helenvalentina

Exciting News – Briana Vedsted’s A Girl Named Cord!

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Helen

Fabulous News!!! A Girl Named Cord by Briana Vedsted will be published on Amazon.com July 31st, 2013 as both a paperback and an eBook.

Get in early and be one of the first to read!!!!

Goodreads link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18269695-a-girl-named-cord

Book description: Cord had to work hard to earn her living as a cow puncher, and she was getting along just fine until a wealthy rancher moves into the county and threatens the lives of her and her friends. Cord rises up to meet every challenge, but the death of friends, both old and new, plague her at every turn. And just when everything seems like it is going to go back to being peacefully normal, a secret comes to light, putting Cord and her future family in danger. Will Cord let go of her sorrow filled past and revengeful wishes long enough to save her loved ones and pull her life back out of the bottomless pit it seems to be stuck in?
“But let me tell you this: peace in the heart is much more comforting than blood in the sand.”

Cover art by: Dirk Porsche at http://shiggyenterprises.wordpress.com/

Find out more about Briana on her blog, http://whenibecameanauthor.wordpress.com/

And check out Briana’s other books here:

and

Posted in Conversation, Fire | Tagged Amazon, Briana, Briana Vedsted, Cord, E-book, Girl Named Cord | Leave a comment

I Remember

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Helen

Memories (Photo credit: Prathima Pingali)

I remember your deep, glittering eyes
Reaching mine
I remember your soft, beautiful voice
Trapped in time

I remember your pain, of such depth
Reaching out
I remember the passion, blood stricken
Leeching out

I remember the madness of guile
And delusion
I remember the others loyal
In their collusion

I remember the lies and truths
Lost for all
I remember your devilry
Siren call

I remember the innocence
I lost for all time
I host your sad memory
Within my rhyme

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged acceptance, choice, dark, denial, lost love, Love, memory, pain, passion, Relationships, truth | 19 Comments

Full Circle

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Helen

My friend, your words are still calling cards
You still repeat the themes you should not know,
should not have heard, reverberating your view
had you been invited to the conversation

So many years since their staccato, strange momentum
was the order of the day, yet like leaves of autumn you
still fall every year, like clockwork, reminding of the loss
in a blaze of pointless, beautiful but all too brief colour;
full circle the seasons and sensations come and go

My friend who was never a friend, nor love, nor enemy true;
the ghost that walks through electricity and need to me; you yet return
as a postcard withered by time, finally reaching its destination after
years of mis-direction; so fitting for you, the master
of diversion and the king of the unreal

My friend your face has aged and your voice is the fall
of winter; anger and madness still glint in your reptile eyes,
searching for something you can never see
And you will never see me again, not if I see you first, but I will
still notice, if nothing else, how you continue to converse
across the bounds of normal conversation, no matter how pointless
this may be; not now to my heart, which is closed, but yet to that
part of my mind that can, even now, remain amused

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged autumn, choice, conversation, dark, delusion, denial, friend, intimacy, loss, memory, Musings, Relationships, truth | 7 Comments

Red Alert

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Helen

Broken heart symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My heart has broken
Shards of glass spill
Red alert
There is no hurting
It is riven, dead
Red alert
Call the ambulance
Arrives too late
Red alert
Write the epitaph
Words unspoken
Red alert

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged alarm, dark, heartbroken, lost love, madness, pain, red alert, Relationships | 12 Comments

Cold Case

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Helen

Our history is a cold case
Dissected on a table
Dusty memories now covered
No-one has looked within
For years

Our passion is on cold ice
Freezing like its birth-right
Trapped within a photo
A memory mostly forgotten
In tears

Our mystery is a cold case
Rendered lost and irrelevant, yet
detectives may still ponder,
looking for imperfections
in the crime

Our hopes are now on cold ice
They breathed too brief and small
Left-overs from a dinner
where no guests came to call
in time

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged Cold case, dark, denial, lost love, Love, Musings, pain, passion, Relationships, truth | 8 Comments

Forget Her – For Prompt 14 – The Music of Jeff Buckley

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Helen

Firecrackers (Photo credit: sarub)

The debris of these many years
alights your mind like a firecracker
out of season; a chance sighting
on the street of similar hair,
a similar walk and memories flooded back
A dam unstuck, overwhelming
And you thought you could
forget her

Had you not strung your life up
with new adventures, new family and friends
like lights upon a Christmas tree?
And had you not written and re-written
songs and poetry and prose, the
narrative of the past, in blood
on virgin sheets, to re-tell the sordid truth
and all you did, and what she evaded?
All these things just to forget her?

