Showing posts with label Visions anthology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visions anthology. Show all posts

Friday, January 27, 2023

I Guess Rejection Means: More for Me... in 2023!

From time to time, I help other authors and publishers with ideas. Some of those brainstorming sessions yield a visual creative piece for application. As Undawnted grows, the missed opportunities of others become integrated in-house. 

For instance: Bent out of Love was a cover design that I formulated to help a struggling writer put his thoughts into a cohesive vision. After waiting a year, I made Bent Love into an upcoming Long Form poem.
Bent Love is the opposite of the Black Hearts Club. The Long Form poem is about a man down on his luck, but desperate to save his relationship with the woman he loves.

What would you do for love? 

After writing the Black Hearts Club poem, I wanted to have a counterbalance to the "gave up on love" mantra. People change, and so do their feelings. One year, Valentine's Day is the worst day of their life. The next year, it may be their happiest. It's best to be prepared. 

As well, to put a decade of Long Form Poetry into one publication, I am using the year-old Visions anthology cover design mockup I did. The artwork was not used for the anthology, and was sitting around on the computer gathering dust. So, now it will have a new purpose: Visionary.

I have two different collections of my poetry. Oracle will have the culmination of my Chapbook poetry; Visionary will house the compendium for the Long Form poems.

I will be adding and revising other poems to fit within these two forms as the year goes on. I wanted my poetry to be individualized. Readers can then take what they want: separate or encyclopedic. 

Other additions that have been made are: Samhain, and Shamiscient. I have a horror chapbook that is under reconstruction thanks to a Lulu technical mishap, but I wanted to delve into the spiritual side of the Hero's Journey into the Unknown, as well as just write spiritual/shamanistic poetry. The Long Form poem: Galactic Ride, touched on this subject with much critical acclaim from readers. Therefore, I want to expand on this intriguing subject. 

And, to the guy on Twitter a few months ago who made a spectacle out of himself because he hates my cover design work: stuff it. I don't like sexcapades on my book covers. My writing is good, and doesn't need hormones or fluff. If you don't like my covers, then you probably won't like my writing... so, you've saved both of us a trial by fire by walking down another isle in the bookstore.

However, I think my cover designs are innovative, fresh, and have motif-driven visual arts components that enhance my website as well as my writing. I have spent years honing my digital arts craft and until the world ends, I am going to do as much in-house creating as possible. 

That is what a gifted polymath does. 

2023 looks like a buffet of visual, symbolic, and rhyming delights. I hope you will join me this year as I bring more of my imagination into the realm of the unpredictable, insatiable, and undeniably... unleashed.

Thank you for visiting Undawnted.


Monday, October 24, 2022

WordCrafter Blog Tour: Joseph Carrabis's Marianne for Visions Anthology

Summary

This short story is about the final stages of life. It's not a coming of age story; it's a coming to the end story.

How do you envision your last days? Marianne answers this question by how her mind starts to slip into fantasies. Marianne tries to balance her mental decline, her other medical issues, and her daughter's concerns with an analytical perspective, sarcasm, and defensiveness. All modes to deflect and shield her from others imposing their will upon her as she withers away.

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Review

The short story Marianne by Joseph Carrabis addresses the fears that each human endures as they draw closer to the end of their lives. The elderly Marianne is confined to a wheelchair, knowing that her prognosis is grim, yet her mind is sharp. She sharpens her wit by foiling the plans of her daughter, Rose, and when that is not enough to satiate her suspicions, she antagonizes the younger woman with airplane tickets to euthanasia-friendly Oregon... to visit her sister, of course.

What Marianne does not see is the perspective of Rose. Her daughter is witnessing her mother's mental decline and is helpless to do anything about it. She is pushed away and treated like a gold digger.

In converse, the daughter is more wrapped up in her stress of being a caretaker than to enjoy the last days with her mother. Rose’s relationship is complicated by her mother’s disgruntled attitude, finances, medical and legal appointments. Rose appears to have little power and is reminded of her insignificance, to the point where Rose visits her mother only once per day.

The narrative asks the reader: which view of the situation is correct? Each character sees the other as a hostile combatant, instead of as family. A true-to-life situation as the older and the younger women become at odds, both afraid to address the real issues of their relationship and what Marianne’s death would mean to them both. As these circumstances often yield two struggling individuals, who are unable to communicate with each other, because their emotions are dominated by ego instead of compassion.  

The story, Marianne, shows how a situation can lead people down the path of ungratefulness. Ungrateful to have a caring daughter who takes care of Marianne. Ungrateful for the time Rose has left with her mother.

The reader is not only taken on a journey of this complicated relationship, but also navigates its audience through the collapsing mind of Marianne herself. A good read that asks many hard questions. In the end, the reader is to decide what it all meant. If being at odds with a failing loved one has meaning at all.

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Purchase 

To read, Marianne, purchase Visions anthology here: https://books2read.com/u/49Lk28.

 

Giveaway 
Five digital copies will be given away in a random drawing at the end of the tour. Each stop visited earns an entry. Let me know you were there by leaving a comment.     

To Enter the Giveaway... go to Writing to be Read and leave a Comment.

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Joseph Carrabis told stories to anyone who would listen, starting in childhood, wrote his first stories in grade school and started getting paid for his writing in 1978. He's been everything from a long-haul trucker to a Chief Research Scientist and holds patents covering mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics. After patenting a technology which he created in his basement and creating an international company, he retired from corporate life and now he spends his time writing fiction based on his experiences. His work appears regularly in several anthologies and his own published novels. You can learn more about him at https://josephcarrabis.com and find much of his work at http://nlb.pub/amazon.


 

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