Monthly Archives: July 2017

Tiny Tidbits and Odds & Sods

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Happy Friday, gang! Hope you’re planning to make it a terrific weekend, wherever you are.

I just wanted to give you some quick updates before I dive deep into TV pilot re-writes around here.

The first update is on the Shoshin Yoga classes I mentioned in my previous post. Yes, the  Kaiut Yoga poses that will kill you. The update is that I have survived three 75-minute sessions, interspersed with 1 of my usual, old-fashioned yoga sessions, and I CANNOT BELIEVE the difference it has made in my joints. Already!

This type of yoga is for any level, any age participant, because it is all done on the floor, on a yoga mat. No upright, complicated balance poses. If you are having joint stiffness, or recovering from a surgery or a sports injury thingy, then you might seriously want to try this kind of yoga.

I use online classes and do them in my living room. You have to pay by the month, but they are not expensive. Just a head’s up, in case you are suffering. It has made a world of difference for me and, as I said, results have happened quickly.

Another update: Once again, thank you to all of you who have been downloading my free eBooks at Smashwords this month. The special promotion ends in 4 days. After that, you will have to resort to either buying my eBooks (hence, helping me pay for my life-saving yoga classes!!), or searching out illegal downloads somewhere on the Internet (try Russia first; it will save you time!). (However, avoid any sites offering free downloads of a very old short story of mine, titled The Urge Towards Jo, as this is generally an FBI sting site for pedophiles. I kid you not. Steer clear, unless one of your lifelong goals is to be publicly arrested for being a pedophile.)

Anyway.

Here is a link to my blog page that has all the free downloading info. And thanks again, gang. I think I had more downloads during this year’s promotion than any in the recent years.

Another (EXCITING) update! Although, this one is a little iffy because it involves acting quickly… There is a promising chance that I will get to see Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 when I go to see Sandra’s new play in New York City in mid-September.  A former husband/current friend-and-namesake, Wayne Lewis, and I are trying to get a couple of tickets for the Sept. 19th show.  There are, like, 4 (expensive) tickets left. I’ll keep you posted. (Meanwhile, if you scroll to the bottom of this blog post, you can hear that terrific, Tony-nominated, 7-minute song from the show, entitled: Letters.)

Okay. I think that’s it for the updates! Gotta get my fingers tippy-tapping on the re-writes of the Untitled Cleveland Drama!!

Thanks for visiting, gang! Be like me: Eat plenty of chocolate and have a terrific Friday! See ya!

Chocolate makes life better! It’s a proven fact.

Ready for a painful death yet???

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Well, okay, perhaps I exaggerate. But I did start doing Shoshin Yoga (a class that teaches Kaiut Yoga). And doing it calls to mind poses that were perhaps used by torturers during the Spanish Inquisition.

Do not be fooled by how simple the poses look! That would be your first foolish mistake.

I have been doing just basic old yoga for about 10 years. Primarily simple floor poses. Nothing elaborate or fancy. I get great results and am really happy with it. However, I am really, really tired of pounding my poor feet around on hard wood floors, pavement, cement, concrete, etc., all the time. Now 57 years’ worth of all the time. My legs are taking a  real beating. So I thought I would try Shoshin Yoga.  The poses looked so relaxing and, yes, easy!

Well, it is, in fact, easy! But it kills you. The poses are all about putting pressure on the joints, and holding the poses a really long time.  Or what feels like a long time, because you’re putting so much darn pressure on your joints!(I’m currently focusing on a routine that does 10 floor poses in 75 minutes. Oddly, the time overall goes quickly, even though you feel like it is taking forever to die.)

After the torture is over, I do feel noticeably loose & limber. So I’m going to try doing it 3-4 times a week and see how it goes. If you see me go skittering past you, all loose & limber & spry, then you can assume the torture is paying off.

