City of Legends

The other day I was asked how many books I have had published and I had to guess.  I don’t think it is senility, yet, but just there’s been a few and some of them are far enough back that I forget them…so as much for my own edification as my audience’s…here’s the master list of my books

1.  PanthEon                                                        

ISBN #0-9659576-0-8

My first book, the Panther talked me into it as a predicate to my taking part in the Southern Poets’ Tour of 1996.  A lovely volume containing solid layout of about 70 of the poems from the Panther Cycles.  Out of print, but you can still find it in niche bookstores or occasionally on eBay.

3.  From an Unexpected Quarter                        

ISBN #0-5950023-1-5

Not really my second book, but this volume sucked up #2, "from out of the city", and added a hundred or more additional poems.  Despite some solid individual pieces, and the entirety of the Goldenheart Cycles, very uneven.  best know, perhaps, for the scandalous cover photo of my second wife, model Ann-Michelle.

4.  Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion                      

ISBN #0-5952225-2-8

The second book I did with Ann-Michelle gracing the cover, a stronger book overall that "from an unexpected quarter", some of my better work from that era.

5(a).  101 Great Love Poems (Hardbound)                

ISBN #0-5956540-2-9

My sole hardbound volume to date, a popular gift book, which is why I haven’t taken it out of circulation.  Truth be told, it’s several poems from the Panther Cycles, repackaged with a marketing-concept title.

5(b).  101 Great Love Poems (Softbound)                  

ISBN #0-5952588-2-4

The softbound edition of the book.

6.  INVOCATO                                                    

ISBN #1-4116293-1-0

My collection of some of my best works, not given the wide release of most of my other books, because I wanted to keep it to the hardcore fans.

7.  THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES                      

ISBN #1-4116379-4-1

All 640+ poems, with annotations and both cover and internal illustrations featuring goth model and recording artist Jillian Ann.  A massive book.

8.  The Morgantown Suite Poems                            

ISBN #1-4116337-4-1

Written over a period of several days to give my impressions of the West Virginia town where I spent my teen years.  Some lovely works.  Was disqualified from being used as a prize for a Poetry Out Loud competition because the subject matter of the poem "If your husband gets home".

9.  Ronin in the Temple Of Aphrodite                      

ISBN #978-1-4303042-5-8

A solid collection of muse-free romantic and erotic poems.  I took it out of circulation after the cover model decided she wanted to pick a fight with me, but plan to re-issue it with a new cover in the coming months(!).

10.  Psalms of the Monster River Cult                            

ISBN #978-1-4357072-8-3

Daniel S. McTaggart and I collaborated on this collection of poems about the Morgantown area, the people and culture.  It was fun and well worth the opportunity to work with my longtime poetic mountain poet friend.

11.  As such…                     

ISBN #978-1-4357144-8-9

During my very intense and public relationship with South African writer Candy Tothill, this volume, featuring her image on the cover and a foreword written by her, surfaced.  Intense, romantic, erotic and ultimately ironic as it debuted just days before she packed it in on the relationship.

12.  loveaddict                            

ISBN #978-0-5572839-0-3

Powerful, confessional and true.  The poetry of romantic obsession, of love, of lust of madness.  A very satisfying book to complete, although perhaps a bit inaccessible to my saner readers.

12.  Selected Poems and Passions:  2004-2011                           

ISBN #tbd

Going through a few last minute changes before it goes global, I would have to say this is my strongest book since "love gods…".  The last seven years of love, pain, madness and joy. 

Later this year, or maybe next, you get Apokalypsis, which will render these all moot.  I might even pull them all from publication.  I haven’t decided yet.

It is the return of the "From Out of the City" podcast.

Featuring a funked up, cathedral organ pure testosterone and tears fueled delivery of "The Sacraments" from "Apokalypsis".

Well, what the hell are you waiting for?  Here’s the link:

From Out of the City for January 1, 2011

This Friday night, at approximately midnight, as the new year turns on the East Coast of the United States and the people closest to me are, for the most part. elsewhere, the "From Out of the City" podcast returns with something remarkable, "The Sacraments" from the forthcoming book Apokalypsis, perfromed with my band.

I just listened to the revised music, now I have to go back into the studio and tweak my vocals, as I need more from my voice.  The integrity of the original take is amazing, so powerful that the Sunday Girl herself refuses to listen to it.  I need more.  I need incandescence.  I need a religious fervor worthy of a Joan of Arc or a Saint Stephen.  I need to dig deep and release it all.

