Manny Moreno, Poet, Writer and Ongoing Contributor, Shares "The Tree" and more...

 

Monolin “Manny” Moreno is of Yaqui-Tarascan descent and an Enrolled Member, of the State Recognized Group of Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. His Yaqui Ancestry records date back to the late 1600’s. He has four books published: The Bridge is Gone, poetry, and The Elder: A Tribute, remembrance of elders Harry Jack and Barry Beaver Turner--both published by Back40 Publishing, and his book of poems, Longview Road, Sam Aros and son published. His fourth book is Scared – Coming Full Circle published by Eaglespeaker Publishing. It is under revision to be published under new title Scared – The Healing.
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Manny’s poems are about the beauty and heartache of growing up in rural Livingston, where his grandparents settled in the early 1900’s, and about his rough and crazy decades in Stockton. Readers have admired the plain language, emotional power, and honesty of Moreno’s verse. His poems have appeared in Song of the San Joaquin, Hincha Poesia and Whispering Thunder. He was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2011 and was Poet of the Month for Moon Tide Press in June 2012.
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Moreno is a Sun dancer and member of the Black Wolf Honor Society Gourd Clan and Native American Church. He has appeared on Native Voice TV in Santa Clara, KKUP Indian Time Radio in Cupertino and on Channel Ten for Native American Month. Manny has lectured and read his poems in many venues, most recently at Modesto Junior College (Modesto), and the Haggin Museum and Mexican Cultural Center (Stockton).

The Tree

A twig from an ancient tree

was planted in this valley

ninety-years and a day ago

with grandparents' post-migration

arrival

propagated with a labor

of love and dream songs which

sprouted roots rich

with indigenous sacred hope

and over decades this twig branched-out

into an ancestral tree

lush with a heritage of scattered leaves

some have prevailed on the railroads

farmfields and overseas

warriors in battlefields

some have crooned and swooned

on saddles of assimilation

not total though

to gain an education

some have hummed commitments

to heaven in humble jubilation

some have whistled weary in whirlwinds

on life’s meager means

some have not forsaken

chanting enchanted

traditional ancient

cosmic conscious themes

and now

in this soul-deadening

out of balance Y2K

millennium infancy

I reflect in the autumn years of my being

standing somber in

the shade of our tree;

what will become of it

and me?

For the tree

expands into five generations

perpetuating a pristine

perpetual dream

in this valley reality like

enormous hawk wings

encapsulating us with

a shade of simplicity

celebrated in a social

status of invisibility

and I

native son shy of eloquence

irrigate the tree

with common words

to nourish-in nutrients of this life force

flowing in crimson canals of flesh

in the fertile soil of San Joaquin

in the plants and critters

in the rivers and

pulses of little towns

being shredded for

progress and malls

in the decades deciphered

from a million memories

fertilized for posterity

prestige and dignity

of the tree and landscape

and panorama

of our souls.

~~~

"keep on dancin'"....I am told by my ancestors in the spirit world.

When I stumble they catch me
when I fall they lift me up
when life becomes so hard to endure
they gather in my dreams and console me
when I look for answers they guide me
when I am weak they strengthen me.

You, keep on dancin'...

— with Cindy Moreno Reynolds

Final Thought:

Working on my 5th book has me doing much thinking. A process. Observations.

I remember this, "It's important to know WHO you are. It's also important to know WHO you are not. I leave pretending to the pretenders.

Hope you are having a good day.

Find me on Facebook

Manny

God Bless and Best Wishes on Your Book Writing, my Friend! 

Gabbie

A Little light Music to Enjoy the Afternoon - Featuring Ezio Pinza - Narrative from Bravo! by Guy Graybill

South Pacific - Tony Award!

Enzio Pinza (1892-1957, bass)

Ezio Pinza, a native of Rome, was born into a poor family. He considered two other professions--civil engineering or cycle racing--before setting on a singing career. Pinza's singing debut came when he was in his early 20's; but he is remembered, today, for the work he did while in his fifties.

His debut occurred in 1914 in Bellini's Norma in the Lombardy town of Soncino. Later, after military service in the First World War, he returned to singing. Ezio Pinza sang at La Scala
from 1922 and at the Met from 1926 until 1948. As the best-known bass singer of his day, Pinza sang all of opera's major Italian bass roles.

The total singing roles that he mastered were said to be near the hundred mark. His professional and personal reputations were both built on his role as the title libertine of Mozart's Don Giovanni...

During his frequent tours, from city to city and country to country, Pinza was reported to be steadily rehearsing Don Giovanni's behavior while away from the theatre.

Among Ezio Pinza's favorite roles was that of the title character in Modest Musorgsly's Boris Godunov, a role he insisted on singing in Italian, even when the rest of the cast was singing the English version!

When he was 56 years old, ancient by some standards, he moved out of the Metropolitan Opera House and onto Broadway, to star in a lead in South Pacific, for which he won a Tony award. 

He also appeared in another play, Fanny, as well as in operettas and motion pictures. 

One is left to wonder how successful he might have been if he had every learned to read music...