Meanwhile…

Tickets are now on sale for the play Charm, by Philip Dawkins, at MCC Theater in New York City.  I will be there opening night (September 18th?) but I believe tickets for that night are now impossible to get. This is the play in which my friend & colleague, Sandra Caldwell, has the lead:

“The New York Times calls Sandra Caldwell a ‘true entertainer in every sense of the word.’ Her acting career extends throughout the worlds of film, television, and theater. As a jazz singer, she has performed with top orchestras in some of the world’s finest venues, including the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the Newport Jazz Festival. On television, Sandra was seen in ‘The Book of Negroes’ (miniseries, guest lead); ’19-2′ (recurring); ‘Soul Food’ (recurring) ‘Little Men’ (series regular) and guest starring roles in such shows as ‘Law & Order: SVU’ and ‘Rookie Blue’. She was a featured performer in many TV movies, including Good Fences with Whoopie Goldberg, and Disney’s The Cheetah Girls. Film work includes Murder at 1600; Shall We Dance, and Maya Angelou’s directorial debut, Down in the Delta. In theater, Sandra has appeared in the musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (Shubert Theater); the Original Workshop for Ragtime (Live Ent. Productions); the drama Coming Through Slaughter (Necessary Angel Theater, Toronto); and was nominated for a Dora Award, the Canadian Tony, for her work in Sophisticated Ladies (Sterling Productions, Toronto).”

Plan to see the show if you are going to be in NYC this fall, okay? But make haste! It is a limited run.

All right.  Now I have to take my loose & limber self back to the world of TV pilot re-writing! I’ll see if I can keep my limber hip joints from sliding off my desk chair!

Then, this evening, it’s cake & coffee, with one of my former writing students, at my home away from home: the Granville Inn!!

We are celebrating our recent birthdays. (His 30th; my 57th!) I’m looking forward to it. It seems all I do around here anymore is work, sleep, and kill myself with Kaiut yoga…

So! Enjoy this gorgeous Wednesday, gang, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing! Thanks for visiting. See ya!

Birthday looming large on the horizon!

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Yes, that’s right! Tomorrow is my birthday!! 57 years young and on we go to the best years ever.

I know it’s sort of a non sequitur, but here are a few of my cats on the bed last night:

Clockwise from top left: Lucie, Huckleberry (laying flat), Weenie, Daddycakes, Tommy, and Doris!

As always, click to enlarge the image and to see how incredibly cute they are.

Well, patience has finally paid off and it became indisputably obvious that the script re-writes I needed to tackle first, were for the TV pilot (Cleveland’s Burning, aka Untitled Cleveland Drama) (it’ll be so exciting, won’t it gang, when you turn on your TV sets one day to watch the hit show, Untitled Cleveland Drama??!!).  Anyway, the revisions I needed to make arrived Wednesday night, while I was dreaming. I awoke to find all the ideas I needed, fresh in my brain. I had to run to the desk and scribble all the ideas down on paper before I forgot them.

So exciting when that happens! Getting the ideas — that’s more than half of the work right there.

I’m hoping I can get the revisions done within a couple of weeks, and still have plenty of time to tackle the Tell My Bones theater project and have it completed by mid-late September. Life is good, gang. Life is good!

On that happy note, thanks for visiting. Enjoy my birthday tomorrow in whatever way amuses you most. I leave you with another gorgeous gem from South Pacific, in honor of how young I’m getting every single lovely moment.

Okay, see ya!

A terrific Monday underway in the hinterlands

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It is no mere coincidence that I am pictured here (albeit with my phantom son) smiling at the bluebird of happiness! (See my post from June 28th — Auspicious Moments.)

I got a text late last evening from Sandra Caldwell, the actress in NYC that I write with/for.  The PR for the Off-Broadway production of Charm, for which she has the lead role, has officially begun! (See post from May 12th – Such Good Things! re: the play, Charm, by Philip Dawkins.)

http://www.broadway.com/buzz/189141/sandra-caldwell-to-lead-nyc-debut-of-transgender-themed-play-charm/

Naturally, reading a text like that while I was already in bed, falling to sleep, immediately shifted the gears in my mind to overdrive. How exciting for Sandra!! It is finally underway! And how exciting for Sandra and me, since it helps enormously with the PR for the other theater projects we are working on together.

However…

It only emphasizes my conundrum around here this summer. Do I focus more on the re-writes of my TV pilot, re-writes for which the production company in LA is patiently waiting? Or do I shift gears and go back to focusing on the re-writes of my one-act play version of Tell My Bones, the re-writes that Sandra would like to have in hand by September?

AAAARRRRRGH. Being so indecisive, of course, gets me closer & closer to NOWHERE.

I decided that I would stop thinking about it (last night), and allow myself to fall asleep, and that as soon as my feet hit the floor this morning and I got out of bed, I would instantly know which project needed my complete attention first! Conundrum cured!

