I enjoy reading them.
Really amazing. Worth learning."

"Life is a mix of struggles and rejoicing. It may be intense and depressing at one and smooth and pleasant at next. I do not have to reinvent the wheel; we all know this.

Everyone needs a moral support; be it tough or celebration times. Isn’t it?

We all need it. Don't we?"

Oh what a wonderful, uplifting post! Thank you so much Aniruddha for sharing this! Next time, post a longer 'teaser'--a paragraph or two, leading to your blog post. Love it!

Friday night we have a date
Check your watch... Don't be late!
Just don't ask, Will you be mine?
Here's the bottle: uncork the wine

I'll bring chocolates, no need to cook,
Oh wipe my tears: the audiobook
Is still not here... But luckily
I just enjoy your company

No more sadness, no more blues
Lets put on our dancing shoes!
Friday night we have a date
Check your watch... Don't be late!

¸.•**•.¸¸.•**•.¸¸.•**•.¸


Come Join me Friday night, the last night of my launch event
♥ Love ♥

Get the print edition
Apart From Love
Audiobook coming soon



My sculpture, The Dance of the Old Virgin

A new author page now showcases highlights of my literary work. Take a look at it and please, if you will, tweet or like it:

Just found a new review for A Favorite Son!

★★★★ A Must Read, May 11, 2013
By Cynthia Hamilton "Cindy" (Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: A Favorite Son (Kindle Edition)

This book is a superb modern day version of the biblical story of Isaac and Rebecca and their twin sons. It tells of how deceitful and greedy people can be within their own families.

The author also writes poetry and it shows in her beautiful flowing way with words. It's a book to remember!

Come one, come all! Cast your vote in the writing contest!
Beautiful writings about love. Which one deserves to win?

Vote HERE

♫ °˚˚ Happy Mother's Day! ✿*‿*) ♡♥ ◦°˚˚
And what about ♥ Love ♥
A Last minute update



This is my watercolor titled A Thousand and One Nights, in which I explored how the roundness of the female figure is complemented and contrasted by the rectangular divisions in the picture plane. Here is Shahrazad, whose life depends on her story-telling ability. If the king is bored with her, he will send her to her death, as he has done with his previous harem girls. As long as he is intrigued by her words, he will let her live. In a way, she is the perfect symbol for what I am doing here: tell a story, and hope it will entertain you.

So now, bear with me: For various technical glitches at Audible, the audiobook edition of Apart From LoveApart From Love has not come out yet... So instead, I have changed course during the last couple of days, and offered you my gifts: my ebooks, just in time for Mother's Day. All the same, I so wanted you to have the opportunity to give the audiobook to mom on her special day... She would have loved it! How can I describe this experience? It's like witnessing a great performance, not in the theatre but in the intimacy of your own home. Still, the audiobook is coming, and soon. I hope you will consider getting it then. And so, here is my last minute update: I am rescheduling the last day of the event.

Please make a note of it: the launch event ♥ Love ♥ (please join, if you haven't already) will come to its high point on Friday, May 17th, 5:00pm--8:00pm PST. Until then, I will do my very best to promote the Writing Contest, where your beautiful entries are showcased. This way, more readers can come, and appreciate your work. So far, over twelve hundred page visits to the entries page during this month!

Then on Friday, I will announce the winners. Three front-runners will be chosen, and in addition, I will pick one more winner--a wildcard--out of a hat.

Please forgive me this last minute change of plan. And now, happy Mother's Day! If your mom is nearby, give her a big hug for me!


♥.•**•..
((¯`♥´¯)) ✰¸.•*¨`*•..¸♥
.`*.¸.*´¸.•*¨`*•..¸♥...♥

I'm waiting to be taken, but now, be forewarned
Don't you dare come near me, or else you'd be scorned--
Unless you delight in contemporary fiction
And enjoy reading a book with detailed scene depiction

If you let me pull you in, deep inside
Until you find yourself there, in my characters' mind
I'll make you burn in hell, ablaze in desire,
I'll let you swirl like smoke, ever higher and higher

I'll bring you down here: Santa Monica, Venice Beach
For a father-son meeting, with a blame and a breach
You'll hear Lenny, Natasha, Anita and Ben
And be tortured by guilt, again and again

Find a path to forgiveness, find a way to come clean
Find the words to explain what exactly you mean
Turn page after page, then fall to your knee
'Cause Apart From Love, no feeling is free



All three will be FREE!!!
When?
May 10-11, 2013
What?
Home
A Favorite Son
Apart From Love

And psst... get the audiobook for Mother's Day:
A Favorite Son (US)
A Favorite Son (UK)

Aniruddha wrote: "Uvi wrote: "Aniruddha wrote: "Uvi wrote: "I aim to make my books a work of art, inside and out. My artistic covers have won several contests. And when you open them, you can see how carefully I hav..."

