Poem: Resolution 2019

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Maybe this year can be better. Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Resolution

By Michelle Garren Flye

This year, it will all be different.

I’ll study Love, find its uses.

I’ll know how big it is.

I’ll measure it, weigh it.

I will find its boundaries.

You say that’s impossible.

You say Love knows no such things.

You say it has no limits.

You say it’s ageless, timeless,

And you say Love never stops.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

When I put it in a test tube

And place it in the centrifuge—

Apply enough pressure…

We’ll see who’s right about love.

I’ll spin out all my discoveries.

For the whole world, of course.

Everyone wants to know,

Every body longs for my answers

About why Love is, who it’s for.

This year I’ll figure it all out:

Who deserves Love?

What is Love made of?

When is the right time, and

Why is less Love too much to bear?

Just wait and see.

Because when it’s done,

They’ll adore and worship,

Congratulate and adulate—

They will all love me.

Poem: Magnum Opus

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

“If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”

–Michelangelo

Magnum Opus

By Michelle Garren Flye

Is that your masterpiece?

Your legacy and estate?

When you look at it,

Do you know it’s finished?

Or do you want to wipe it clean?

Completion is nothing.

Finality is all that counts.

You could dot the last “I”—

Then black it all out.

The creator’s Hand decides.

Or maybe it’s accidental?

In the end, it won’t matter.

Shake the Etch-a-Sketch

And start over again.

Author’s Note: As the year draws to a close, I’m looking hard at where I am and where I want to be. I’m making plans for changes. Watch this space.

But don’t worry. I still have plenty of romance left. I’m not erasing the Etch-a-Sketch. I’m adding another one.

Something in the light

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

There’s something about this time of year. Something about the light. Like things are clearer. More contrasted.

See what I mean?

Maybe we should be able to see more clearly, too.

If we look.

Look hard.

Look long.

Look deeper than you knew you could.

Even at the shiny things.

The beautiful.

The things you thought had only one face.

Earth has a soul. We are it. At this time of year when days are short but time is long, we can take stock, see if we are where we need to be. Make a u-turn if we’re not.

It’s humanity’s solstice too.

Poem: What Happened to the Last Grey Knight?

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

What Happened to the Last Grey Knight?

By Michelle Garren Flye

Don’t look now.

It ate him.

The profane darkness hurtled

Engulfed

Swaddled

Blinded even the stars.

The hideous murk stalked

Striped

Pounced.

Consumed

While peace, love, hope, charity

—All shivered in shadow.

And the last grey knight was gone.

But don’t look now.

It’s hungry still.

Perhaps it will come for you.

Wrap yourself in vermillion, ivory and bluest blue

—Pretend you wear armor, too.

Fading (Poem)

Posted on December 15, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Photo by Monique Laats on Pexels.com

Fading

By Michelle Garren Flye

There’s less of you today.

I watch you fade like print on paper left in the sun too long.

Don’t worry, Mama, you say. I’m all right.

I know it’s a lie, but we’re all fading.

Some lose little bits.

From serif to sans serif print.

Courier to Helvetica.

But you fade—you’re not bold anymore.

You’re not underlined.

You’re italic

And the ink is seeping away from you

Like blood spreading in a pool.

Are you still there? I whisper.

Even when every touch brings you pain,

I still have to touch.

It’s the only way to know.

When newsprint breaks down, it becomes transparent.

I can see through you.

There’s no print anymore.

Just a period at the end.

Baby, it’s cold at Christmas-time these days

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Have a holly, jolly holiday and be very careful to maintain your politically correct language if you want to continue to hand out your bona fide liberal card. Because there’s a very thin line liberals must walk these days. And for this blog entry, I’m going to wobble off it a bit.

Please understand, I’m a Democrat. I’m liberal. I have a woman card and I voted for Hillary Clinton, and not just because she was running against the worst human being on the planet, either. I honestly believed she would do the best job. With all that said, I’m getting really tired of the liberal war on Christmas this year.

Photo by Meve R. on Pexels.com

You can’t watch Charlie Brown because the kids yell “Merry Christmas” and read about Jesus’s birth from the Bible. You can’t listen to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” because it’s a trigger for some people who have been date raped (I know. It’s creepy. But just don’t listen, maybe?). You can’t watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” because Santa (and most everyone else at the North Pole) is kind of a dick. (Please note I realized this when I was a kid but I was—and still am—more bothered by the fact that the dolly on the Island of Misfit Toys had NOTHING AT ALL wrong with her.)

