iTunes Podcast and T-shirts with Sculptures on them

iTunes Podcast and T-shirts with Sculptures on them

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T-shirts with Sculptures and iTunes Podcast.

SO, I have arrived: my podcasts have made it to iTunes.

Check them out here on iTunes. So far I’ve made two podcasts: one of me reading Chapter 1 of FALLEN and one of me reading Chapter 1 of THE LOVE OF MY (OTHER) LIFE. Look for more podcasts of book chapters and interviews! Also, I will be setting up a Parvati Press podcast with Parvati Press authors reading from their books or being interviewed.

And check out the new Parvati Press Emporium, where you can buy t-shirts that feature my book covers and my husband Sabin Howard‘s sculptures or drawings. You have options: you can choose a t-shirt with the image (book cover, sculpture, or drawing) on the front or back. The sculpture shirts say “RISE TO THE OCCASION Sabin Howard Sculpture.” The FALLEN t-shirt says “JOIN THE APOCALYPSE“; the COLD LIGHT t-shirt says “IN THE END, LOVE DEMANDS EVERYTHING” and the FAR SHORE t-shirt says “LOVE IS SALVATION.”

Check them out, and enjoy!

 

 

T-shirts with Sculptures

 

 

2 Podcasts and A Most Excellent Review of FALLEN

2 Podcasts and A Most Excellent Review of FALLEN

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A tweet of special loveliness winged its way to me today:

@tracilslatton I apologize that it took me so long to review your novel, Fallen! Thank you for writing it. http://wp.me/p2qe77-1no 


I checked the link to emsun.org and the 5 star review of FALLEN is quite wonderful:

I read it no less than four times in the past two years. Finally, feeling very guilty, I knew I was going to not only finally review the book, but also purchase my own copy. Last week, I did so.
Fallen explores the grittier side of what could happen in a post-apocalyptic setting. Lives are clearly divided into Before and After, and survivors battle with the guilt as they can’t reconcile the two. 

Also, I have made two podcasts, one of me reading Chapter One of Fallen, and the other of me reading Chapter One of The Love of My (Other) Life. Right now they’re housed at archive.org; I have tried my luck at iTunes, we’ll see.


THE LOVE OF MY (OTHER) LIFE

FALLEN

 

Real Friends; and Loving Stephanie Snyder on Yogaglo.com
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Real Friends; and Loving Stephanie Snyder on Yogaglo.com

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My friend A. is becoming successful, and she’s encountering snark from some of her friends.

I told her, “You know who your real friends are because they’re still your friends when you’re successful.”

Something unfortunate happened for me with a so-called friend when I got the book contract for Immortal, and that person fell away. I cared about her but she couldn’t deal with her own jealousy.

At least that person wasn’t petty. She couldn’t continue as my friend, but she didn’t try to make me feel badly.

A. has been shocked at the petty jealousy of some of her long-time friends, who are trying to tear down and minimize her accomplishments. Obviously, their malicious behavior is a reflection of their own inner emptiness and insignificance. I tell her that, as other friends of A. also tell her, but she still feels hurt.

We are all of us all too human that way.

Others of us are very pleased for A., and proud of her. A. is a lively, creative sort, big-hearted, hard-working and fun, wildly talented and genuine. She has many real friends. I’m sorry she had to learn this particular lesson, but she won’t let it dampen her brightness of spirit.

On to a completely different subject, except that brightness of spirit connects it: Yogaglo.com.

My friends, family, and dogs know that I’m a dedicated practitioner of yoga. I do yoga every day, which is a good thing. Yoga contains my sometimes rambunctious energy. Last time my friend Paul was in town, and we were eating fried artichokes for lunch and drinking way too much wine, he sighed in the face of my gesticulating.

“You’re hyper today,” he commented, and turned down his hearing aid to tune me out. Or maybe he just ordered us both more wine so I’d get tipsy and giggle more and rant less. Or maybe he did both. Maybe I could say your real friends still love you when you’re hyper.

Truthfully, I have a lot of forward thrusting Mars energy these days, with Mars in Virgo in my first house by transit, squarely on top of my natal Mars in Virgo. This is in the Vedic system. But Mars in Virgo takes to the physical and mental discipline of Yoga like a duck takes to a pond. In fact, I secretly believe that Parvati, Shiva’s consort and the first yogi who was taught by Shiva himself, must have Mars in Virgo, as I do.

So, yoga keeps me calm. It regulates my energy. A little over a year ago I discovered an online yoga studio called Yogaglo.com. I was an immediate enthusiast, because yogaglo.com offers hundreds of classes for different durations and at different skill levels. I can do a two-hour hip opening class that opens my psoas and rocks my world, or I can do a half hour slow flow class, when I’ve already spent 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym.

There are some excellent teachers at yogaglo.com. I must mention Jason Crandell, whose intelligent, well-articulated classes are a special joy.

But this blogpost is a shout-out to the effervescent and inspiring Stephanie Snyder, whose classes are just wonderful, at any length, and at any skill level. I like to do yoga that is strong, supple, steady, and rhythmic, and Stephanie serves up her classes just that way, whether they are level 1 for beginners or level 3 for experienced yogis. I mean, I could always do without ekapadakounyasona (sp?), but I try twice as hard to master the pose when Stephanie is talking me through it.

