Upcoming Characters: Eden

Apologies for not inundating you with useless posts and statuses.  However, I AM writing.  My upcoming novel with the working title The Circadian Ladder has a wonderful character named Eden.  She's a girl from another world who rides a man-eating beast whose demeanor always matches her owner's (a voracious mood ring of sorts). Eden has been betrayed by the world, and has no use for anything human - but loves non-human creatures, creatures deemed monsters, monsters whose hearts are gentler and nobler than those she's experienced in everyday life.

I'm going to collect images that inspire me regarding the characters in the book.  Eden could very much be the person contained in the image below.

 

I haven't been able to find the artist or origin of this image, but if you know anything about it, please let me know!

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The Awkward Hero - or Your Very Own Unsympathetic Character

"While some might find his character unsympathetic, they are reading about someone who never learned how to jump through the hoops of day-to-day social interaction. I find characters like this fascinating.  After all, what’s more interesting, a circus lion or an untamed lion in its own habitat? ." - Elias Barton on Carder Quevedo (lead character in Above The Universe Below)

This quote was take from a guest post by Barton on the blog of writer and editor Tricia Kristufek.  Find the full essay HERE!

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How to Find Inspiration for Your Writing and Art

"Inspiration is a funny thing and it comes in funny ways: through a movie, a conversation, in dreams. At times, someone brings inspiration with them in their smile or wrapped up in anger. They accidentally drop it at your feet while searching for their keys. It can even come to you wearing the costume of an old memory. It’s all about listening and understanding that inspiration is there to find you – and it’s really important to latch onto it and work with it before it slips away – because, believe me, it will." - Elias Barton

This quote was take from an essay on finding inspiration by Barton.  Find the full essay at A Bibliophile's Thoughts on Books HERE!

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Speaker for the Dead & Metallic Hummingbirds: Elias Barton Interviewed by Suzanne van Rooyen

"Reading and writing are one of the biggest ways we can understand our world. When I was a kid, many things weren’t allowed, but reading and writing were encouraged… and saved my life.  Books explore and expound on life in ways that plunge us far beneath the surface.  I started writing to make sense of life and explore my own inner-galaxies. I don’t expect I’ll ever fully finish!" - Elias Barton

Please check out the rest of my interview with Suzanne van Rooyen HERE!

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Inside My Head...

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One Direction and My Novel - I know, WTF?

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jaidis Shaw of Juniper Grove.

Among the questions asked:

Q: If your book became a movie, who would be your first choice to play the lead roles?

A: "For Carder: James Franco crafts a great I’m-a-mess-but-still-appealing. A friend’s daughter tried convincing me that Carder would be Harry Styles from the band One Direction. I had to look him up. Haika/Iris could be Mia Wasikowska, Greta Gerwig and –give her a couple years but– Julia Garner.   For the Vivienne Girls, I’d love to see Anna Farris, Kristen Schaal, Kristin Wiig, Parker Posey or the Olson Twins being raw but slightly comedic. It would all be under the direction of a gritty Eternal Sunshine-esque filmmaker!"

Too read the full interview please visit Juniper Grove HERE!

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Radio Interview with Cyrus Webb on Conversations Live

Live radio interviews are a strange animal. However, host Cyrus Webb has a way of making one feel right at home. The subjects he interviews on Conversations Live are varied: from Dionne Warwick to, well... me!

Please check out his interview with me about Above the Universe Below, writing and art.

You can play the interview in the embedded window below, or find it online here.

Listen to internet radio with Cyrus Webb on Blog Talk Radio

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Be Weird. Be Random. Be Who You Are.

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Calling all Nerds - and other updates.

Guess what one nerd's dream might be?  Getting the premier Nerd internet headquarters (http://www.nerdist.com) to review one's book!  Well, it happened!

The ever-talented Jessica Barton -no relation- said: " Above the Universe Below is one of the best things I’ve read in a while." Check it out here.

If you enjoy witty podcasts, Jessica's podcast No Math Allowed is for you! I say this as someone who already listened to her show before she published the book review. So check it out!  

In other news, I am embarking on a blog tour -book tours are now held in cyberland more often than not- in the next couple of weeks as well as some podcasts and radio shows. I will post updates and links as soon as I get them.

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JUST RELEASED: Above the Universe Below -- Read it for FREE!