It reminds me of some recent feedback I’ve received on Becoming Magic. Readers are not all happy I took on a #metoo storyline with this one. And some are not happy that (slight spoiler here) I didn’t have my character report her assault from the beginning. I’m not saying these readers are wrong…completely. Maybe I should have written this story from the POV of a strong woman who reports her assault and brings her attacker to justice.

But is that the only way to write a story from a strong woman’s POV? Isn’t it possible that you can be a strong woman who is attacked and is so shocked by the fact that you were attacked that you don’t immediately report it? Isn’t it possible that you can employ all your strength into rebuilding your life and moving on after the attack?

Isn’t it possible that every survivor has a right to their story the way they wish to live it—not just the way liberals tell us is the correct way?

And by that same token, maybe you need to stop and think about Rudolph. Rudolph is a freaking survivor if ever there was one. He is bullied by everyone from Santa to his own father, and he still battles the yeti and saves his friends and Christmas. And I got all this when I was about eight years old, so I’m thinking there’s nothing wrong with the way the story is told.

That doll still bugs me, though. She’s too perfect. I’m thinking she’s a spy.

No apologies: I write what I write.

Posted on November 19, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Romance is a window on the reader’s soul, not the writer’s. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It’s a truth for most romance writers, I think. Our friends and family are almost afraid to read our books. As if they might find out something more about us than what they want.

Why don’t you write something else? I have this great idea for a book you could write.

It could be funny.

I could almost laugh.

Why am I amused? The reason is simple. Any good writing lays your soul bare because you do tell secrets about yourself. It’s the only real way to make your writing read true to another person’s soul. The trick is to write it so no one knows what is true and what is fiction. And I can guarantee you, even those who know me best don’t know what’s true and what’s fiction in my books.

I always say I’m never in my books. And it’s true. I’m not a character in my books. But I am in there. I’m in every word and phrase I write. When you hold my book, you are holding a part of my soul. Is it a window onto my everyday wants and desires and loves? No. Like all writing, and especially fiction, my words are filtered through the reader’s experiences and is more likely to reveal something about them than me.

I guess that’s why I say, no apologies. I write what I write. If you have the courage to read it, that’s great. If not, please understand when I chuckle a little when you suggest I write something different. I love you, but my visceral answer to such a suggestion is an unequivocal “no.”

In other news…

I’m on Book Reviews by Jasmine today promoting Becoming Magic by talking about what I’d do on my day off if I worked in show business in Hollywood. As you might expect, it’s magical!

And on Smashwords and its affiliates, Close Up Magic, Book 1 in the Sleight of Hand series, is FREE just in time for the holidays! Read it if you dare!

Fear Waits By My Computer

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Photo by ahmed adly on Pexels.com

I get up. I send the kids off to school. I grab a cup of coffee. I go to my office.

I say good morning to Fear.

Fear waits for me by my desk every morning.

Good morning, he says. Are you ready?

I am. I sit down behind my computer and push Fear away. He’ll breathe down my neck if I don’t.

And I type, ferociously and as unbrokenly as I can manage because if I stop, Fear is waiting.

Fear is patient.

Are you sure that’s the right way to put that? He lingers at my shoulder. Then he shrugs. Never mind. Nobody reads your stuff, anyway.

You should’ve started writing novels earlier instead of that short story crap. Ten years earlier and you’d have an agent and been able to sell your stuff instead of messing around with this self-publishing thing. It’s just vanity press by a different name.

You should really get an agent, but agents don’t like what you write, do they?

Fear has a grip on me now, so he is confident enough to walk away a little. He looks back at me and shakes his head. Why did you quit your day job? Oh yeah, to be a mom. But you could get a real job now. Maybe you should.

And now Fear has a little friend. Self-Doubt holds his hand, and is somehow more frightening than Fear himself.

What’s the problem? Fear says. Are you afraid if you stop writing you’ll be just another regular Joe?

Maybe you already are, whispers Self-Doubt. Maybe you always have been.

Note: So far this month, I have defeated both Fear and Self-Doubt. I’m at 48,254 words of the National Novel Writing Month book. Take THAT Fear and Self-Doubt!