:) I know exactly what you mean... We live and we learn!

Let me give you the dearest gift that I can
Do not refuse me, for my story began
With passion at heart, guilt down at the gut
And sentences that I weave, then turn and cut
Now I give it to you, and this is my plea
Hold my book in your hand, it is yours, it is free!



All three will be FREE!!!
When?
May 10-11, 2013
What?
Home
A Favorite Son
Apart From Love

And psst... get the audiobook for Mother's Day:
A Favorite Son (US)
A Favorite Son (UK)

Aniruddha wrote: "Uvi wrote: "I aim to make my books a work of art, inside and out. My artistic covers have won several contests. And when you open them, you can see how carefully I have considered every detail insi..."

My pleasure Aniruddha. I noticed that you gave a lot of thought to the design of your poetry books, too!

The clock is now ticking, time to set the alarm
Be super careful and you'll come to no harm
Head over to Amazon at the stroke of midnight
To find my book free! Oh what a delight...
Get Apart From Love, A Favorite Son
Get Home, and let the yarn be spun...

Check out the details here: All three will be FREE

★★★★★ "Uvi Poznansky has penned a literary symphony complete with a cast of likeable, bruised characters"
Review by Ashley Fontainne

ALL THREE WILL BE FREE!
When?
May 10-11, 2013
Home
A Favorite Son
Apart From Love

I aim to make my books a work of art, inside and out. My artistic covers have won several contests. And when you open them, you can see how carefully I have considered every detail inside. This includes the choice of font, the size of different fields of text, the white space around blocks of text, the indentation of the first paragraph in the story as compared to the indentation of following paragraphs--all of which create a balance; a black-and white environment for you to sail away into the story.

In the case of my novel, Apart From Love, I have focused on several design details. For example, the first letter of each chapter in the book is unique, in the traditional manner of illuminated manuscripts. This special attention to the first letter signifies a beginning of a new thought, and an invitation to the reader to pause before delving in.

I chose a fancy font for the first letter, called Kokonor. Furthermore, I placed it carefully, like a piece of art, in relation to the following letters. This can not be done simply by typing the letters and selecting different fonts--but rather by adding a 'text box' and carefully placing it on the page, letting the text rearrange itself around it.



Here, in Anita's voice, is the text for the opening of the chapter shown above:

"Since the bleeding began, I’ve been missing my ma more and more. If she was here I could ask her, like, How come I feel so alone. How come I can see, all of a sudden I can now see how my youth is wasting away in this place. Like, I have no air, I’m wilting here. And Lenny, he don’t even pay no attention, ‘cause he’s back to his usual thing, which is: comb his thinning, gray hair—sleek it back, real slow and careful—and then work all day, write all night, either out or away.
Me, I thought getting married was meant to change things—but then, if things are changing it’s not for the better."

Treat yourself to a gift!
Get the highly acclaimed novel with 48 eloquent reviews
Dubbed "A literary symphony"

An artistically designed print edition
Apart From Love

This time, I will open in a round-about way. Do you like a 'open-ended' story? I mean, a story with an end ties most threads in the yarn but not all, so the story lingers in your mind--so you have to keep looking at it, this way and that, trying to imagine what else happened? In effect, you become the writer of the future events of the story.

Two of the chapters in Apart From Love are open-ended, and I am not going to tell you which ones--you will have to read the novel, and find out for yourself! What I am going to tell you is the trouble I found myself in, because of these open-ended ends--first, with both of my narrators, and then with ACX, the place where the audiobook is undergoing an intense process of Quality Analysis before it is offered for sale to you.

Most audiobooks are carried along by the voice of a single narrator. Apart From Love is unusual because we have a dual-narration project: he said, she said. For her part, Heather (who plays Anita) sent me three version of the last sentence, so I may choose the best variation of an unfinished end. And David (who plays Ben) did a couple of variations on the last sentence in another chapter, before I approved the entire project. In hindsight I have a better way of suggesting to them how to perform this feat: first, extend that last sentence, write something outrageous, horrible, funny beyond the last letter, and then stop just short of it--

Yesterday--taking a short break from chatting with you, and running the launch event--I sent a note to ACX. I was becoming worried that their approval process is taking too long, and started asking myself, Will I have to extend the launch event beyond Mother's Day? Will I have to stop and restart it later? I would hate to do anything like that... So here is what I said:

