Fun guest blog on MOONLIGHT GLEAM’S BOOKSHELF
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Fun guest blog on MOONLIGHT GLEAM’S BOOKSHELF

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Moonlight Gleam

This was a good time… I participated in a character guest post on Moonlight Gleam’s Bookshelf. I got to be Luca from IMMORTAL, Laila from THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR, and Emma from FALLEN.
Am I already those characters? Yes and No. Novels and screenplays are like dreams, everyone in them is the author. But it’s not that simple, because consciously, to create a character, I merge qualities from many different people I know. A three-dimensional character in a story is a kind of chimera.
So it was an opportunity to inhabit my own mythos, and I got to play….

Character Guest Post With Traci L. Slatton

Traci L. Slatton has kindly agreed to participate in a character guest post starring “Emma”, as well as characters from her previous novels “Luca”, & “Laila” to discuss her inspiration for writing in honour of her newest release Fallen.

Traci: “Blog readers, please meet Emma Anderson from FALLEN, Laila Cambridge from THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR, and Luca Bastardo from IMMORTAL. Guys, who’d like to talk about my inspiration for writing?”

Emma: “I’m a painter and illustrator, and before the apocalypse, I got my inspiration from looking into the faces of people around me. Especially my loved ones’ faces.”

Laila: “Who needs inspiration? It’s just so much fun to forge the Old Masters! I don’t wait for inspiration. I just have a blast doing what I do best. Gimme a paintbrush and some terra verde green and a little lapis lazuli blue: voilà, a Vermeer!”

Emma: “You’re lucky. I live during the end times. Billions of people have been killed in a global eco-disaster. We survivors are left struggling to stay alive, fighting vicious rogue bands, and haunted by strange psychic powers that dissolve us into madness.”

Laila: “What a drag! But you know, it’s not easy for me, either. My dad is missing and he’s being pursued by vampires. Evil, remorseless, blood-hungry vampires.”

Luca: “Inspiration? I get inspiration from Giotto’s frescoes, from Botticelli’s ravishing female figures. Such inspiration gives me the courage to endure a brutal indenture in a brothel of horrors.”

Laila: “I can paint just like Botticelli.”

Emma: “It’s not painting that saves me now. It’s love. When the world ends, all that’s left is love.”

Luca: “I am waiting for the great love who has been promised me. I chose her, and I know that the Laughing God will bring her to me, when His joke is ripe. I love her already and I haven’t even met her yet. Love is the only immortality we can know.”

Laila: “I’m waiting for my love, too. I can be close to him, but I can never quite have him. It’s too perilous. The hottest guy I ever met, and he smells so yummy, too. I just want to wrap myself around him and squeeze!”

Luca: “My great love smells like lilacs and clear light.”

Laila: “What does clear light smell like? Hey, there’s a beautiful Botticelli painting for sale, it has a pristine provenance provided by my friend Lord Cromer. I can get you a good deal . . . “

Luca: “Sandro Botticelli is one of my best friends. I already get good deals. Though he does negotiate relentlessly. It’s the Florentine way. At heart, Florentines care about money, food, and art. And wine. I myself have a fondness for vino nobile di Montepulciano. Though I don’t know if I’m Florentine. I don’t know my origins.”

Laila: “I’m a margarita fan, myself. Nothing like tequila to inspire a rowdy game of strip poker!”

Emma: “We don’t have the luxury of money, wine, and art. Food is the luxury now. I don’t know if the human race even has the luxury of a future. Arthur says we do, but I am not certain. He believes that we’ll rise out of the ashes and create a better life. He’s like that, always trying to do something noble and good. I just want to keep a few children alive . . .”

Luca: “God’s grace sees us through. There’s always God’s grace, even when we can’t see it. But we know it’s there. We’re receptacles for it, because of our souls.”

Laila: “The man I love has half a soul. What does that mean? What is a soul, anyway? Does having a soul explain why I’ll spend my last dollar on a pair of above-the-knee white patent leather boots with six-inch stiletto heels? Is there an explanation for that?”

Emma: “Soul has something to do with the invisible field of information that holds us all, the way the ocean holds fish and algae and seaweed and its myriad other creatures. I think soul may be what got us into trouble with the mists. Our souls make us vulnerable to psychological influence via the biomind.”

Laila: “What’s a biomind? Never mind, I don’t want to know!”

Emma: “Arthur knows. He’s brilliant.”

Laila: “I hope he’s hot, because he sounds like a smarty pants.”

Emma: “He’s beautiful beyond the dreams of women.”

Luca: “The most beautiful man I ever met was Leonardo, son of Ser Piero da Vinci. He was also the most talented and intelligent. I was his tutor, but he taught me more than I ever imparted to him.”

Laila: “You’re not so bad yourself, Luca Bastardo. Too bad I’m six inches taller than you!”

