We tend to believe that we think with our intellect, and that the emotions stand apart, a secondary force, there for the purpose handling a separate life concerned with what we love and hate, not with what calm, logical decisions we will make to order our lives.
The truth, I believe, is that we think more with our emotions than with our intellect, and then bend our intellect to fit our emotions.
Saadia’s verses take me from this dull, dusty world to a secret place of moonlight and shadow, where blue smoke curls lazily up as the ill-wind sax moans of lust and despair, and a fleeting glance from beneath long black lashes hints of delights untellable, and the soft breeze wafts subtle perfumes to me.
A cool yet scorching hot desert, like Baked Alaska in a tall, slim glass, ice cream and oven-hot fruit mixed, to be eaten respectfully with a long, long spoon of purest Silver, while staying a cautious distance from the devil’s lick of passion.
And then to be fled from in bashful panic, for old Adam himself is too young a boy to be teased and tantalised with such casual finesse.
Available on Amazon
Where you can also find my own work
When I’m writing a novel, I find that I don’t so much decide what my characters do, as that I find out.
Obviously I base the novel or story around an event or situation that I wish to dramatise or examine, and I will have an image in my mind of the characteristics of the main character, and probably a rough story line, but I certainly don’t know what he or she is going to actually do or say on the journey through the novel’s situation towards the final result.
This, I think, is impossible with tens of thousands of words to be written, and the writing of a novel is not so much the physical writing down of what is already known – meaning that it has already been invented or worked out – as the writing down and altering of comments and ideas, until I find I am able to seize on one as it suddenly ripens into a flow of action or dialogue.
So in fact when I start don’t have a clue as to ninety-percent of what the character will do. So set him down in a place, apply some stimuli – such as that it starts to rain – and see what he does. I may do the writing, but I think it is the existence of the character in my mind that produces the novel. I do not so much create as report.
How do you feel about this?
A friendly tip, freely given, with no pressure implied >>>>>>>>>>>>>
Online shopping is convenient, but when it comes to books you can’t beat standing in the isle and flipping through a few pages, ignoring the nuisance people who brush up against you as you decide if you really want to break a twenty on an author who you don’t know, and may love or hate.
Amazon know this, and they’ve set up a facility called “Look Inside.” Enter the name of a book that you’re interested in on amazon, and when you go to that book’s page, look for the “Look Inside” logo.
If it’s there, give it a click, and you’ll get to view excerpts from the text, usually about three pages long.
You can also see the back cover, where the book’s brief description (the blurb) usually lives, and the contents pages.
If three pages isn’t enough, then go back in another twenty minutes, and the system will let you look at another three pages.
Oh yes, there is also a text entry facility where you can enter enter a key word, say “ears,” and amazon will show those parts of the book’s text that contain the word “ears,” as in “Lorenzo usually wore his hair long, because his ears had been cut off by the Mafia’s enforcer some years previously. Since then, he had made a habit of paying his gambling debts on time.”
If you not too busy, you might want to go to the link at the bottom of this blog and take a look at my novel….
….GO NOW. IT’S COMPULSORY, NOT OPTIONAL. IF YOU DONT GO YOU WILL BE AFFLICTED WITH A PLAGUE OF BOILS, AND YOUR FAMILY WILL BE CURSED FOR THREE GENERATIONS. YOUR DOG WILL BECOME RABID AND BITE YOU IN THE….
….oh dear me, I really must apologise for Richard, one of my more aggressive sub-personalities. Take no notice. This only happens when I forget to take the pills.
My first novel 
My second 
…third.
Xangans is a collection of short stories, blogs and poems written by memebers of the Xangan community, fo which I acted as publisher.
Recently I was talking to a friend, who asked me “define love.” It was a side issue to the main point of the conversation, but big enough to vanish into for hours, so I just said that nobody yet had ever managed to define love.
I think that was true, even though my intention was to avoid the question.
But the question stayed with me, because exanining or defining love and its complications has always been a major theme with authors, in fact it’s important to most people.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
A man rose trembling on the shore
Where the sea had newly birthed him
His hands he ran down his wet form
To wipe the slime of old creation
And found his lean limbs ready
For joy and death
Before him lay the forest’s tangle
Beyond that rose the beckoning hills
On whose crest stood a place tall
That gleamed beneath the mastering sun
As though it were of diamonds rare
Yet of tomb’s shape
How shall I tread, he asked the sky
But sky gave back no answer
Though parrots shrieked amid the trees
If I tread life, will it not bleed
Lying crushed beneath my feet
So I would die
If I stand silent, will I not rot
Here on this burning salty strand
And all my promise so deny
To ignore thus this untrod sand
And His gift spurn
The waves crashed violent at his back
The thunder rolled about him loud
With nervous start he stepped out
His paces to the dark jungle
Driven to act
With each hard tread he crushed on life
On snail or grass or butterfly
Much as he placed his steps with care
And from his footprints oozed blood
Yet sprang up white roses also
To his relief
For the grim crimson of the One
Added fire to the other’s calm
And the cool beauty of the One
Made excuse for the other’s gore
In purpose twining
Someone quoted the British writer E.M. Forster on the subject of love, and that reminded me of the one time that I actually took advice on a major point from a writer’s group.
