Featured on Naelle Devannah’s blog!

Naelle Devannah is a long time friend whom I met about a decade ago on deviantART. (Well, here she found me.)

She an all-around loveable person, anyone can confirm it. But we became friends immediately because of our mutual admiration. This is how I first started getting to know her, her visual art. I felt a kinship with her because of our similar circumstances (isolated goth girls from “the country,” creatures of the web) and our love for the aesthetic contrast of darkness and bold, bold color. (A tropical symptom, I suppose).

Visit her site, there’s lots to love that will keep your eyes busy for days.

I asked for her feedback on Stars Like Fish (which is printed on the back of the book) because I knew she would understand. Our imaginations are neighboring lands.

We plug each other often, but yet, I was beyond flattered to have a space in her blog (which is quote popular!)

This is part of her series “Getting to Know…” – where she asks personalized questions to artists of all kinds, giving an in-depth look into their intentions, motivations and personality.

READ IT HERE!

Photo by Naelle Devannah.

She also took some really fabulous photos of the insides of my books.

Here’s an excerpt:

 

You work with a combination of painterly words, photography and illustration. What’s your perception of the term visual art? What can you foresee in future creative generations?

Maybe my “painterly words” are my frustration… I know my writing is very visual. When I discovered photo editing, I got the same satisfaction as I did describing scenes. Illustration, you flatter me so, but yes, I like to doodle.
My perception of visual art is something arcane and academic that I am only vaguely familiar with and learn about through people like you and observing what they do… perhaps it shouldn’t be, but having spent so many years in academia can make you a little insecure before talking about something without a theoretical background. However, and this is a total contradiction, visual art is, at the same time, something so accessible to absolutely anyone with properly functioning eyes… we can interpret images as signs, in a manner that they should say something, or ask us something, but then again, we can also just enjoy something beautiful or ugly for what it is. So I guess I shift from one starting point to the other, depending on what’s comfortable at the moment. You can either have a long conversation about a piece of art, or write a long paper about it, or just like it. And I guess the same goes for the creation of visual art… you might transmit, transgress, transcend, or just make something.

 

Where Everything Lost is Released in the Wild

International buyers: My book is now listed on Etsy! If you’re interested in buying a copy, please order it from me personally through Etsy, that way I can personalize it, wrap it, add postcards and whatnot… it’s a little cheaper than anywhere else so you can save on shipping. Click to visit the product page!

Also, a reminder that it’s on Goodreads as well! Please, add it to your book lists!

And amazon, where reviews are always awesome.

If you’re in Puerto Rico, you can now buy copies at a few local bookstores!

I took a photo at Mondo Bizarro (because it’s the only place I didn’t feel silly doing it). This is a brand new art and comics store – which does a lot more that just sell things, check out their facebook page –  in Río Piedras owned and managed by the Pernicious Press team.  They have tons of cool stuff (just look at that Kraftwerk album stowed away) and it’s also a gallery with a café and BUBBLE TEA BAR. And the owners are all-around awesome people.

MB

It’s also available at Librería Mágica and La Tertulia in Río Piedras, and Libros AC in Saturce. So look at it/buy it wherever you happen to be or wherever you prefer. Just know:  it’s around.

Where Everything Lost is Available

Ladies and gentlemen: WELIF is unofficially out!

Unofficially because I only have a few copies in my hands, it is not yet in bookstores and only available online for the time being. The reason is that the covers I received do not have that damask detail you see below, which is very important to me, and I’m working this out with the printing service.  The covers are completely black! Which doesn’t affect the overall mood of the book at all, it’s even kind of fitting in a way, but I would really like the covers to look like the image below.

However, if you can’t wait, you may order it from amazon, or just go take a look, since it lets you see the first couple of pages.

welifff

The art came out looking like pencil sketches instead of ballpoint pen sketches! Which is also very important to me, since I’ve been trying to make a point out of drawing in cheap pens rather than real artist’s tools, but I still rather like the outcome.

welifff

Those of you who follow me and know what I’m up to know that this is an anthology of poems I wrote during my angsty teenage years, so it’s not a very happy book at all, and doesn’t reflect my writing style anymore (but it does reflect my budding “writer” – it’s not like you can’t tell this person is now THIS person).

I promise that when the cover issue is resolved, I’ll post where you can go buy a copy (or flip through it), as well as my etsy link, where I rather everyone buy it so I can personalize it and add extras.

Where Everything Lost is Mutating

The good thing about being in charge of one’s own publications is I have only myself to report to if I don’t meet a deadline… then again, otolaryngologist that is also the bad thing.

Where Everything Lost is Found was intended to be finished and on paper around this time of the year.

From angsty anthology, it’s mutated into illustrated poetry book. From a considerably thick book, it is now short and, hopefully, sweet (perhaps more bittersweet that sweet…) The process has been one of elimination… elimination… and more elimination.

They say one is one’s own toughest critic.

In all honesty, I have chosen not to have any critics for this project (as I did with SLF). I don’t mean to say this is productive or smart, but for both books, I knew exactly what I wanted to produce and rather have not had any input, positive or negative. That and, being irremediably stubborn and hoarder of secrets.

WELIF, I had mentioned once before, is a flowering graveyard of adolescent texts. I’ve decided to include only poems (not prose, as originally intended).

The task at hand was to draw some ballpoint doodles to compliment some of the poems. Now, I want to fill it with ballpoint art in between each poem, and to illustrate some of them (since some drawings only allude to specific images in the poetry).

These are some finished and in progress drawings:

image

 

So it turns out, WELIF has mutated into an art project. (You can choose whether you want to call this “art” or not, I personally don’t know what else to call it. )

Until a voice in my head says “enough!WELIF is a work in progress. But I intend to have it done by this Fall. At most. Maybe.

Where some things found are announced…

If any of you follow my livejournal, rx you might already know I’ve been cooking something up for the last couple of months…

It’s Where Everything Lost is Found, sildenafil and it’s scheduled to be published in… well, when it’s finished. Approximate date is May 2013.

This one contains a bonus… art! A handful of doodles in between poetry and bits and pieces of prose and, possibly, short stories. However (as it happens), the chronology is all backwards. Most of it contains a healthy dose of teenage angst and existential desperation, because it only contains pieces written more than a decade ago.

welif

This is a teaser of some of the drawings (all in black ballpoint pen), many of which will be recent (because all my “art” worth sharing has already been seen online).

So keep an eye out! There’s actually more than one announcement to be made, but only when the time is right!