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.

Movie Review: Filth is a Tragic-Comedy about Office Politics, Mental Illness, and the Downward Spiral

Filth is the story of a Scottish police officer who slips from normality into madness. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is out of control when he is sober, but when drugs and alcohol are introduced to an already fragile mind, he loses his grip on reality: totally, completely, fully.

Mental illness is the elephant in the room in Western society. This film shows the descent from barely hanging on to outright unhinged. The movie is a statement piece, and perhaps we should heed its warning. 

The humor (is it Scottish humor? because I am checking my Scottish heritage card here) is repulsive at best: sex, drugs... and dance music. The writer is Scottish, we'll give him a break. If you like Blazing Saddles, then a film like Filth will not phase you.

*****

Filth

Scheming Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a bigoted and corrupt policeman, is in line for a promotion and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Enlisted to solve a brutal murder and threatened by the aspirations of his colleagues, including Ray Lennox (Jamie Bell), Bruce sets about ensuring their ruin, right under the nose of unwitting Chief Inspector Toal. As he turns his colleagues against one another by stealing their wives and exposing their secrets, Bruce starts to lose himself in a web of deceit that he can no longer control. His past is slowly catching up with him, and a missing wife, a crippling drug habit and suspicious colleagues start to take their toll on his sanity. The question is: can he keep his grip on reality long enough to disentangle himself from the filth?

IMDB

*****Spoiler Time*****  

The Breakdown

Bruce Robertson, played by James McAvoy, is a cruel, unapologetic Scottish police officer who treats people as he views the need to treat himself: with disdain, disrespect, and disloyalty. Since childhood, Bruce Robertson has suffered tragedy and guilt. He has bipolar disorder, for which he takes pharmaceutical medication as well as self-medicates with drugs, sex, and alcohol. The audience comes to understand that Bruce is an unfortunate and miserable soul, as he is remorseful over the death of his brother (an accidental death he caused) from childhood, his wife with their daughter has left him for another man, and he dresses up as his wife to feel a connection to his family. He is a man without hope, looking for redemption in a promotion to Detective Inspector.

When he is demoted from Detective Sargent to Constable for having his emotional, mental breakdown in full view of his colleagues, he plans his suicide. A knock on the door happens right as he is about to commit suicide. Does Bruce Robertson die at the end by his own hand, or is he saved by the woman he wishes he was good enough for? I think we all know the answer to that question. 

R.I.P. Bruce.

This film has been rated: 7.1/10 Stars on IMDB.

*****

The Review

Bruce Robertson: The games are always, repeat always, being played. But nobody plays the games like me. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, soon to be Detective Inspector Bruce Robertson. You just have to be the best, and I usually am. Same rules apply.

Although the film is disheveled in places where the pacing of the film is discordant with the plot, the plot itself meanders, its ribald comedic nature and dramatic death spiral, as the audience, we must understand we are seeing the world from Bruce Robertson's point of view. And, Bruce's point of view is unraveling before our eyes. We are descending with him into insanity. 

Without an anchor of his wife and daughter, Bruce has no reason to remain stable or good or kind. Bruce has no reason to be stable, good, or kind to himself. He is crying out for help, and yet no one can see the desperate state he is in. A police department trained to see the signs of instability in the public is unprofessional and uncaring when the same characteristics present themselves in one of their own officers. 

The games people play... with other people's mental health.

Thank you, James McAvoy, cast and crew, and Irving Welsh for bringing to light the horrible necessity [reality] for so many people to shove mental illness under the rug. Yet, hiding mental illness means that the problem goes unresolved. Filth is a tragic-comedy (black comedy) that isn't about depravity, profanity, or obscenity of a rogue police officer. This film is about the indecency of our society that ignores all the warning signs of mental illness and uses its own incompetence to ignore the cries of so many who require mental/emotional help.

The tragedy of this film is one of society's failures. 

Watched free on Prime Video. 

*****

The Tally 

My review will be posted on Prime as well as IMDB. 

Prime... 4 out of 5 stars

IMDB... 9 out of 10 stars 

*****

The Writer's Workshop

Movies for Writers: Filth is an opportunity to discuss and educate about mental illness.