It was in Manchester, England, and usually I’d found that advice on minor points was useful, because it’s easy to make mistakes on minor points, but on major ones I usually stuck fast to my opinions or methods, as I’d thought them out well before.
But I’d definitely made a mistake in the offending chapter – chapter three – by entering into a wordy tangle as I tried to explain the hero’s feelings on love. The consequence was that the whole chapter was too heavy-handed and “purple.”
With much whining and moaning I cured it by cutting about a quarter out. I’ll paste just one paragraph of the offending text below, a paragraph that does not appear in the finished novel.
What’s your opinion? Is it too “gushy”?
But why had he not seen this essential difference in her, a difference that could not be ignored or bridged? That was beyond Stuart’s power to determine, but the truth was that he saw the love, and not the thing that he loved. He loved but he did not understand: he did not understand Jennifer because he did not understand himself. He loved but he did not understand that her love was not as his, even as she was not as him. Nor did he understand that love could be other than as he felt it to be; that like all these great emotions that mankind names so glibly it covered a range as wide as that which separates the burning desert from the snow bound Himalayan peaks.
If you blog on Xanga, you have to be prepared to be shocked occasionally.
We sit at our computers, full of clever thoughts, eager to taste the wit of other, and occasionally we innocently click onto a new web address.
You know of course what we are forced to view sometimes?
Filth, thats what. Naked women, lustful men, unmentionable toys, improper use of baby oil and handcuffs; you name it, sooner or later you’ll see it.
And it seems to know neither the barriers of race, sex or good taste. Slender, supple women, women so well equipped they could suckle an army; muscular masterful hairy men, pale delicate cute youths; they’re all there, twining their limbs together as though the clouds had burst and poured down viagra.
Straight people, gay people, I’m not quite sure people.
Stark naked, half naked, lingerie so scanty a mouse couldn’t blow its nose on it.
Sooner or later, willing or not, you get to see it all.
But today was different
Because never before had I seen the whole range in one picture!
This is a recently published novel by Lynn Voedisch, www.xanga.com/bastetmax journalist and fiction writer.
Like myself, Lynn is one of the tribe of new authors who know they can do better than ninety percent of what you can find on the shelves at your local bookstore, but aren’t yet to be found on all those shelves because their second name isn’t Grisham, and bookstores don’t like to take a chance on new talent.
I read it recently, and have finally got around to reviewing it. Available at Barnesandnoble.com, on amazon.com, and at other online sources and book stores. See also www.lynnvoedisch.com/ExcitedLight for other information and sources.
What do I like about this novel? I like the imaginative vision of endless, unseen forces behind normal, visible events, sweeping in from glorious infinity to aid one needy child. I like the purity of Alex’s feelings. Love and anxiety for his mother, admiration for the interesting Jack. Is this why the angels speak to him? Because his feelings are simple, central and intense, those of a human not yet dirtied by the grubby world of compromise and hesitancy?
I like the portrayal of his mother, caught in the all too familiar trap of a struggling single parent. A once skilled dancer and choreographer, Allegra struggles against her growing alcoholism only to recreate herself as a posturing doll, inwardly longing to be again a good mother to her son, yet drawn by her destroying thirst to pose as a tasty little trophy for the predatory Ralf Neri.
This is an imaginative novel, a skilful blend of the magical unseen and tragically everyday.
Now I bang in my own bit of advertising…
Yesterday I flew back into Toronto after three hectic days at Book Expo America in New York. It was three hot, busy and exciting days. Just how hot, busy and exciting it was I can best describe by saying that despite a diet of burgers I weigh six pounds less, and my wallet is a few hundred dollars lighter.
The place was one vast madhouse of authors, of every type. Suit and tie men, and their counterpart business type ladies, all married to their cell phones; enthusiastic guys who’d just published the ultimate Swords and Sorcery novel; Vietnam veterans who’d finally put their experience of that conflict into print; kids and their parents who’d written and illustrated superhero stories; writers of self-help books, of text books, of books on allergies, on vintage cars, on Afro-American struggle; writers on religion, anything from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam, gay authors, straight authors, humble authors, pretentious authors, nervous authors, efficient authors; novelists, poets, academics, illustrators, and “Industry Professionals” who seemed uncertain what they actually did; fat guys, skinny supermodel chicks, ancient hippys rambling on about Woodstock; travel writers, serious writers, trash writers….
….and this is to name only one class of lunatic.
And the whole seething mass with but one intention: to proudly promote the agonised-over book that represents so many hours of their life, so much of their effort, so much of their hopes and dreams, so much of their soul.
And I was one of them.
Before I dared to enter that vast building, I faced to the Mystic East – I was looking up thirty-fifth Street – and raising my eyes to a high mountain that I there espied – I think it was the Empire State Building – I cried to the heavens
“I call ALL the Powers of Bullshit into me!”
“I call ALL the Powers of Bullshit into me!”
“I call ALL the Powers of Bullshit into me!”
Then, trembling, I entered.
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