So, this morning, when I awoke and my feet hit the floor — I totally forgot that I was going to make my miraculous decision this morning. I was too focused on how happy I was!

So I’m still sort of floundering here, project-wise. But I did buy a new dress for Sandra’s opening night in New York.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that I already bought a new dress for Sandra’s opening night in New York (see a post below, back in May, I think). I bought one of those colorful Calvin Klein fit & flare dresses, thinking I would depart from wearing my usual plain black sheath…

But, even though the Calvin Klein dress is really pretty, it makes me look like a flower garden floating in from the distance. I don’t like feeling as if I look like that. (I guess I prefer looking like a little slice of the dark void moving toward you, and so you don’t see me until the last second, when I walk up to you on the sidewalk and say, “Hi. Were you looking for me?”…)

Anyway. I’m super happy for Sandra. I’m super happy about my new dress. I’m super happy about the reality I’m currently looking at, and I fully intend to be super happy with all these re-writes I will eventually finish around here.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep peeling carrots with my son, smiling contentedly at the bluebird in the tree outside my window until everything falls into place.

My finest hour!

Thanks for visiting, gang!! Have a terrific Monday, wherever you are! See ya!

Ah, Hinterlands!

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Since my move to the Hinterlands, and especially since the warmer weather arrived a couple months ago, I’ve been blogging a lot about my back patio and about how blissful it is.

I had often thought of taking a photo of it and posting it here, so that you could see how serene it looked, with all its many flowerpots full of outrageously blooming, colorful impatiens and riotously red geraniums.

But I knew that, to outsiders, the back patio would not seem so impressive in a photo. It is rather simple and has only serviceable (albeit comfortable) furniture. It is the blissful peace of a clear summer evening that gives the back  patio all its charm and makes it such a blessing to me. You can’t capture that in a picture.

And yet…

Now I wish I had taken that photo and posted it here for you, because last night, my back patio played host to a wonderful mommy deer and her young fawns who allegedly live under the trees a few backyards up the road, and I awoke to an almost denuded patio! Flowerpots had tumbled over hither and yon, an ancient geranium in full-bloom had been trampled upon, and only a handful of impatiens blossoms were left. The deer family ate them all!

The impatiens that were left, I have since moved to the front patio, which places them much closer to the house, the open windows, the constant monitoring of hissing cats, etc. So I doubt they will be eaten.

The front patio is nice and all, and has nicer furniture, but it also has an overhang that makes it difficult to see the stars when the evening comes. Plus there are less fireflies in front because the front yard is, of course, closer to the road.

I still plan on enjoying my (now even simpler) back patio, with its three herb pots and a thriving, flowerless, poinsettia from two Christmases ago.  Here’s hoping the deer don’t like to eat cheap patio furniture, since that is basically all that’s left…

Okay, gang! Back to the re-writes around here. Thanks for visiting on this truly stormy Thursday afternoon! See ya.

What’s not to love??

Bliss & Miracles Abound in the Hinterlands

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The last several days, I put all writing on hold and have been concentrating solely on some Bentinho Massaro  lessons (in the Trinfinity Academy), in order to get a better grip on my reality around here, as 2 major writing projects bottleneck each other in my brain.

It’s been a wonderful break. I wish I was one of those people who could follow Bentinho around and go on all his retreats. My life would be so different. However, I’m not sure that’s exactly the kind of “different life” I want… At least not yet.

Anyway.

Last evening was lovely. After a couple days of torrential downpours and high humidity, it was nice to sit out on my back patio again and watch the sun go down on the peace & quiet of the Hinterlands.

At dusk, when the fireflies were just emerging (around 8:45 PM), I saw a mommy raccoon and 5 (!!) youngsters hurrying across my neighbors backyard and up their pine tree. It was awesome, how many there were.

The other day, over in the park — I was the only person there and a mother deer and 5 young fawns appeared at the edge of the woods. Yes, 5.

This is astounding to me. 5 fawns; 5 raccoon cubs. To me, it shows that life thrives here in the Hinterlands.

I love raccoons, however, back at the old house, they made me nuts. I had a split-level house, which meant I had 2 roofs. One at the very top of the house, naturally, and one that extended over the first level, which was directly outside the bedroom windows on the 2nd story.

