8-29-15 Book Launch Press Release

In lieu of Saturday post - here is the Press Release from the AWwYP (my publisher's) Website

‪#‎UDPPbook‬ ‪#‎booklaunchparty‬ ‪#‎workthatwork‬ ‪#‎HVP‬ ‪#‎AWordWithYouPress

The pun comes with the territory...

Dear Friends,

If you are anywhere in SoCal please join us Saturday, August 29th with our sponsor Highlight Video Productions, at 2575 Foothill Drive in Vista to help us celebrate the launch of Ugly Drawers, Pretty Panties, our darling Tiffany Vakilian’s first publication with us at the Towers that shine A Word with You Press flags.

This event will be a great chance to meet the author and kindred spirits, and to network with writing, media, publishing, and other professionals. It’ll also serve as a reunion of sorts for all North County writers, in particular the Meet-Up group Anti-Social Writers and Creative Misfits, of which Tiffany and I are members. She handed me the fiddle when the Oceanside towers burned.

(but it does make a good story. But definitely not a lire!) 

We expect more people than there are inappropriate puns at the Towers, so be sure to bring a lawn chair. Come enjoy a little live music and the camaraderie of fellow writers, artists, and friends. Tiffany will give a brief reading at sunset, and be on hand to sign copies of her book.

50% of the proceeds from her book launch sales that night will be donated to the Transformative Language Arts Network, promoting the use of spoken, written, sung, or embodied words to facilitate social change. And you get a woman’s ugly drawers and pretty panties to put under your pillow or sell on eBay.

In a perfect world, I would be flying in from Moscow for the event, but I’m on extended time out for bad behavior and locked in the Tower! But I will be there virtually, as will folks all over the orb.

AND we will announce the prize winner to our Beneath the Surface contest before the day is done. I do hope to see you and promise to be on my best misbehavior!

Fifteen bucks gets you a beer, a book and a burger.

With LOVE from the land of the double-entundra,His Moi-ness,The Thorntonator-in-chief​, thornificent, as ever

Two Gold Lines

Hey hey! Here is your Saturday Post!

This is my time, to sit, to sip, to look, to listen
This is my space, for pondering, for dancing, for writing, for singing
This is my joy, loving, giving, hoping, living
And learning
Let's not forget that

***

I am tacitly mindful of the length of my posts, and weight of my words. Someone taught me, I think it was Mom, that words are like toothpaste - once out of the tube, they can't go back in. I've been failing, and succeeding at that whole "keep it in the tube" way. Even the bible talks about it - "The tongue is a “small part of the body” (James 3:5), yet Proverbs 18:21 says it “has the power of life and death.”" There are a great deal of self-help books and gurus who basically say the same thing, "watch what you say...", and I just want to shout out to the writers... WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! Watch it grow, change people, start or stop wars. King David was a psalmist. Solomon was a song writer. I am a griotte! I claim it. I own it. I walk in it. And I share the joy of it. As you may or may not know, my first solo book of poetry has been published, and I can't be more humbled by the hard work that so many people put in. Thornton Sully, CEO of A Word With You Press, saw me at one of his writer's group dinners, and became my friend and mentor, even though he's admitted to lacking weight as a connoisseur of poetry. But for my non-poetry works, he's a beast of an editor (in the best way), and someone whose criticism I truly respect.

A Word With You Press has a contest with a 7.00 entry fee and a 350 word limit. The contest ends this coming Wednesday. Even though my book is now in their catalog (with more to come!), and I will never win because I'm basically staff, I submit a piece every time there's a contest. I will always participate, not just because of the awe-inspiring feedback, but because I believe in the mission of this publishing house - to put gravitas on a low carb diet. As the type of poet I want to be -  well, gravitas comes with the pen and paper. Yes, tech aside, I have journals everywhere...

​I digress.

The following was edited out of my submission, but it's so fun to write, and every time I read it I smile to myself... Enjoy!​

Mama has been harpin’ on Brook to “cover her cooty cat ‘fore the smell of her in heat attracts all the Tom cats from Dana Point”. Maybe if I dressed like that for Kimber, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Yeah right, my sexiness was never an issue. It always came back to the kids.

If you would like to read the full piece Two Gold Lines, please click here...

