Day: September 29, 2013

Sneak Peek: Sliding Past Vertical

Today we have a sneak peek from the new novel by Laurie Boris, Sliding Past Vertical.

Sarah Cohen is a walking disaster. She means well, but the ex-diver’s hasty decisions wreak havoc on her life in Boston. Good thing Emerson is a phone call away in Syracuse, with a metaphorical mop to clean up the mess. Their long-distance friendship can be excruciating for him, though. Years after they shared a brief college romance, he’s still in love with her. When everything goes wrong, Sarah takes another plunge: back to the scene of her last mistake, to start fresh. Unfortunately for Emerson, the move puts her too close for comfort. Her attempts to straighten her life’s trajectory are sometimes amusing and sometimes catastrophic. With Sarah around, is anyone safe?

Sliding Past Vertical is available through Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Here is an excerpt from Sliding Past Vertical…

Continue reading “Sneak Peek: Sliding Past Vertical”

Video Trailer: Climbing Maya

What is success? What do we strive for and why? What is it we chase after, day after day, and inevitably judge the value of our lives against? Do the old answers of career and money really hold up? Faced with unemployment, the impending death of one friend, and self-destruction of another, Ken La Salle begins his search for the meaning of success. It’s a search that explores why we still crave success that in the face of inevitable death could be nothing more than Maya, and helps us push through all of our preconceived notions to a concept few understand.

Climbing Maya, the philosophical memoir by Ken La Salle, is available from Amazon and Amazon UK.

Don’t forget, you can cast your vote for trailer of the month on October 26, 2013 at 5 p.m. Pacific time.

National Poetry Day: Thursday, 03 October 2013

Some people have skipped over this post already, thinking they don’t “get” poetry or that their little rhymes or rushes of emotion spilled out in words are not “real” poetry. That’s certainly what I thought when I first heard about National Poetry Day. But October 3rd is not about the profound poetry of the elite. No, according to the website, it is “a nationwide celebration of poetry for everyone, everywhere: from assemblies, bus-queues, cafes, greengrocers, hospitals, ice-rinks to waiting-rooms, yacht clubs and zoos…a day when poetry slips off its dust-jacket and takes to the streets.”

Since 1994, on this designated day, school children take up the theme in pictures as well as words and even a rap or two. Poetry has been written and read on subways and in ambulances and in 140-character bits on Twitter. Four Welsh poets will be writing 100 poems in 24 hours.

Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation, describes National Poetry Day as belonging to all who “have ever cried or laughed or loved or cursed and wished for words.” I know there is more than one writer here who fits that description, even if you don’t consider yourself a poet.

This year’s theme is Water. Imagine the wealth of poetry you could write if you were not bound by the definition.

I’ll leave you with this excerpt from Longfellow’s “The Day is Done”: Continue reading “National Poetry Day: Thursday, 03 October 2013”