Fire Up Your Follicles

Scales fell from my eyes

Ooh - I've just been throwing out the junk after all the food-fest. First thing that's going in the trash is the bathroom scales. That's the first problem solved. Second problem is that the programme on my righteous virtue training machine has gone wrong. All this bloody software! Computers are like men - you choose them cos you like the look of the  hardware and as soon as you get'em home and try to plug 'em in they develop a software problem. 

Never mind, life is beautiful quand même. I'm missing my home in France to be honest. I've been thinking of the river Charente and writing a love poem. Mainly I'm writing a story. I'm terrible really, constantly distracted by love, desire and chocolate. Well, let's just say chocolate shall we. It's all research you know. 

I had always said that I was never gonna give it away again. For a few months I have been trembling on a cold street corner of literary virginity. Punters have stopped, sighed, squeezed and occasionally had a nibble. But Hell, it's Christmas and a wise woman gives out the goods. "Knockout!" is only sex, love, intrigue and police action drama but it's FREE. There's a new hot book soon out so take this chance to fire up your follicles in preparation. 

I hope you all had a great Christmas. Next year will bring its own problems of course, but we're learning all the time aren't we?  Just think -in 2013 mankind will know more than she has ever known - except what to do with all that knowledge. 

Links to free book:

USA:http://brev.is/VX94    UK:http://brev.is/UX94    

Canada:  http://brev.is/TX94    Germany: http://t.co/fqh7OH8P  France: http://t.co/5MhbVQ9B   Italy: http://t.co/og0DaRkA   Spain: http://t.co/uNiwdvun   Brazil: http://brev.is/SX94   Japan:http://t.co/NYL9r2o6

Emma thinx: Giving it for free is business. Giving it for nothing is love. 

Freeze Frame - Published.

I've been invited to a virtual party. You know, I really should stay in more! Once again I have been helping out in the final thrust of Oscar's Freeze Frame poetry project. To be honest it is a labour of love - just to see something unique out there. I had forgotten about being a poet - you know that kind of earnest endeavour for that one inspired word. I can't believe I used to do that stuff. I can still do LOVE but the old wino, the innocent kid,the walk in the country, the big philosophies of time,the intellectual abstracts, the rainy nights in a northern English town, an old couple crossing the road -all that is far from my grasp now. The signals are tiny and the receptors are dull. Far from being disheartened, I am very happy to do full fat big breakfast lust. There is a great happiness in it. 

At last the Freeze Frame collection is out there. It is a wonderful anthology and I'm proud to have been around it. For this last time I am posting Oscar's blog on here. What do you think of his beard? He's not getting a mistletoe snog from me with all that lot on there!

Freeze Frame Anthology – Published

Santa may-be

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am a reasonably serious old bloke who has scribbled poems for about 50 years. Finding myself posing in a Santa hat holding a Kindle Fire device for a picture to be captioned with punny quips made me wonder if I had lost the plot. If I appear disrespectful to poets and poetry I do apologise. O brave new world that has such peep-shows in it. Such is the circus of the modern book world. Apparently some fiction writers are so busy on the road that all their stuff is done by ghost writers. Seemingly it’s the brand that matters. It is incredible to me. Perhaps I won’t beat myself up over the Santa hat. If it makes poetry more accessible and unstuffy then it has to be a Google plus. I defy anyone to ghost write in the style of any of the six Freeze Frame writers.

Far more importantly, the book is out there and up on Amazon. It was delivered without anaesthetic during the night, about 24 hours premature but at a good weight and with powerful voice. This is not the end of course but at least everything is all together and in one place. The stars are the poets who had enough faith in me to join in and risk all to be part of the Freeze Frame project.

Tomorrow evening 1800 hours UK (GMT)  - 12 noon USA EST – there will be a launch party at which all can meet the poets. There will be readings and comments and hopefully a few silly hats.  This takes place on Facebook with a live link to a Google+ ‘Hangout’ – you can watch us all having our virtual champagne and reading a selection of poems from the collection.  Here’s the link:

Stop the world – FREEZE FRAME – it’s the launch party!

Find the book here:
Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Amazon Germany
Amazon France
Amazon Italy
Amazon Spain
Amazon Japan
Amazon Brazil

Ho Ho Ho!

Emma Thinx: Poems live on pages. Poetry lives in hearts.