Emma: “You both have red hair, though Laila, yours is flame-colored, and Luca, yours is yellow-red. I’d love to paint you both. Laila, your laughter is infectious. Luca, your soulfulness emanates from you!”

Traci: “So did you guys figure out what inspires me?”

Laila: “Tequila and patent leather boots?”

Emma: “No, silly, it’s love!”

Luca: “Love and beauty!”

Laila: “Love, beauty, and laughter!”

© 2011 Traci L. Slatton, author of Fallen
Great review of FALLEN
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Great review of FALLEN

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Good words & a highly intelligent read from The Book Worm’s Blog:

★★★★

…Slatton’s natural storytelling ability takes over and the reader finds themselves engrossed in another well envisioned story world.

This book is very well written, and is another great example of Slatton’s creative abilities. (But the reader is going to want to remember going in that this is the first of a trilogy — or you will find it very depressing, and even fatalistically frustrating.) Slatton has once again allowed her ability with words to develop a post apocalyptic world that draws the reader in, and allows them to work towards the struggle of survival right along side the characters. The characters are compelling and real in that Slatton is not afraid to develop characters that are more than one dimensional. They have weaknesses, and compulsions that are both horrifying and ennobling. Slatton has developed characters that have the courage to face a failing world, while at the same time demonstrating not only everything that is right about mankind, but everything that is wrong, as well. All of these characters are more than they appear on the surface. They are each confronted with a devastating situation that brings out not only the best, but the worst in each of them at the same time. It is all of these varying traits that gives the reader pause, and the opportunity to reflect on what actually makes up an individual, and why we — as a species — are given these vastly different character traits. These vast differences ultimately beg the question why are such emotional characteristics an overwhelmingly important part of the human experience?

Read the whole review at The Book Worm’s Library!

FALLEN on sale on Amazon!
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FALLEN on sale on Amazon!

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For one week only, FALLEN is 99 cents on AMAZON!

FALLEN is the powerful story of love at the end of times. Emma is a woman struggling to survive and keep seven children alive in a world ravaged by chaos, madness, and war.

Emma meets the charismatic Arthur, who leads a strangely well-provisioned camp of men who seek to rebuild civilization. But Arthur hides a secret. Slowly she falls for him, but can she stay with him, when his secret is revealed?


EARLY PRAISE FOR FALLEN:


Fallen is a riveting page turner. Traci L.Slatton takes the reader on a mystical odyssey where death lurks around every corner. The choices one makes determine survival. Fallen is a thoroughly absorbing read written by a master story teller.

-Mary T. Browne psychic, author, The Five Rules of Thought, Power of Karma, Life After Death
Brave New World of ePublishing
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Brave New World of ePublishing

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It’s a brave new world of publishing. Because of ePublishing, we are in the midst of the greatest revolution in publishing since the invention of the Guttenberg Press, which, by the way, put a whole class of people out of work within a generation: scribes. And initially, there was quite a lot of resistance to printed books; some members of the elite classes believed that no educated man would buy coarse printed books. We’ve all seen how that turned out!

The traditional publishers are dinosaurs, fossilizing in front of our eyes. They take too long to read manuscripts, they take too long to get manuscripts into printed form, they respond too slowly to the market, they are afraid to take risks, they are terrified of innovation and run from it, they run themselves on old-school business ‘rules’ that are outmoded and largely false for books, they run via group-think and committee-mind so they lack creativity and vision, their PR departments are incompetent, they want to be gatekeepers instead of gate-openers serving the reading public, and they have no sense of nurturing mid-list authors and developing a career over time.

Basically, traditional publishing houses are searching vainly for an algorithm that will guarantee that every book they publish will be a bestseller. To that end, they beat the deceased equine until it is a gelatinous mass.

This is a time when independent-minded, innovative, pathologically persistent authors can do very, very well—because they can get their books out to the reading, buying public quickly. Think about the millions of eBooks author John Locke has sold.

However: beware of literary agencies that offer to ePublish your novel for you, for a price. In my mind this is a serious conflict of interest for a literary agency and a shocking dereliction of ethical responsibility. If an agent likes your book but can’t sell it, take your book and ePublish it yourself. With a company whose sole business it is to ePublish books.

Literary agencies face tough times. They make money from selling books to traditional publishers, and the traditional book publishers are buying fewer and fewer books, and stupider and stupider ones, to boot. I understand the temptation that these agencies face in wanting to get a slice of the ePublishing market and bolster their bottom line. However, it is a conflict of interest for a literary agency, and it is not an ethical business practice. Some literary agencies are marking up the ePublishing services that they recommend to authors, so the agencies are making money off the author going through the ePublish process. NOT COOL.

If a literary agency says to an author, “We love your book and we know readers will, too, but we can’t sell it,” the thinking author MUST ask himself or herself one question: How hard did they really try?

Even if the agency hands the author a list of twenty submissions, the author must wonder, what if number 24 was the charm?

