My friends on Facebook’s Artists Underground are holding an online charity auction Friday, March 12th at 7 pm Pacific Time, through Sunday, March 14th at 9 pm Pacific Time to help raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I wanted to bring up awareness on this topic — please spread the word.
This page is set up for an on-line art auction that will take place Friday, March 12th at 7 pm Pacific Time, through Sunday, March 14th at 9 pm Pacific Time. The auction will feature art from various artists, including accomplished artists and up-and-coming artists. The proceeds will be going to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society within 2 weeks of the auction close.
Pictures of the art work available for auction will be posted beginning 1 week before the auction. There will be a minimum bid on each piece (but the bidding will begin rather low) and your winning bid price will include free shipping within the U.S. (or delivery in person where possible). If bidding internationally, please email me before hand at marcyeibenartist@yahoo.com for a shipping quote. Also, if you would like to donate a piece of art for this, please email me.
Why the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society? Well, those who know me most likely met my mom. My mother was the sweetest, most awesome mother ever. She had 5 children and was married to my father for over 30 years. She really was my best friend, the person I could tell anything to, who I would call for advice, who shared every up and down in my life.
In Dec of 2006 she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lymphoma. The doctors said it was curable and she would be totally fine. They did her first chemotherapy. Unfortunately, her body couldn’t take it. It caused all sorts of other physical problems and they couldn’t continue with the chemo. Try as they might, they made no progress. In April of 2007, weeks after her 60th birthday, she passed away.
When I learned about the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society I knew I wanted to be a part of it in some way. I have since joined Team in Training and am simultaneously training for my first marathon and working to raise $3500 for LLS. This is a very important cause for me and I’m hoping that I get tons of support on this. If you would like to just donate without waiting for the auction, you can visit this page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sd/rnr10/TeamEiben. Or you can wait for the auction and help out that way!
Well, the holidays have given me a chance to catch up with everything! I hope everyone else had a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Solstice, New Year’s, [insert holiday of choice here], etc.
The first draft of the novella is DONE! I’m rushing headlong through edits. Which is just as death-defying and wacky as it sounds. No, seriously.
I’m always reading something, too. Over Christmas weekend, I finished the treat-like item won in The Rejectionist’s contest from a while back: A LONG, LONG TIME AGO AND ESSENTIALLY TRUE by Brigid Pasulka. I did a review on Goodreads. This is a book to be read and savored. Not my usual cup of tea, but a delightful read. It was refreshing to immerse myself in something other than SFF, horror or romance for a while.
Right now, I’m working on THREE DAYS TO DEAD by fellow AWer, Kelly Meding. I’m a little over the halfway point and am loving what I’ve read so far. I’ll give a detailed review after I’ve finished.
Speaking of reviews, I’ve been working on contacting book reviewers, and have sent out the first batch of advance reader copies of HUNTED BY THE OTHERS. Keep an eye out for reviews of the book (and some interviews I’ll be giving!) on these sites:
On the cooking front, I made some baked apples for dessert on New Year’s. They are delightfully tasty, and very simple/easy to make. Here’s the recipe:
6-8 large green apples
¼ to ½ stick of butter
Brown sugar
Powdered cinnamon
Powdered nutmeg (if desired)
Preheat the oven at 350 degrees. Core the apples – no need to take off the skin – and put them on a baking sheet (suggest covering the baking sheet with tinfoil first to avoid a sticky clean-up job later). In the cored center of each apple, insert a pat of butter, a tablespoon of brown sugar, and dust the top until the sugar is covered with powdered cinnamon. Add a dash of nutmeg to taste.
Pour a small amount of water in the bottom of the baking sheet. The sugar will burn if you don’t add it, so this is important!
Let the apples bake uncovered at 350 for one hour. Best consumed when still warm!
Lastly, I’ve made the following New Year’s resolutions:
– Submit my novella on time.
– Finish writing book #3 in the H&W Investigations series.
– Submit book #3 on time.
– Write more short stories.
– Figure out if I want to write book #4 in the series, or something else — and write it.
There you go! Feel free to share your own resolutions and thoughts in the comments.
Yes, this baby started out as a typical fangirl’s wet dream.
And now, I present to you… The Greatest Shirt in All the Land.
Evi has both “improved upon” and hijacked my Christmas present. Yes — that’s a Twilight — no, no, sorry, New Moon — t-shirt with a picture of Edward Cullen on it. Now with added eye-patch, mustache and goatee!
