Geraldina Gets Interviewed

My short story lead character, Geraldina, gets interviewed by an other worldly Katalina on one of my favorite blogs, Amaranthine Nights.  I have to say, Joleene Naylor did an excellent job on this interview.  As many of you know, it's not easy to talk to Geraldina.

Geraldina discusses some of her favorite subjects, including vampires and prunes.  If you've not read any of Geraldina's stories, I have one under the tab 'Geraldina'.  In this story, Geraldina is visited by a vampire.  The visit ends up being a short one for some reason.  Please take a look at 'An Offer I Must Refuse.'  Comments are appreciated.

The other Geraldina stories are in revision and will be added back on here when done.  'An Offer I Must Refuse' has been submitted in a contest.

If you have not visited Amaranthine, please do.  Joleene is a most talented author.  Her characters are so intriguing.  Her books are available on Amazon.  They are on my list of next buys.  I have added one to my shelf, as you can see.    
http://joleenenaylor.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/interview-with-geraldina-pottwatts/
Joleene, thank you for allowing Geraldina an interview.  I hope Katalina was not too traumatized.

LHR

Spotlight: The Blog Entourage

small explanation here:  I tried desparately to not use !, alas it was hard to do on this spotlight.


Spotlight on The Blog Entourage

My spotlight today is on the most fascinating blog I’ve found, The Blog Entourage.  http://www.theblogentourage.com/

It is the mastermind of Christina Lucas who is creative, intelligent, a whiz with computers, and kind.  I have gotten to know Christina recently and I adore her personality.  She must have high energy to run this blog!  I know I couldn’t do it.

What’s so great about The Blog Entourage?  Everything!  And I mean this blog has everything but the kitchen sink.  There are tabs for ‘beauty &style’, ‘entertainment’, ‘wellness’, ‘food’, ‘home and garden’, ‘travel’, ‘blogging tips’, ‘forum’, and ‘top bloggers.’  I can get lost in her blog!

One of the features I like is you can guest blog!  There are 16 categories of blogs.  You’re bound to fit in one, and this service is free.  You just click on your category and submit your link.  And you can view the other blogs in your category. How ingenious and easy.  She does ask that you display her button. Small thing to ask for this free service.  As you can see, I now do.

She always runs a ‘Crazed Fan Weekend Hop’ where you can find new blogs to follow and submit your blog.  Again, you pick up the button to display on your blog when you do this.

She lists popular posts – believe me, you don’t want to miss these – and she has a side post to ‘Meet the Bloggers.’

She offers a Blog Entourage Community, chat, and network with other bloggers.

See?  She is a very thoughtful person to offer these.  I have to say, this is an awful lot of work for one person, just to help bloggers network.  Thank you for doing this, Christina.

Have something to advertise?  That’s possible on her blog too.  The price starts as low as $7 per month.  Check her website on the details and which price range fits you.  You can also donate to keep this wonderful blog going.  But there’s more when you pay to advertise!  This is off her website:

If you become a sponsor on The Blog Entourage, you will receive tweets and Facebook shares on some of your posts, will be introduced in one of our weekend blog hop posts (which receive the most views of any of our posts), and will be introduced in one of our weekly newsletters.
In addition all Large Picture Ad sponsors will receive up to two sponsored post during the month, one promoting your blog/site in general and another post to promote a giveaway, post, or product of your choosing.

OMG!  She’s thought of everything.  

Some of my favorite blogs are the foods, recipes, creative ideas for children’s parties, and lunches.  Recently, she showed step by step how to make a pie crust.  Any of you ever made a pie crust from scratch?  It isn’t that easy.  Mine sometimes just don’t work out right.  I’ll be darned, but she had two tips and I realized by using these, my crusts would be perfect every time. Out of the way, store-bought crusts, I don’t need you anymore.   

  

Because of her, I finally joined Etsy, and am I ever having fun with all the free patterns and unique items for sale.  Creative people do love Etsy.  Thank you, Christina, for getting me hooked on that site.

