5/30/12

Book Expo America is next week, and I am attending. My latest title is in the event's New Title Showcase. Trying to make a determination, by tomorrow, if I will also go to Anaheim California in late June with my book as well. I am swaying more toward the positive of it, it is just the long airplane flight I am dreading. I could use that time to write though, so it could prove productive for me in the end. Hhhmm, what will I propose to do???

 *****

Feel like I should be playing a piano every time I begin to blog. Every word I speak opens my wingspan, hollows me, just a little more, so I can reset my life, scouring for answers in the rubble of my interior. I began a short story collection, which is now so long, it is actually a book, go figure. So, I started a new short story collection, so you can read the long and short of it.

5/29/12

The view

from my

window of the world

The best thing about your home should be that the moment you walk through the door, your shoulders should drop and relax.  From your bed, you should see the sea, if not, then you should at least see sky, so moonlight can shine on your pillow, and the light of dawn can wake your sleeping eyes.

  Life, and your home, shouldn't smack you in the face, it should feel restrained, and it should just creep up on you. If it doesn't feel like that, then know something is horribly wrong, and waiting for it to feel horribly right again, may be the wasting of a lifetime. 

There should never be devastation on a daily basis, as time goes on, your instinct should take over like some kind of sixth sense, never become too complacent. The upside of all of this is that it will make you think actively about whether you are actually living life, or simply existing as a means to your ending. As my experiences grew I began to notice other things. I would pass through areas of great fecundity into a wasteland of rubble as barren as the surface of the moon. It took me awhile to realize that these were the parts of my life that were shockingly empty and devoid of life. I find my vision looking forward sullied by my own real knowledge of what lies beneath so many relationships, so it is that I find myself caught up in the very important debate about whether to keep quiet or speak out. In the deciding to speak out, my books have taken shape. Writing was just one more thing I had always put aside, hung up on a shelf, stripped from myself. As I continuously emerge from the weeds, my book ideas continue to grow, as I surely have more than ample seed in my garden, in which to write from.

 P.S.
**** the heat today in the northeast is suffocating, make sure you water your roses, they need to drink on a continual basis in order to bloom, like all of us.

5/28/12

I'm most creative when I am in this solitude, where I no longer second-guess myself, when I just go for it, and take the plunge.  This is the time I make unexpected word parallels from the part of my brain that stores the metaphoric as it overflows out of me.  I am writer. If I were a carpenter I would build floor to ceiling bookcases, and then I would fill them with novels, memoirs and collections of poetry from the most famous, to the totally unknown. I would sit all day and read every word of every page. I would memorize every word of every poem.

If I were a carpenter I would build a staircase.....to my perfect life!

Happy Memorial Day

5/27/12

My inner introvert is calling me today, as I once again, tap into my quiet side, on an unending quest to keep moving myself forward. I have already today, gone for a run, performed upside yoga inversions as if my life depended on it, attended mass, and have had a mimosa. Now my thoughts are few, yet oddly comforting, as I change my attire, securing my bosoms inside the contours of my bra, smoothing out the wrinkles of my sundress, applying cream to my flawless skin, and lipstick to my never naked lips. Allowing the sun to now heat my face, as I step outside and enjoy the silence, the abundance of life again, as I leave my mark, and make it my own.

“I decided to start anew,

to strip away

what I had been taught”

        Georgia O’Keefe

Someone said to me today, that writing is a solitary assignment, as much as it is a solitary pleasure. Having thought about that all day, I have to now admit, yes, it is. The solitary part of it, is what leads to my thought, what lends to me my ear in hearing my own inner voice, what takes me to places I have never been, what gives me the hope of places I will one day travel, what gives me the confidence in having just enough edge to paint a picture using words, to describe the man sitting across from me on the train as I watch him breath. The solitary pleasure is what I find in the silence of morning, when the only sound is the tapping of my keyboard and the clanking of my coffee cup. It is the sterility of first thoughts that get put to paper, my pen, the pill I now take to make the world right. So yes, solitary is part of being a writer, or at least it is, for a writer like me. All the non-solitary time is where I find the seeds in life to plant, grow and write about. It is amazing how many seeds I already have stored up, for all the books yet to be written.

