Red Haircrow and Flying are privileged to announce we will now handle website adminstration and press for Uli Lenz. We are hard at work updating and creating new web content, and looking forward to upcoming events.
Previous site: http://ulilenz.de/
New: http://ulilenz.com/
Articles at redhaircrow.com:
Poetry » American poetry » Native American
Published by Flying With Red Haircrow
Published: Available March 17, 2014
Words: 5,340
Language: American English
ISBN: 9781311903570
Price: $4.99
“CORE is a poetry collection with themes of suicide, loss and grief, but also of courage, joy and deeply passionate love. It is a journey of healing and survival that has taken the author around the world and through his own heart and spirit. It is the revealing of darkness and light, of beauty and hideousness, and a reliance on the strength of one’s ancestors and their beliefs to inspire hope and perseverance.”
Readers appreciative of contemporary poetry written by a Native American poet who has traveled the world and the broad spectrum of life may be interested in the forty plus poems written in a variety of styles and meters. Delivered from a unique perspective, sometimes dark and powerful, and at others whimsically gentle, work by Red Haircrow has often been described as “unforgettable and haunting.”
Core will be available at Smashwords & its distributors, and other online sources.
Editorial Reviews:
“There is no doubt Red Haircrow has a gift for descriptive prose; the vivid imagery the author presents through the selection of language sketches a picture for the reader that is rich in feeling and atmosphere.”—Top2Bottom Reviews
“Inspirational, often poignant, occasionally brutal…”— Bob Cherny, The LL Book Reviews
“I read this collection with a sense of wonder, humility and inspiration and the writing deeply touched me on a multitude of levels.”–Indie Reviews
“To make something so beautiful out of pain and struggle is the highest meaning of what I believe art is: transforming hurt and becoming healers.”– Ana Christina Caelen, Sound therapist, Musician and Composer
“It makes me think, makes me feel, enables me to travel to different places without leaving the comfort of my easy chair.”– Nancy Ferrer, Outlaw Reviews
Red Haircrow is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction, poet, private chef and former law enforcement officer of Chiricahua Apache/Cherokee descent who lives in Berlin, Germany. Red is also a psychological counselor, publicist and owner of the multi-media entity Flying With Red Haircrow.
Red Haircrow has various poems, shorter works and articles published in magazines like Sword & Saga Press’ American Athenaeum, Sibling Rivalry Press’ Assaracus, Danse Macabre, and Indian Country Today Media Network.
Awards include: Rainbow Award 2012 Best LGBT Biography/Memoir for “Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World”. Winner Global Ebook 2013 Awards Best LGBT Fiction for “The Agony of Joy”, Finalist Rainbow Awards 2013 Best LBT Fiction, “The Agony of Joy.”
From the author of “The Agony of Joy”, winner of the Global Ebook Awards 2013 in Best LGBT Fiction, Variance is a collection of ten short stories and novellas by Red Haircrow ranging from contemporary to fantasy, the surreal and thought-provoking to the innocently poignant.
Although some see “variance” as suggestive of disharmony, it can be the reality of achieving, understanding, expressing and conveying a variety of emotions, schools of thought, relationships, personalities, and more, without limitation, exhibiting the ranges possible within one’s being.
As a story collection, Variance displays the range of a multi-talented poet and author who has been described as having a “magnificent command of language” and “a gift for descriptive prose.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contemporary Fiction
Night Shift
The Caravaggio & The Swan
The Coat: Secrets of a Hatcheck Boy
Convenience Store Romance
Fantasy
The Angel of Berlin (Urban)
A Lieutenant’s Love (Historical)
Katrdeshtr’s Redemption (Dark/Vampire)
Surrealism
We, The Dead (Visionary)
Children of Light (Ancient)
The House of Doom, Dreams and Desire (Sensual/Horror)
2013 GLOBAL EBOOK AWARD WINNER: BEST LGBT FICTION
“From London to Berlin, to the frozen seas of far east Russia, this is an unforgettable journey of rebirth, revelation and redemption as two men struggle to overcome their separate past agonies and allow themselves to experience friendship and love.”
It’s one of those things…well, it’s one of those things I never actively think of: winning an award, but I know what The Agony of Joy meant to me. It’s fiction, but it’s also my story in that it is based on real life situations I’ve dealt with (and still do in some ways) and what others close to me have experienced. Being a child abuse survivor, devastatingly losing a beloved to suicide, parental distance and strife.
It took me almost ten years to complete, from beginning to end, because it is a very vividly realized novel, which can have “triggers” for survivors like me. Triggers refers to those phrases, suggestions, scenes or dialogue that “trigger” memories of abuse or some other traumatic episode, but my point wasn’t to force that: it was simply to present the reality we live with every single day.
The moments we have to fight through when others are oblivious, just to keep going: to keep walking, to keep working, to go about daily activities. Sometimes it is excruciating physically, mentally and emotionally, but we go on because that’s what we know to do, and because those ones who hurt us didn’t ultimately break our hope or belief in goodness or in trying to do good for others because that is what helps us keep living.
There’s an anonymous saying: “Always be kinder than necessary. You never know what someone is going through.” That is CANON. Too few people ever consider such a thing, only thinking of themselves, their own needs and wants for even the most minor thing.
Almost ten years. I had to take a hiatus from writing AofJ because my own memories were close to overwhelming me at times. Like the character Adrian Lee also, the family divide because of choices and sexuality, the disrespectful and insulting treatment hurled my way was tearing me down. But I completed the book eventually.
And then you submit your book. And you receive replies like:
“This is ordinary….”
“This didn’t grab me….”
“This is too unreal, unbelievable….”
When it was my life. It was the life of men I’ve known, loved, and some of whom are now dead because the crushing disappointment of being dismissed, disbelieved or disrespected became too much for them. Most of the scenes/locations in the novel are based on actual places, restaurants, places I’ve lived and explored.
I believed in this work. It was a complete labor of love, hard fought and won. I didn’t let the literal couple of hundred of rejections get me down, but I also didn’t go with a couple of acceptances as the understanding of what the novel is was important for the story and for me. I knew it was a story I had to tell because it was important not only for me, but for millions of others who have lived or are living in such situations regardless of social status, religion or belief system, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, etc.
No, awards aren’t everything. There are many great books out there that don’t get the attention they deserve. This award was important for me because I know publishers, especially traditional ones, are very dismissive, often editors only go by their own whims or reading tastes, and what they THINK readers want. I’m glad the judges of this award were more objective and recognized Agony for what I tried my damndest to present just as it had been lived.
My latest interview for this novel was at the AuthorQuiz website, where you can read more details about its writing and background. The book trailer is below. It was first published at Smashwords, and is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo and other online distributors.
Other of my posts about The Agony of Joy:
Description: “Former model turned actor Adrian Lee can barely list age range ’23-29′ on his resumé anymore nor stand his life of empty social events and appearances, meaningless roles and casual partners. When he meets Alexander Skizetsky by clever arrangement of his agent, the enigmatic yet infinitely attractive Russian kindles a little light of hope in his aching heart. Yet even the beginnings of a friendship and love beyond his wildest dreams cannot assuage a life spiraling out of control.
The long estrangement from his devout Irish Catholic parents and family and the dark secrets they all share combine to drive him to the brink of despair, though Alexander is determined to stay by his side. After locking away his own memories of betrayal and loss, the Russian had decided never to love again but something in Adrian spurs the noblest intentions in his formerly jaded heart. Returning in pilgrimage to his homeland, he brings Adrian along on a journey of rebirth, revelation and redemption.”
Flying With Red Haircrow 