Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house during the last week.
Be warned that Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.
Your host for May 2013 is: Abi over at ‘4 The Love Of Books’
This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!
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This week, another of those ‘nice’ surprise e-mails, direct from the author and introducing me to yet another new genre to explore, that of ‘Poetic Fiction’. I am still busy grappling with the poetic terms which Lance declares to have used in the writing of this book, so I am certain that this is going to be a story which is going to demand my full concentration when reading. I love a good challenge and if the poetry which Lance has written and published on his blog is anything to go by, I am definitely not going to be disappointed.
NB. Some of the words in the book’s synopsis are unspaced, this is how they were written by the author and are an integral and intentional element of the story.
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‘AND THE SOFT WIND BLOWS‘
Timmy Enosh is a peculiar, small man: fivethree, onehundredandfifteen pounds, and is a pharmacist in Ashton City, Tennessee. He finds himself at fortythreeyearsold as his life starts to fall apart: his threehundred pound wife disappears, his romantic interest has lost interest and has gained hatred toward him, his coworkers harass him, customers verbally assault him, and he has the strange urge to adopt his foulmouthed, eighteenyearold coworker, Alex. When things start to pile up, Timmy must find a way to deal: he turns to Alex to supply him with marijuana, starts sewing an elaborate Mr. Mistoffelees costume, finds solace in the wild, etc., etc., etc. And the soft, constant wind of change blows him on, on, and on.
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LANCE UMENHOFER
Lance Umenhofer lives in Nashville, TN. He is twenty three years old and graduated from Belmont University (Nashville, TN) in May of 2012 with an English degree.
Lance, started writing song lyrics long before he ever moved to poetry, let alone fiction. Like many young teenagers of his generation, he dreamed of being a rockstar most of the way through high school, but something happened along the way. He found that he started to enjoy writing the lyrics to songs much more than writing the music to them, and then one day he had the epiphany that he could just write poetry instead, since song lyrics were poetry already anyway.
He was just a poet for quite some time, until college, when he decided to write a series of interconnected short stories that soon turned into a full-length novel. And now, he considers himself mostly a fiction writer that still dabbles in poetry every chance he gets.
‘And the Soft Wind Blows’ is written in what Lance refers to as: “Poetic Fiction,” which combines elements of poetry into a prose narrative. He uses : anaphora, rhyme, slant rhyme, alliteration, repetition, among other poetic attributes.
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It’s funny how little is planned when I sit down to write. I imagine most authors having notebooks, maybe multiple, of ideas and plot points and character sheets for their novels, and when they sit down to write, they compile all of their ideas into paragraph form, having every intention to make their ways to the final climaxes planned out months, maybe years before.
But, through the years, it’s seemed that the more and more I plan out a piece or have a vivid picture of where the story is going or who the characters are, the more and more I stray from it. I do not like to write within constrictions, even if the constrictions are made by myself. For instance, in And the Soft Wind Blows, I wanted Roxie to be Timmy’s saving grace. Without giving too much away, I wanted Timmy to take Roxie in his arms, swing her back, and tell her it would all be O.K., to run away with him to California and start a new life, fresh, with unlimited potential, but it does not turn out to be so.
There’s something about the infinite opportunity of the blinking, black cursor that totally enthralls me. I stare at it and consider my options, though most times the words take over, and I am left without a say as to which direction the story goes. My words come out of me as if I were only but an intermediary between their will and their lives on the page. As I type away, my notebook lies untouched to my side, and I find myself going through it and crossing out things and rewriting other things to make them fit into the parameters I’ve set through the fervent onset of words filling up my screen. This onset, combatting the enveloping shroud of infinity, continues until I feel with every ounce of me to stop, and let it sit, and let the story be complete.
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I can’t wait to discover all your own great new finds this week … so please stop by and share your link
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