 

Marvelous Discovery: FOYLE’S WAR on Netflix
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Marvelous Discovery: FOYLE’S WAR on Netflix

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At night, after working all day and then tending to my little one and organizing dinner and cleanup, I pose for my husband, classical figurative sculptor Sabin Howard. This entails sitting and holding a particular expression and gesture while he sculpts.

It’s work, not play, trust me. And it takes forever. We’ve been working on this head for almost a year.

Whiling away the hours has turned me into a Netflix aficionado. I started with 24, and watched all 8 seasons. I went through Grey’s Anatomy (really gets lame as the seasons wind on) and The X Files (despite my obsession in the 1990’s, some episodes are tedious).

Recently, I watched The 4400 and White Collar, both fun shows. White Collar features an art thief/con man who works with an FBI agent to solve crimes. Since I secretly want to be an art thief when I grow up, I got hooked on this show immediately. Sabin stopped sculpting to watch an episode with me about sculpture forgery. There was some chitchat about Bernini while authenticating a sculpture that had Sabin grinning.

Then last night I stumbled upon an intelligent, suspenseful British historical crime drama called Foyle’s War. It’s set in England during WW2. After two years of research for novels I am writing set during that period, I can tell you: this show gets the details right!

It’s an impressive show. It’s fascinating to see how the moral complexity of individual lives plays out against the larger backdrop of the war, which was a war without any moral complexity at all: Nazi murderous, racist, unbounded aggression was simply wrong.

But individuals can seldom be depicted this way, strictly as saints or as demons. And so the people of that era who lived, who didn’t die one way or the other in the war, lived their lives with the richness and fullness of humanity–not with any false purity. They committed crimes, made mistakes, turned blind eyes, gave in to their worst impulses, took advantage, lied, cheated, and stole, the way people do, and have done since Cain and Abel, and always will do.

At the heart of this series is Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, a quiet man with a sterling moral center and a dedication to fly fishing. Other characters are also engaging: Sam, his girl Friday/chauffeur, and Foyle’s son, who has enlisted.

I recommend this show, and I look forward to watching more episodes as I perch on the small seat of a ladder and hold a lopsided smile, all for my husband’s sculpting.

 

 

AFTER Series Giveaway and Guest Post on HOUSEWIFE BLUES AND CHIHUAHUA STORIES Blog
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AFTER Series Giveaway and Guest Post on HOUSEWIFE BLUES AND CHIHUAHUA STORIES Blog

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I was searching for book review blogs and stumbled upon Texan Jackie Burris’ rather wonderful blog called HOUSEWIFE BLUES AND CHIHUAHUA STORIES. I queried her and we discovered that we both love our pets… So Jackie invited me to do a guest post and eBook giveaway to promote my books. Find them here.

I wrote about our dogs Molly and Gabriel, and how they’ve enriched our lives.

Some lucky winner will receive digital copies of all 3 books in the series, FALLEN, COLD LIGHT, and FAR SHORE. So be sure and enter!

 

 

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Returning to the iPhone, after a frustrating stint with an android phone

Returning to the iPhone, after a frustrating stint with an android phone

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I wanted to love the Samsung Galaxy S4. I did love its big, luscious screen. I enjoyed its camera. The hardware of that phone is lovely. I liked the customizability of ringtones, as I screen calls via ringtone.

But android software is dreadful. Dreadful, awful. Bad. Don’t buy an android phone.

First, the Galaxy ships with several gigs of utterly useless space- and processor-swallowing software. This software is mind-numbingly stupid. There are several scornful nicknames that convey the derision in which it’s held: “bloatware” and “crapware” among them.

You have to do this tech-intensive thing called “rooting the phone” to really exterminate that pestiferous bloatware.

Second, the settings are badly disorganized. It’s hard to find what you’re looking for. Someone who has no executive skills capacity whatsoever designed the Galaxy settings.

Third, the software doesn’t always work. For example, mailing pictures from the camera album. Sometimes they would send, sometimes they wouldn’t. Very frustrating.

Fourth, the email app is god-awful user unfriendly. Impossible. Doesn’t sync often enough, only likes gmail. And everything, including your password, is stored on the cloud, which means Big Brother NSA can pluck your password out of the cloud and ruffle through your emails at will. (Imagine a big hairy oaf rummaging through your underwear drawer….)

Fifth, you have to press extra buttons to make a phone call or get a message.

I personally found that android software required a lot of fussing with. It’s not well organized and intuitive, as apple iOs software is.

My Galaxy screen had an issue in the fall and I swapped the sim card out into my old iPhone, and I sent the Galaxy to Samsung for repair. While using a slow old iPhone 3, I fell back in love with the iPhone. There’s NO stupid crapware to root out. Everything just works. I don’t have to fuss with it.

The Galaxy came back from Samsung. It looked beautiful and worked–well, it worked as well as an android phone does work, which is to say, encumbered with stupid bloatware and sporadically. I delayed putting the sim card back in because I just couldn’t bear to leave the pleasant efficiency of the iOs environment. Finally I girded my loins and dutifully returned to the Galaxy.

Two weeks later, and some website or email created an annoying alert on the phone that it had a virus and I needed to download antivirus software. There was a specific website it wanted me to go to. I was pretty sure that was a scam. But it finished off my tolerance of all things android.

I took myself to ATT. I did what it took to get the iPhone 5S.

Awesome phone. A pleasure to use. And my relief is delicious.