With words, song & prayer
TiMo

Thorn & Me - The Day He Saw the Book 

P.S.
Blackbird
Bluest Eye
Bone straight hair
Skinny thigh
This is not I
This is part I
This in part I
This impart I
Winged creature fly
Dragon
Fly
Dragonfly
This is I
This is why

Team Andrew

Happy Saturday - and here is your post!

My older brother
My younger brothers
And then of course
Mom
Hospital
In Costa Rica
Want to get him
Home

Take care of
Stateside business
Wish that I was
There
Miles and miles
Air, dirt, and water
Boundaries stand
I stare

In the context 
And the subtext
We gather round him
Close
Laying healing hands
And prayers
Outcome only
God knows

"Andrew has been working as a missionary in Costa Rica, and he is currently in a medically-induced coma due to an apparent brain aneurysm. If you can find it in your heart to donate any amount to help with this wonderful man's medical expenses, my family and I would be so grateful. Thank you for your support! We love you Andrew..."

Please donate here

to help pay to bring him home from Costa Rica for medical care and family love. If not, prayer is always appreciated, especially at time like this, and quite often more powerful than the doctor's prognosis.

With words, song and prayer,
TiMo

Just checking in...

Here's the latest update on the time capsule-

Book is in process and progress. I'm excited about it. the work, but I have home life to think about and it makes for some interesting workarounds. It is beautifully silent in the grass green field of my mind. I've even had time to write letters that I put off for months after the wedding and home making.

I have been storing up energy and inspiration and I feel good about what's coming. The next project is the workshop, and I have at least a third of the class filled. I haven't touched the play I'd planned on, and the book gets a little time here and there, but the brunt of my creative energy is in the chapbook, and at the rate I'm going it'll be done next month. I'd like to thank A Word With You Press for their input and some key characters for their editing skills and feedback.

Just got a new project, so I best get to it, but HAppY NeW YeAr!!!

With words, song and prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Chrysalis-Transformative Language Arts Journal

A Brief Review by Tiffany Monique

Chrysalis: The Journal of Transformative Language Arts

Transformative Language Arts is using spoken, written, sung or embodied words art to facilitate social change. And now, after years of bearing fruit with the Goddard TLA Program, there is a new Transformative Language Arts journal online.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg founded TLA after “years of working with people to develop something that encompassed the written and spoken word, social change and personal transformation” (I interviewed her in 2010 when I first began my studies at Goddard College). The first article in Chrysalis is her story of founding, entitled To Make a Prairie.

I'm in there too, having written a review about Dani Shapiro's creative memoir, Still Writing, and I'm still glad to engage my own transformation due to my TLA graduate students in Pme, Qme dual expression and the spectrum of authenticity. I am actively developing my "art, activism, studies, and livelihood.” Studying Transformative Language Arts has encouraged me to begin some of my best creative work. Once I found my way to engage my own story, it became my Transformative Language Arts mission to help others (mainly women) see within themselves their own spark of inspiration.

It's a wonderful rite of passage for TLA, and Editor Amber Ellis is on top of keeping the flowing nature of Chrysalis in top form. This is a maiden voyage, a first run, and according to Ellis, "The articles, essays, poems and reflection pieces collected within the inaugural issue of Chrysalis mirror this period of transition, this struggle, to become something greater, something whole." In addition to my Masters in Transformative Language Arts, I have been accepted into the Transformative Language Arts certificate program. 

"The certification provides participants with a thorough orientation to TLA, some avenues for developing a TLA practice and connecting with others involved in TLA, and encouragement to be part of the TLA community, help grow that community, and further define and develop TLA in the world. The Goddard program is a much more intensive immersion into TLA" 

Work with people. Love what you do. Spread the word. Change the world. “Simply write”. For whatever your artistic talent, this is wonderfully simple advice to hear. Artistically do what is in you to do, “anywhere and anytime”. It will take years. It will take collaboration. It will take education. Now that certification is possible for TLA Practitioners, there is yet more opportunity to engage and share what is transformative within an artist, and have that artist be a more powerful force for change within a local community. And of course, I've signed up. Care to join me?

With words, song and prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Raw Man Review

From the loving comfort of home, here's your Saturday Post!

