City of Legends

Don’t ask.

A few moments ago, I removed from distribution two of my books, specifically Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite and As such…

These were mercurial actions taken because I, as the creator of these works and the arbiter of their fates, chose to.  Don’t worry, the excellent pieces within each volume will live on in perhaps future volumes, online, and via already existing print copies of these books.

I’m just getting warmed up.  The actual distribution cycle is such that it may be several weeks before the stores list them as out of print.

Having made the announcement that As such… will be joining the scrap heap, I also want to reassure hardy souls that there is salvage being done.  And while I have not yet made final stock of the survivors of love gods of a forgotten religion, I have made a somewhat (kinda/sorta) final decision regarding which poems from As such… will make it into loveaddict (at least the first edit pass).

These are (in no particular order):

• I will dream of you til morning
  
• beyond these walls (a sonnet)
  
• I stand for you (a villanelle)

Yes, just three.  The standards of loveaddict are exceedingly high.  As there is a rumour that this is my last book for a while, perhaps even leaving the rest of the works until postmortem, I want it to be a book that I am proud of, both in terms of literary quality and emotional resonance.

I haven’t yet made final decisions on a handful of pieces, but I can tell you that, as "love gods of a forgotten religion" is taken out of print, at least the titular poem, as well as "the patchwork skirt of my love", "Monument", "the Unicorns" and "We Owe Debt to Memory" will slip between the covers of loveaddict.

And, minor tsunami alert:  I will be taking out of print "As such…".  Great book, well done, I am just tired of the baggage it carries.  I am invoking the "TRANSCENDENCE" clause on this one.

I hear celebrations in many small pockets as I announce this.

As promised, here are the survivors from from an unexpected quarter.  Note that poems that are not making the carry over to loveaddict are not out of my catalog, just not thematically, structurally or qualitatively suitable for the new volume.  Also, as most of the new book is new material, I can afford to be brutal…

• traveler to an antique land
  
• Cithara Song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon
  
• the trellis of human experience
  
• I will wake you tonight

Note that among the poems that will be not making the move will be the Damascus poems, and the entirety of the Great Cycle to the Goddess of Fire and Poetry as well as…the Goldenheart Cycles.  So it is obviously not an issue of literary or emotional merit.  It has even been suggested in close circles that I also punch the ticket on As such...

I am not so cruel or shallow. 

Love, romance, sex.  The high of raptured contact.  First kiss.  Parting kiss.  The discovered lie.  The damning truth.  The smell of brimstone.  The smell of jasmine and warm skin.  The spirituality of making love.  The necessity of pain.

Themes.  Themes to be covered in loveaddict, my next book (you’ve seen the cover in my last entry).  What was originally to be a volume of all new poetry, exploring the nature of love and why we are drawn to it, has evolved.  I am not giving details.  I want to surprise you, to please you like an unexpected kiss or a bundle of roses.  I will tell you that the book is a confession, and the titular character is me.  Not a confession of some great evil or crime, but of how my mind and soul work and how I have sought to fill the need for love and to love in my life.

I am still editing at this time, but we are probably looking at around 160-175 works.  Many published previously, elsewhere, in various literary and poetry journals (I don’t keep track of my publication credits, which I find in the ghetto of academic poets is considered a worse sin than plagiarism.  Fuck ‘em.  This is not a game to keep score in, this is my religion, not a dilettante’s hobby).  Many of the poems are new, so new you can smell the afterbirth.  Some are refractions of the past, distillations of the present and visions of an uncertain, but hopeful, future.

There are reflections of the catalog of my muses, from Alabaster to Aubergine.  From the Mad Gypsy to Brigit.  Valkyrie and Goldenheart.  The cats are present, Panther and Leopard, but only there because the Radiant Tiger found virtue in them, spoke of them, and chose to make the words public.  There are new muses, or at least ones you have never met before. 

Soon after the book comes out, I will be removing selected selected earlier volumes of my works from circulation.  Some of my older volumes contain works that, in the filter of time, I have judged disposable.  Just as I have decided certain people are.

The blurbology for this one will be interesting.  I haven’t decided yet who to approach.  Maybe Larry Jaffe?  Some new people.  Som non-writerly types, even.  Many were startled when "Artisan and domestic diva" Michele Beschen, the host of B. Original, blurbed As such…

I do wish to thank the lovely and talented Liza Lorraine for her contribution to this book, in the form of the cover photo.  It is stunning.  If one poem in this volume speaks to one person the passion and evocation of emotion that her photo does to me, I will be pleased.

