Through These Veins We Are Connected

Boundaries Bound  by Mulugeta Gebrekidan

Through These Veins

Anne Marie Ruff takes us on an adventure in the coffee highlands of Ethiopia. The bitter taste of death, sweet almond extract of true love and intrigue are wired together in this epic story.

Ruth and Zahara are two strong women searching for truth. They want to save those they care for from the tortured death by AIDS. A cure is within their very grasp.

Stefano, the Italian scientist, is plant collecting before the forest disappears. He meets a medicine man who has found katannii leaf extract can cure AIDS.

Life replicates fiction- I understand what it is to collect plants, having been a collector of roses and rare plants. Stefano’s passion for rescuing the secrets of the forest is romantic and true. The charming Stefano streams with life blood.

The topic of a cure for AIDS is timely. Timothy Ray Brown is the first person to have had HIV totally eliminated from his body. Will some plant that is burned or cut down hold the secret to something better than a “functional cure.”

Our oldest human relatives come from Ethiopia, a now country suffering with drought, deforestation and death. With one Medical Doctor for 100000 citizens, survival rates are low. Locals hold to superstitious beliefs that spirits and supernatural forces can cause bad fortune, and illness.

Ruff stands apart from preaching to us about Pharmaceutical Companies, corrupt governments or political action. “Pepsi and Coke should start a big political campaign,” Ruth says. Ruth speaks a profound idea.  Ruff’s writing flows gracefully showing the evil forces what they are.

There are passages where Ruff’s images are handsome and bitter as raw coffee, as in, “She wrapped both hands around her wine glass attempting to steady herself, to prevent herself from descending into the abyss of uncertainty.” As if the red wine, or liquid of the glass could save her fall.

Above the image of the beautiful paintings of Mulugeta Gebrekidan. He is an Ethiopian painter using mixed media and oil. His work expresses the same longing to save, to stir greatness without explaining.

Ruff inspires us to conserve this beautiful earth’s biodiversity without asking or waving a flag. “Think carefully about how you can stay true to your values-”

Through these veins we are all connected. Ruff’s novel is romantic, thrilling and uplifting. Read it and be changed.

Anne Marie Ruff Grewal lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two boys. Photograph courtesy of Anne

.

Fear Uncertainty Doubt Oh My

Back to basics, son is off to the Sequoia's with Uncle Jerry and the boys. I've moaned about this before,  how I miss my beta reader...  Now that the next novel is almost ready for editing, I beg anyone who reads thrillers or transgressional fiction to take a whirl at my current manuscript. Thinking of offering bribes, yes cash money.

I read this twitter conversation about FUD, or more exactly how writers but I think also our world wide economy feel overwhelmed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The best solution for that is to be ready. Write your plan on a yellow pad, break it down into daily chores, then execute. 

Perhaps I post a cardboard sign stating: will read your book in trade...? Anyone write literary fiction out there? Hello ~ 

"Fear uncertainty and doubt ~ oh my, no forget about it."

Gone Fishing

Or Frankly Scarlett, he doesn't seem to care either.

One of those days... thanks Margaret Mitchell, Gone With Everything.

Writing is slow today, son packing for camp, daughter packing for Ireland.

I'm putting up the gone fishing sign on my brain.

Cactus Inspiration

Cactus in Glass Bubble
Our lives become closed in a shell.
Do you long to hear the song of waves inside the shell,
or prefer the comfort of a rain umbrella, a cozy you understand the corners in the dark?
Push beyond the smooth pathway, stand on burning rocks and listen to your heart.

Succulent Scape
Feels like the great eclipse and the diamond glass cutter may shatter?
Embrace the change with a joyful center, though your inner ear balance left you.
Walk on a tightrope of gossamer, for God's sake keep your chin up above fiberglass nets.
I kneel at your courage to rise from punching one more time, your lips part, smiling.

Glass Ornament for dry landscape
The desert only gets too much rain one day or smoke and fire.
It is the days in-between when you hike and work and go longer than ever before.
The word count, the chin ups, the hands shred to exposed muscle.
Then know you have done every inch of great.

Mini moonscape

Caroline Gerardo Copyright 2012
To make these ornament bubbles all you need is
 a couple tablespoons sand for the bottom, pebbles,
small succulents and water once a week.

Love Ready Haiku

Roots of Past

" Mon coeur ne vous quitta jamais une seconde,

et je suis, et serai jusque dans l'autre monde,

celui qui vous aima, sans mesure..."

Haiku for broken ~  

heal a heart with time and joy~  

laugh at soggy past.

Window Panes Repaired and Painted,  and Ready for Sunshine

Cyrano wears a ~  plastic nose hidden behind ~ clog heart abs of steel.

Tree Stripped of Center by Fire Survives and Grows

Look sideways upon ~
his dressing gown rippling waves ~
river wash the sand.

Horsehoes For Good Luck In Your New Life

Chanting pants on fire ~ for he is a crafty liar ~ heat forgives the fail.

Walk Bravely For You Made it Over the Burning Coals, You ARE READY.

All photographs and text are copyrighted material by Caroline Gerardo