Reflecting the circles
Of life and of choice
Listening to the patterns
The still and peaceful voice
Dreaming of a sea change
Begin, rebuild anew
Lens I use part foreign
Part familiar view
Would there be a chance
Will the fates allow?
If it was so destined
Could I see somehow?
Speaking of the soul’s code
From a stranger’s voice
Reflecting all the circles
Of my life and choice
(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Hi
So, work is still mad and my time is limited, but Easter is coming. I had planned to do some serious blog reading and catching up, but my editor has just finished manuscript assessing my latest novel, an occult themed book, and she suggested making it the first in a trilogy, so the plot monster has risn in my head and I’ve plotted out two books now to complete the trilogy so will be deep in writing the beginning of the first of the two over the break instead. So I may be missing in action for Easter as well, apart from any poems I have scheduled to post every few days, and attempts to at least try to keep up a bit each morning over coffee!
So forgive me my absence from your blogs again, please – the muse is a demanding force as you all know only too well!
But on the topic of trilogies – for those that either read them and love them, or those that write them (or serial books in general) – do you find you need to do a mini-synopsis of the previous book at the beginning of the next? If so, are there clever ways of doing that without it just being a whole bucketload of heavy exposition at the beginning? Any thoughts, tips or advice would be much appreciated!
Oh, and in terms of such advice, my trilogy will complete an arc with the same people, plus some new characters – it isn’t one of a series of ‘X – occult hunter’ with different episodic storylines – so in case that is important to any advice given I thought I would mention that.
Cheers
Helen V
Blackened eagle
Wings through putrid sky
Storms brewing
Hunger and terror
Blind sisters they weave
Darker thread
Demon regal
Hooded piercing eye
Wolf pursuing
Spiritual error
Forsaken hearts cleave
To the dead
(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Image credit: Vlad Gerasimov at http://www.vladstudio.com
I found a cat upon a tree
Who grinned and grinned quite viciously
This cat could speak – so very strange!
All preconceptions re-arranged
He smiled and simply asked me ‘Who?’
As owls may speak, but seldom do
He waited on my answer yet
With twinkling eyes I won’t forget
‘Who what?’ I asked as my reply
With this he simply answered ‘Why?”
He curled his tail and sniffed the air
Pretending that I wasn’t there
‘Who are you, or rather why?’
He offered finally, by and by
His eyes affixed me like a trance
Chimera lost in circumstance
‘And I may ask the same of you’
I answered tartly, as I do
‘A cat that speaks atop a tree
Makes scarcely less good sense than me!”
‘Who and why and when perchance?’
He answered, merry in his dance
‘And will you answer, if not why?’
His manner silky, ever sly
‘I do not understand your quest’
I answered, ‘Let the matter rest’
‘But say I were you and you were me’
He offered next elliptically
‘If that was so’ he finally said
‘I know I’d answer you instead’
But what he asked made little sense
This cat here played at my expense
‘I’m not your mouse’ was all I’d say
And quickly bid this cat good-day
And as I wandered into blue
He purred and quietly whispered ‘Who?”
(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
For mindlovemisery’s prompt at: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/prompt-51-complete-bafflement/
Aurora Borealis, the colored lights seen in the skies around the North Pole, the Northern Lights, from Bear Lake, Alaska (Photo credit: Beverly & Pack)
I’m strung out on the atmosphere tonight
I’m wallowing in the luminescence
Twirling through sheer starlight
The breeze on the air is humming
A tone I knew so long go
And I’m dimly aware I’m falling
Where the brave dare not go
I’m blissfully star struck singing
Love songs to the palest moon
Aurora so long away winging
Daylight can wait for centuries
I’m falling through night to dawn
I’m like the newest morning
Just trembling to be born
© Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Vermeer’s original painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring from 1665 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Not a hair out of place
It’s been so long since we last met
in parties brittle with laughter and with
escapades we won’t forget
Age has been kind to you or you’re clever
Picture perfect you still seem
While I find myself lacklustre
Just a pretender to the dream
Every stroke of makeup is precision
You shimmer like the afternoon’s lost summer sun
as you glimmer through these hallways where something else
has been begun
I’m in awe, a little jealous
and kind of angry with this too
You’re picture perfect in a portrait
and I’m fading out of view
You’re picture perfect in this portrait
where I’ve faded out of view
© Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Fox (Photo credit: Natasha Lloyd)
She was sly and she was crafty
She was clever, she was cold
There were only lies and traps in
All the stories that she told
She was daughter to deception
She was misdirection’s queen
She was never on the straight path
She just hovered in between
If she ever felt too lonely
She would never question why
She preferred to be superior
To be effortless, not try
She was crafty like a fox now
She was dark, essentially
And I guess I should have known then
That she’d get the best of me
© Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Image credit: abstract.desktopnexus.com
Live through this
Life under your microscope
Dull tones ringing silence
A sigh of lost regret
I try then to forget
Each day I awoke to just sunlight
Set to expose
Live through this
The madness of the drama queen’s
Last turn upon the stage
A glance and haunting smile
I try to reconcile
This with secrets too well hidden
So deep inside
Live through this
A patterned awful net of years
Spread out like death’s web
In the depths of December
I try to yet remember
The smile that opened this dread door
So very long ago
I lived through this
Your threat of harm or worse
A cursed dance with death
Alone, or now it seems
I tried then to redeem
Harassment with a beaten heart
Bleeding out upon the floor
In the end there’s only this
From your fetid traitor’s kiss
When only fear could give you bliss
I lived through this….
(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All rights Reserved
A poem from the point of view of a stalking victim, for mindlovemisery’s prompt at: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/prompt-50-grim-determination/
Hi
Just wanted to pop in to say I know I’ve been absent without leave from WP more than I would like of late, and it won’t change for a while because work went from mad to pure insanity in terms of hours and demands in the past week or so and will remain that way for a while – so just want to say again, if I don’t get to your posts as often as I used to I promise I don’t mean to neglect anyone, I just have so many demands on my time at the moment. 😦
Believe me I’d far prefer to be reading your work than everything else!
On a related note, Briana – if you are reading this, I got The Home Fire delivered this week, but I probably won’t have time to read it or a few weeks – so don’t think I’m neglecting yours either please! I know I will enjoy it, like all your writing, when I have time to relax and give it my full attention!
I hope everyone’s lives are going well, and less hectically than mine is at the moment. I will still try to keep up with the little spare time I have first thing each morning, and by about mid year things should hopefully let up in my world again, so till then, please bear with me!!
Cheers
Helen V
the star of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at Hollywood boulevard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Give me the draw card
Give me some time
I’ll bring the people
You bring the crime
Give me the headline
Give me a star
They’ll come to see this
Travel afar
Give me a tagline
Zeitgeist is fed
They want their fashion
They’re easily led
Give me the draw card
Marry in haste
All of their hunger
Soon laid to waste
© Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved
Like most people, I have a number of sides to me. The most interesting one probably emerges through my writing, hence this blog. I love to read, and also to write, and so this is a way to share both.
Gravatar image credit: (c) iStockphoto.com/Lobsterclaws
helenvalentina 