~~~

Many thanks to Guy Graybill, for allowing me to feature individual artists who appear in his book, Bravo!

His latest novel is... 

Uvi Poznansky - The Author - Featuring The David Chronicles

Uvi Poznansky is a bestselling, award-winning author, poet and artist. “I paint with my pen,” she says, “and write with my paintbrush.” Her romance boxed set, A Touch of Passion, is the 2016 WINNER of The Romance Reviews Readers' Choice Awards.

Education and work:
Uvi earned her B. A. in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion in Haifa, Israel and practiced with an innovative Architectural firm, taking a major part in the large-scale project, called Home for the Soldier.

Having moved to Troy, N.Y. with her husband and two children, Uvi received a Fellowship grant and a Teaching Assistantship from the Architecture department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. There, she guided teams in a variety of design projects and earned her M.A. in Architecture. Then, taking a sharp turn in her education, she earned her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

She worked first as an architect, and later as a software engineer, software team leader, software manager and a software consultant (with an emphasis on user interface for medical instruments devices.) All the while, she wrote and painted constantly, and exhibited in Israel and California. In addition, she taught art appreciation classes. Her versatile body of work includes bronze and ceramic sculptures, oil and watercolor paintings, charcoal, pen and pencil drawings, and mixed media.

Books and Genres:
Her two series won great acclaim. Still Life with Memories is a family saga series with touches of romance. It includes Apart From Love, My Own Voice, The White Piano, The Music of Us, and Dancing with Air. 

The David Chronicles is a historical fiction series. It includes Rise to Power, A Peek at Bathsheba, and The Edge of Revolt.

Her poetry book, Home, is in tribute to her father. Her collection of dark tales, Twisted, and her Historical Fiction book, A Favorite Son, are both new age, biblically inspired books. In addition, Uvi wrote and illustrated two children books, Jess and Wiggle and Now I Am Paper. For each one of these books, she created an animation video (find them on YouTube and on her Goodreads page.)

Spotlighted Author Chris Lindberg Talks About Inspiration...

Inspiration 

  

A common question we writers get asked is, “what inspired you to write this book?”  For some of us, that’s a much harder question than it might seem.  When I started writing my debut novel Code of Darkness, I don’t really recall a moment before where I decided exactly what the book was going to be about – it was more a process of starting to write, and then seeing where it would go. 

 

For me, a novel isn’t always the result of one big epiphany, but rather the sum of a bunch of smaller discoveries you make along the way.  More often than not, those discoveries are going to make a good story even better.  I’d get moments of inspiration for storylines, characters, details, plot twists, even a metaphor here and there.  Some of them fit perfectly into Code of Darkness, others were so good I had to find a way to work them in, and yet others wound up not quite making the cut.  It just depended on what I needed for the story and when I needed it.

 

How does a writer get these moments of inspiration?  Well, that’s different for each of us, I’d guess.  In my case, there are two things.  The first is going somewhere and clearing my mind.  I’ll go out for a run or bike ride, and just let all thoughts of the day be wiped from my brain for a little bit.  This gives my mind a little room to let the imagination work: my thoughts will wander to a project I’m working on, and all of a sudden I’ve built up four or five scenes, or a key detail, or a plot twist.  It does wonders. 

The second source comes from just keeping my eyes and ears open.  While I’m out working, commuting, playing with my kids, whatever, I never know what might strike me as something I can use in my story.  It could be a conversation I overhear, something I see happening on the street, or any other everyday occurrence that might somehow spark a thought in my mind.  It’s amazing how much source material is out there, if you just keep your eyes and ears open to it. 