The past is not a shadow, not
a lurking figure skulking in the background,
not a drinker maudlin way past closing time
It is the shape of the future, just as surely
as the shape of her white, white hand
held out as though to wave goodbye, cuts across
all memories and crystallizes the moment
you decided, if you did nothing else
in life, achieved no other aims, you would do this:
You would forget her

But it’s pointless, like the lyrics
to a song that made you weep once
and now only draws the slightest sigh,
time withers all; it lulls you, passed remembering,
till even the urgency of the need, the desire,
the sheer requirement to be disciplined, fails you
and you can no longer forget her

So feel it tumble back, your defences
stripped bare; transcendence is gone now
It’s all in the pit of lost choice
and odd, fractured denial; that one moment
she reached out, and you turned away,
snarling, lost in pain too deep
So you know, it’s all back, back with you
and as long as you live, you will never be free
and you will never, you will never
forget her.

For mindlovemisery’s prompt to be inspired by selected songs of Jeff Buckley – I chose his song Forget Her but my poem has a different, ambiguous slant to it about who might be the darker party involved. 🙂

See mindlovemisery’s wonderful poetry at http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged belief, cruelty, dark, delusion, denial, Dreams, forget, Forget Her, Jeff Buckley, lost love, madness, memory, Musings, pain, passion, poetry, Relationships, truth | 25 Comments

Mistake

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Helen

OH NO! (Photo credit: jddunn)

A click on the keyboard
A stroke of the pen
Decision made in haste
Miscalculates, and then
All we know of hell
And all we’d know of heaven
Descends

A word brusquely spoken
A tear soaked voice
Denial of true feelings
Petard on which we’re hoist
There’s nothing sung but dirges
As demons will rejoice
Our choice

The shock and the freefall
Point of disbelief
All rationale asunder
Disquiet is a thief
We swear we’ve learned our lesson
Turn over our new leaf
Before this grief

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged choice, dark, denial, Dirge, error, lessons, loss, mistake, Musings, Philosophy, regret, shock, truth | 25 Comments

Infinity

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Helen

Infinity Swan (Photo credit: pernillarydmark)

Infinity bracelet worn
Upon a stranger’s wrist
Like a talisman to where
Intimate strangers kiss
All my life there’s never been
More to feel than this
Can a sense of lack become
Something close to bliss?

Infinity tattoo tells
Lies to all who’ll hear
Hopeful, in a coffee shop
All are gathered here
Each one whispers to their heart
This may be the year
Passion finds its better part
Vanquishing all fear

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged Aspiration, desire, hope, infinity, intimacy, Love, Musings, passion, Relationships, truth | 11 Comments

Trenchcoat Song

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Helen

English: Navy velvet trenchcoat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Trenchcoat covers
Neck against a chill
That slivers down the alleyway
All the way to hell
Frost upon the grass breaks
As stranger’s feet tread by
Players roll their dice to see
Who may live or die

High heeled, cool stilettoed
Crack the innocent’s back
Deaf now to the cries of pain
All these things they lack
Somewhere in their making
Deep within, gone wrong
All their victim’s treasures
Traded for a song

Posted in Earth, Poetry | Tagged belief, choice, dark, denial, Dreams, fashion, fear, madness, Musings, pain, passion, Trench coat | 11 Comments

The Seed – Now Available on Lulu.com!!!

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Helen

Hi Everyone ! As promised, below you will find the links to the paperback and ebook versions of my first novel The Seed.

Over the next couple of months it will be available also on Amazon – both paperback and eventually kindle version, Apple and Nook, in global distribution. I’ll keep you up to date if any of these are preferred points of purchase. 🙂

In the meantime, the description of the novel is below. It is a romance, essentially, but has a dark and ambiguous undertow, which will surprise none of you familiar with my poetry!

I hope if you choose to purchase that you enjoy the novel and I’d welcome your feedback. 🙂

Book Description

Sara Fraser, a solitary artist, is haunted by her dreams of a past life where she is deeply in love—a concept and experience foreign to her waking existence. Just as she is becoming known for her artistic endeavors, Sara launches a new series of paintings based on her dreams.

Robert Masters, a journalist in a passionless marriage, interviews Sara about her latest work, only to discover a personal connection to her paintings: it seems he is the man in her dreams. But when Robert, a man who prefers to peer inside others’ lives instead of his own, suddenly finds the intrigue of a possible shared history catapulting him into an intense romance with Sara, a story from the past begins to haunt both of them. As the lovers contemplate leaving the waking world to follow their dreams, the possibility of happiness dictates them to take risks they never could have imagined before.

The Seed is a story of truth, loss, and the price two people must pay for love.

So, the all important links to lulu are:

For the ebook:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/helen-valentina/the-seed/ebook/product-21124841.html

For the paperback:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/helen-valentina/the -seed/paperback/product-21119023.html

I’ll be working on a separate Page on this blog so these details are always available, but for the moment, this is the first real promotion of the book so far – really exciting!!

If anyone feels so inclined, I’d appreciate re-blogging – but no pressure/expectations !!

Cheers

Helen