I’ve had the good fortune to meet a fellow scribe who not only has opened my eyes to new ways of viewing the art of writing (thanks again for introducing me to Fernando Pessoa!), but has also been kind enough to let me share some of his work here on this blog.
This is the first poem by Russell Salamon I have had the pleasure of reading. Or, rather, had read to me by the artist himself. If you have the opportunity to go to a poetry reading by Russell, jump on it. He’s amazing.
POOL OF RESURRECTION
You take my face into your hands
and twist it this way; wind carves
my hair into thickets of hazelnut
bushes. I kiss you with my receding
high mountains. You press against
me your blue black sea meadows;
mirrors of sunset light, darkening
a bed of dreams.
I would settle for timeless kisses
your honeyed meadows, woman
with no mind on, a voiceless
embrace that keeps saying
now and now—skiffs and barges
floating between us.
I enter you through the pool
of resurrection. You rise through
me like a gust of wind shivering
through branches. A wind rocks
singly the whole grove. We hear
hammers pound mountains into
the ground. Desire builds solid
this slow time in our veins, skins.
To me, anticipation is a great thing. One of my friends and wonderful beta readers doesn’t agree. She absolutely can’t stand not knowing what’s coming next in a story. Sometimes she even skips to the ending in a book just to find out whodunit. She’s been demanding to know the details ahead of time of who-killed-so-and-so, what-happened-to-such-and-such, do-he-and-she-get-together, etc, while reading a series of books I loaned her.
What’s the fun in skipping ahead or being told ahead of time? It doesn’t work that way in life, and it would bug the ever living crap out of me if someone ruined the ending of a book or movie like that for me. I like being surprised and having something to look forward to.
For instance, I am anticipating a number of things. Finding out what my first book is going to look like once the cover art is made, and what the editorial process is going to be like. Seeing it on shelves in bookstores or available for purchase online. Seeing if my first short story will win or place in the contest I submitted it to. The nextKim Harrison book (and damn that it’s not coming out until February, 2010). Would life be as sweet if I didn’t have these things to look forward to? I don’t think so.
After reading Joe Konrath’sblog post on the subject of the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with being a writer (yes, it’s a little dated, but I caught the link from somewhere else and was intrigued enough to follow and read it), I’ve decided that I’m just too damned cheerful about what’s gone right for me lately to be worried about what he’s talking about. He makes some good points, but the ones I agree with are mostly on the subject of keep writing.
Despite the handful of doom and gloom posts I’ve seen on a few agents’ and editors’ blogs, I’m not seeing quite so much to be worried about as I apparently should. I love my agent, I’m thrilled down to my toes that Kensington picked me up, and I’m not too worried about my far-off future in publishing just now. Things are going well, and while I’ve certainly had the “OH GOD AM I NOT GOOD ENOUGH?!” jitters, I’m not so afraid of that as I used to be. I continue to anticipate good things in my future — because I’m doing everything I can to ensure those good things come about.
I’ve written an ungodly amount of stuff. Talking with a friend about it yesterday reminded me of this, and how very much of what I’ve written will never, ever see the light of day.
What? Why is that, you ask? How can this be?
The answer is simple. Most of it isn’t publishable. For example, I’ve written four poems in my entire life. That doesn’t make me a poet. They aren’t particularly deep, meaningful, or insightful, mostly because they were all written during times when I was being exceptionally emo in high school and wanted an outlet. Even my friends aren’t allowed to view these little gems. They’re rotting away in the dark recesses of a hard drive and they will be mentioned, quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
Same with the first novels I wrote. Yes, novels. Plural. More than one. My first one dates back to 8th grade. Trust me, it’s nothing you want to see. They aren’t anywhere near the quality of the novels that are going to be published. I think of them as practice. Scary, god-awful practice, but practice nonetheless. Will I ever unearth any of them, dust it off, polish it up and ship it to my agent for perusal? Doubtful. Very doubtful.
More recent examples include a short story I wrote after a sleepless, feverish night brought on by reading three Stephen King books in a single day. It’s too twisted for most peoples’ tastes, including mine. Another example: the 200,000+ words of cross-over stuff written with the friend mentioned above. She’s writing her own novel. As we dearly love each others’ characters and writing, we’ve gone back and forth writing the equivalent of fan-fiction of our own work. Amusing as it is, it’s not meant for public consumption.
The point to all this?
I dunno. It makes me wonder what some of my favorite authors are hiding under their beds and in the cracks and crevices of hard drives, never to see the light of day.