***Memorial Day weekend looks to be wonderful weather, so looking forward to the sunshine. Hoping to take some beautiful pictures of the Hudson River. Fleet week in NYC !

  taken fromAmazon Review 

 An incredible open book sequence of human struggle, stripped completely bare of anything that makes one feel secure. The sheer guts of this author wins her a prize, in telling this story in every depth of emotional and physical pain, in episodes of absolute abandon and depression. This woman's open vulnerability delved deeply into the lost hope that there even was a god, then at the end finding redemption in a god whom had picked her up and carried her through in her darkest of moments. I had waited for this book to arrive after reading her first book. I knew it would be explosively painful, but I had no idea, in the end, what I would find within her words. The book left me amazed at how far one can fall, then rise, not only above it all, but with the pure guts to write a book deploring human misery and loss in such a way that it saturates you, and then defies any thought you might have had about being able to handle the pressures of your own life. Left me empowered to believe, dig deep, then deeper still, as this author states. The author has placed many pictures of her tissue expanders bulging from her head within the middle of the pages of the book. The pictures allowed me as a reader, to identify with what she was going through as it lent much more than a visual of disfigurement for me. Some of the pictures left me speechless, as I am not sure if I, as a woman, could have endured this same process, had it been me. The behind the door peek into this woman's life before the accident made it all the more wrenching for me, then
empowering as she became strong enough to come into her own. What I found most amazing is that this woman has an incredible gift for writing in no matter what she is telling, and through all the horror, it has finally become her thread to her future. The story is a testament that the human will, and a mother's love, are two of the most powerful medicines known to mankind. It also left me in believing, get out when you can !

5/23/12

From all the chaos books were born. The sonnet of my life!

 When the blood of a woman's heart is something she no longer drowns herself in. When you realize every star in the galaxy is just for you. When you no longer wear self-doubt and loathing as your life vest. When life happens, life changes, and we become ourselves. The bittersweet, the bitter blue, where narrative is gone and all the chaos you finally break through. The definition of hope becomes a powerful thing; when your heart beats so fast you just know you have to run after it. You just know now, what you need to do.

5/21/12

The heart was no place to leave the blades piercing her soul, slicing her flesh, as the resounding sound of madness echoed throughout her head. His footsteps hardened in the distance. His betrayal left and then carried away with the tide. She collected every sharp knife in the house, and threw each, individually, into the sea. One knife, one blade, one life, as seaweed attached itself to her lost hope, and the turning, of yet, another page. The salt from the ocean lay like bitter tonic on her tongue, as sea salt spray washed over her face in acknowledgment of falling tears.

Naked in front of GOD  book 1   Are you there GOD, it's me ?  out on Kindle

Print book available end of week

5/20/12

Available today on Kindle:   Naked in front of GOD   book 1   Are you there GOD, it's me?

Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com and Indie Bound will begin carrying title in print week during the week of May 21, 2012.

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson

5/19/12

With eyes unfiltered, how could you ever expect me to just forget?

The teeth of your words chewed through my ribcage, the trembling trench of my hands, when a life ends, what does that look like exactly? Help me to remember.
LJ

Early morning run through the park today, held onto its solitude in blissful surrender.

5/18/12

Truly believing, that eventually, all writers can write a best seller, even a peasant such as myself! In a passion searing through flesh until it scorches my palm, in wave of utter boldness, simply to feed my unabashed hunger, I have had to stand at the crossroads and make that decision to go right, or turn left. I have been persuaded to tip toe into dual book writing, albeit slowly at first, but soon to be born after my winter 2012 ‘Life Changes,’ the second book of my Naked in front of GOD Series. I will write and publish side-by-side dual books, in an unbridled attempt at four books per year. Summoning the strength and guts needed to literally crawl away from any negative environment, to free myself, to achieve the goals I have set forth for myself. Therefore I am switching from desktop to laptop, so I can write and enjoy the warm months outdoors simultaneously. If you see a crazed woman sitting hunched over in the middle of the grass at Central Park, it just might be me!

By the way, on a side note, my roses look gorgeous today. All that east coast rain brought them to life. Today they will be my writing companions, as I write, and smell the roses!

Pictures to soon follow, no not of me, of my roses.

5/17/12

 I’m still dancing with the devil, but getting so much closer to finding me. Writers are so eccentric out on a limb kind of individuals, we are, we are!

5/16/12

 

He had named the island after her, turquoise pool of water she often leaped into, her naked body clambering up on the rocks, breasts exposed to the sun. She could sense the presence of his body climbing towards hers, the smell of his skin as it awaited the touch of her fingertips. The rain forest fringed by white sand beaches that hid their secret, often arriving by private ferry, in complete seclusion. She had thought about the valley of desolation, the narrow path of her life that had plunged her to these gorges, the crack in the earth’s crust she had fallen in to. She had tried to back away, but bruised and blistered, she always came back to the cauldron of boiling water that held their secret and the lure of the passion, the fire each held for the other. The island held their secret, as they held one another clinging to branches, fully experiencing the flesh of one another...

