my first novel, blue, on kindle and iphone

After looking into and starting the process a while ago, and then looking again and seeing that Kindle was now a reader available for Iphone and ipod Touch, I gave it a try again and was able to get a new cover, pricing, and text of my first novel, Blue, loaded on the Amazon website without too much trouble. I'm excited for people to be able to read my first novel at a lower price and in a way that is convenient for them. It's easy to upload text and I may try to put a book of poetry on their as well.

Here is the Amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/d6cp6b

Working on the novel

I recently talked to my friend Lou, a poet who has written several novels, and others, and my Creativity Coach, Wickie of Monstre Sacre, about my novel in progress and they both agreed that I need to focus more on the forest and look at the 2nd half of the book, the one I really haven't revised much or even read since I first wrote it.

I have revised the first part, really the first third, many times, since I was going to publish it as a novella, and then changed my mind. Reading the rest of what I've got makes sense.

So far I am surprised and somewhat dismayed at how personal and autobiographical it is. How much will the reader be interested in my life? As if they would know it was my life...but anyway...how interesting is this material? I took a class this weekend from one of my favorite writers, living, dead, or undead, Stephen Elliott, on writing literary fiction or non-fiction using your personal life. It was a good class and is making me think about who my ideal reader is, and how similar they are to me. My friend Anne is probably my ideal reader, currently, as far as I can tell. My friend Simon used to be but my work is not dark or horrific enough for him anymore.

My ideal reader probably likes the following books and authors etc.: Infinite Jest, Ulysses, William S. Burroughs, (my friend Brian comes to mind...), Franz Kafka, The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch, maybe Kundera, Rules of Attraction, Nadja by Andre Breton, Paul Bowles, Samuel Beckett, Bukowski, maybe Natalie Sarraute and other new wave novelists, also maybe Middlemarch and Saffron-Foer. An eclectic mix, for sure.

Even though my style is not that similar, I feel closest to Kafka in some ways, in the sense of saying "yes, everything is fucked up, but so? it can, and will get much worse..." I think this is the world I write about, with characters more cynical or depairing than myself. Writing about hope is not as interesting to me as how people deal with the lack of it.

the joys and pains of writing and editing a novel

so I somehow managed, in the last 8 years or so, to write a rough draft of over 150K words, over 500 pp on word depending on how you slice it. big.

anyway, I have revised certain parts of it, like the first 2 or 3 hundred pages, several times. and I just started what I thought was going to be the last revision, I hoped, and got through 90 pp making significant changes. so...just realized the other day some basic changes I needed to make, starting again from the beginning. feeling that it is an endless, neverending process. endless and neverending.

the truth is that most of the changes I've made are still there so none of my ongoing efforts have been wasted. It is a better novel than it was a few months or years ago. and as I go through the first hundred pages I am establishing a baseline and better understanding for the characters and story then existed before.

writing a revising a novel is easy, just stick your hand in the fire. ow that hurts! good, now do it again. repeat.

meat puppets song

saw them last saturday. this song, like a couple others, I first heard covered by Nirvana on their great unplugged recording:

Oh me

If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do

I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news

Would you like to hear my voice
Sprinkled with emotion
Invented at your birth?

I cannot see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see
I formulate infinity
Stored deep inside me

If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do

I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news

Would you like to hear my voice
Sprinkled with emotion
Invented at your birth?

I can't see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see

I formulate infinity
I store it deep inside of me

books I am reading right now

No Time to Lose, Pema Chodron, her commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva. I am well into this and it is very good. Lots to think about and practice, especially mindfulness, which PC really inspires me toward.

Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga by Swami Vivekenanda. Very interesting discourse on Bhakti which ties in with my novel and the next book....

Miracle of Life, stories about Neem Karoli Baba, compiled by Ram Dass. Stories about the guru of Ram Dass, who he describes in Be Here Now, which I actually read as a kid, maybe a teenager. Bhakti path. Good so far. Having met and had darshan with a real guru for the first time recently, Amma, her in NorCal, I am curious about gurus especially one like NKB who I "met" early in my life. I don't know if he is my guru or not but perhaps I will figure that out.

The image is of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, originally called Avalokitesvara in Buddhist texts like the Heart Sutra. She was originally described as male and then became male and/or female.