Proud Mom

Photo 8-28-2011 copyright Caroline Gerardo


Family Prayer


It is almost Fall
My favorite season
School starts in a week
We will fly down to California
Summer locked down in the prairie ends
I will miss the skys in Wyoming at daybreak,
Long rides on Shorty into the National Park across the river,
and I'll give Big Rainbow tomatoes (heirloom) fireworks in a basket to the neighbor.
I look forward with great anticpation to the days ahead, when my middle child attends High School.
The games we play, "what 'cha thinkin of?" when we reveal our true hearts as a team family together bind.
I anticipate with amazement Carson's soul growing as a strong oak tree sharing his spirit with earth.
I thank God for my blessings, for three children who I treasure more than I can speak.
Will the barn owl be here when we return before Halloween?
It will be fun to surf again at Monarch Beach,
and catch sunlight dancing in the foam.
My great fortune is wherever
I am with my children
and God is home.

Solar Flares Poem

Copyright Caroline Gerardo © August 26 2011 photograph and poetry

"Self Portrait Death Mask" (photo title)

Electric Flares

I’m not afraid of sunspots and solar flares.

A warrior soul faces phonies, valkyries, and queries.

You go hide behind polypropylene umbrellas,

eating second, third grace spread on the prairie.

Lawyers say fire the guns, win a gazillion pretties.

It is not that I hesitate to unleash the A bomb,

I lived in Los Alamos as a tot,

the dust is the source of my particulate cancer.

I’m not afraid of solar flares.

Playing solitaire you swallow easy dazzle cake,

a sweet gooey duck hanging in the window.

Open birdcage with moths of psychobabble.

Unleash the pennies of the furies.

I am not afraid.



Poet Lament To Scott Wannberg

Scott Wannberg, poet Lament 

copyright © Caroline Gerardo August 22, 2011

Scott Wannberg said

You told me,

“Our measure is when we are dead.”

“The amount of gold inside my teeth?”

A memory so pushcloudy:

“Tonight’s reading, my house

next to Marilyn Monroe’s

last pill on Sixth Helena Drive.”

At the Bosendorfer piano

Charlie Haden misses his twins.

English Sheepdog, Byron 

guards the Dutch Door.

“You are too beautiful to be a poet or a painter.”

In rage. I count Plath, Sexton-

today I tell you Lisa Zaran & Daisy Fried.

Wake up take a challenge,

though we have not spoken for centuries,

your shy intellect is in our hearts.

I am a cocoon of solitude,

cone of silence with prolific words,

never in the nick of time.

A passion vine overtakes my magnolia,

I planted it to feed the monarchs.

God knows I take care of my children but

to recall to feed the birds is a millet story.

Come scatter black seeds,

I have children to outlive me,

a geriatric pregnancy cancer miracle.

Pray I find the poems you wrote in my journals

I carried around like a Bible.

They are not lost in the fire,

or in the devastation choices for cheating men.

I am now Hephaestus, beauty is my creation

I am a living poet with work ahead.

Poem: Rear View Mirror

Rear View Mirror

Caroline Gerardo © copyright 2011

Adam will feel shame again.

A fox’s venetian red coat glows.

His heart desires raw chicken.

Breast not feathers, and entrails.

He steals the best parts.

counting his krugerrands

some lesser will clean after

You will feel shame again

motis operendi drives the vehicle.

Conquer tuck under secret wing

Search the fingernails

 bacterium destroying soul

Wash the container, recycle new love.

Don’t use the rear view mirror.

Don’t send an apology to absolve yourself.

In time you will feel shame again

but never understand what you made to ash

Book Tour Closing Marketing Site

photograph: Caroline Gerardo copyright 2011

In Spring Butterflies Awaken From Galled Tree

Received an email this morning that Book Tour will be closing their website on September 1st due to lack of income.

It is not a site I used with frequency, I choose to limit into six silos of marketing. For myself, I want to write seven hours a day, care for my children and work my bank job an eight-hour day. This leaves about an hour a day for marketing efforts. While I hear other authors submitting and growing in readership, I have been accurate in my assessment of how to develop as a writer. The best use of my time is in plinking on the keyboard.

Dear S Moker and all the Book Tour employees and affiliates:



I was saddened to read the email that you must close up shop. Your website is a lovely and helpful source for writers and readers. Things are tough and this is the Third Great Depression, though no politician would use such words.



I hope you will resurrect in some new format that includes ads and pay per click and some form of income for your families and those who work with and for you. At this moment, things seem dark, but push forward, in time this will bring about something good.

All my best. Hugs.

Caroline Gerardo

Author

Writing, Goals, Planning

  It has been foggy in the mornings, rather gloomy for summer. Carson returns home Friday night. We have tickets to see the Decemberists at the Greek the same evening. I will drive five hours up north to pick him up then we’ll bring a picnic to the concert. Hopefully I can stay awake to make the drive home. It has been an intense summer. My flash fiction Entropy will be in Scapegoat Review Magazine September. I have the contract for the short stories to be written as screenplays. One first draft I completed in July the other I will start in two weeks. Scheduling everything I do these days. I function my finest when I have the most demands. With working full time, writing full time and caring for my family is a balancing trick. Plan my goals.

  I have some writing projects to organize. What better method than to list of goals.

