GSP's Book of the Day September 13

Songs of the Dead by Dawn Colclasure

#gypsyshadow #checkeditout #poetry

Dawn Colclasure’s dark poetry collection, Songs of the Dead (formerly named Topiary Dreams), is not only dark, but passionate. Anger, fear, hurt and betrayal run under the skin of this work and shine through especially bright in poems such as No Turning Back, Deep Within and I am Madness.  Colclasure examines the dark side of human nature; murder, drug use, violence, insanity and isolation. But, beyond the tales of death and darkness there’s also a message of empowerment; the voice of someone who has taken too much, for too long and has finally had enough.

Songs of the Dead is a re-release of the chapbook originally published in 2003 and with more than twenty-seven new poems; it has more than earned the title “expanded”.  Colclasure has a flair for prose, with lines such as “walk on the moon and hear the stars breathe,” (from Death Shows my Pain) and different poetry forms stop the reader from falling into a sing song rhythm of sameness and help to keep the collection fresh and interesting, page after page.

Word Count: 5700

Pages to Print: 55

Price: $2.99

http://www.amazon.com/Songs-of-the-Dead-ebook/dp/B004CYESPI
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/songs-of-the-dead-dawn-colclasure/1103096557
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28793
http://www.gypsyshadow.com/DawnColclasure.html#SongsofDead

Songs of the Dead, a collection of dark poetry by Dawn Colclasure. Available from Amazon, other fine eBook vendors and Gypsy Shadow Publishing at:
http://www.gypsyshadow.com/DawnColclasure.html#SongsofDead

Book of the Day May 13

Camel-Lion by Hugh Fox

Get ready for a jump into hallucinatory LSD dream-/nightmare-writing here. Fox takes his own marriages (to a Peruvian, a Kansan and a Brazilian) and all his years in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain and the rest of Europe and turns them into what may have begun as autobiographical and turned into fantasy stories.

His immersion in opera, film and theater since he was a kid, along with a fascination for world literature and a special interest (nightly for 7 years!) in French film, transformed Fox from a Chicago-born gremlin into an artistic internationalist. There's also his obsessiveness with ancient archaeology; drawing cultural lines between the ancient Andes and the ancient Middle East. So get ready for trips to Istanbul too, a cultural historian turned fictioneer (referring here especially to the first story in the book, the one that gave the book its name, Camel-Lion).

Tucked inside these pages you’ll also find allusions to Fox's years spent in art galleries; from the Art Institute in Chicago (specializing in French impressionism) to the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi gallery in Florence, the National Gallery in London, the Nelson Atkins gallery in Kansas City—none of them escaped him. Lots of the time you feel you're inside fictionalized art-galleries . . . or classical music concerts ("Salvation").

Let's not forget Fox's childhood and early adulthood captivation with fanatic Irish Catholicism and then later in Judaism, when he discovered the grandmother who had raised him was a hidden Jew ("Suede and Velour") You’ll find Fox always getting to the inner heart of things—a maniacal scholar-artist, as it were.

Always ("Unsprung") you’ll note Fox’s special obsession with his favorite city, Paris . . . the Parisian; the internationalism; cultural history infatuation; an insane fascination for all of the arts, history, archaeology, world-religion all of which he transforms into somewhat autobiographical fiction.

Word Count: 30,000
Pages to Print: 110
Price: $ 3.99

http://www.amazon.com/Camel-Lion-ebook/dp/B0051VRK1K
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/camel-lion-hugh-fox/1102157694
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/60748
http://www.gypsyshadow.com/HughFox.html#CamelLion

Camel-Lion, a short story anthology by the late Hugh Bernard Fox, Jr. Available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, other fine eBook vendors and Gypsy Shadow Publishing at:

http://www.gypsyshadow.com/HughFox.html#CamelLion

Book of the Day December 29

Songs of the Dead by Dawn Colclasure

 

Dawn Colclasure’s dark poetry collection, Songs of the Dead (formerly named Topiary Dreams), is not only dark, but passionate. Anger, fear, hurt and betrayal run under the skin of this work and shine through especially bright in poems such as No Turning Back, Deep Within and I am Madness.  Colclasure examines the dark side of human nature; murder, drug use, violence, insanity and isolation. But, beyond the tales of death and darkness there’s also a message of empowerment; the voice of someone who has taken too much, for too long and has finally had enough.

Songs of the Dead is a re-release of the chapbook originally published in 2003 and with more than twenty-seven new poems; it has more than earned the title “expanded.”  Colclasure has a flair for prose, with lines such as “walk on the moon and hear the stars breathe,” (from Death Shows my Pain) and different poetry forms stop the reader from falling into a sing song rhythm of sameness and help to keep the collection fresh and interesting, page after page.

Word Count: 5700
Pages to Print: 55
Price: $2.99

Here's what we need you to do (Thanks in Advance!):

1. Login to Amazon
2. Click the link (under the picture)
3. By the title on Amazon there is a "like" button, click it. if you wish you can stop there, but if you want to help even more . . .
4. When you click and hover over the like button it says "share this link: via Email, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest." Click one (two or all) of them and hit share, it should only take a couple of minutes.
5. Page down to the visible tags (Tags Customers Associate with This Product) and either click on the tags you agree with, agree with all the tags or, if you've read the book, add some tags of your own. The fastest way, of course is to click on the link that says "Agree with these tags?"
6. If you have read the book, please leave a brief review!

Book of the Day September 20

Camel-Lion by Hugh Fox (Deceased)

Hugh Fox (February 12, 1932 – September 4, 2011) was born into an Irish-Catholic family in Chicago. He was a writer and one of the founders of the Pushcart Prize for Literature. He was published in numerous literary magazines and was the first writer to publish a critical study of Charles Bukowski. He became interested in literature and the arts at a young age, and attended Chicago's Jesuit college, Loyola University. After receiving a master's degree in the humanities, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois.

In 1958, he began teaching at Loyola University of Los Angeles. Three years later, he served as Visiting Professor of American Studies at the University of Sonora in Mexico, and during 1964 and 1965 he was a visiting professor at several universities in Caracas, Venezuela, including Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and the Instituto Pedagogico. Also a specialist in pre-Columbian Amerindian religion, Fox lectured throughout South America under the sponsorship of the United States Information Service. It was at this time that he worked on the manuscript for his novel The Taffy Hills, which was never published.

 

 Here's what we need you to do (Thanks in Advance!):

1. Login to Amazon
2. Click the link (under the picture)
3. By the title on Amazon there is a "like" button, click it. if you wish you can stop there, if you want to help even more.....
4. When you click and hover over the like button it says "share this link: via email, facebook, twitter or pinterest." Click one (two or all) of them and hit share, it should only take a couple seconds.
5. Page down to the visible tags (Tags Customers Associate with This Product) and either click on the tags you agree with, agree with all the tags or, if you've read the book, add some tags of your own. The fastest way, of course is to click on the link that says "Agree with these tags?"
6. If you have read the book, please leave a brief review!