"I approved the audiobook production of Apart From Love on April 12, 2013, and received a note from you saying, 'Barring any issues in the quality check, that process should take around 2-3 weeks'. It is over 3 weeks now, and I am eager to let listeners know the audiobook is out. I am at the end of a great launch event for it, I do not want to lose their interest if it takes longer. Please let me know the status of Apart From Love."
The reply came in later that day:

"Chapter 17 has a truncated audio issue (file cuts off before audio track is finished)"

I replied, as did David from his end, that the end of this chapter is cut off by design, so as to let the reader imagine what happened. In response, they qualified their instruction, which--I hate to admit it--did make a lot of sense:

"Since the 'cutoff' is intentional there still needs to be a certain amount of room tone (spacing between the end of the narration and end of the file). It sounds too abrupt as is.... after being reviewed the files get sent to our encoding team, during this process they examine the files (the book was initially rejected due to the abrupt end of chapter 17)"

With that, came a list of instructions to please revise the audio files, recompile the entire fixed audiobook into a single zip file, with specific naming instruction; upload the zip file to their online dropbox; let them know it is ready for them, and wait for them to review the new submission, which they would do as soon as possible.



What happened next? At this point, this story is open-ended, too--
Stay tuned

I love the idea of listening to a story. But being new to the technology I can understand the hesitation many of you may feel. If you have never listened to audiobooks before, perhaps you find yourself wondering, hmmm... What device do I need? As it turns out, you already have it:

You can listen to audiobooks on any device that is compatible with the mp3 audio format, including: Sony Walkman, Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod; mp3 players by Sony, Archos, Coby, Creative, SanDisk and many more; Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7 smartphones and tablets. Here's a good article about the use of your Smartphone for listening: How to Listen to Audio Books on Your Smartphone with Audible
You can listen to audiobooks on your computer, using iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other program that plays mp3 files.
You can listen to audiobooks on your e-reader. Both the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook can play mp3 files. Here are two good articles about the use of e-readers for listening: How to Listen to Audiobooks on an Amazon Kindle or a Barnes and Noble Nook, and Listening to Audio Books on Kindle 1st Generation.

Even simpler: Audible, the Amazon company specializing in audiobooks, will gladly help you--24 hours a day, 7 days a week--to download the audiobook to your preferred device. It is quick and painless... Here is their help line: 1-888-283-5051 (US & Canada) or 1-973-820-0400 (international.)

If you spend a lot of time driving on long trips, doing yardwork, or even sitting around the fireplace, you can imagine what a great companion audiobooks can be to spin away the hours. Great narrators make books come alive. Being so close to you, breathing words into your ear, they make the experience both intimate and heightened, with every nuance in the story becoming fully expressed.



The audiobook of A Favorite Son is already here!

Download Apart From Love ebook
The audiobook is just around the corner...
Stay tuned!

Aniruddha wrote: "Happy to know about on-going dairy of conversations between your Father and you. Quite new for me."

Aniruddha, when I was a little girl, my father kept an on-going diary in which he jotted down his conversations with me. It was written almost like a play, centered on the dialog between us. Six years ago, when I came back to my childhood home to mourn him (during the Shiv-aa, the seven days period after his passing) I unearthed many of his long lost documents, and among them--the diary.

It is in a surprisingly great shape, despite the yellowing pages, and even if you don't know a word of Hebrew, you can appreciate his strong, fluent pen stroke and beautiful handwriting. It is firm even in the process of crossing out a few words.



This handwriting must have been on my mind when I wrote the opening lines of a short story, And Then She Left Him:

"He looks at the line. It is written in blue ink, pressed into the sheet of paper—vigorously here, faintly there—with his usual stroke, a stroke that drives through the spikes and valleys in the shapes of the letters at a steady slant. The line reaches the margin, where it is punctuated, unexpectedly, by a red stain.

Blotting it is bound to leave fingerprints, and so Mr. Schriber decides to leave it alone. He lifts the paper by its corner—and a drop bleeds down; he lays it down on the desk—and the stain goes on spreading. Going back to his writing, he applies too much pressure on the pen—and the pointed nib digs into the paper. Taking a deep breath, he tries to compose himself. The pen is his weapon. The simple act of pulling it over the soft, white surface has never failed to calm him down. Letter by letter, mark by mark, it will soon draw him into a different state of mind."

Excerpt from Home

Connie wrote: "Thank you for your warm welcome and for the invitation to post in the Writing discussion."

My pleasure Connie!