And I will.  The next three days are very important.  They are a time of great turmoil and pain in my life, or survival and passion and the last romantic verb.  And I don’t want all of you who have waited the last couple of years for the return of the podcast to be disappointed.  I don’t want to be disappointed, not by myself (I am disappointed enough in others, you know).

I’ll post the link once the podcast is up and you shall see, you shall hear, did I take it all the way?  Did the afterburners kick in and the last wisps of fire really press things as far as they can go?

Let’s find out what I have left, shall we?

A few months back the manuscript for my "next" book, Apokalypsis took a 176.25 degree turn when I decided to turn it into a full on love letter to the extraordinary woman I call "White Sunday".  No problem.

But then I kept writing more "White Sunday" poems and the book kept growing.  I asked a good friend, fellow poet Mary Katherine Brake, if she would be so kind as to take over the editing duties.  She agreed, but she also said that there was no logical end point for the book until either I stopped writing "White Sunday" poems (at this moment around two hundred and growing daily) or the relationship took such a dramatic turn that I had to change the muse’s "totem".

I agreed and handed off the project, realizing it could be months, even years, complicated by a complicated relationship the likes of which would make the most love-starved fan go "Phew!  I’m glad he’s not involved with me!"

So I decided I needed to do a different book in time for my Spring Tour.  Something different, something stunning.  Something so overladen with images and poetry that it would explode in your mind and eyes like artillery shells full of ecstasy and pain.  This was the book currently called "orphans", but it will undoubtably change names as now, thanks to the editorial tutelage of Ms. Brake, I have ample reason to postpone that book until mid-Summer 2011.  No problem.

I’ll do a third book, something powerful and romantic and poll my readers and find out…they want what?  Erotic?  Sheesh.  And at the very moment I am trying to demonstrate to that small piece of the universe that matters to me that I am not some overly-intense screaming Byronist.  Okay, I am, but I have other sides to me as well, really. 

Thus was born the need for a fourth book.  Something patoral, gentle, true but in the subtle whisper not the cataclysmic bombast.  I am right now working on the concept, but I think you will find it oddly refreshing.

So, here we go.  I was going to do a book in 2010.  Instead, no book in 2010.  Four books (maybe) in 2011.  Blame my editor.  I knew there was a reason I hated editors.

The good news?  I already have the covers to the first three designed. Really.  No, you can’t see them…yet.

 #1:  If you haven’t been over to my pure poetry blog, Amomancer, http://amomancer.blogspot.com , you are missing the show.

#2:  I am going nuts trying to figure out who my most loyal visitor is, all I know is they come on from a Mac with a Katy, Texas node point.  They’re the reason City of Legends beat out williamfdevault.com  last month by THREE visits!  Drop me a note, leave a comment, you deserve recognition or at least a tip of the hat.

#3:  The book situation gets wilder.  Recognizing that Apokalypsis might be a while, I conceive the new project, my editor, God love her, comes up with a brilliant idea that would make that book even more amazing, but it would mean postponing its release until next summer.  Meanwhile, I was planning to use it as my tourbook, which means either a) postponing the tour or b) coming up with a third book idea…I love my editor.  I love my editor.  I love my editor. (I figure if I keep saying that I will unclench my jaw)

still alive and well.

I am making plans to revive my podcasts in the new year, and to kick off my Spring reading tour in Florida around Valentine’s Day. 

The new book:  "Amomancer:  selected poems" will be coming out in January, most likely.

"Apokalypsis"?  Hm.  May be a dead project, may be transitioning.  I will see in the next few weeks where the fates take me.  I may end up cannibalizing the resources I set aside for the promotion of that book to support "Amomancer".  Too early to tell.  A shame, actually, but I merely pass through this world and life, I do not control it, nor would I want to.

I am strong, and well.  I surprise myself sometimes. 

Just requested permission from my editor for "Apokalypsis" to use "The Sacraments" in "Amomancer:  selected poems".  Let’s see how territorial she is.  And when did I start asking permission from editors?  WTFFFF?

Right now have the headphones on as "Nowhere Fast" by Ellen Aim and the Attackers (actually, Fire, Inc.) plays from "Streets of Fire".  Perhaps my favourite cult movie of all time.  The cats have buried several low yield fission weapons in a trench full of strontium isotopes and are threatening to make the laundry room a kill zone if I keep dancing.  Cowards.

Reactivated my Skype account.  It had lay dormant since Aubergine.  If you need to touch base with me, drop me a note or look for me on the wire. 

