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Recently I wrote about Stephen King's book on writing and that I was in the midst of reading Salem's Lot. 

 I only have about 100 pages to go in the lot, but I am really enjoying the more traditional vampire story (versus the "OMG, I-love-him-so-much" story).

It's really based more on the Dracula myth that other stories. However, for those who aren't big into 481-pagers like Salem's Lot (that's even on my Nook), there are graphic novels that focus on the mean, ugly vampires.

One that King assisted with is American Vampire.

The vamps in this one have long, claw-like fingers/fingernails and almost unhinged jaws with elongated fangs -- more like a snake than the vampires we're used to these days (and more like the previews for Fright Night than an Edward or Bill Compton).

Stephen King has also announced that he's almost finished writing a sequel to The Shining, called Dr. Sleep. According to EW.com, King "read an excerpt at George Mason University last weekend. It appears the sequel follows a grownup Danny Torrance, a hospice worker who helps patients die painlessly. He comes into contact with a clan of roving, psychic vampires called The Tribe".

If you want to see the excerpt, look no further!

As some of you know, I've been going to Nashville Poetry Workshop (that Zach began) for a few months now.  This week, we're doing a definition/ode to a common thing assignment. Feel free to do one as well!

This article was suggested to me as a good precursor to this assignment:


The definition poem, when looked up online, has a pretty elementary format that's pretty lame in some cases (like this one: http://www.k12handhelds.com/data/samples/poetry/poetry_book.html), but I think one of the best ones I've seen (a former prof of mine's work) is called A Definition of Terms (below).

Also, what came up in a discussion with a poet friend about Pablo Neruda's poems (specifically the Odes to Common Things and Odes to Opposites) is that he's really got an attitude about these poems -- which are more like anti-definition poems. He might "say" in the title that these things are plain and ordinary (Common Things), but in his ode to the cat, the cat is majestic.

I've brought the Ode to Sadness to the group before, which is a great example. As my colleague who suggested this assignment stated, Neruda's "writing against his subject matter, which is the point. But calling it an "ode" does something to our lens. We see how necessary sadness is to him, even as he seems to be reviling against it. So, pick some large emotion or state of being and write an ode to it in which you get nasty mean, but not to the point of temper-tantrum. Stick to catalogs of images, etc." In Sadness, he's basically cursing sadness out.

Just food for thought. Here are the poems that I will bring to group on Sunday:
_________________________________________________

A Definition of Terms
By Blas Falconer
  1. Cruise, as in, I didn’t plan to cruise anyone, a verb, slang, to seek a trick, usually at night; no connection to Tom Cruise, beloved actor and movie star. 2. Trick: a noun, slang, a.k.a. "good-love,"
"one-night stand"; a verb, to have sex

with someone of the same or opposite sex,
the number of which often accrues
with increased loneliness and lack of love.
That’s what we became, two potential tricks
that morning at the airport, costars
in some fantasy, the story of two

strangers, their flights delayed, waiting to
board their planes. You watched me. You: a sexy
Spaniard dressed in black, save the All-star
tennis shoes (nice touch). Bored, I watched planes cruise
the runway, drew the same geometric
shape in my book: circle, circle....but I love

the fear that comes with desire, and I love
to be desired, so though I thought, No, it’s too
early, not a chance, I’m too tired to trick,
and, Where the hell would we have sex
anyway, before long I was the one cruising
you, the idea of us, a fleck of light, a star

growing brighter. I walked past you, star-
ing at you with a smile, as if to say, I’d love
to get it on, passengers and flight crews
too busy fighting or sleeping or gabbing to
see what we were up to, see us talking sex
without talking. You followed me. We tricked

them all. An hour later, I’m alone. My plane tricks
the pull of gravity, taking me home, star-
ward, as the ground grows and grows. The sex
was great: a bathroom stall, a soft love-
grip, buckles, buttons, goodbye kiss, all too
fast to forget, tender to confuse. 1. To Cruise,

to seek comfort in a body. 2. Trick: the cruised,
the lonely, the starved; sex between strangers
who give and take this temporary love.