5/15/12

 Writers block is a real phenomenon, like a brick wall you’ve been thrown up against.

Just this morning one of my better thoughts was washed down the drain of the shower, via the dove soap bubbles, way before I had ample time to cage it to paper or keyboard. These are the days I think my brain is just clearing out, freeing up space, to be able to retain the thoughts for the better writing days. 

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

5/14/12

There are days in this writer’s life when I just sniff the roses, and from that point onward, anything of note, seems to get clogged up, bogged down, stuck in the twiddle of weeds. Me think it is the accomplishment of book 1 of Naked in front of GOD that has left me exhausted yet fulfilled. A pile of crumpled pages lay at my feet, as nothing notably worthy is coming together for me this morning. Each word having been placed separate before my eyes, nothing resembling a remote well thought out structured sentence comes into adherence here across my pages. 

The power of solitude, my writing is the vantage point from which I view the world.

***

 "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. "

— Henry David Thoreau

5/12/12

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson

My rose bushes look amazing with the morning dew resting on their tongues, unwavering in the determinate belief that spring has finally sprung. I am going to sit in the sun, enjoy the wine, and read from one of my favorite masters, Emerson, as I allow the serenity of all the green around me to seep now through me.

5/11/2012

My blog has really taken off in the last couple of months. I have a newly established almost 6 thousand hits, which is wonderful in itself. Every blog post seems to be equally requested and represented in my stats, so I am not going to worry over what to write about next anymore. It seems there is a large population of individuals whom simply now follow Lillian Jade, no matter what my writing topic is. Life continues to surprise me, as I methodically put one foot in front of the other. Having rode the trains all day yesterday, I have decided, I really need to buy an Ipad for writing of my books and blogging while on the go. My blackberry just is not cutting it lately for my eyes. I am often amazed at how some people can create long extended documents on it, while I, on the other hand, type out non descriptive mixed up letters on the thing. Definitely time for an Ipad for me! Thankfully I have a brother in law whom works at Apple. The same girl on the train whom was diligently typing on her blackberry, faster than I can breathe , was also putting on a full face of makeup from start to finish, without poking her eye out with the mascara wand, or having blush on her cheeks like Rosa the clown, and the thin line of eye pencil, well, it was absolutely straight and perfect. I was in awe just watching her create her face, on a train that bounced from side to side the entire ride. Some people are just flawless in their execution of everything and anything, wow!

5/10/12

In NYC for the day today, Ophthalmologist & Neurologist appointments,bookstore appointment, after which, meeting up with my daughter and the meeting and greeting of the Columbia University team of doctors she works with. Then, finally, off to a swank lunch, my daughter and I. Going to be a long day, but weather looks promising.

***

A lifetime of memories will never return quickly, as my memory problems have less to do with the memories having been erased, than my not being able to find them just yet. The filing cabinet is there for them. It is my ability to go to the cabinet that is impaired. I almost have to pass certain levels to get to the next level, some days I reach that level, some days I do not. In the beginning my thinking had slowed, but that has improved, memory is spotty, whole sections still locked in that file cabinet inside my head. I have had to redefine myself, become a new version of 'me'.  Writing very frankly about, well, just about everything, aging, mortality, my midlife crisis, my children, my accident, my surgeries, my marriage, rage, anger, abuse. Anything I stay up nights worrying over, I write about. At this point in life, I have much material to write about. A jaded piece here, a jagged piece there. Yes, that's my life, a measurement of extremes! 

In between all of this, I am also carving out a romantic haughty interlude I have yet to put a title to. My thoughts are that as the book forms it will give title to itself, I am quite sure of this. There is just something about this Apple Chancery for my blog that I am simply head over heels in love with.

5/9/12

Facing my past, finding my passion, before dawn, frantically proofing for final edit errors, the fine tuning of Naked in Front of God book 1 Are you there God it's me? My horribly naked memoir of accident and turmoil. Then I did a 40 minute run, 60 minute yoga routine, took my daughter to the train, blasted off some emails, worked on my son's invites for his wedding rehearsal dinner, threw down a Greek yogurt, dropped my new car off to be simonized, and now, well, here I am, right back in the calm of my loft at barely 9:00 a.m. Seductively scissoring off new reveals about myself, to all of you my readers. Admitting how challenging it is to juggle all the components of my life, days when everyone and everything seems to be throwing me punches. In adage, I glue one more piece to the collage of my life; the world never stops changing around me. The dark secrets inside of us never matter to the outside world, until you write them in a book, in total absence of fear of holding them in any longer. Then the world sits up and takes notice, and you become who you really are, who you were meant to always be.