Read the Examiner Review of Raw Man here.

Fred lived it and then wrote about it. I read it, and it informed me on many levels. My family started conversations and told each other stories about what we remember from our childhood.

I said in my review, "He hasn’t won any awards for writing, but I suspect he will." More than that, I hope he does. Here is my review of Raw Man.  I hope you, and many more people read his book.

Check out his website as well -- www.rawmanthebook.com.



With words, song and prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Raw Man #3

Good day to you! Here is your Saturday Post!

He asked me at the launch party where I was in the book, I said something flippant like, "you were on a boat..." because I didn't want to tell him that his book is scary to my life story, and hard to read for more than pages at a time.

Yes Fred, I am reading your book. I thank you for the acknowledgment. I am going to write a review after I'm done reading. I am humbled by every page.

Again I say, the more I read of his novel, the more I am afraid to, but the more I need to. PTSD... there's a ping in there that links so many parts of my life. I have nothing to do with it really, but it has a LOT to do with me. I want to read more, learn more, do more, but I really feel like I need to shut up a stay here a minute with Raw Man.

Buy his book and let's talk about it, especially if you are children of Nam Veterans.

By Fred Rivera

Fred is promoting his book and PTSD awareness. Click the image caption to see Fred's interview on KPBS. I am quite amazed by him, if you couldn't tell.

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking

© Tiffany Monique February 2014

Raw Man #2

Good day to you! Here is your Saturday Post!

There is so much more to this, but for now, here is the Examiner Article for Fred Rivera's Book Launch. The more I read of his novel, the more I am afraid to, but the more I need to. I'm looking forward to writing and sharing this book review as a rite of passage and a forgiveness of the ignorance I used to own when it came to the war in Vietnam and PTSD.

Raw Man Launch
© Tiffany Monique 8.23.14

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking

© Tiffany Monique February 2014

Saturday Post 4.12.14

Inspired by the Image

© Moneta Sleet, 1969

While reviewing Hidden Treasures: A Collection of African American Facts on Examiner, I took to looking at this photo. I've been that mother, and I've been that little girl too. It is so powerful, being held. It is also truly powerful being the holder. The seasons change and from one moment to the next you become one and then the other. At one time giving the power to the one in need, and then receiving the power so needed. I love this representation for time in American history, but also as the photo of a mother holding a daughter, while simultaneously holding herself. Is that the heart of a mother? The heart of a woman? The heart of a human?

I find the duality once again PINGS me to Pme/Qme (the performer and the quiet one). The points of spectrum once again make me glad I learned of my own spectrum of authenticity and balance. I miss dual-expression workshops. Now I have the time to do them. Will I? Is it time to hold or time to be held?

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking

© Tiffany Monique February 2014

A Contest From A Word With You Press

A Contest I Say! A Contest! From A Word With You Press!

h

There is no greater pleasure than helping a student discover the beauty and power of the written word, but of course I am preaching to the choir.

We currently have a contest open to cyberspace and to all local students that allows them to see their work on line and to get valuable feedback from other writers who read their entries. Writers must create an original work of between 750 and 1,000 words that contain somewhere within the text the phrase "I swear, it's not too late."

Here are the parameters of the contest, which will accept final entries up until Thanksgiving Day.

http://www.awordwithyoupress.com/2013/09/19/500-reasons-to-read-this-entry/

To kick start some interest, AWwYP is offering $500 to the contest winner.

A Word with You Press will select six finalists who will then write a new piece to a different prompt to by judged independently.

I look forward to meeting you and discussing plans to save the world.

best

--

Thornton Sully
Editor-in-chief

A Word With You Press

Publishers and Purveyors of Fine Stories

106 North Main St.

Moscow,Idaho 83843

***

A Word with You Press is a consortium of writing and publishing professionals whose purpose is to see that new and used authors reach a broad audience both on line and in print, and that their work loses fat and gains muscle tone.

We achieve this by hosting writing and publishing workshops, by editing, designing, illustrating and publishing both fiction and non-fiction manuscripts and by sponsoring inter-active writing contests from our website,

A Word with You Press would very much like to establish itself in their new community. We have since our founding in 2009 published ten books, including a Pulitzer Prize winner and award winning poetry and fiction, and we have sponsored over a hundred and fifty events for writers. 