Now. back to the editing. 

Finally, after much fumfering and threats of jihad, the first two of my books to be made available specifically for the Amazon Kindle, that remarkable eBook reader that is dominating the marketplace, are now available at Amazon.com.

The Compleat Panther Cycles, that darling of the intelligentsia of the digital renaissance, is now available for your Kindle device at a fraction of the tree-killer, massive 700 page volume it normally is.  With all of the poems, forewords, annotations and jaw dropping internal artwork featuring Jillian Ann, it comes in at just (get this) $9.59!!  Amazon retails the hardcopy for $36.00.  That’s almost 75% off!

As such…, last years dynamo of passion unfurled and hurled defiantly into unsympathetic winds, got turned around in record time and is now ready for your paper-free purusal for a mere $6.39, that’s more than half off the cover price!  I actually feel a little cheap at that price, but if they want to sacrifice their margin, I’m good.  The poetry is no less passionate or penetrating or, sadly, ironic. 

In any case, this means I now feel compelled to push on with adding more of my books.  Watch this space for updates.

Not ten minutes ago I got a response from the help desk for Kindle at Amazon.com (slogan:  "Don’t fight us, you will be assimilated"), informing me that once As such… goes live, I will be able to edit the messed-up title, but that once the process is started, you can’t change it until it comes out the other side.

I thank them, then told them they need to work on their "12 to 72 hours" thing.

I am waiting to hear back from the people in charge of, or at least involved in customer service for, Amazon’s Kindle publishing.  I have two issues, but still not so much as a low, plaintive moan to indicate anyone has received, read, reacted to or resolved my emails.  The sad thing is that the party line from Amazon (slogan:  "Look out, there are llamas!") is that the book(s) will be fully processed within 12 to 72 hours.

That’s issue #1, as it is bearing down on 96 hours for The Compleat Panther Cycles and it is, as yet, only listed in a sort of "coming soon" status by Amazon (slogan:  "Home of lots of slightly used Segways!").  Annoying, as I usually depend on my business associates to be a bit insane about deadlines.  But, who knows, maybe the size of that massive volume is slowing things down.  I wouldn’t know, as they are not talking to me.

Issue #2 is the self-service interface for transferring your previous published book.  I overlooked a field and it dutifully warned me to fix it before it accepted.  Good for it!  Thank you, Amazon (slogan:  "Eat hot flaming muppet death, mom and pop bookstores!").  But when I filled in the wayward field, the form reset the title of the book to a generic "New book 1" or something to that effect, which I didn’t catch.  How do I know I didn’t forget it the first time?  Trust me, I was going nuts trying to decide whether to use the short form of As such or the long form of As such…romantic poems of rebirth or the really, really long form of  As such I get dumped again right after putting a woman on the cover of a book, which Amazon (slogan:  "We’re really big and personally know Stephen King, bitch all you like!") would not appreciate as I have found large, detached and quasi-automated corporations do not appreciate irony.

So I immediately fired off a strongly worded request to allow me to fix the mistake caused by their semi-user-friendly interface, but still, after 72 hours, all I can show for the request is that book, as well, is now listed in a "Hey, look at me, I’m about to be available…someday" status, with the silly, generic name.

So I have held off releasing the other two books I was going to release last weekend to them, while I wait for some sign of life from Amazon (slogan:  "Our rainforests burnt to the ground by wildcat land speculators.  Take that, Al Gore!").

Sigh.

I promised a surprise.  Nothing expected.  Nothing about my love life (I have a love life?  Amazing.)

What I am about to announce means I am embracing a shifting paradigm in books.  The amazing part is perhaps how slow I have been, considering my relationship with the digital renaissance and the elements of that movement over the last two decades.  Ah, well, even Odin is blind in one eye.

To the point:  I am working this weekend to bring several of my books to Kindle, the eBook reader that is marketed through Amazon.  This will provide my content of my books, in the layout and form originally presented, available to the audience that is embracing the paperless book movement.  The books will be provided at a lower price than the hard copies, particularly with The Compleat Panther Cycles, and will be the full books, no detail lost.

To assist in the market, we’ve come up with a series of marketing slogans (isn’t this fun?  No.  It makes me feel like a pimp, when in fact, as the author, I am the hooker.)