The Blog Entourage also links to Facebook.  You can share your blog posts on Facebook and your link can show up in her blog.  You can tweet her blog too if you want.

May I suggest when you visit The Blog Entourage (and I know you’ll want to) (http://www.theblogentourage.com/ ) that you click the colorful 1 button, which tells Google to mark this site as a great site to visit.  I did.  Let’s see how many of us can click that colorful button.  

Christina, what can I say?  I love your blog.  Kudos to you for your creativity, this wonderful blog, and your thoughtfulness.  You are amazing!!!

Christina, this is for you.  This is my fav thank you song:  (no one does it like the British! so excuse Scrooge - you are truly the opposite of him)  Enjoy, and THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR BLOG!!!!

LHR

Guest Blogger - The Desert Rocks

My guest blogger today is a fun person, poet and writer.  She does 'rock our world' with her poetry, stories and humor.   She is a kind person who always supports everyone.  She has a lot of marvelous things to say to us, so please welcome The Desert Rocks:

First of all, I have to thank you Donna for inviting me to your blog.  I am humbly awe-struck by the chance to share my thoughts with your friends.

1.  What inspired you to write poetry?

To answer your first question – I was inspired to write poetry by my parents who love classical European poetry and recited huge amounts of it to me as a child.  My father’s favorite was Francois Villon who was quite bawdy, if I remember correctly.  Slowly, my poetry took shape and it started to become more like a photographic experience.  My father also had a dark room and developed his own photographs.

Anyway, as I grew older I felt it became a way to communicate my thoughts and feelings without  bogging someone down with long narratives, whining and stories of woe is me.  (I hate soap operas.)  Putting words together could produce something that made people smile or cry.  I enjoyed getting a reaction.  

In first and second grade I played near a creek by myself.  It made me feel free and I started enjoying my connection to nature which later helped me develop my insight into transcendentalism and helped with my college poetry work.  I mentioned that I felt free because even though I had amazing, brilliant parents – they were literally rocket scientists who thought maybe someone had switched me at birth.  (Just kidding, I look just like them).  Unfortunately for them, I wanted to listen to rock music which was impossible at our house since my parents preferred classical and thought something was seriously wrong with their rebellious teenager.  I Played my Yellow Brick Road album over and over, trying to memorize Bernie Taupin’s lyrics.  Then I played my old Beatle’s Rubber Soul album over and over till one day I realized I could get my own little radio.

Enter in Motown, and Blood Sweat and Tears, America, The Grass Roots, Credence Clearwater Revival, The Temptations, The 5^th Dimension etc.  I ordered scholastic books from my teachers called Pop/Rock Lyrics that I inhaled faster than you could inhale pop-rocks the candy.

Fortunately, I had a wise high school English teacher who taught us that Bob Dylan’s lyrics are just as important as Herman Hesse.  I mean “Tangled up in Blue” for example, but more about this later. 

I also played piccolo for nine years and studied opera – two things that helped with cadence.  In college I put the emphasis on the poem and studied every type of writing.  That was a very long time ago and any thoughts and creativity were channeled into the marketing/advertising use of rhyme and rhythm which I’ve been trying to peel away so I can get back to the real me.

I’ve spent most of the last few years readjusting and deprogramming myself from a very nerve-wracking stressful, lifestyle that was not at all conducive to writing, health or any free and clear thinking.

2. Does your blog, The Desert Rocks, reflect the real you?

I’ll just make it simple and say, yes my blog reflects my personality because I have so many interests.  Keeping focused has always been a challenge.  I also like writing stories and I’m working on my first novel.  This week a story came out for eBooks in an anthology called Fiction Noir and later this month another story will be coming out in God Makes Lemonade.