Fortunately, ePublishing, as a form of self-publishing, has lost its stigma. It’s a viable option, especially for authors who already have a solid readership.

 

HOWEVER, and this is crucial: it is imperative that every ePublishing author do a few things: 1. Hire a professional manuscript editor and do at least two revisions, and 2. Hire a professional copy-editor and have the manuscript copy-edited before sending it to the ePublisher. These are not optional. They are mandatory. Sloppy books are not taken seriously and will not sell. My third recommendation is that eAuthors hire a PR firm. Readers can’t buy your books if they don’t know about them.

When it became clear that, despite the international success of my historical novel IMMORTAL, traditional publishers were not biting, I chose Telemachus Press to ePublish/POD my novels FALLEN and THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR. I had been researching ePublish/POD for a non-fiction art book I wrote with my husband, sculptor Sabin Howard, THE ART OF LIFE. I had done exhaustive research in the field; Telemachus Press was the clear front-runner. I own all my own publishing rights, unlike with some of the other big self-publishing companies that people are using. This matters. Telemachus is cost effective and very, very professional.

Working with Telemachus has been a delight. They care about their product and about their customers. I can say that they have bent over backwards to accommodate me and to ensure that my novels will be quality products. They are timely, they are efficient, they care. I have only good things to say about them. I recommend them to every would-be eAuthor. Find them at www.telemachuspress.com

 

Artist as Psychopomp – Tune in Mon July 11, 2011 – Monty Taylor – Living Consciously
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Artist as Psychopomp – Tune in Mon July 11, 2011 – Monty Taylor – Living Consciously

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FROM MONTGOMERY TAYLOR, ABOUT MY GUEST APPEARANCE ON HIS SHOW
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JOIN ME! Monday, July 11, 2011 at 12:00 NOON
www.talkingalternative.com

Call in live: 877-480-4120
Hello Everyone,

I hope you can tune in to us this coming Monday, July 11th at 12:00 NOON EDT (and call in with any questions you may have during the live broadcast). If you are busy at work, tune in anytime that is good for your schedule or time zone by simply clicking on the archive of any of our past programs. The website is: www.talkingalternative.com and my program is called “Living Consciously”.

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Here’s a summer reading project that makes a difference!
(The recent series of solar and lunar eclipses continues to bring to us a future of revelations and insights.)

First, here’s a new word to add polish to our vocabulary: psychopomp. According to the dictionary, a psychopomp is a guide that conducts the uninitiated Soul between realms of consciousness and different stages of cosmic reality. In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful animal. In many cultures, the shaman also fulfills the role of the psychopomp.

We don’t always expect to find psychopomps in the field of art and literature, but consider this perspective:

When looking at art throughout the ages, a little interpretive trick is to look for the character in the painting or sculpture who is holding a staff. This is the esoteric symbol showing that the figure in question was serving as a guide to a destination of fuller self-realization. In art of ancient times, Hermes is often seen holding a staff or cadeusis to identify him as such a guide. After all, Hermes (Mercury) was the only Olympian that could go from the heights of Olympus to the depth of Hades(different levels of consciousness) without restriction. He was the Divine Messenger that could communicate with every level of human psychic evolution. Later, in the art commissioned by the Catholic Church, the Saints and even the Christ were depicted carrying staffs to portray them as guides to the Heavenly Realms.

But who left us the legacy of these messengers? It was the Artist! It is important to remember that people could not read and write as a collective society until very recent times. So, it was the symbolism in the art of temples, cathedrals, and sacred places that conveyed the message.

This week I will have as my guest the visionary writer TRACI L. SLATTON, who steps into just such a role from the unexpected realm of the written word of fiction. Using written language the way a painter of the Renaissance uses crushed pigments of meaning and fine shading of emotion to transport us into time, both past and future, she celebrates the immortal voyage of the Human Spirit. Her latest books take us to the brink of what we think we know about time.

Traci Slatton’s works share a theme of linking the worldly perception of our existence to the transcendental. Her novels have been translated into over seven languages. Her recent books “Piercing Time and Space” and “Immortal” foreshadowed the current release of her most recent novels “Fallen” and “The Botticelli Affair”. They bring us into a world of insight and our relation to the endless cycles of time as we know it. After all, 2012 is rapidly approaching!

Traci Slatton is married to the pre-eminent sculptor Sabin Howard, whose widely-collected bronze sculptures champion the ideals of the Renaissance and their role in connecting us to the value of classical esthetics in our present reality.



Please let your friends know about this wonderful program that is such a joy to host. And please, if you can catch it, let me know your ideas for future program topics.

You can also join us on Facebook – Talking Alternative Fan Club, Twitter – @talkalternative, also at LinkedIn or IM us using AIM Messenger: talkalternative@aol.com

Best wishes always, Monty
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Montgomery Taylor
MontgomeryTaylor22@nyc.rr.com

JOIN ME! Monday, July 11, 2011 at 12:00 NOON
www.talkingalternative.com