Book 1 debuts in two weeks, just in time for Book Expo America 2012. Perfect planning !

“Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory.” Let's face it, life can get messy !

5/8/12

I have so much to organize, so much to write, but the clatter of the rain keeps me distracted. The rain now pelting the roof of my house has me now unorganized, as I listen to the sound of random drops bouncing off of the skylight. Switching channels, as I open my word doc and decide to continue today in fiction, in recognition of the rain being so needy for my thoughts, my attention, like the clever persuasion of a new lover.

****

The man has all but swallowed her alive, as the feel of her flesh against his body part has the mouth of the rivers of their tongues swimming in a collision of tide, leaving them both now exhausted and breathless. Doused in sweat, belonging to one another, crossing leg over leg, arm over arm; until they are one frenzied body no longer separate human structures. The act more immense and powerful than either ever imagined. In a calm assertive voice, he gives direction, she takes it, slowly, fully, wrapping her hand around it.

5/6/12

The usual Sunday, trying to barter with God to give answer to my questions, very unimpressed with the complications of my life, as the usual need for silence employs. The sun neither here nor there, not very persuasive in trying to get me outdoors to write. The chair on my deck looking slightly chilled, as the warmth of my desk and skylight has me kicking back in my loft space. Working on book 2 in the Naked Series, and a naughty fiction debut as well.

 Naked in front of God  book 1 Are you there God, it's me ?
 will be released on or before May 21, 2012 in paperback and e book format..

Excerpt :
A year after the hair processing chemicals had torn at my flesh; they began tearing at my self-confidence, and larger still, at my life.

 Pain shot through my insides, like some demon clawing at my flesh, ripping apart my body cavity, and those damn apostles, well I faulted them for this poison in my pain. I saw them standing over me, bearing the iron cross, the same cross I envisioned being placed on my grave. I would survive for ten minutes after a shower, and then the throbbing in my head always had me lying down on the bathroom floor. Slowly, I would enable a crawl to the bedroom.   
 
Smells and sounds often reminded me that I would not be rerouted out of this life, this horrible set of circumstance. There he was, clinging high up on my ceiling, ever forbidding me to leave this earth. God had given my brother the green light; I was always stuck on yellow. Yellow meant you waited; you waited a good long time until God made his irretrievable final decision to make you a relic of a past life, or move you on through to the future. The oxymoron was that the pain of life had me almost welcoming death.

5/3/12

Yes, the snow doesn't fall anymore; you were the last snowflake that ever landed on my nose, as I stuck out my tongue, you evaporated on it. I watched you leave, felt your last touch beneath my sheets of pain, as the rain fell, and the frost in the air became you, became my deepest lose. It dropped to the ground in silence, my heart, as the train, your train, pulled away from the station. I took the diamonds from around my neck, and dropped them down the sewer. I dropped the ice of you.

5/2/12

The night I was torn from the pages of your life, you thought you left, but really, I had already left you. Your tears carved into my flesh, as you tried to hold the taste of my final kiss on your tongue. Snow was falling from the sky that night, as the holiness of your wants fell from your mouth, landing on my lips. Winter was always the hardest season, it left tracks in the snow of where we had been, a reason for someone to always find us. Every winter that passes I find a snowflake that reminds me of you, allowing it to melt on my tongue. The affair I dreamed of, well it was quite like this, I ended it, not you.

5/1/12

An Ending:

The silence in the elevator had her taking the stairs, as unthinking, a quick tear begins to start. The tear, working its way out of her consciousness over time, soon dries up on the marble floor of the office building, fighting to hold on, yet fighting to let go. Walking down the hallway as if it is the most traumatic walk of her life. The time has really come to say "goodbye", as a powerful Amazing Grace plays inside her head. Covering her tear deep under the dirt of the corridor, feeling the echo of trumpets of a love affair now over. She will miss the dimples in his cheeks, and the soft feel of his lips on hers. His hands now only a memory of how they crossed over her body, playing music on her breasts.

      Looking out from the tenth floor window, from the leather burgundy chair he was so accustomed to be being serviced in, as he watches the sands of time continue to fall. His now trembling hand fumbling at his zipper, pants, as he gets dressed, he is no longer able to turn the hourglass over. She is gone. Gone from his zipper, his office, his life, the silence she left is the most powerful scream he has ever heard. Pouring a glass from the bottle of Jameson he kept on the shelf, staring out the window with nothing but hope, crying with everything but his tears. It is over, she is gone, and nothing can now conquer his loss. She, herself, peers up at his window, walking along the avenue, seeking the comfort to her loss in the clouds above. Tragic death of a love affair, as they suffer together, as their organs weep, as they move away from one another.