I was challenged by my friend Thomas to compare and contrast what is happening right now in regards to my writing to other muses, from my past.  This reminds me of a challenge a friend of mine once issued when he complained that Larry Bird was getting too much attention in the NBA.  We did a statistical breakdown on his play and found out he was the dominant player, by a major margin, at the time.

But, to mollify Thomas and put my current state of being in perspective, let’s use, as a yardstick, the following muses:  the Panther, the Leopard and Brigit.  I am selecting those as they are the benchmarks of my muses, in terms of number and quality of works, each having been involved with me over a span.

Let’s make it easy. 

Brigit was a factor in my life for approximately the same period of time that the Sunday Girl has been, so far.  During that time I wrote approximate 110 poems about her.  In a recent breakdown of my ten best works, none marked the list (sorry, love). 

The Leopard was a factor in my life for about 6-1/2 years, nearly twenty times the period of time of the Sunday Girl.  During that time I wrote approximately 150 poems about her.  Of those, one makes the all-time poems list.

The Panther was a factor on my life for a year and a half, about four times the period that the Sunday Girl has been in my life, so far.  I wrote to her approximately 800 poems.  Staggering.  In the base period, that period equivalent to my run so far with the Sunday Girl, I wrote 34 poems to the Panther.  Of the full 800, a single poem stands out in my all-time list.

The Sunday Girl.  Four months, more or less.  215 poems, as of a half hour ago.  6 of my top ten all time works come from that collection.  If I continue to create at this rate, by the time we reach the involvement duration I was with the Panther, we are talking nearly 1,000 poems, and already of a measurably higher quality and durability.

We’re not talking a distraction.  We are talking about major, profound and welcome change to the regime of the muses in my work. 

So, Thomas, does that answer your question?

I opened up a Word file this afternoon, ready to start on one of my infinite sequence of unfinished novels, but with the realization that this one might achieve that transcendent state of "completed".  The characters are resonant, the plot, relevant and timeless, the setting and events have a certain sparkle to them, like diamond encrusted dental floss.

The first line kicked like an electrocuted mule. 

I wrote one paragraph, started the second. 

Went back and read it and closed the file.  It is too true.  I would probably lose everything of value in this life if I wrote that novel.  I deleted the file, put on my iTunes, and slipped over here to ask the question of myself and my readers as to when people began to count more to me than amomancy?

I know the answer, I have the poem that foretold it, that began the cascade.  It is called "faith healer" and it was written in early 2009.  "faith healer" is also the subtitle to the second volume of the Apokalypsis series, the White Sunday poems.

I have been hoisted on my own petard.  So here I am, trapped between the fire and the ice, the stone and the steel, the passion and the purification.  For once, truly, those elements of my life which I have always held perfect control over, even when everything else tumbled down, it is out of my hands and I am having to place a higher premium on loyalty and faith than on my own intellect and creativity.

The jack becomes the knave becomes the jester.  Humbling, but there is a lesson in this for me.

I just have to figure it out.

As I am utterly dependent on the Sunday Girl for the editing and therefore the release date for "Apokalypsis", I have turned to other volumes for publication.  No shame to her, she has a lot on her plate just putting up with me, and I am resolute that no one but her will have a say in the final publication.

But, to those of you who have been part of my mythology for the last few decades, the publication of the book "Malevolences" may be more interesting anyway.  A collection of works from my black catalog, those poems I had earmarked only for publication after my death, I have grown weary of waiting, my patience is needed elsewhere and thus I steal from that account.  Look for it early in 2011.

The third book is starting to take form, but will suffer the same fate as "Apokalypsis", and this is the second of the books in the poetic tale of the Sunday Girl, entitled "Faith". 

Such is my resolve to release the books as I envision them that, should a final publication date for "Apokalypsis" not be announced by October 20th of this year, it will not see publication prior to next August.  Sorry, children, I am bound by my own rules.  I’ll explain this all, soon, perhaps on October 21st?

To celebrate several events, but most explicably the 1,000th post that I have made to my pure poetry blog, Amomancer, I have posted the entire 99 poem collection and contents of my forthcoming book "Apokalypsis".  I edited out a few small elements in the dedication and author’s section, to obscure the identity of White Sunday a/k/a The Sunday Girl, as she is not yet ready to go public, but otherwise, it is all there; the Sacraments, Lighthouse, the first 60 of the White Sunday poems, various villanelle, haiku, sonnets and projective poetry of love, lust, desire, affection, despair, pain, sorrow and consummation.

One hell of a ride. 

Here’s the link:  Apokalypsis at amomancer.

Enjoi.