Music I love to listen to while I write.

The music I listen to when I am writing depends on what I'm working on. If it's editing or new work on Immortals-the series, The Sylph Ayekah, and will soon be published VIRGINS, I favor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If I'm doing stories, blogging or poetry, I listen to Music by Charro or The Beatles and The Doors, and other like that. How about you?

Fate Awaits from The Sylph's Tale

As I promised, here is the first FREE read of Immortals-the series, Book One, The sylph's Tale.

BOOK ONE

THE SYLPH’S TALE

By

Marta C. Weeks

Warning: This story contains sexual elements that might not sit well with the average reader.

Copyrightã2017 by Marta C Weeks

Fate Awaits

I shouldn't have returned to Earth after, as a salamander, I slid into a river between a man and a virgin. Her screams and his grunts stirred in me new thoughts: What must it be to feel flesh on bones? The idea jolted me back to the sky. 

~~~

To explain how it all came to be is like trying to hold time still as it expands and contracts. Every culture and experience intermingles with the reality and fantasy of what is and is not. Every living thing comes to be with memories of how it was before and was not. 

Eons before the present, or what I now call the First Age, The Almighty released multitudes of Celestials, supernatural and timeless spirits to witness the diverse processes of Earth’s evolution. A hallmark of angel hierarchy is brilliance. I, Archangel of Light, was the brightest of all spirits. We all are invisible and eternal, can take on the form of seraphs, winged heavenly messengers or any living creature, but we are not glorified human beings. Not male or female and cannot reproduce as humankind does. 

From times unknown, we witnessed oceans recede giving way to land. Energy flowed and chaos became order. Random matter transformed, leaving mere traces of what had preceded. Surviving matter continued the reproductive processes.

Overcome with reverence and wonder we watched The Almighty impart humans with ethereal substance: a soul, self-awareness, reason, and autonomy. Humanity rose to splendor and fell many times. In each era, from primitive beginnings, humans evolved in a manner unlike any other living thing. Yoked with passions, humans strove for selfhood and lived, truly lived, to love, to work, to create, to war, and to ruin. They engorged the Tree of Life with pleasure and pain, sensations not experienced by Celestials.

In this First Age, in spirit, I roamed Earth. Stopped caring how other celestials reacted to mankind’s use of The Almighty's gifts. Humans enthralled me. Like a shadow or a breeze, I mingled amongst people in the throes of passions and struggles for survival. I became bored with the heavenly and consumed with human endeavors. Under the pretext of angelic observation, I watched men and women copulate, spellbound by all its aspects. 

It was not long after I slid as a salamander in a shallow river between a man and a virgin that for the first time a thought came in as a whisper as if to nudge me to do, to be, to become-how must it feel to be a human. It jolted me like thunder, and I fled to Heaven's Gate, to the protection of The Almighty’s Eternal City, but I did not enter. Like a thief, I held onto my thought. Not wanting to have what I had experienced taken from me. I remained outside. 

"Why did I think that? Did I feel envy?" I asked, in the safety of heaven’s harbor. 

I cannot deny I was harvesting sparks of jealousy. However, I continued to veil a growing desire for humanity with the argument: Celestials have no judgment. We can empathize with humans, and sway events by inspiring ideas within them, but we do not feel. Yet, like a squirrel running from a hawk's shadow, I felt the heart of fear. 

Not daring to enter the Eternal City, I pleaded to The Almighty Vision, “In You, I take refuge. Deliver me from illusions. I beg to appear before You. I want to serve You. Have I offended You? Almighty, am I envious? I long to see You.” For the first time ever, I was not summoned. No one came from behind the eternal gates. 

“Have my thoughts offended You? Please do not deny me Your presence. Please do not forsake me.” 

How can I, an Angel of Light, feel forsaken? I am of The Divine. “If I have wronged You by enjoying Your miracles in the land of the living, forgive me, but please do not forsake me!” 

Silence enveloped me with emptiness. 

For centuries, I did not return to Earth but hid in a black hole. Although celestials do not feel, best I can explain it is that I violated Holy Creeds and that realization exploded in me engulfed me in defeat, and, shriveling with loss, I vowed, defying my purpose, never to return to earth. But, I already was linked to human feelings. 

The Almighty remained silent, not because I, the Archangel of Light, was created free of error, but because The Almighty had abandoned me to my own choices, my own will. 

Millennia passed until a command came, "Abandon your exile. Look down to earth. Your fate awaits. Have faith, for I give you the world." 

Hearing The Almighty’s voice, I whimpered, “Is this Your command? Finally, You speak to me. How can I serve You? Have mercy on me.”

Countless Celestials cried out, “Have you lost all faith?”

“Why me?” I screamed. “Why? Am I doomed, an outcast? What will become of me?”