I am very proud to announce that my novel Above the Universe Below is now available on Amazon in both hardcopy and ebook/Kindle formats!  This novel has been a labor of love for several years and it has been my honor to represent Carder, Haika, Rabbit and all the others in the story.  

Carder's story is an odd one - it's even been called "weird-flavored" (I particularly like that one), however, being intimately connected with these characters on such a deep level, wandering through their minds and peaking into their hidden thoughts, intentions and memories was an experience unlike any one I've ever had.  

In a promotion on Amazon.com, Above the Universe Below is being offered for download for FREE during August 17-19th.  Please free to enjoy the novel and if you do, please leave a review on Amazon!

Click here to download

--The novel will shortly be available on Barnes & Noble and for the Nook shortly, but Amazon currently has it exclusively. 

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You Can Finish Writing Your Novel 1.0

If I collected all the pertinent tips to finishing the writing of your novel in one article, you would be here reading it for hours or days. But since I can’t, and you can’t, this project will develop in many, smaller sections. Regardless, the years I spent writing Above the Universe Below were difficult, fussy years that taught me a few things. The 211th thing was: YOU CAN FINISH YOUR NOVEL! You can. You. Can. I promise you. And if you want to, you will.

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Little Earthquakes - 20 years Later

or: I Married Tori Amos 20 years ago... and We’re Still Happy 

It was 1992. I was just a teenager who felt like an alien. She didn’t care. She watched me sitting there in my parents’ basement, saw my purity hiding behind glasses and a peach-fuzz mustache and decided she was going to take it. It was time. I was ready.

Or so I thought.

Up to that point, I had no real experience with music. I had one friend who was introducing me to The Cure and New Order, but I was still largely ignorant. 

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Little Hell & Lava Enlightenment: Part I, The Secret Life of Life

Tungurahua Volcano "Little Hell" in Banos, Ecuador

Upon first arriving in Ecuador, Aaron raised an eyebrow, assuring me, “We’ve completely missed the tail end of wet season. I really did time everything perfectly.”

After a grueling seven hour bus ride on a bus fit for elves, after mile upon mile of twisting roads up and down hillside and mountain, after children trying to sell us necklaces and iguanas on the roadside...

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Press Play! - The Soundtrack to the novel ABOVE THE UNIVERSE BELOW

There are endless amounts of music consumed and digested during the writing of a novel.  ABOVE THE UNIVERSE BELOW was no exception. Thus, I've edited the playlist below as the soundtrack to the story. The songs aren't arranged musically but chronologically to novel's scenes. While I lean towards explaining how each song relates to chapters and events, I'll just let the soundtrack should stand on its own.  All you have to do is press play!

Enjoy!                               (you can view the printed playlist after the jump.)

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The Secret Life of Life: The Animal Catalog

Do you want a lion? Everybody wants a lion.

No.

A dolphin?

Maybe—the choices rushed through my childhood mind—You know what I want?  I want to lie on the back of a whale in the middle of the ocean while I look up at the stars.  And spiders.  I want tons of spiders. Herds. I always had a thing for spiders.

My brother—who in childhood resembled a cheetah, with long skinny limbs, eyelashes that could harvest wheat and hair in perpetual decision between blonde and red—thought I was crazy. 

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Finding inspiration in THAT CREEPY GUY...

My friends all know that I've always found inspiration in authentically weird art, eccentric people and unusual poetry and music.  Even in advertisements, if 9 out of 10 people prefer the minty toothpaste being shilled onscreen, I'm the 10th - the one who likes it blueberry flavored.  This isn't out of any desire to be unique, it's inborn and it costs me (imagine exactly how long a brand of blueberry toothpaste would last on the market).

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Having a Coke With You

by Frank O’Hara

 

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

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You might not see what you'd expect...

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To Quote...

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Cover For the New Novel

After a great deal of heartache, hardship and harebrained ideas, the cover for Above the Universe Below has been finalized.  I originally envisioned something more... strange, but I think the darkness is still well-captured.  I can imagine Carder's trepidation walking among the trees pictured and feel the weight of an ominous heaven hanging above his head.  What do you think?

Some of you have asked when the novel will be officially published.  It will soon be available on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble's Nook (and other services which I'm not sure who uses) and hopefully it will be available in hard copy not long after.  I'll keep you posted!

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Eating Brains isn't always easy...

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