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. 

Anyone who knows me at all knows Ihave the attention span of a fruit fly and a very mercurial sense of creativity.  "It started out as a cat, but about halfway through I was thinking about the way a coyote has such great facial exprsssions and horses have long legs and bulls have horns and how dumbfoundingly beautiful my second wife was and remembering a lovely woman-child with full lips, incredibly perfect breasts and dark, haunting eyes and the image of a woman dancing in just a man’s black shirt to the sounds of the night while I am pondering the evolution of the concepts of pantheism versus polytheism and suddenly the sculpture looks more like…er…something else. And why did I give it a prehensile tale with a stinger on the end?"  Yep, sounds like me.

The new book, loveaddict is getting much the same treatment as it evolves.  It is lucky to held onto it’s name this long (Well, "Throbbing Python of Love" is already an album name by Robin Williams, so that one was out.  Besides, do you really want to go into a bookstore and ask the clerk if he as a "Throbbing Python of Love"?  You might get smacked around.).  I have a mind to explain the forces behind the evolution, but I won’t (do you really need another parody of a travesty of a comedy of errors like unto last year’s "As such…"?  I don’t.  I will say that this is shaping up to be the most perfectly romantic and erotic collection of my work to date.

I am…pleased.  And that is not something I often say about my books projects.  While I find the writing of poetry painful but effortless, the stress of making decisions and pondering existing works as I put together a book is overwhelming.  I can rejoice in it when it comes out well, but I also have to deal with my ambivalence during the blacksmithing of the hot iron into a usable implement.

I have a cover photographer and model.  I have most of the works.  I have a concept.  I have a dedication (!).  Now it is the nature of the anvil against the fury of the hammer and the power that together they wield against the iron.  Oh, and the throbbing python of love.

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 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.

Just off the top of my head, in response to a friend’s request.

1. You never know what is going to happen next, so be prepared for anything and everything and learn to have faith in your adaptability.
2. I will be traveling abroad within the next two years.
3. Tales of the Amomancer will be my best selling book in my lifetime.
4. The longer I live, the more I value couer rage and passion.
5. George Bush will go down in history as one of the two or three worst Presidents of the United States.
6. As such… remains a most remarkable book, regardless of the irony of its very existence.
7. Most people who seem to be liars are not malicious, just gullible or assumptive enough to believe something not true that they heard or perceived.
8. I am going to have to learn to perform my music live. This scares me.
9. God has one wicked sense of humour. And isn’t afraid to roll it out, especially when you get cocky.
10. Brad and Angelina would make a dynamite Ant Man/Wasp team for the Marvel Avengers film.

No, it is not Kevin Costner’s speech from Bull Durham, but I wasn’t going for profound and sexy. Those lists I save for private conversations. By the way, when you have the time (this is even for you stalkers out there) head over to Amomancer today, it is getting a lot of new stuff, and the tagging proceeds.

I write. You can criticize me for what I write, what I write about and my style, but you have to admit, I write.

I’ll try to keep it to two posts today…then maybe I’ll fade it back to one a day, soon…

I started laying the musical framework for Aubergine last night. Challenging, as I am demanding a lot from myself on this one. It won’t be easy, it won’t be simple. But, I am game. A reader has suggested I post a link to my version of I rained poetry, and maybe even let readers vote on the selections for the Evangelist CD. I don’t know. Too many things to ponder. My brain hurts.

To those of you who find my promotion of my book As such… a bit surreal, or even hypocritical, I apologize. The simple truth is that I am keeping a promise I made, in both letter and spirit. I have broken other promises in the past (and, sometimes, keeping one promise means breaking another), wrestled with definitions of faith, truth, honor and morality, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, and sometimes being caught in those webs where no matter what you do, you are doing something wrong in absolute terms or someone’s eyes. It is exhausting, and exhaustion sometimes leads to errors in judgement. I actually considered, for several days, pulling the book from circulation.

It is one of those 51/49 percent situations where no matter what I do, someone will find ample room to criticize me. That’s just part of the terrain. Life has no easy answers, no cut and dried resolutions. Someone, somewhere, will take offense at anything you can imagine doing. Anyone who even dreams they know everything that I am doing or why needs therapy. Hell, I probably need it…but it makes it so much more interesting to see me work it out in anapest hexameter, no? I’m going to screw up more in this life, those of you without sin…buy a catapult, I’ll stand in the open and let you snipe. If it makes you feel better to use me as a lightning rod, then I consider it a public service I am rendering.

I began packing my cargo boxes for the tour. A bit early, you say? yes. But I need to keep a running inventory on this trip, as I am traveling with a massive amount of books, CDs and merch (do you have any idea how much a single copy of The Compleat Panther Cycles weighs?). The bookstore reads are nice, as they order their own stock…but the coffeehouse, cafe, etc., type reads need me to drag my own stuff. Pain in the ass. But the boots are nice

I was very tempted to stay in Los Angeles. Very. It would have meant leaving some things and some people behind, I don’t do that. I may not enjoy the role always, but I’m the guy who is supposed to hold the collapsing mine shaft open so the maximum number of people can escape. The concept of saving myself is difficult for me. I’ve done it, but I’ve always felt terrible afterwards and tried to make amends…and tried to do better the next time. Another of those promises. Ohana. I texted it when I thought of it.

The read was good. Very good. There was only a handful in attendance and we held it indoors due to the raging heat (it was in the nineties). I wasn’t 1000% satisfied, and I don’t think I could’ve gone that far for strangers, but it played well and I said what I had to say and I even sang (a’capella which, as Father Guido Sarducci used to say, means "without hats") "I love you more than gods can comprehend".

I may keep that in the tour. Definitely a crowd pleaser (not my voice, God knows, but the purity of it all). Rough on me, but the people are there to see the matador get gored. Don’t think I would keel over on stage, but that would make a great legacy moment.

I got to speak with Peri last night. We mostly talked about the casting of Robert Downey in Iron Man and Marvel Studios’ master plan. I kept getting texted by a friend whose long-distance relationship was crumbling and was losing her mind, perhaps even contemplating suicide. I finally lost patience with her and told her to do what she thought best. Atlas gets tired of people complaining about backache.

The trip, on the whole, went well. Guerrilla reading in New York, the SLC read and then the Long Beach "As such…" reading (I had forgotten how powerful that was…although I did not read the forewords (laughing)). Thanks to everyone who assisted and insisted. Thanks to Karla, Jenn and Sabrina for the emotional support, Jazz for the irony and Vox for not taking pictures.

Later today I start a special training diet to help prep me for the tour. I need to focus harder, work harder and continue my vocal exercises (I do a few things a few hours before each read: I sing the Three Stooges’ "Alphabet Song" to tighten my elocution (I am not kidding), recite a couple of the key works I will be doing in that reading, and sing Don Henley’s "Heart of the Matter" to burn off excess emotion). I need to make some key decisions about the reading list for the tour…I may do a reading book…a pdf of the works I can then pick from for each read, print off a copy for each different event and annotate it as I see fit.

God, but I need laid (did I just say that out loud?). Karla found out about my vow of celibacy and, being aware of my appetites asked "What is up with that?" I thought she was going to smack me from a thousand miles away. Maybe I should add a little clock to the website "Number of days since the poet shared his flesh"? The mind boggles.

Love is all you need. But I want more, I want truth. I want it all…I want it all…I want it all…and I want it now.