3. Who is your favorite poet?

I usually have to go back to Edna St. Vincent Millay, although Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot and Robert Service are also high up in my list of favorites.  Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote about love, death and romance with that sorrowful, bittersweet edge that I always enjoyed reading because she makes herself sound like a sophisticated Emily Dickinson.  By the way I love Emily Dickinson, but style-wise definitely Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The Philosopher

And what are you that, wanting you,

I should be kept awake

As many nights as there are days

With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,

As many days as crawl

I should be listening to the wind

And looking at the wall?

I know a man that’s a braver man

And twenty men as kind,

And what are you, that you should be

The one man in my mind?

Yet women’s ways are witless ways,

As any sage will tell,-

And what am I, that I should love

So wisely and so well?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

4. Does living in the desert inspire you?

I’m very happy writing here in the desert for the rest of my life.  http://thedesertrocks.blogspot.com

5. If you could be any insect, what would you choose?

I have to say I love butterflies.  I know you love them too.  Let’s go flit about…

Lastly, I want to talk about artistic freedom and what it means to me.

“Born free as free as the grass grows – born free to follow your heart.” –From the 1966 movie Born Free

I mentioned rock music and how my parents didn’t really approve of me listening to it.  It was considered the devil in disguise and who knows maybe it is – I never met the guy and I hope I never will.  What I do remember though is hearing about wearing flowers in your hair when you visit San Francisco.  The concept of flowers in someone’s hair made me want to hear more.  I remember seeing the movie Born Free and I was very young, but I remember crying because I didn’t feel free like Elsa the lion.  Meanwhile, older folks were going to some fantabulous parties called Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury and I was in elementary school, working in the cafeteria and wearing a hairnet during the summer of love.

Song lyrics haunted my mind and I wanted to be free.  By the time I had control of things it was the eighties and I felt I had missed so much.  I didn’t own a television because I was busy writing my restaurant column or working in advertising.  Even though I still tried writing poetry, my mind was wrapped up in work or man problems.  

The television thing still cracks some of my friends up because I never, ever watched a single episode of Dallas, Alf or Hill Street Blues.  In fact, I think someone born in 1990 can probably beat me at a game of eighties Trivial Pursuit.

Anyway, I have always loved the innocence of the sixties lyric-“Let it Be”, “I Got You Babe”, “Love me Tender.”  I mean this stuff is so cute.  To me it’s like icing on a cinnamon roll.  It’s like a sale at your favorite Disney store where Tinkerbelle tee-shirts are half price.  It’s comfort food for the revolution in my heart.

The Seekers, The Cowsills, Al Stewart, all contributed to my search for meaning – and then the unthinkable things started happening like Elvis leaving us while I’m in college.  Cat Stevens went to some other country and denouncing everything in the United States.  The Beatles broke up, The Monkeys broke up, Sonny and Cher got a divorce, Abba broke up, even the Eagles broke from the amazing Don Henley and Freddie Mercury died.  Now, I can see that they all just wanted to be free.

Last year I watched a wonderful movie called The Darjeeling Limited featuring songs by Peter Sarstedt and fell in love with his sixties song, “Where Do You Go to My Lovely” and if you haven’t heard it check out his YouTube video.  There’s also a great video about him saying he gave up a huge television offer to remain free to be the musician he wanted to be – a guy with a guitar ready to play wherever and whenever he wants.

Today is a different day.  I have traveled and yet I prefer home.  I have done many things and now there’s classical music playing on my radio all day while I work on some copywriting or while I’m finishing up my manuscript.  I think poetry is as much a part of me as my toes, my eyes, my nose and most of my heart.  Without freedom of expression we are not artists, we are slaves and while my parents loved me with all their heart, they didn’t realize there was a lion hidden deep inside.

How about you, are you free…or is someone or something holding you back?

 Wow, thank you, The Desert Rocks, for this great blog.  Freedom, gives us that power to write what we feel and be who we are meant to be.  

Friends, remember to check out her blog and click 'follow.'  You won't be disappointed.

http://www.thedesertrocks.blogspot.com

For you, my poet buddy:

And let us not ever forget why we are free:

LHR