This lower-level roof was the delight of raccoons all over the neighborhood. Not only would they race around and play on this roof at all hours of the night, they would tear the heck out of my window screens, threatening to bounce directly into any/all of the bedrooms at any moment. It also gave them easier access to my main roof, in which they were fond of tearing gaping holes and then lowering themselves into my attic, which was a walk-up and right next to my bedroom. The door to the attic was in my bedroom. It was essentially a closet door, with no lock of any kind. The raccoons would race around and play in there, tearing up & down the attic stairs and frequently banging right into the attic door, waking me from a sound sleep and scaring the beejeebers out of me.

I definitely do not miss that.

I prefer watching them from a distance now, as they scurry happily up a tree.

All right. On that blissful note, I have to make some progress here with these scripts (the re-writes of the Untitled Cleveland TV pilot, once known as “Cleveland’s Burning,” and the One Act play version of Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story.) If my mind explodes from all this dual-thinking-creating, I will let you know… I am hoping that by the end of the summer, my life is going to be in a totally different, better, perhaps more-sorted-out place.

In the meantime, as Bentinho says, “Everything already exists, right here, right now,” which means that somewhere within reality exist my finished, re-written scripts and a very contented me. I’m off to go find them!

Thanks for visiting, gang.  See ya!!

PS: To all of you who are downloading my free Ebooks at Smashwords this month, THANK YOU!! (See post below from July 3rd.)

A lovely 4th & South Pacific!

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Around here, the “4th of July” happened on Sunday, July 2nd. It was a most perfect day here in the Hinterlands.  Hot but not humid at all, and an absolutely clear, cloudless sky all day long and well into the night.

The fireworks took place in the park at the end of my street, and as it turned out, I had a completely unhindered view of each & every firework just by standing at the end of the driveway.  It was absolutely awesome. Not just because I had such a clear view, but also because it was effortless.

Living in New York City, you had to contend with, literally, millions of people if you wanted to get even a glimpse of the fireworks. For me, someone raised on smaller-town fireworks displays of the 1960s & 70s, where perhaps dozens of people showed up, but never millions, dealing with the Independence Day hordes in NYC  got old fast.  So I stopped going. But I really missed those long-ago 4th of July summers that seemed to have disappeared from our national landscape entirely.  It has now become all about fireworks displays that are “bigger,” more “spectacular,” more expensive and thus in need of luring, yes, millions of people in order to make it worth the expense. It seems that the 4th of July is now all about overwhelming people.

I don’t need to be overwhelmed. I get up in the morning, and then simply discovering that I’m still alive is overwhelming enough, thank you.

However, here in the Hinterlands, it turns out that life is perfect.

This past “4th of July” was probably my most favorite July 4th ever, even though it was July 2nd. Around 8 PM, I took a beer with me out to the back patio and sat and watched the sun inch ever downward across the sky. All the neighbors were out in their own backyards; having cookouts, sitting around fire-pits, playing with their dogs, lighting sparklers, playing volleyball. The fireflies came out in abundance, along with the stars, and it was just like a 4th of July from yesteryear! I wasn’t thrilled about being alone, but other than that, it could not have been more perfect.

Then, when the signal came that the fireworks were ready to begin, all I had to do was walk to the end of the driveway to see all the lights exploding in the sky.

And all the other neighbors were standing at the ends of their own driveways; dark shapes, silhouetted against a sparkling sky. No crime to contend with; no litter, no noisy people, no millions of strangers jostling you for a better position, a better glimpse of a tiny slice of sky; no stress about wondering how long it’s going to take you to get home from there once everything is over. In fact, it was utter silence all along the street, as everyone stared up at the sky, each lost in his or her own splendid wonderment for half an hour.

And to top it off, we could even hear the music from the park; eternal 4th of July treasures like “76 Trombones,” and “America the Beautiful.”

I realize that many, many people seek far and wide to get away from all that is “Old Town America,” but I actually love it. And nowadays it’s “globalized;” everyone’s on the Internet, glued to smartphones; aware of what’s going on in the world; and also, most importantly to me, into all kinds of organic, non-GMO living.  For me, it’s the best of all worlds; rolled into peace and quiet and remote living.

Then, as if it couldn’t get any more “Old Town America,” last night I went to the local summer stock theater and saw South Pacific!! Yay! I love that musical. Not only the anti-racism message of it, but the songs are so memorable and, in my opinion, so lovely.