The books selected to be the first wave of my transition, along with their "clever" slogans are:

The Compleat Panther Cycles 
slogan:  Kindle the legend

As such
slogan:  Kindle the fire

The Morgantown Suite Poems
slogan:  Kindle memories

A Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite 
slogan:  Kindle a quest

 The slogans are subject to tweaking (I am an editors’ nightmare).  The whole idea is to use the name of the device as the verb.  The final prices will be released when the books go live, sometime in the next three days or so.  I will keep you informed.

Now, back to dealing with some interestingly erotic text messages I just received.  Bad girl.

 The drive to see my parents (I am in to actually see my 95 year old Grandmother, who is in failing health) is always an interesting time, as it allows me buffered time to think out loud.  Usually I get a lot of thinking and writing and sonic experimentation on the 3-1/2 hour trip.

This morning was no exception.  It started as a ramble, dealing with lyrical issues on the new Evangelist CD, but then segued into an examination of my life over the last year.  A lot has happened, many events and elements I could not have foreseen.  Some gentle, some brutal.

All in all, I have come to a conclusion.  This is one of the best years of my life.  

I have reconnected with old friends I had no expectation of ever hearing from again.  I have taken public stands on the issues of the day, been recognized for these stands, and made connections with people who have the power to affect things.  I have loved openly and with abandon a woman who loved me in the same manner.  I have broken some bad habits, written some great poetry, recorded some interesting material to posterity, helped a few friends get elements of their lives in order, saved at least two lives (according to the individuals) and published a remarkable book.  I’ve learned new words and concepts, examined my own failings and picked splinters from my metaphorical ass.

There have been some downer days and strange pains, but when the scales are weighed, I have to say that if every year was as remarkable as this one, I would be the luckiest man alive.  Most people do not live as much and as well in an entire lifetime as I have lived this past year.

I thank all of you who have shared this voyage with me, from the most vocal of friends to the saddest stalkers.  From the constant to the mercurial, from the inspiring to the oppressive.  From those who will still be a part of my life next year and for years and decades to come, to those who have now passed back into the grey.  

I thank you all with profound and spiritual gratitude and wish only to say that, while I compiled a massive list of names to include here, I shall not.  Some secrets are best kept.  While I won’t lie to you, I will withhold that which would force others harm or pain.

I have some great ideas now to finish up those damn final tracks on Evangelist, and am looking forward to tomorrow with great hope, joy and peace.

I have no quarrel with any of you.  If you have with me, that is a measure of you, not me.  Being loved and respected is not a measure of a person, loving and respecting others is.

Namaste.

I stayed up way too late last night, working on the final tracks to Evangelist. Every time I thought I had one finished, I’d suddenly get another idea, changing the instrumentation, the attitude, something about the piece in my mind. It’s a little insane right now. I feel like I’ve lit the fuse on the rocket but am having problems getting comfortable in the pilot’s seat. This will probably end up being one of those projects where I hate everything about it before I am done with it.

We were working with the guitar for one particularly upbeat piece (which I shall not name at this time) when I realized we needed a good bass line. So we turned what we working with on the guitar into a bass line. Better. But now, the drums sounded wrong. Too fast, too shaky. Maybe slow them down a bit and…hold it. Now we have a problem with the tone of the vocals. Sheesh. This reminds me of why I gave up painting. I would tweak things until they were a mess. Maybe I just need to timebox the process and deal with it.

A name for the publishing house is driving me nuts. The original name, peacat, is off the table as far as I am concerned. I could use it, but that would be disrespectful and a little odd. As such… will have to go down through history as the one publication of that imprint. An amazing book, if now a bit….ironic.

McTaggart wants Monster River Press. No. Too regional (we dubbed the Monongahela River the Monster River for our collaboration Psalms of the Monster River Cult.

City of Legends Press is in play, but too self-referential. Likewise any variation on my name or various sobriquets. I will give myself until mid-July to work it out, I have authors waiting on me and I am so fucking tired of waiting on other people. Patience was the last virtue I learned and the first one I lose, it is not in my nature to wait, I pace a hole in the rug.

I am going to see my Grandmother this weekend, and I have an invite to a party. I know why I was invited, and although there is a part of me that always knows I am cunning enough to dodge flagrant temptation, for at least three good reasons I don’t even want to see me have to. So we shall see if my curiosity and arrogance beat out my virtue and common sense.

Place your bets.