  The Lucky Boy in final editing with Neal Hock, it emerges from that stage on Wednesday. I have to write an essay for him about what I want the reader to take away.

  I am writing two new novels at the same time. This seems as overload; but is working well. The characters in Pump are ones I already know. I have a story board in the downstairs bedroom and photographs completed. The other novel, Cumaean (clunky working title) is a chapter one I started online as a short fiction about an eco-terrorist but have decided to run with it as a full length thriller. I ran some ideas by an FBI agent to check my story and the plot motivates me to make it full length.

  On the advice of the poetry publisher, I met with their attorney about using the autobiographical elements. I have sixty some poems, flash pieces and photographs we are compiling. The stories range from natural world, literary, dark, and personal. The difficult angle is having it be fiction not memoir. A great number of authors write about themselves or what they know, but in this, I open a door about some negatives in my life.

  Rather than follow the legal advice to file, I asked him to prepare “model release letters” or something saying they would “hold me harmless”. The concern is some person may come back and want a piece of the royalty. Poetry makes no profit but ...

 The First Amendment protects writers but I have known some litigious personalities, so better to avoid the problem. Nineteen letters were sent, the strange thing, those who I thought would protest the most were encouraging and full of praise.

  Next project is taking photographs and short videos for the books. I plan to include links for the digital books that loop to my content and swing back each chapter for more savvy online readers. I completed considerable research about interactive reading and am progressing with our secret project but the technology I want is not yet written. We have conference calls three days a week and the computer gentlemen on the team are the most animated not the comedian or the musician team members. I told them last week we are all geeks and they sent me these weird and wonderful leucandendrons.

It is an exciting time in publishing. I only wish I had 44 hours a day to write.



Pomegranate Seed Poem Time Out

copyright 8/13/2011 Caroline Gerardo

Time out for me at midnight. Date for death past.Stage four termites in fertile soil.

The experts wire health graphs. Life stolen seven months - it is now seventeen.

“There's nothing else to do.

Miracle you had a child."
Ask peripheral questions,

 easy anger, swift of sword.

"Do not take my everything
  blackened mold tar Umpire."

Another ring. Bell? Time out.

Shrug shoulders to children,
Who cares? Times a game.

Abandoned... I regress too.

Our Father in plastic shroud,
question DNA month before

A life is duty honor courage.
Cells membranes connected

- we all are touch and erase.
 Godot nothingness you say.

Vocation has no such path.

Physics love a connection,

regenerating a dust without
color of monarch chrysalis.

Pomegranate aril venetian 
astringent attracts termites.

Memory burn Nordic star,

 You never loved four years

Joyful toss the crematorium.

Career in Sudan.  Time out.

Soul stolen from an Arabian
mare wearing ruby blankets

her grains in my sandals are
from Aortic Sea as in glass.

Diatomite needle in my heart.
Hands touch - form the letter.

“Publishers stand firm” in quick sand.

Bridge





There is little a traditional publishing firm or independent bookstore can do to fight the flow of the river.

The printed book on paper is not going to burn for kindling to stay warm. Consumers will continue to purchase hardbound and paperback books.

However, it is better to learn to swim with the flow and join in the revolution. Authors need to write well, keep visible with their readers and keep all four legs in each camp. Publish on paper, digital, audio and read in person face to face.

Young readers desire content, they crave new and authors will deliver stories to satisfy. Digital will dominate the market in two years. It is cheaper, faster and more adaptable. New formats are created that include narrative, music, art and interactive qualities. My advice to fellow authors is: be yourself, take risks, and support each other.

There is not a large difference between today’s publishing industry verses the music industry’s fall. The only upside is there are multiple digital formats. When the music industry rolled out the CD they had no idea how easy it would be to copy that piece of plastic. Multiple formats in book publishing naturally slow the tide of piracy, monopolies and big business. Musicians make a living only from live performance today, not sales of records. Stealing of music copyrights seems the norm rather than a crime to teens. The music business (like publishing) was controlled by big extravagant labels that did not allow fresh talent a voice.

I do not want to see my books in Wall Mart but will learn everything about formatting, new digital advances and make my writing better. As a writer I plan to survive.




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mellencamp/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836.html

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/publishers-need-stand-firm-against-digital-wylie.html

We are all in for trouble when Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos sit at a conference table and dictate pricing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-music-industry-sales-2011-2
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0

Vote on Character Name and Title Please

Taking a writing break tonight from my seven days a week. I travelled with baby in a bucket by plane last night. Tonight I have a movie event in Los Angeles and thought I might make it to Pierre Picot’s opening at Alias books, but not certain I can do both. I met all my writing goals this week. I have three more chapters to the Western and four on what I am calling “Black Orchid.” I was thinking the western would be 30000 words but enjoying it so far and it will be longer to really get to the meat of the narrative.

This door is closed tonight. I have a happy heart.




I am thinking of calling the Wyoming story "Santuary" as in a person who defends a refuge for species to balance ecological processes. A person who will do anything to favor the survival a species in an intensely managed landscape, even kill humans. 


The killer's name is also up for debate.

Please leave your input for title and name of my eco-murderer killer.

links for books

Greed (Cardinal Sins)Vanity (Cardinal Sins)Toxic Assets (Bank)Toxic AssetsLust