In The Moment

Dear Friends,

My usual blogs will return soon enough, but in the meantime I want to point you in the direction of a writer/editor friend of mine named Elizabeth Glixman. Her blog, In The Moment is quite cool. We've been working together at Eclectica for a while now and a rather nice friendship as well as an editor/editee relationship has come out of it. But where Elizabeth really shines is her poetry works. She has published a great chap book titled, A White Girl Lynching. I'll be reviewing this soon and will post the link once its done.

As for my usual gratuitous self promotion:

• Check out the retreat site: Writing Away Retreats
• My review of Mulgrew Miller's Two Night Stint at Dazzle Jazz Club
• Shop for The New Face of Jazz (**Come on..you know you want one! Shirts, paraphernalia and more for dogs, kids and men too...support jazz and the research and travel for the book**)
• New Blog alert: I'm co-authoring a blog with a friend...Libber's Log. It's a better participate or get out kinda thing. All I can say is Mad-Libs anyone? Check it out!
• Of course...my website.
• Outsider Writers...contest coming up...enjoy!
  

Hope you all are having a super-duper summer!

Yours in sunburns, summer sun and sun in my eyes,

Cicily

Writing Away Retreats

Closing Shop for a While

Quote of the Week:

If being sane is thinking there's something wrong
with being different....I'd rather be completely fucking mental.
~Angelina Jolie

Current Local Weather:
Showers of too-much to do, followed
by sanity storms rising
out of the west.

Currently on my IPOD:

Crazy Bitch
~Buckcherry

Dear John,

Its been great. No, its not you, its me. Really. Don't take this the wrong way, it wasn't your mother, or your cooking, nor was it the way you acted the last night we were together after drinking twenty-two martini's.

It's just that I think you're fat. Really fat. And I also think you could stand to get a nose job, a tummy tuck and probably stand to move to another part of town because of the way you smell.

Actually, its the fact that I have TWO books going on, three if you count the follow up to the first fiction one, a retreat business to run, a household, a few billion pressing issues like dinner, dishes and the floors need to be swept, a few billion reads/interviews/reviews, matron of honor fun...

...and I'm in love with someone else.

The person I am in love with is witty, smart, charismatic, playful, writerly and is more often than not the person I should be. Instead, I have turned into a stressed out ball of red hair and tears more nights than not lately. I just need to finish up some projects, get things moving in the right direction, which they are going in now, just at an amazingly sluggish pace. So, until this side of my personality returns, I will be MIA.

Sure, email me. I have no problem with that.

Go to the retreat site: Writing Away Retreats and if you are compelled, which I think you should be as it is going to be wonderful, sign up. Upcoming retreats are going to include award winning authors, editors, agents etc. And you will have ample time for feedback and working on your craft.

I'll be back when the storm settles and my commitments have waned. Promise. I always do return. Right?

right.

Hopefully, the next time you will hear from me, I'll have an agent, a finished final draft and my sanity.

Yours in Overly Frazzledness, Over-cooked Eggs and Only One Life--Gotta Make it Right,

Cicily

My Town Monday-Cold Stoned Stupidity

Yet another pictorial My Town Monday Blog from Cicily:

Except this one is in third person POV because Cicily is too angry to write in first.

Cicily has been sick. Too sick to eat for a while. Her tummy has been wanting to revolt against her due to mutant bacteria from healthy food that was probably undercooked at a restaurant in Atlanta that has decidedly taken up permanent residence in her gut. But as of the last few days, Cicily's appetite is back. After losing almost 20 lbs. she is finally eating again. And although she is taking it easy, today Cicily decided to eat something not so healthy, but rather something tasty...

So she went to the local Cold Stone Ice Cream Store.

For some Cake Batter with Brownie Chunks and maybe a little Marshmallow Cream.

And found this instead.

And this...

Cicily at the moment, hates her town. Cicily is now going to clone herself and protest.

As a matter of fact, Cicily is so angry she is going to clone her children and have them go to the public auction and raise hell in front of public officials...


There is another Cold Stone in Cicily's town but it also closed. I think I am going to adopt Travis's mindset from now on and only eat meat...wait a minute, wasn't he just in the hospital too? Alright, never mind, I'll stick to water.

Yours in Frickin Idiots, Finding My Way Down the Ice Cream Aisle and Fudge,

Cicily

New Pics of Horse Mountain Lodge/Writing Away Retreats Lodge

This is where you could be sitting and working on your MS or journal or short story collection in October 2008 or May 2009....Read on....
What did you do today??? I got into the car with a very nice person whom I had never met, who is interested in the retreat , who happens to live in my hometown, and drove almost four hours each way to reach out and literally touch my dream... and it looked like this...

And this...

And this...
Literally, this was a breathtaking dream come true. I started to cry. I was overwhelmed with the beauty and the thought of being able to welcome writers into my world and help them achieve their dreams in this fabulous and too good to be true setting. Although I had seen pictures of the lodge on line and the Realtor once expressed the beauty of the lodge over the phone, there were, for once, no words to express what I touched, smelled, or laid eyes on in person. It was quite different than what I had expected. I'll start with the Realtor's directions. She stated that after driving 2.6 miles off the road, a log cabin would suddenly "appear" on the right hand side. At first, a small kinda dumpy little house (No, not the one above, this is the actual one) appeared on the right...yeah, I was thinking I had been fooled. One of those looks better online than in person things. Kinda like a personal ad for a single guy: Looking for life-long commitment, looks don't matter, I'm tall, dark, handsome with six figure income and he turns out to be short, pale, skinny and older than Stonehenge living in a trailer park with his even older mother, their twenty five shaggy dogs and surviving, just barely, I might add and on welfare...not that there's anything wrong with that.

But she was right.

Against a deserted mountain setting, a BEAUTIFUL log cabin appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Another thing she was right about was the fact that once people come to this cabin, they don't want to leave. I tried pulling the old toddler addage: YOU CAN"T MAKE ME...she said, oh yes I can. I could call the police. Yeah, I guess she's right about that.


Lining the path to the house are many, many Aspen trees. In the fall and spring, they promise to be beautiful. The house is...indescribable. A true retreat and I think if enough of us protest or pitch in maybe we won't have to ever leave. But, what I can promise is a true get away, a true retreat of luxury, peace, quiet and nothing around but surrounding nature, good company and time to hone in on your craft. If you have any comments, questions or well....anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact me at any point. Thank you for being a part of my dream. I hope to make this a memorable experience for all of you. Come and see us this October or next May at Writing Away Retreats!

Yours in Nature, Not Knowing What to Do with Myself and Never Wanting to Wake up From this Dream,

Cicily

Enjoy the pictures. But trust me...they don't even begin to tell the story...



YOU MAY FILL OUT THE FORMS TO SIGN UP FOR THE RETREAT AT ANY TIME ON THIS
SITE:

http://www.freewebs.com/literaryretreat4couples