“Why not you?” The response froze in me. 

“Go, enjoy the land of the living. Now your function is to prepare the way for the Celestials of the World. You are the most brilliant Angel, one of the few that can enter The Eternal City.”

Is the human ego rising inside of me, taking over, saying what I want to hear? “If it’s not Your will, Almighty, please stop me, now,” I said.

“You are chosen to glorify creation,” the wind screamed across the sky as it pushed me into the clouds. “You must do as The Almighty demands."

“But my mandate is to witness without intervening.”

***Note: thanks for reading, I welcome comments. if you want to read more wait for next excert or go to:  Amazon The sylph's Tale or Books2Read

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FIND YOUR GROOVE

Despite a few words (not that I don't use them), I recommend this video Writing Wihtout Rules and article: Bad Advice Boogie: Write Every Day By: Jeff Somers June 4, 2018.

Feeling closer to mortality I am deciding what's important, life for me is a car with four wheels and a cozy chair.

I can't write at will and specific times. Kudos to writers that write, locked in a specified place and time every day but it's not my best option. Our family is large and I am the wife, mom, and Gma; the nurturer, the budder, and fixer-in-chief. Haven't been able to switch places with my husband while I am in my authorship sepulcher. He is very helpful, I already do a lot of please look this over and or "edit for me and I will..." plus he has his own pursuits.

So, for me is more beneficial and easier for my familia to stop flagellating with " I must write every day, at a specific hour and place, no matter. Unless it comes with a box I can crawl into as if it were a time machine.

In this video writing is also:
1) Conceptualizing. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake and jot down a new concept, idea, conversation or dream. My protagonists talk and appear (and not in a set place or space box.
2) Reading. Oh, I grab time to pour over notes, articles, and stories where I can. When traveling, my husband always drives. A good thing, for the GPS, even to get me home, I end up lost. I read in bed when I can't sleep, or in my quiet chair when he's asleep, done tossing and turning, not just books but YES posts on SSM and other authors.
3) Thinking. That machine inside my head that does not turn off. I keep a pad or my iPad on my nightstand, where I can write a note with what fills in my mind, and that never happens on cue.
How about you? Have you found your groove?

Ta Ta for now. Below is a link to the video and an article from WritersDigest, a place I trust and love:
 I recommend this video Writing Wihtout Rules, and article: Bad Advice Boogie: Write Every Day By: Jeff Somers | June 4, 2018. 

One piece of advice that seems good but can do a lot of harm is the old classic 'write every day.' Jeff Somers explains why.

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Thanks to sites such as WritersDigest.com and this article: One Year, One Hundred Rejections: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins | WritersDigest.com: Today's guest post from Brett Elizabeth Jenkins aims at a different type of goal than many writers might aim for: 100 rejections in one year!

That admirable authors undergo rejections helps me from not feeling alone in the rejection line. Even when I sink into feeling when as a child, limited by polio and slowed by dyslexia, I read curled up by a corner window in my bedroom or the attic of my grandparent's store; daydreaming of growing into a dancer, and writer. 

I did become a dancer and self-published the first book of my Immortals series The Sylph's Tale on Amazon and Boooks2Read. And a screenplay adaptation of The Sylph’s Tale or Ayekah the Damned on Amazon Studios.

Had a successful career as Program Specialist and Research Analyst and Counselor. Freelanced for CBS Sacramento Arts&Entertainment, Examiner.com, and Ex-In the City Guides. A few of my poems were published by Scruffy Dog, Editred, Poetry for Conservation and was poetry finalist, 2012 San Francisco Indie Publishing Contest and finalist in the 2017 Short Story Contest on Screen Craft. Completed ISA Screenwriting, the University of Iowa, UCD, extension, Poynter’s, Gotham, and Odyssey. Participate in Goodreads, Sierra Writers, Horror Writers, PRG and various others.

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Hi authors, searching for useful sites I discovered this piece on ALLI with valuable advice on where and how to discover details when working on novels that reach back into the history. Enjoy.

Best Way to do Historical Research | Alliance of Independent Authors: Self-Publishing Advice Center

What the Heck?

There are tons of sources for writers published or on the fence.
For those newly published, like yours truly, to a book reviewed or bought is a major chore and ALL of us self-published authors need sources.
I found a source on Facebook, Writers Helping Writers and then I went to the webpage and joined, happy to get information without depleting my budget.
That's another thing:  the cost for most resources, classes or workshops, are ridiculous and writers, as I hear, unless they are famous bestsellers, don't have the funds to keep said sites fed and housed without doing without food and shelter.
What the Heck?