Category Creative Writing Tidbits

They’re at it again… read more here:

http://accentuatewriters.com/viewthread.php?tid=5190#pid199062

And here:

http://www.facebook.com/michelleldevon/posts/10151449220990226

And my blog post earlier this year about it here: http://michelleldevon.com/2012/03/28/must-read-warning-for-everyone-who-writes-poetry/

Please don’t fall victim to this scamming site. Read the email they sent me today by downloading the PDF copy of it here.

Bookmark to:

All weekend long, my novella, CELESTE, by Michelle Devon, is free! Amazon.com has listed it for free for the entire weekend, and I’m very excited to see I’ve already reached a couple of their best sellers lists. For example, I made it to #4 in best selling short fiction and #11 in thrillers/suspense. I made it to #304 overall too, but that’s not quite high enough and I’m already dropping this morning!

If you enjoy shorter reads, this one about 55 pages long, that will keep you guessing until the end, then please consider picking up my novella today! Share the links to it with your friends and have them pick up a copy too, and if you feel so compelled, I would love an honest review of my work too.

Thanks for everyone who helped me get to this point! Ya’ll rock!

Love and stuff,
Michy

Once I thought tears were a weakness. Once I thought I should be ashamed of not being strong enough to control my tears. So I hid them, from everyone, and never let anyone see me cry. I had learned early on as a child that tears only made daddy angrier, made him not listen, and sometimes made him hit.

The same thing happened in my first relationship, too, at least, my first grown up relationship. He would be ugly, angry, and sometimes even vulgar, but when I cried, he’d only get worse.

Tears only made men angry, made them violent, made them shut down and not listen. They said tears were emotional blackmail, instead of simply being true expressions of pain, hurt, sadness.

So I learned early on to hide the tears as much as possible. I hated it when I cried, feeling foolish, weak.

But o...

I was having one of my infamous talks with Ryan, you know, the types of talks where we speculate and extrapolate on just about anything and everything, stay up late and solve all the problems of the known universe, then go to sleep and wake up the next morning and totally forget all the solutions. In this conversation, we talked about the universe. I personally think the universe is a living, breathing entity. It expands and collapses (breathing) and it grows and changes, in consumes and purges. We are but parasites to the host which is the universe, and much like our own bodies have parasites that we are host to, sometimes these parasites are good and sometimes they are bad.

Sometimes the parasites are the very thing that keeps our bodies alive. Other times we take meds to wipe some parasites out completely.

Is the universe as a whole really that different to us?

I do think that humankind is a bit egotistical to think we are the biggest, highest, top of the chain beings… of course, not all humans think this, but I bet it would be a safe bet to say that the human race as a whole has a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to ‘life’ in general.

Has anyone seen T...

“I trust you.” I never knew how important those three words were.

…I trust you.

More important than saying I love you is knowing that in a relationship there is trust.

The only thing missing from some of my past relationships was that one crucial ingredient.

Trust.

Contrary to popular belief, making love really has very little to do with sex.

No, in fact, making love doesn’t really require sex at all. Although, adding sex to making love can really bring two powerful parts of loving together into a relationship, and that is the ultimate goal when in love with someone.

But right now, I want to talk about ‘making love’ and what exactly that is, at least, what it is to me.

WHAT IS MAKING LOVE?

Making love is a ...

(*Originally written in 2006. Well worth revisiting this one.)

The dance was nice. The music was great, but a little loud. It was very hot on the dance floor, but we found a personal wind tunnel near the entrance where we sat to cool us down.

And there on the dance floor was this early to mid-20s woman, wearing jeans and a white shirt, with what appeared to be her husband and two children.

They were dancing together as a family. At one point, she even got on her knees to dance with her less than three-year-old son while dad swung the daughter around and around.

I watched, entranced by the love and fun in this little family unit. They made me smile, filled my heart with joy.

Then, while I was sitting at this table watching them, this song comes on, this Natural Woman song.

Do you lurk in the shadows watching me?

I am so exposed.

I put everything out there, hoping you will see, will read me, will view me—will watch me and know how I feel, how I still feel.

Open, my life is a book, written on pages before you, and everyone can read it, read me. Part of me hopes you are watching and part of me is so afraid of what you might see.

You are invisible to me. All traces of a connection that was once so real and strong to me—gone. I seek for it; I yearn for it. I reach out and can almost touch it, almost feel it, and then it vanishes like smoke before my eyes.

I don’t cry. I don’t get angry. I’m not sad. I’m just barely breathing, barely holding on to that thin string that is sanity and dangerously close to stepping over the line into the realm of fantasy forevermore—drifting into fitful sleep each night.

Even in my dreams, I ca...

The odds of winning the last mega-millions big lottery that was all over the news were something like 1 in 176 million chances of winning. That’s pretty long odds, right there. Yet, ever hopeful, people buy tickets to the lottery every day. Why? Because human beings seem to like playing the odds. One of the reasons hang-gliding and mountain climbing and even something as simple as roller coasters are so adrenaline pumping and exciting to people is because there is a risk of death (or at least serious injury), however small, that comes with the rush. If there were nothing to fear, there would be nothing exciting about it. You get excited because you faced risk and death, and you win… you survive. You beat the odds while staring them in the face.

We play the odds all the time: every time we get behind the wheel of the car (sober or not, driving or not), we risk death. Every time we take a new medication from a doctor that we’ve never taken before, we risk death. Every time we walk out our door, we risk death, and just staying in and doing nothing risks death in a different way. After all, did you know that more people die from accidents and injuries or illnesses that happened in their home than all other crimes and causes of death combined? Most of us, if we die, are going to start that process in the relative safety of our own homes.

The point is, we are constantly at risk of death, every one of us, and yet somehow we function every day in spite of it. We are gamblers, human beings are… yes, we are. We play the odds. We hope for the best, even though we know the odds are stacked in favor of the house, because we know, deep down, that someone is going to beat the odds. We believe, with prayer and fantasy, that we will be that someone.

And sometimes… we are. Or as my uncle said to my mom once–and you’ve probably very likely said it before yourself: Someone has to win the lottery. Might as well be me.

And yet, in the end, we all die. Every last one of us is going to die. We can’t escape that eventuality. But some of us die sooner than others. There are reasons for that. We don’t all get to live a good, long life and slip into the next plane of existence quietly in our sleep. Blessed are those who do.

BEATING MY OWN ODDS

I’ve been doing a lot of reading ...

Since becoming a writer, many have asked me the source of my inspiration, what it is that compels me to write. The answer is always different, depending on my mood, what’s foremost in my mind that day, or what is currently inspiring me. Though the answers are almost always different, they are all true. If I had to pin point the reason I write to just one thing, just one impetus that moves my fingers, I’d have to say it’s the ‘what ifs’.

When I was a child, what ifs got me into trouble with daddy. He would tell me to do something a certain way, and I’d asked, “What if I did it this way instead?”

I mean, I didn’t think it; I would actually ask...