The production was very well done, some really gifted voices in the cast. But try as I did to stay present and appreciative of what was happening in the moment in front of me, I couldn’t help wondering what it must have felt like, 70 or so years ago, when those first unsuspecting audiences saw South Pacific on Broadway for the first time, ever. With Mary Martin, no less. In the flesh. It must have truly blown people away.

Yes, as always; I was dying to live in the past! (That’s an interesting mixed-metaphor, isn’t it?) All right!!

Thanks for visiting on this rainy Thursday afternoon. I leave you with this really lovely, lovely song. (Unfortunately, I sang it a lot to Fluffy while she was dying last summer from cancer. Now the song pretty much breaks my heart, but such is life. And on we go.)

See ya, gang!

Oops, forgot to alert you!

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Over this past weekend, the folks at Smashwords began their 9th annual Summer/Winter eBook sale.

it is called “Summer/Winter” because some of us live in the Northern Hemisphere, while others among us live in the Southern Hemisphere. Hence, summer here; winter there.

Regardless of where in the world you live, July is that special time of year where we not only celebrate my BIRTHDAY (!!), but also download several of my eBooks for FREE.

That’s right, FREE.

I’m not sure why I continue to participate each year, because, truthfully, people download my eBooks like crazy on Smashwords when they are free, but only rarely do visitors to Smashwords buy one of my eBooks when they are not free.

In general, people buy my eBooks (and books) through Amazon, all over the world.  And on Amazon, my books are never free.

Yes, Amazon the behemoth. Amazon the disrupt-er. Amazon who put a lot of indie bookstores that used to carry & sell all my books out of business. And yet. Amazon is where almost everyone in the English-, French-, and German-speaking world buy most of my books.

Still, team player that I often am, I continue to participate in the annual Smashwords sale (read: free giveaway).

So. On that note. I believe this is the link to my Smashwords page. If you scroll to the bottom, you will find links to 3 of my eBooks, any and all of which you can download for free in July.

Twilight of the Immortal (historic fiction, suitable for young adults & up.)

Reader reviews: “…Twilight of the Immortal is a masterful book, perhaps a masterpiece. Once the first page is turned, life changes for the reader. It’s a book that immerses, educates, entertains, and enlightens. It’s a book that induces laughter and tears. It’s a book that the reader will savor until the last pages and then begrudgingly winnow down paragraph by paragraph to prevent the end from actually arriving because it’s hard to accept that this book won’t last forever.“

“…As soon as I read this quote, attributed to [Rudolph] Valentino: ‘Observe, Rosemary, how in Hollywood there is no difference between a knife and a smile,’ I knew for sure that I had found a gem! Twilight of the Immortal is both beautifully written and an engaging romp, an insider’s view (fictional though it may be) of life behind the scenes in the 1920’s movie industry, with Rudolph Valentino, Natacha Rambova, and Alla Nazimova, all figuring prominently in the story line. I enjoyed it immensely, from beginning to end.“

Freak Parade (award-winning literary erotic fiction, not suitable for children or for the in-any-way squeamish; drugs, sex, violence, and, yes, ROMANCE!)

Reader reviews: “Freak Parade chronicles the slow and sometimes painful resurrection of a previously-famous recording artist, Eugenia Sharpe. Her world is populated by those who are compromised in any number of ways, and that is perhaps the most refreshing part of this novel — nothing is clear cut and very little is as it seems…”

“…the book is intensely erotic with scorching sex scenes. It’s shocking and raw in places. It’s also warm and funny and sad and deeply emotional. It’s about destruction and redemption, friendship and desire, love and hate, pain and pleasure. It’s also a powerful romance. All of these things make Freak Parade an unforgettable read.”

 

The Muse Revisited: Early Erotica, Volume One (not suitable for anyone opposed in any way to hardcore literature; these are the early stories that made me famous!)

Reader reviews of the early erotic stories of Marilyn Jaye Lewis: “…There’s authenticity in these stories but I don’t feel like I’m looking through a forbidden peephole to get a glimpse of her life. Her writing might even be too good for the erotica genre but I’m glad she’s writing because it restores my faith in what *can* be accomplished in sex writing. “

“Marilyn is a seriously good writer! These stories are erotic, nasty (in the very best sense of the word), witty, charming, and affecting, occasionally all at the same time. No easy trick…”

 

Okay, gang! There you have it! Thanks for visiting! See ya.