poetry and other weaknesses

Kindle

2012-01-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

I swore I would read all my paperbacks before buying an e-reader, but now I'm almost ready to invest! Why? Because I think it's time I sold something and I should at least be able to carry it around with me! I've been giving books away at obooko.com, which is a nice freebie site, but a staggering 658 people downloaded one of the books and I came a way empty-handed. I've now removed my

Preview

2011-11-18T02:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote this story a few years ago as a Christmes gift for a friend. Here are the first few paragraphs. The magic piano Hugo Higgins was fed up. It was Christmas Day, given an hour or two, and no one had even mentioned presents.Miss Grubb, his class teacher, was convinced that everyone, especially parents, should believe in Santa Claus. On December the first she had

Twain's Rules of Writing

2011-11-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

(from Mark Twain's scathing essay on the Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper) This is another entry from that old website. I like the short instructions at the end most. 1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. 2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it. 3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of

Lost track of this blog....

2011-11-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

....but I'm going to start attending to it more often. I'm revamping an old website and removed a few very ancient pages. One of them included this, which I did not write. It's part of a poem called “The temple” which was written in 1633 by a writer named George Herbert. At that time spelling was much a matter of taste and inclination and influenced by the preferences of the print setters, many

How time flies!

2011-05-19T01:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to pass the link to this blog on and realized that it's close on three months since I looked at it. Part of the problem is that I've been painting intensively for weeks and weeks, practicing a new oil painting method. The only writing I've done lately has been in my head. I always think about the ongoing literary effort when I've put my light out at night. I have good ideas after

Friends in need

2011-01-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not on a begging trip! I was controlling links and realized that I have orphaned this blog! I suppose it's because I haven't done any writing at all since getting two books (still with some missprints which I really must correct) onto obooko.com. The titles are "A start in Life" (category biography available here:(http://www.obooko.com/obooko_memoir/bookpages/mem0009_

Fragment

2010-09-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

Promised across the road, here's a short story or maybe the start of a longer one. FragmentAs far as Lois was concerned, if her life was shattered, why should he get off scot free? She stood motionless at the foot of the bed they had shared for seventeen years or so. Her knuckles paled as she tightened her grip on the bread-knife. “Now,” she muttered over and over again. “Damn it. Get it

Consolation

2010-08-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

This quote is quite a comfort for a minor would-be writer like me: "The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting." — Arthur Schopenhauer (The Works of Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays) And here's another one that caught my eye: To live alone is the fate of all great souls. Arthur Schopenhauer I've never thought of it like

The rain in Spain...

2010-08-18T00:52:00.000-07:00

......might fall only on the plain, but here in my part of Germany it's falling everywhere! However, we never seem to get really bad floods, though the old part of Cologne sometimes gets inundated. The Rhine does get too full sometimes, mainly fed by melting ice from the Alps, but normally, things don't get out of hand. I live very near the Ruhr (the main Rhine tributary) and that gets quite full

What shall I do next?

2010-08-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

I'm quite excited. 48 readers have downloaded my book! That doesn't mean everyone will read it to the bitter end, but it's a lot better than for the book than its previous record. The page my book is on at obooko is linked here, so if anyone calls, hello and leave a message!!!! Now I've started on the publishing spree, I'm keen to get my short stories in some kind of order. Some of them are quite

It never rains.....

2010-08-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

So much for my good intentions. The new novel is on the back burner because my brain is now full of ethics in the form of a book translation that will keep me busy probably till the end of the year. Fascinating stuff, actually. I'm learning a lot, but also losing time for my writing and other endeavours. To compensate, I have edited my "Start in Life" anecdotal autobiography and am publishing it

doing the write/right thing

2010-08-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

Early this morning I started a sequel to the novel I have just published at obooko.com, which just goes to prove that insomnia has its uses. Actually, I wanted to start on August 1st with a view to writing at least 1000 words per day, which would take me well into the book by September. I won't force myself to keep to this schedule, but I will try! There has been a big discussion about using

Editing is a pain

2010-07-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I printed the 190 pages of a novel I've been writing for ages. It started off as short stories that were published in the early 1990s. Then the book went out of print after the publisher died and the business changed hands, resulting in the end of several good projects and not just my little book. For years I didn't even look at the file, then I decided one day to make a novel out of it

Looking for you!

2010-07-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

If you are an illustrator of children's books and would be interested in taking Hugo on, I'd love to hear from you!

Excerpt

2010-07-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy completing two books I started yonks ago. But I'm also contemplating adapting a rather long short story into a children's book. My problem is that though the contents are usually quite harmless, my everyday writing style is rather sophisticated. Here's the first page: The magic pianoHugo Higgins was fed up. It was Christmas Day, given an hour or two, and no one had even

Witness

2010-01-02T02:34:00.000-08:00

Ella was crossing the wooden footbridge when she noticed two boys hanging over the side, looking down at the fast-flowing river. She often took this shortcut home, though she had been warned not to. It was too dangerous for a woman alone. She slowed her pace down and kept to the opposite side. The boys appeared not to have noticed her. Soon she was level with them. “Go on!” one said to the other.

Good intentions and yellow flowers

2010-01-01T05:10:00.000-08:00

Talking of yellow flowers, I wrote this poem quite soon after my mother died. It's really a tribute to someone whose main enemy was her own sadness and inability to intercommunicate. There must have been more joy in her life than she ever revealed to me. I hope so, anyway. I'm so sorry that I was never a "comfort" to her, my own life having turned so many corners and drifted further and further

The problem with Christmas.....

2009-12-25T02:45:00.000-08:00

....is that it never fails to arrive on the day you expect it to. The feverish run-up,now starts mid October with premature glitter in the shops and a range of Christmas sweetmeats guaranteed to be stale by the time you are meant to eat them - at least, that's how it in here in Germany. I'm fairly immune to them because I can't stand mazipan, persipan, or any of their near relations, and German

Conquering the wasteland

2009-12-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. -Vladimir Nabokov, (1899-1977) Quoting Nabokov makes me feel better this morning. Not that I'm deliberately boycotting this blog, it's just that my exhibition took all my energy this autumn and my chorus was also part of the big picture. I hope to do

Keeping up with the Joneses....

2009-11-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

....ist quite hard if you are one yourself. Jones was my father's surname and I rescued it from the registry office after my divorce, but continue to use the Puleston, which has been my stage name throughout my career(s). Puleston is a name given as middle name to all those born into the Puleston family but not blessed with the surname Puleston and we have a very interesting and extensive website

I knew this would be hard to keep up

2009-11-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

I really do want to upload some of my written stuff. Here's a short story. I'm sure you know that I own the copyright on all my work. If you wish to quote or use something, please ask for permission. You'll probably get it! The Jacket Florence was not usually bad-tempered. She had been married to Harry long enough to realize that she couldn't change him. He came from a family who believed that

Keeping up appearances

2009-10-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

It's easy to get out of the habit of updating blogs. I must have visited a dozen in the last few days that had been neglected for months if not years. so today I will add an abstract poem! It's one of many I wrote during a period of deep personal crisis. I destroyed most of them later, because they were more cries for help than literary compositions, but I kept a few quite lyrical ones. Nothing

A blog in need.....

2009-10-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

Well, why not. My painting now dominates the other blog so I'm dedicating this one to original poetry, plays and stories, usually in English! Starting as I mean to go on, here's a little poem in the style of C-S. Eliot. I wrote a programme for a fellow stage performer and myself. Actually I wrote the short stage plays, and we read all the wonderful "Cats" poems in between. The evening was calls