Guest Blogger Oscar Sparrow

 A glorious blue sky winter Sunday. There is beauty on this Earth and perhaps we are the only entities of the universe to possess the emotional and intellectual pathways to discern it. In the bare trees around me, the merciless crows scrabble for nothing other than survival and dominance. Unlike mankind, they know not cruelty but only indifference. Surely we are both saved and shamed by beauty for what we do is in its presence. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Gauguin did not know and we are no nearer the answer today. 

The poet Oscar Sparrow loves to quote these lines. He comes to mind because his collection "I Threw A Stone" is free today on Amazon KDP.  I am delighted to use my little blog to display his own take on the matter. Don't forget there is a full audio track for free with the e-book. Any one who witnessed him revealing his "Erectile Dysfunction" at the Bedford Festival of Romance now has the chance to re-live the moment. 

A few years ago I went to a public auction with a friend who was looking for some furniture. Whilst we were waiting for his lot to come up, an enormous quantity of cuddly toys came under the hammer. It seemed that it was the entire contents of a bankrupted shop. The price started somewhere at the edge of the cosmos and came down to something I could afford by raking about amongst the fluff covered boiled sweets in the sofa. Within a few seconds I owned several hundred cuddly giraffes, tortoises and some things that looked like socially disadvantaged wildebeest at the end of a hard day in the stampede.  I applied for a pedlar’s certificate and set out on a career as a door to door salesman. The giraffes and tortoises flew out of my sack. I sold only one wildebeest to a guy spaced out on wacky baccy who thought it was an alien.

Plan B in my retail conquest of the planet was a market stall. That weekend I was at the town tat-fest with my trestle table loaded with cuddly alien cattle. I figured that since the goods were not selling I would offer them at 50 pence each. After lunch I reduced the price to zero but still the poor beasts could find no homes. Then, a fellow trader wandered over and looked at the creatures and declared that they were from a top designer label and that by giving them away, people thought they were junk. Accordingly I increased the price to £5 and added a sign saying “Top Designer Brand”. By dusk, the herd of alien wildebeest had gone. I shared the spoils with a guy who had lent me a truck to transport them and the market stall authorities. There was enough left for a good old fish and chip nosh up and a week’s  caravan holiday. (It rained and the kids were sick). So much for my flirtation with Capitalism.

So it is with some worldly experience that my poetry collection “I Threw A Stone”  is offered for free until the close of play on the 18th December. It is of course a top designer brand. So far I have shifted one copy in the UK and have zoomed up 900,000 places in the charts. Sales are probably not helped by the fact that Amazon UK have removed all but one review apparently on the basis that people liked the book. (One could become quite annoyed about all this but poet karma keeps my thoughts on a higher plane).

Here are the links.

USA: http://amzn.to/QVtsVA

UK: http://amzn.to/TVdUke

Germany: http://amzn.to/U88fVT

France: http://amzn.to/UCmhO3

Italy: http://amzn.to/UCmhO3

Spain: http://amzn.to/Z0jCX3

Japan: http://amzn.to/TV0R2m

Brazil http://bit.ly/U7QshE

There we are then – Roll up! Roll up! There ya go my love, cheap at half the price me old China, perk ya selves up wiv a poem or two. Roll up! Roll up .

Emma thinx: See with your inner eye. Hearing is believing. 

Freeze Frame cover Reveal

I've been working. My dear mate Oscar has been editing and compiling a collection of poetry. I've actually done some work on the audio - but only because I'm so bloody nosy about how people sound. Recently I went back into poetry myself to do a couple of YouTube videos. You know, poetry is still a really cool medium. I would be the first to admit that the commercial bish bosh bash has weakened my ability to go into full poet mode.

Listening to these guys I kinda zoned out of all the clatter. There's Paul Tobin, a real deal poet who gets inside the fence and under the radar. He's  - just so calm and persuasive. Jo Von Bargen - an American poet with a life soaked softness that is - well - beautiful. There's a guy called Jeff Hansen who comes up with abstract stuff in a direct voice that offers ideas without any messing about. There's Claude Nougat who speaks quite hauntingly about Rome in a captivating Scandiamerifrancitaliano  accent that must be unique to her and the world. There's Oscar in his full Thespian/cockney truck driver/British posh. Finally, there's Candy Bright who digs it out from the woman's heart and certainly gets hold of mine. 

Today the cover of the collection Freeze Frame is revealed and I am proud of my very small part in this project. The cover was created by a young designer, Will,  who freelances for Gallo-Romano.  They tell me the e-book will be up on 21st December and the paper edition in January. It has its own Facebook page and if you feel so inclined you could follow the link and like it. 

Emma thinx:  Go undercover - hibernate with a book.