red haircrow | Flying With Red Haircrow

In From the Belly, Virginia Bell opens the doors to a gallery of poetic meditations – on the tenderness of childhood and motherhood, the primal pleasures of food and sex, and the joyful aches of family and memory. The poems are by turns ekphrastic and self-consciously confessional, taking inspiration from the art of everyday things.

Influenced by and suggested if you enjoy the following: Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony, and God; Mark Doty’s My Alexandria and School of the Arts; Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard; Elizabeth Alexander’s The Venus Hottentot; Lisel Mueller’s Alive Together; Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris; Rita Dove’s Selected Poems; Emily Dickinson’s Selected Poems and Letters; Marie Howe’s What the Living Do; Christina Pugh’s Restoration; Ruth Stone’s Ordinary Words; Heather McHugh’s Hinge and Sign; Adrienne Rich’s Midnight Salvage; the photography of Sally Mann.

ADVANCE PRAISE

Chris Green, author of Epiphany School, says: “Virginia Bell’s From the Belly is pure pleasure and expertise. Poetry about all home matters secret, scary, and sweet. The body and its generations, our food and art. Poems both comfortable and ominous folded in fine linen but spotted with blood. The book, like a series of intimate paintings and photographs, is perfectly stilled. Bell is never hurried, and the reader is aware throughout of her technical skill, love, common sense, vision, and magnificence.”

Alice George, author of This Must be the Place, says: “Like a painter who rejoices in the wrestle between abstraction and representation, Virginia Bell’s poems respect and illuminate their earthly triggers while transforming this world through an impressive craft and compression.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Virginia Bell’s poetry has appeared in CALYX, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women, The Mom Egg, Poet Lore, Pebble Lake Review, Wicked Alice, Ekphrasis, Contrary Magazine, Woman Made Gallery’s Her Mark: a Journal of Art and Poetry, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, as well as in the anthologies Brute Neighbors: Urban Nature Poetry, Prose and Photography, and A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration. Bell has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and has published articles on activist writers such as Eduardo Galeano and Leslie Marmon Silko, and also the Instructor’s Resource Manual for Beyond Borders: A Cultural Reader (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). She is an associate editor with RHINO Magazine and an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago, where she particularly enjoys teaching courses on Women in Literature and Early American Literature.

ABOUT THE PRESS

Located just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, Sibling Rivalry Press develops, publishes, and promotes outlaw artistic talent. Our aim is to cultivate literary and poetic rock stars. We are also home to Assaracus, one of Library Journal‘s Best New Magazines.

Learn more at www.siblingrivalrypress.com.

17/07/2012

Book Trailer for “Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World”

First posted on 16 July, 2012: this is the video description of a biography written in memoir style of a courageous young deaf man, the compilations of notes, journal entries and essays, as well as my observations of a person I felt the personification of beautiful. Of the ability to create light from darkness, joy from pain. For more details, description and an excerpt, please visit its page on GLBT Bookshelf, Silence, and for a great review of the work at The LL Book Review.

I first heard the song “Midnight” by Minako Obata, when it was the end theme in an episode of the anime, “Black Lagoon.” I was riveted in place, and found it unforgettable, just like G.Y.S. The acapella arrangement is lovely, haunting, with a bittersweet sadness that also reminds me of him. He couldn’t have heard it, but he could have felt it.

As I wrote in more detail in my previous author’s note: “He lived most of his life in or near Berlin in Germany. Whether by train, bus or foot sometimes when I am wandering through the countryside or city, through the many parks or shopping arcades filled with people and I happen to see a tall, slim person with long reddish hair: I have a little pain inside me.

It stops me in place because I think of him. If the person is moving away from me, sometimes I wish it were him somehow, still alive, still touchable in the physical sense. I want to imagine he is alive and loved by someone even if it is not myself, he, my special phantom of the city. It is hard to accept sometimes that so vibrant a soul is now gone from this world, but I believe I will see him again one day.”

This photo used in my video is one I took at Scharmützelsee, where he also used to walk, as I still do as often as possible. Other photo journals I’ve made in Germany can be found in this entry on Songs of the Universal Vagabond.

Lyrics:

“Someday I want to run away
To the world of midnight
Where the darkness fill the air
Where it’s icy cold

Where nobody has a name
Where living is not a game
There, I can hide my broken heart
Dying to survive

There, no one can see me cry
The tears of my lonely soul
I’ll find peace of mind
In the dark and cold world of midnight.”

13/07/2012

There’s Still Time: Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale is on til July 31st!

It’s an annual events that gives readers a chance to find new authors they might never have considered, and take advantage of discounts and giveaways to add to their ebook collection titles they’ve been searching for: Smashwords Summer/Winter Book Sale, July 1-31st and Flying With Red Haircrow is offering three items this time around.

“The House of Doom, Dreams and Desire” with its new cover and revisions is free, just enter the code SSWIN at check-out.

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Description: “John Jones believed himself the most enlightened of gay men. Professional, well read and boyishly handsome despite his age, he also believed himself open-minded, tolerant and devoid of vice.

Yet he cannot resist the temptation of “The House”, a computer generated environment where one can explore their own subconscious in a safe environment. Safe except for the darkness you bring with you.