_________________________________________________

Ode to Sadness
By Pablo Neruda



Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
bitch's skeleton:
No entry here.
Don't come in.
Go away.
Go back
south with your umbrella,
go back
north with your serpent's teeth.
A poet lives here.
No sadness may
cross this threshold.
Through these windows
comes the breath of the world,
fresh red roses,
flags embroidered with
the victories of the people.
No.
No entry.
Flap
your bat's wings,
I will trample the feathers
that fall from your mantle,
I will sweep the bits and pieces
of your carcass to
the four corners of the wind,
I will wring your neck,
I will stitch your eyelids shut,
I will sew your shroud,
sadness, and bury your rodent bones
beneath the springtime of an apple tree.

Recently, I went to see Billy Collins at Vanderbilt. I paid for two Saturday sessions that I really felt I got a lot out of and inspired me to write some new poems.

Until then, here are a few gems we talked about:

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins
8 Count by Charles Bukowski

This week's assignment was to write a persona poem (try here and here to get schooled on the terminology). My favorite example is probably this one by Thomas James called Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonnekh XXI Dynasty.


I love this assignment and I've written a few.

• One about/from the POV of James Dean called Matador Red that I wrote after reading a bio on Dean and published in The Red Mud Review.

• One about a character from 100 Years of Solitude called Upon Facing the Firing Squad that was published in Number One.

People have asked me a lot of questions since I published Bleed You Dry. 


You've written your book, but how do you take it from a Word document to a document that's fit for publishing to PubIt! or Kindle? You can't just copy and paste it in or PDF it because ereaders have a different format -- a different size screen than your normal, 8x10-ish sized computer document.


I learned the hard way when I pulled my book up on my Nook and the page breaks were all wonky. I needed a format -- a format on a HTML coding level.


Personally, I find it irritating to type in all the code required to format it, so I waited for Pages, a Mac application, to go on sale (it's $19.99, but Apple frequently has half-off sale).  The site has a mini-tutorial on e-pub, or e-publishing and a basic template for e-books that you can type into -- or you can import your already-typed text into it.


For more templates, you can buy the app "Inspiration Set" -- which is also $19.99 unless you hit a sale. It has about five more templates.


Happy publishing, folks!

My favorite vampire author right now, Richelle Mead's got a lot going on if you want to check it out:


1. A new Succubus/Georgina Kincaid (excerpt) book out on Aug. 30. It's the 6th in the series.


2. You can win a copy of Bloodlines, a spin-off of the VA series or get it on Aug. 23. Read an excerpt here.


3. VA graphic novel information is out here.


Two books out in a week of each other? Pretty damn good for a pregnant author, huh?

It's almost as bad as the words on George Carlin's list : self-publish(ed).


Ask any English snob across the globe.  The connotation of it is that you're some uneducated hack who goes around calling yourself "a writer", but your material wasn't up to snuff (enough for it to be published on its own merits). Poets assumed that your work was riddled with abstractions. Short story writers thought your punctuation horrible. Novelists placed bets that you changed from past to present tense every 22 pages.


Hell, even when I was a journalist, an editor once told me, "We don't interview people who are self-published. Anyone can do that."  The higher-ups would've rather read a review about the sequel to Everyone Poops.


But like any bad word, the rules are starting to change. People are getting the attention of more followers, avoiding paying a publishing house and an editor, or are even forcing companies to get into bidding wars over them.


And I like the idea of a writer having publishers/agents/suitors, as my experience thus far has been that agents are lazy and they don't give a hoot about you or the time you took to send them your material.


Example: When reading one of the 672 a query/find an agent/get published books I have, it suggested to make a SASE-style postcard for the agent, so he or she could check a box (such as "Send first chapter" or "Not interested at this time" or "Send entire manuscript") and mail it.  That way, you'd be more likely to get a response, and a fast one, from an agent. I put the boxes, their address, my address, and the stamp on it. Three out of three agents were too damn lazy to even write their names on the returned postcard!


When you get service like that, who can blame writers like Barry Eisler for turning down a $500k book advance to just self-publish?


Others are doing it, too (read this article), which might be a good idea. I mean, if the agent can't even take the time to sign his or her name, they're going to do a piss-poor job marketing your book and finding a publisher, right?


The market is changing. The language is changing.  And people are asking about how I went about selling my book online, so I am thinking of giving a lesson on self-publishing.


Besides, dirty words have never bothered me.