*****

For more Movie Reviews, check out Undawnted's Critiques and Reviews page as well as her IMDB and Amazon Prime profiles. 

Have a great and wonderful day.

 

Storytelling: What is Love? Can We Read Our Way to Fulfillment or Should We Demand a Refund?

As a writer, I am faced with making life choices for my characters and how love affects their lives. 

Do they have Eros, or erotic love? A fancy, an admiration? Or is their love quest something deeper? Perhaps even unrequited? 

How a writer views love in their own reality often reflects how characters in their imagination view the concept. Have you been thwarted by love? Been love sick? Maybe even a hopeless romantic? 

Eroticism can be written and sold like an old hooker in the night. No one sees. No one cares. The reader just needs a fix like an addict. Sex, please. Served in fifty shades of something.

RomComs are always fun to watch on the screen. For some reason, we [the audience] do not get tired of the retelling of Shakescpeare's Taming of the Shrew. 

Then there is the unrequited variety. We see someone from across the room we would like to hold and cherish but never do. We sit in our own delusion while life passes us by. That can be so dissatisfying to the audience. 

The next category is my favorite one besides the Taming of the Shrew, and that is the hopeless romantic. I agree with Jane Austen's assessment that every girl should marry up. I qualify that statement with a handsome, generous soul with means and connections. If a girl is going up in the world, she might as well go all the way. Shouldn't we say? 

No matter the love genre, a writer needs to write the characters as people and not as literary devices just for a boring sex scene. We want the meat and potatoes! The audience expects a well rounded couple for a good old fashioned romp! Ups and downs, heartache and pain, finally the reward for the faith and fidelity of their hearts. 

Unless of course you just want to stare at him or her from across the room for the rest of your life?

If you want to experience the beginning of a budding romance, then check out my first book in the vampire series, Nocturnal Redemption: In the Eye of the Beholder. 

Ryan Blackburn is a mythology professor. She has studied and built her life around her family legend: the protectors of humanity from the creatures that walk the night. One slight catch: she actually meets a pack of werewolves and a lone vampire on his nightly rounds. Her legends weren't so mythical after all.

In the coming days and weeks, Ryan is lured into the vampire's world called: The Lair. A slow but strong bond is formed between the vampire captain, Jeremy, and Ryan. Just as the politics that brought them together could easily tear them apart. 

Will Jeremy and Ryan choose each other? Or, will they go their separate ways? 

So when you write about love in your stories... what color of love are you? Black and white? Gray? 

We have to remember when we write about the heart, that we must write that the love story is the heart of the matter. And what matters is how the readers see us reflected in our respect for the affairs of the heart. I want to mirror the hopeless romantic in all of us. Love is a gift. When two people find love then we should nurture their inquisitiveness. No one is ever satisfied with a love that is unrequited. 

We as writers have to be the love Santa for a love starved populace. We have to write that great love story to keep our love Santa from getting stuck in the chimney of life. What did you expect? Cupid wasn't helping this along anyway...

Speaking of which, Valentine's Day is only 46 more days away!

Have a great and wonderful day.

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History of Valentine's Day

Celebrating ancient pagan rituals for over three thousand years:

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday. 

On the Road Again

It's just not a Willie Nelson song.

Of course, I feel like I have traveled this road one too many times. The street names are all the same and you never cruise above 55 miles an hour. There's something wrong with this road. 

So I have to off road from time to time. I pick some unfamiliar exit and make a mad dash for it. I usually end up in some forest. 

I'm on TV! But, it's not Survivor. It's Finding Bigfoot or Call of the Wildman. 

It seems to be all about the hunt for me. Travel down a road to nowhere for only so long and you are on the prowl. Good thing in reality I do my hunting at the grocery store. 

Things could get messy if civilization wasn't so civilized. 

Still civilization has its drawbacks. We, humans I mean, don't get to nourish our primal instincts, our wild side. 

Movies, tv shows, and marketers like to psychologically target and overemphasize the sexual motivation of our species, but they do not realize that that is not the basis for our urges. It's survival. 

I know a little bit about survival. 

So the next time you write remember what drives your characters. Is it sex? Is it escape? Or, is it the basic instinct of survival? 

One of the best survival mechanisms is to know yourself, and your character. 

Have a happy haunted day!