Edie Roones

Blank Verse:   Old Masters and New Remember, we’re examining the poems using MMO:  Means, Methods, Opportunity (Aristotle’s Kairos ).  This time we won’t have three different forms to analyze.  Blank Verse only has one form. On tap we have the Old Masters, Shakespeare and Cowper, and the New Masters, Frost and Stevens. Flip to the link below to read the blog: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/11/25/ poetry-major-met…-blank-verse-mmo /

A new book by my friend Remi Black, the second in her Enclave series. Dream a Deadly Dream Assassination.  A fugitive comtesse.  A lethal sleep-spell.  Wyre and wraiths.  Wizardry against sorcery.  And regicide. In Dream a Deadly Dream , a sorcerous plot to kill the king weaves together past and present, dream and reality, to create a nightmare that can kill. For three years Cherai, the comtesse Muirée, has hidden from the conspirators who assassinated her father.  Now, in the weeping season, a sorcerer has woven a lethal sleep-snare to entrap her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she holds the key to the conspirators’ chance to seize the throne of Vaermonde, a chance thwarted when they killed her father too quickly.  The poisoned nightmares sent by the sorcerer will compel Cherai to turn herself over to her father’s murderers. Only a chance-met wizard can free her from the sorcerous sleep-spell. The exiled wizard Alstera wander...

Blank Verse Poets who want to appear “intellectual” (cue the snobbish accent) will use Blank Verse. See, I’m already limiting my readers who are turning off because I’m using the jargon of educational poetry. “**” Okay, first, let me talk about “professors” and “educators” of higher content learning.  (I am using “**” here so you will know I am being sarcastic about these terms.  These people aren’t teachers.  Sorry, back to my point.) These people run the Advanced Placement level courses in high school and many of the higher level college & university courses (for several years, as an adjunct professor, I had to bow to their strictures).  Some of these “people”—not all of them—act as if the knowledge they have is arcane, open to only the privileged few.  They want to keep their content secret.  They present the information in dribs and drabs wrapped around by multiple distractors, so that only a special few will understand it. Grrr.  T...

Try this:  click! New covers mean looking at how people can find books. M.A. Lee surveys a major e-retailer's listings for her books and list some Indie Writer difficulties.

Free Verse is like Jazz on Steroids. What is Jazz?  Well, here's a sample of the best:   Ella Fitzgerald riffing with "Blue Skies" The key to jazz is to present the melody then go everywhere else in play.  Like Dave Brubeck's "Take Fire", giving each musician an opportunity:   Equal Opportunity Music Free Verse does that.  It presumes the reader is familiar with regular poetry (Pure Verse), so it begins its riff immediately. I like Free Verse more than the other two methods:  Pure and Blank.  The best (think e.e.cummings) is highly experimental and an intellectual challenge to work out. It's Pure Verse that we encounter most often.  You know, those songs that rhyme.  Rhyme helps us remember. Blank Verse is the most "intellectual" (said with rounded snobbish tones). Free Verse is experimental. People have a tendency to think Free Verse is simple;  it's not.  Believe me, it is certainly FAR from easy.  It's actual...

We're hosting Emily Dunn of Writers Ink Services as she works through a yearlong series of blogs on Poetry! Even though people spend time with poetry everyday, they have a tendency to view poetry as something intimidating.  I fault Language Arts teachers for this, especially middle school and high school teachers.  Poetry in school becomes a matter of analyzing and picking out things rather than simply enjoying what the poet has to say. How do we spend time with poetry everyday?  Poetry is song.  The music you have words for :: that's poetry.  We don't look at it that way.  We should. We sing the catchy little tunes along with our favorite singers, we soar out with the power ballads from great movies, we cry at lost loves, we're motivated by the choruses we sing along with our congregations. Handle Me with Care:   Traveling Wilburys My Heart Will Go On:  Celine Dion's greatest power ballad That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be:...

Why do writers change great covers for books?  M.A. Lee presents the reason behind her change of the first three covers for her Hearts in Hazards romantic suspense series set in Regency England. Come over here to check it out:  click The 2015 cover The new cover for 2017