Back again…

Hello, void.

So consider this a reintroduction, as I’ll be posting here again. A lot has changed in five years… Ugh, what an awful cliche, and no one cares.

To make it real, here’s a brief list of things I’d like this blog to focus on in the future. (We’ll see if this is tragic or prophetic.)

• the freelance writing life
• the fiction writing life
• writing tips in general, for freelance or other writers
• LGBT issues
• progressive politics
• New Orleans life
• animals, specifically dogs

I think that’s it. Harvard researchers say that writing down your goals ensures that you’ll achieve them. That’s hopefully true here.

Oh, wait. Apparently, announcing your intentions means you’re less likely to complete them? Shit.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Poetry vs. Flash Fiction

Which is better?

Elegy, the poem?

Elegy, the flash fiction piece?

Tell me!

Elegy: Flash Fiction

Sometimes I go back in time to see my young parents before I was born. We sit in pale yellow kitchens with orange drapes, drinking Dixie beer from squat cans with pull tabs. We eat fresh cherries from an avocado green bowl with black outlines of daisies. We tip the ash from our Lucky Strikes, our Marlboros, our Parliments into an enormous ashtray of sepia glass. We smoke joints and talk about the oil crisis and Nixon. We do not talk about Jimmy Carter or the Jim Jones massacre or the release of “Rumors” because these things have not happened yet. Those things happened the year I was born, and I don’t want be my parent’s child. I want to be young with them for a little while, young and browned from the sun, unshaven and smelling faintly of essential oils.

My young father wears a Nehru jacket and looks like a Zapatista with his sun-darkened skin and black, black hair. My mother wears no bra under her embroidered cotton shirt, feet bare beneath the hem of her peasant skirt. I watch her toes curl on the orange naugahyde cushion of the kitchen chair. I watch the ash stick to a facet of the brown glass ashtray, watch the sweat gather on a can of Dixie, and we are young together. We talk of the things young people have always talked about, never dreaming of the world to come, with the shadow of death not yet darkening our eyes.

Elegy: Poem

Sometimes I go back in time to see my young parents before I was born.
We sit in pale yellow kitchens with orange drapes,
We drink Dixie beer from squat cans with pull tabs.
We eat fresh cherries from an avocado green bowl with black outlines of daisies.
We tip the ash from our Lucky Strikes,
our Marlboros, our Parliments,
into an enormous ashtray of sepia glass.
We smoke joints and talk about the oil crisis and Nixon.
We do not talk about Jimmy Carter or the Jim Jones massacre or the release of “Rumors”
because these things have not happened yet.
Those things happened the year I was born
and I don’t want be my parent’s child.
I want to be young with them for a little while,
young and browned from the sun, unshaven,
smelling faintly of essential oils.

My young father wears a Nehru jacket,
a Zapatista with sun-darkened skin,
and his unruly mop of black, black hair.
My mother wears no bra under her embroidered cotton shirt,
feet bare beneath the hem of her peasant skirt.
I watch her toes curl on the orange naugahyde cushion.
I watch the ash stick to a facet of the brown glass ashtray.
I watch the sweat gather on a can of Dixie.
And we are young together.

We talk of the things young people have always talked about,
never dreaming of the world to come,
with the shadow of death not yet darkening our eyes.

Knight of Arrows, Knight of Swords

To make it official, here is the announcement of my novel purchase! (You will be seeing many more updates on the novel coming soon!)

http://www.candlemarkandgleam.com/tag/knight-of-arrows-knight-of-swords/

 

Candlemark & Gleam is proud to announce the acquisition of a new title: Knight of Arrows, Knight of Swordsby A.C. Gaddis!

Like a number of our other books, this one doesn’t easily slip into simple blurbs or neat little soundbites. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an incredible story.

Knight of Arrows, Knight of Swords takes place in a burnt-out, post-apocalyptic world where demons roam the earth, and certain humans are sworn to both kill the demons and suppress the knowledge that they’re out there (don’t want to start panic in the streets, after all).

Two of these gifted humans, a mage and a warrior, were paired off in a Sacred Band within the mysterious, cunning, powerful Order of Steel – but they broke the Order’s laws, and have been driven apart and sent to find their own ways in the world.

Now, each has become involved with a creature that he doesn’t understand – not demon, not angel, not human, not undead – creatures both beautiful and terrible, with agendas of their own.

Knight of Arrows, Knight of Swords follows these men and not-monsters on their journeys, both real and metaphorical, as they try to prevent demons from overtaking the world, evil from shattering a fragile peace forged between races, and heartbreak from shattering them.

It’s a romance in the old, medieval sense of the word – laden with lush imagery, grand and sweeping heroic adventures, and, yes, a whole Gordian’s knot of tragic love stories.

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