Psychologically twisted with disturbing images and surreal scenes that might offend some readers, “The House” is a mind and gender bending fantasy of a John in hellish Wonderland!”

Rated NC-17 for sexually explicit descriptions, adult language and imagery some readers might find disturbing or offensive.

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At 50% off, excellent savings for books one and two in the Enigma series, by hot author on the gay suspense and erotic romance scene: Nephylim, whose website Nephy’s World always has some interesting to offer readers. Use code SSW50 at check-out.

Description: “Troubled residents come and go at the Care House where River Caulfield is a caregiver, working towards fulfilling his dream of becoming a nurse. When Silver arrives, a patient found on a roadside near death after suffering terrible abuse, River finds his previous personal detachment is compromised. Seeking to help the mysterious and enigmatic young man locked inside his own mind and memories, River finds his professionalism slipping as Silver begins to open up and live again.

But as their relationship begins to blossom, the roots of Silver’s past abuse and the abuser who forced him into such a mental state sends forth new shoots of darkness enveloping them in dangers threatening not only Silver’s sanity, but their very lives. With River’s devotion and help, will Silver finally be able to break away from his past? The answer lies in the words of a priest, a painting and a long walk through a churchyard harbouring the secrets of the enigma that is Silver.”

Published December 3, 2011 at Smashwords.

Description: “River had always known that living with a freed sex slave, even one as sweet as Silver, was never going to be easy. It gets a lot harder when his parents are killed leaving him to care for his young brother. When Social Services get involved he has a choice to make. Unfortunately, he makes a choice that leaves the relationship in jeopardy as much as the master who returns to claim his former pet.”

Published May 6, 2012 at Smashwords.

30/04/2012

New Release May 10, 2012: “Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World” Edited by Red Haircrow

From Flying With Red Haircrow:

Description: “This is an imaginative collection of memories and observations written from the perspective of a young man who was orphaned early, who was gay, deaf and Russian. He was simple and complex, light-hearted and serious, whimsical and infinitely strong, and when he loved, he loved with all his heart and soul.

A former sex worker and later a husband, he was an amateur activist and philosopher, a startlingly intelligent, passionate individual able to intensely appreciate even the small wonders of the world and the people for whom he cared.

Part diary, part dialogue, part rhetoric, “Silence Is Multi-colored in My World” is based on actual experiences and is a literary portrait of a man with nothing to hide and everything to reveal. It is a slice into the willing veins of a mental and emotional free bleeder.”

Genre: Biography, Memoir, GLBTIIQ

Publishing: May 10, 2012

Publisher: Flying With Red Haircrow

ISBN: 9781476164861

Availability: Smashwords, OmniLit, Rainbow Ebooks, and other online distributors.

Introduction:

Who am I?

I am G.Y.S., a profoundly deaf man. I have blue eyes and red hair, which I wear long. I am gay and Russian, and was born in 1978 in the Ukraine, but I moved myself to Germany when I was fourteen. You’ll learn how and why later.

My words are a mélange of impressions, memories and observations for I love many things and am distressed by many things. I have wandered to a number of countries and enjoy meeting people and getting to know new ideas and perspectives. I find the world both a fascinating and terrible place.

Photography, Nature, Overcoming Disabilities, Inter-societal Understanding, and Love are some of the topics that interest, concern and keep my attention. In writing about me I wish I could have said something clever, unique or witty, but this is simply me: sometimes I’m silly, sometimes I’m angry, sometimes you may find me annoying or overly sad but I’m always honest and sincere.

Flash bits about me? I have a beautiful pink “Grecian” style nightgown I love to wear. I once blew up a vacuum cleaner (not on purpose!). I prefer to sleep during the day but I’m not a vampire. Sometimes I hate being bothered to eat because chewing is usually necessary but can be so very boring.

Other works from Flying With Red Haircrow:

Night Shift

Katrdeshtr’s Redemption

The House of Doom, Dreams and Desire

The Coat: Secrets of a Hatcheck Boy

The Angel of Berlin

Enigma,Enigma Book 1

Fighting The Man, Enigma Book 2 (Released May 9th)

Non-fiction:

Songs of the Universal Vagabond

CORE: A Poetry Collection (Upcoming release)

About Red Haircrow:

“Red Haircrow is a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, private chef, reviewer and former law enforcement officer of Native American (Chiricahua Apache/Cherokee) descent who lives in Berlin. Red is also completing a degree in Psychology, and operates the indie publishing label “Flying With Red Haircrow”, which opened on 31 October 2010.

Both traditionally and independently published, Red chooses to inject realism into their fictional work and happily ever after is not always in the mix though love and strong characters always are. Like life, there’s a bittersweet mixture of laughter and tears, and Red imbues their writing with the power, passion and range of emotions they’ve experienced.

Non-fiction articles are direct, willing to ask the hard questions yet considering of open-minded discussion. You can view Red’s non-fiction memories and articles at their website and others. Among other things, Red loves photography, traveling, learning languages, and spending time with friends. The two-spirit author is active in Native American affairs, and can also be found playing RPGs, browsing 2nd hand shops and savoring the meditative Zen of archery with the medieval Longbow.”