And that’s how I get my inspiration: piece by piece rather than all at once.  Now, what inspires your writing? 

_____  

About the Author

Chris Lindberg was born and raised outside Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from Northern Illinois University in the mid-1990s, he headed out to the west coast for a couple of years, where he began writing as a casual pastime.

Some time after returning to Chicago he began attending writers workshops at StoryStudio Chicago, where he wrote two character studies, both of which have since been developed into key characters in Code of Darkness.

Chris now lives outside Chicago with his wife Jenny and their two children, Luke and Emma. You might catch him working away on his second novel while commuting on his morning train into the city.

Chris Lindberg’s first novel, Code of Darkness, was released in August.  You can find out more by visiting www.codeofdarkness.com, or visiting Facebook and searching on “code of darkness.” 

To purchase Code of Darkness in paperback or e-book edition, please check out: http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=code+of+darkness

Or search “code of darkness” on Amazon or BN.com. 

You can also email him at chris@codeofdarkness.com – he’d love to hear from you. 

Getting to Know Dakota Banks...

Silent Honor

With a successful series in her background, Shirley Kennett remade herself to become

Dakota Banks...Here's a short bio...

About Dakota

I have to believe that growing up in a converted turn-of-the-century funeral home, complete with blood gutters and a drain in the basement floor, warped my mind.

I set aside all those macabre thoughts spawned by reading books in the basement at night with a flashlight and undertook a relatively normal life. College, science fiction, husband, computers, Star Trek, mortgage, fantasy, Star Wars, kids, mysteries, writing, thrillers, horror, and cats. I'm not sure in which order all those things happened, but I haven't killed off enough gray cells yet that I've forgotten any of them. That brings me up to now, or at least the last decade.

I wrote short stories in high school and college, submitted them, and got rejection letters. I still have some of them. Writing was shelved while life ran amuck, and I came back to it in the 1990s. I published six books, all hard-edged suspense thrillers dealing with virtual reality, one of them set in a future world. None were written under the Dakota Banks name. I enjoyed these books because they were my first taste of the writing life, not to mention that they brought in some money and put 600,000 published words under my belt.

Something was missing, though, and it took me six books to find out what the missing piece was. Although my books were highly imaginative and extrapolated then-current trends in forensic science, computer simulation, and virtual reality, they didn't go far enough. I felt hemmed in by reality.

I needed to get back into the basement with a flashlight.

I took a deep breath and thought about what I really wanted to do with my writing career. I had an idea that had been playing around at the edge of my mind for a while, and I decided to see what I could make of it. Combining my love of archaeology with the freedom that comes from using mythological elements in a story, I came up with the basic concepts for the Mortal Path series. Developing that world and the characters who bring it to life has been tremendously rewarding for me, and I hope the books provide pleasurable reading for you.

I live on the western fringe of St. Louis, Missouri with my husband. Our two sons, one adopted from Peru and the other from Ethiopia, are in college. My cats Snickers and Marble sometimes ghostwrite my books. Good stuff, too, if you speak Cat.

I'm a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, the Horror Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America.


Info Used with Permission
Click Title of Article to link to Author Site

Welcome to Aaron Paul Lazar, New Spotlighted Author!

WELCOME AARON!

Aaron Paul Lazar wasn't always a mystery writer. It wasn't until eight members of his family and friends died within five years that the urge to write became overwhelming. "When my father died, I lost it. I needed an outlet, and writing provided the kind of solace I couldn't find elsewhere."

Lazar created the Gus LeGarde mystery series, with the founding novel, DOUBLE FORTÉ (2004), a chilling winter mystery set in the Genesee Valley of upstate New York. Like Lazar’s father, protagonist Gus LeGarde is a classical music professor. Gus, a grandfather, gardener, chef, and nature lover, plays Chopin etudes to feed his soul and thinks of himself as a “Renaissance man caught in the 21st century.”

