More than five years ago, I took a sabbatical from writing. Since then the facts of the world have become wilder and weirder than anyone could have imagined, making fiction well-nigh impossible. Will I ever write again? As we say in Dundee, Eh havnae a Scooby!*
Take care,
M.
*Scottish rhyming slang.
Yes, it has been a long time, folks, but then I’m still enjoying a sabbatical, still sorting this old head out.
I’m not totally inactive, however. I continue to pen the occasional weird poem, and of course to edit the zen space. Speaking of which, the Autumn 2019 Showcase is now published there. Visit, please.
MM.
Yes. Maybe not so much on the writing front at present, but I hear encouraging noises on the publication front. What might it mean? Well don’t hold your breath, but:
All of this is up in the air at the moment, so…
Hello. I know I’ve been quiet, but I haven’t actually been inactive. I have been posting my poetry regularly, for example. Also I’ve been keeping the zen space going – that’s the e-zine I edit – where you can read haiku and other short forms of poetry.
The latest Showcase (Autumn 2018) was published a few days ago, and you find a portal to it it here. As well as words it includes picture; featured this time are portraits by Man Ray, the 20c surrealist photographer, like the one of Pablo Picasso, here to the right.
By the way, I’m always on the lookout for new ‘names’ for the zen space, so if you know anyone – yourself even – who can turn their hand to short, vivid, in-the-moment poetry, then direct them to the ‘Submission’ tab at the zen space.
I am still on sabbatical from novel writing. I don’t know when that will change. Certainly not before this mornings cup of Earl Grey, that’s for sure…
In case you missed it elsewhere, the latest (Summer 2017) Showcase at the zen space is now published.
the zen space is an e-zine for haiku and related in-the-moment words, and I have been the editor since it started six years ago. Yes, with this issue the zen space celebrates its sixth birthday! The latest Showcase includes not only haiku and other recognisable Japanese-inspired forms in English, but also some poetry it’s hard to categorise. It also features some beautiful mandalas from our most ‘quoted’ artist Marie Taylor.
Although I say it myself, it’s a good ‘un this time. Check it out for yourselves – click on the Mandala below and follow the links.
MM.
Are you an aspiring artist? Would you like to take a punt at designing a cover illustration for my latest YA/teen vampire novel, KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE, sequel to From My Cold, Undead Hand? I have little to offer you at this point except recognition, but in that respect I would be helping you and you would be helping me.
Your illustration does not have to be fancy. In fact if you could take a cue from Millie Ho’s excellent black-and-white cover for the first book in the series (look right) you’ll see the kind of aesthetic we’re looking for.
If you would like to offer your services, please get in touch with the publisher direct.
Thank you,
MM.
During my sabbatical from novel-writing, I haven’t exactly been idle. Here are a couple of things that are going on right now.
Turning my short story ‘Axe’ into a screenplay. I had been working closely with a Scottish screen-writer to turn my short story ‘Axe‘ into a drama for TV or the ‘big screen’. Currently, many scenes have been written, both from the story itself and from additional narrative material I have provided – and it’s looking good!
However, the screen-writer has had to pull out, for unforeseen private reasons, and he’s not certain whether he’ll be able to take up the task again. I fully understand the reasons he gave me, and he left the ball in my court as to what to do next. Between us we have a substantial amount of material. I think my choices are as follows:
1. Do nothing, in the hope that the screen-writer may be able to resume the project at a later date; this of course runs the risk of the whole project stalling completely.
2. Try to finish the script myself; this is not my area of expertise, and I am, after all, on a writing sabbatical.
3. Get together with my literary agent and look for another screen-writer; my previous collaborator would be okay with that, but it would need someone who could build seamlessly onto the work already done.
I’ll let you know what turns up.
I Tamburisti di FIREnze. If you don’t already know about Burning Man, find out about it. It’s a festival, for want of a better word, or rather an annual gathering of people in the middle of a desert in Nevada, USA. Whilst there, people perform, make things, share, live together, interact, laugh, work, and generally enjoy themselves. But the main thing is that they do so entirely without money transactions, or even barter transactions. Everything that is provided is a gift entirely without strings, given in the hope that everything will be paid forward in some way. It seems to work, right down to the clearing away of site debris afterwards.
This year the theme is The Renaissance. I was contacted a few days ago by the Project Coordinator of ‘Camp Thump Thump’, a group that regularly attends Burning Man, giving lessons in drum-making and drumming, letting people build, play, and take away their own drums. For 2016 the group has adopted a theme based on renaissance Italy – the time of the Borgias, the Medici, and Leonardo da Vinci – and have reinvented themselves as I Tamburisti di FIREnze for the duration of this year’s Burning Man. The Coordinator asked me to provide some Renaissance-flavoured text for their use, and I have been working on pen-portraits of (fictitious) 16c Guild-members for her.
I’m not yet sure whether or how my work will be used, but again if it is, I’ll let you know.
The manuscript of KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE is open in front of me, and my collection The Last-but-one Samurai and other stories is currently being edited. Meanwhile Angélique Jamail has featured another of my Gothic poems from 2010 on her blog…
… amongst the snake’s head fritillaries. Meanwhile…
… in 2010 I was writing all kinds of poetry, from sonnets to brutalist ‘Lithopoesis’. During that year I put together a little collection of Gothic verses, many with a wry twist of humour, under the general title of The Wraith’s Complaining Mouth (a line from one of the poems), with no idea whether I would present them for publication or what. They have sat in my portfolio since then. During the current ‘National Poetry Month’ in the USA, my friend Angélique Jamail is honouring me by featuring some of that collection, starting with the sonnet ‘Selena’. Click on the picture below to be transported to her blog to read the poem and see what she says about my old Gothic work…
… and the manuscript for KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE has been returned from the editor’s desk, with suggestions and corrections for me to pore through. I plan to launch into that this weekend.
Another quarter of the year has rolled round, and I have been busy putting together the latest offering from the zen space, the e-zine of which I am the editor, publisher, and wot-not. This time there is no set theme, and the illustrations by Vincent van Gogh are totally irrelevant. Or you could say their irrelevance is relevant, and if you wanted to sound really clever, you could say it’s the spaces in between that are relevant. Yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice, as they say. Except of course the zen space is absolutely free. Click here, or on Vincent’s self portrait to be transported…
Marie Marshall 