Let's get the word out!!!

With words, song and prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Click here to read my review in SD Examiner

Pme, Qme, and The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

First SD Examiner article of 2012. Read it here!

VA Earthquake

Here is my checkin. I also published one on DC Examiner.

I am fine.

I was in a basement at the time thinking, I know what the ground is supposed to feel like so either that is a huge, long, truck, or we are definitely having an earthquake. I went outside and danced with the ground. Nothing was broken, or even really bothered where I live or work.

The 5.8 earthquake epicenter was just outside of Richmond, VA. Washington Monument has cracks at the top (so there has been damage in the area). The Nuclear Power Plants near the area of the epicenter have both been shut down. It makes me homesick for Cali, and yet, I feel badly for the people who are really freaked out and suffering. I submitted information to the USGS (US Geological Survey) Did You Feel It? link.

Everyone I wondered about immediately flooded Facebook with checkins and commentary, so it made me appreciate the technology trap for a few moments.

I am requesting prayers (Culpepper County, VA has declared a state of emergency).

Hurricane Irene is coming through this area over the coming weekend, and according to the WX-Men, Irene could become a major hurricane in the next few days (she's a category 2 now). The Martin Luther King Memorial dedication (scheduled for Sunday) may be postponed due to the weather that may be coming.

Please prepare as best you can for what is coming.

Ok, that is a life statement, not just a weather statement.

Kitchen Remodel by FW&D

Mrs. R. invited FW&D back to her Fairlington Edgewood Unit for the kitchen remodel after we remodeled her bathroom in 2010.

Read more here.

Many of the the Fairlington units are cozy when it comes to the kitchen space, so you do well to use bright colors in my opinion.

The neighborhood is so pretty and green, you want to open the windows whenever you can anyway.

FW&D Review- Silver Diner in Springfield

Read the review here...

This was one time when the boss didn't come. I invited some friends and we cut up the whole time. It was so much fun. Lil Miss G stole the show with the cutest smile, and beat a 35+ year old at thumb war, even though his thumb was the size of her whole hand!

The Mombot gave permission for her daughter to be a model for my restaurant review... and even though it took a while for the little one to come out of her shell, she smiled big for the camera... Get ready for cuteness overload... 3...2...1...

Don't say I didn't warn you...

The jukebox played "Popeye The Sailor Man", "Day-O", and some others... we kept lookin' up at the ceiling. It was hilarious. Not only that, We talked about why "Enemy Mine" was one of the great 80's movies... if you don't know that movie, you missed out.

I don't know what I was thinking, inviting one of the most picky eaters I know to a restaurant review, but aside from not touching the shrimp scampi, the burgers, the fries, or the edamame in the salad, she did in fact eat! I wanted to try the sweet potato pancakes, but I was outvoted. I'm not bitter... I'll just have to go back!

We all had a great time, and I really am going to go back for the sweet potato pancakes.

Review – An Hour With Ken Johnson: The Secret of the Seven Openings by Laura Zam

I have been working with and for this artist since around July 2010.

Laura Zam embodies my meaning of a Transformative Language ARTIST, and I am really happy I got to see her wearing yet another of her many hats... this time it's the "Performance Cap" she's got on, and she wears it well.

Click the image to read their preview on DC Examiner!

Fairlington Kitchen Remodel by FW&D

FW&D did some more work in Fairlington. We like the area.

Ms. M, the woman who referred her good friend (our fun loving homeowner Carole), wanted to make some changes to her kitchen, and FW&D was happy to be a part of the change. More...

Fairlington Remodel by FW&D

The homeowner Carole had been in her home since, she says , “before I was a hippy”. She decided to remodel her bathroom. She had also decided to make some changes the ceiling in her kitchen.

Naturally, she called on FW&D.

Click here to read the story!

FW&D Review-Twisted Vines Bottleshop & Bistro

FW&D found another local jewel. Facing Columbia Pike in Arlington is a perfect spot for a date night or a quick bite. FW&D met up with friends old and new to review our newest discovery - Twisted Vines Bottle Shop & Bistro…READ MORE HERE

Profile- Kathy Cockerill of Emma's Children

Click here to read all about it!