The creation of the series lent Lazar the comfort he sought, yet in the process, a new passion was unleashed. Obsessed with his parallel universe, he now lives, breathes, and dreams about his characters, and has written nine LeGarde mysteries in seven years. (UPSTAGED – 2005; TREMOLO:CRY OF THE LOON – 2007 Twilight Times Books; MAZURKA – 2009 Twilight Times Books, HEALEY’S CAVE – 2010 Twilight Times Books, with more to come.) The author is currently working on his fifteenth novel.

One day while rototilling his gardens, Lazar unearthed a green cat’s eye marble, which prompted the new paranormal mystery series featuring Sam Moore, retired country doctor and passionate gardener. The green marble, a powerful talisman, connects all three of the books in the series, whisking Sam back in time to uncover his brother’s dreadful fate fifty years earlier. (HEALEY’S CAVE: A GREEN MARBLE MYSTERY, 2010; ONE POTATO, BLUE POTATO, 2011; FOR KEEPS, 2012) Lazar intends to continue both series.

Lazar’s books feature breathless chase scenes, nasty villains, and taut suspense, but are also intensely human stories, replete with kids, dogs, horses, food, romance, and humor. The author calls them, “country mysteries,” although reviewers have dubbed them “literary mysteries.”

“It seems as though every image ever impressed upon my brain finds its way into my work. Whether it’s the light dancing through stained-glass windows in a Parisian chapel, curly slate-green lichen covering a boulder at the edge of a pond in Maine, or hoarfrost dangling from a cherry tree branch in mid-winter, these images burrow into my memory cells. In time they bubble back, persistently itching, until they are poured out on the page.”

The author lives on a ridge overlooking the Genesee Valley in upstate New York with his wife, mother-in-law, and Cavipoo, Balto. Recent empty nesters, he and his wife are fixing up their 1811 antique home after twenty-five years of kid and puppy wear.

Lazar maintains several websites and blogs, was the Gather Saturday Writing Essential host for three years, writes his monthly “Seedlings” columns for the Voice in the Dark literary journal and the Future Mystery Anthology Magazine. He has been published in Absolute Write as well as The Great Mystery and Suspense Magazine.



http://www.legardemysteries.com/
http://www.mooremysteries.com/
http://www.murderby4.blogspot.com/
http://www.aplazar.gather.com/
http://www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com/

contact him at aaron.lazar@yahoo.com.

Look for Review of

Healey's Cave (Latest Book)

Coming Next!

Spotlighting Paul Kyriazi...

Feature Film Director



Paul Directing Adam West



Recording with Frank Sinatra Jr, Rod Taylor, Nancy Kwan, Robert Culp, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris, David Hedison, Edd Byrnes,  James Darrin, Others

turning novels into audio-books.

Speaker for 'How to Live the James Bond Lifestyle'.

BA in Film. San Francisco State University.

Director of six feature films including 'Omega Cop' starring Adam 'Batman' West, Stuart Whitman, & Troy Donahue.

Produced his novels as full cast AudioBooks with film quality effects and music:

2008 - 'McKnight's Memory' - Narrated by Frank Sinatra Jr. Starring Robert Culp, Nancy Kwan, David Hedison, Gary Lockwood, Henry Silva, Alan Young, Don Stroud, & Edd Byrnes. 4 hrs.

2007 - 'Rock Star Rising' - Narrated by Rod Taylor. Performed by Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris, Robert Culp, James Darren, & Kevin McCarthy. 3.6 hrs.

2007 - 'My Casino Caper'. Performed by Edd Byrnes, David Hedison, Alan Young, Henry Silva, & Michael Callan. 77 min.

2007 - 'The King and McQueen' full cast Audio-Bio. With Barbara Leigh, David Hedison & Joe Esposito. 2.6 hrs.

2006 - 'How to Live the James Bond Lifestyle'. Taught at The Learning Annex. 8 CDs or download. 8 hrs.

2005 - 'In the West' - 90 minute travel production for Japanese company. Appearance by Pat Morita.

1975 - 2004 - Wrote / Directed six feature films:

'Omega Cop' - 'Weapons of Death' - 'One Way Out' -

'Drawn Swords' - 'NinjaBusters' - 'Death Machines'


Now producing my audio-novel 'I Justice' performed by Frank Sinatra Jr and cast.

Birth Place: San Francisco, CA USA

Accomplishments: Twice winner fo Berkeley Film Festival First Prize, Third Prize.