Like them or not, you should listen to the poets

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

If anything has caught me off-guard about today’s political climate, it’s the rising dislike of celebrities and intellectuals. Once upon a time, these were the heroes. Movie stars like James Dean smoked, so everyone had a pack of cigarettes tucked in their rolled up t-shirt sleeve. Jane Fonda said we need more exercise so everyone started aerobics. Remember those “The More You Know” PSAs? They featured everyone from Tom Brokaw to Matthew Perry speaking out about issues like conservation and education. Stars trying to use their star status to make a difference in the world.

In 2016, it felt like all that changed. All of a sudden, conservatives wondered out loud where athletes and movie stars and, God forbid, writers got off having political opinions. And why should they be allowed to speak out about the every day world of politics? Movie stars should just act, singers should just sing, athletes just play their sports (and stand for the National Anthem). The other day, Rob Thomas tweeted that he was shocked to see a reporter’s White House press credentials taken away because he asked the president a question the president didn’t want to be asked. The response Thomas got from fans was less than encouraging in many cases.

But the worst of this is that suddenly writers aren’t supposed to have an opinion. Writers aren’t supposed to speak out against what looks like certain doom. Writers shouldn’t remind the public of what has come before and what it wrought. The press is “fake news” because they are trying to report what’s happening to us. This seems a particularly dangerous attitude, honestly. To prove my point, I’ve compiled a partial list of things writers (mostly in science fiction, but not all) predicted, for want of a better word, in their fiction.

And after reading this, maybe you can understand why I say, listen to the poets. Otherwise, you may live to regret it.

1726 (Jonathan Swift) Gulliver’s Travels predicted the discovery of Mars’s two moons.

1818 (Mary Shelley) Frankenstein predicted organ transplants.

1865 (Jules Verne) From the Earth to the Moon predicted solar sails and lunar modules that launch from Florida and return to earth as splashdown capsules.

1887 (Edward Bellamy) Looking Backward predicted credit/debit cards and shopping malls.

1898 (Morgan Robertson) The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility predicted the sinking of the Titanic—by iceberg in the month of April—fourteen years before it happened.

1899 (H.G. Wells) When the Sleeper Wakes predicted motion sensing doors.

1903 (H.G. Wells) The Land Ironclads predicted tanks.

1909 (E.M. Forster) The Machine Stops predicted video chatting.

1910 (Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg) The Achievements of Luther Trant predicted the lie detector test.

1913 (H.G. Wells) The World Set Free predicted the atom bomb.

1923 (H.G. Wells) Men Like Gods predicted phones, email and television.

1924 (J.B.S. Haldane) Daedalus; or Science and the Future predicted in vitro fertilization.

1932 (Aldous Huxley) A Brave New World predicted genetic engineering.

1961 (Robert Heinlein) Stranger in a Strange Land predicted water beds.

1968 (Arthur C. Clarke) 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted the iPad and its use to access news media.

1968 (John Brunner) Stand on Zanzibar predicted satellite tv, violence in schools, and, eerily, President Obama (Obomi was the character’s name). Interestingly, it is set in 2010.

1984 (William Gibson) Neuromancer predicted computer hackers.

1990 (David Brin) Earth predicted broken levees in the Deep South and the meltdown of the Fukushima power plant.

1994 (Tom Clancy) Debt of Honor predicted the use of hijacked jet planes to crash into U.S. government buildings.

Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency has been predicted by everyone from The Simpsons to Philip Roth. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents, her presidential candidate even used the slogan “Make America Great Again”.

Are these all coincidence? Life imitating art? Possibly, though Stand on Zanzibar and The Wreck of the Titan sound like blatant fortune-telling to me, and how Jonathan Swift could know Mars had two moons in 1726 is beyond me. But what is my point here, anyway? Should Stephen King and J.K. Rowling be allowed to say whatever they want about Donald Trump and the fools who voted for him?

Yeah. Probably. Because true poets have a knack for looking at things a little closer, opening themselves up to the universe a little more, feeling things a little deeper…and seeing things a little clearer than others do. I’m not saying me. I try, but I haven’t gotten there yet. But I do believe we are given poets and prophets and visionaries by a God who wants to help guide us.

And if the overwhelming majority of those poets and prophets and visionaries are saying don’t go there, I suggest we listen.