Skulls

Young woman considers suicide when she is jilted by her boyfried.

SKULLS 

Skulls adorning a landscape of hills

Teetering beside chasms

Cut brown into green softness.

In the foreground, a folding of green

like my green crumpled dress

which I wore

when I went out with Robbie

who doesn't want me anymore. 

I thought of the skulls

And how one day I'd be one. 

Why wait fifty years? 

They are flying above me

Against the skyline

Like balloons of methane gas.

I want to be up there with them

looking down on my desolate world. 

Laurel Lamperd

                                                Download from www.barnesandnoble.com
                                      Three children battle to save a creek for a hurt cormorant

How do you define a paragraph? Jessica Crockett a member of YAWRITE@LISTS.PSU.EDU>

Gives her view.

There is no hard and fast rule, but a paragraph should generally contain a
single 'thought' or 'idea'. This could be a phrase one character speaks, the
description of a place (which may be quite a long paragraph), or a coherent
bite of something like action where one major thing is happening.
Sometimes there will be one point in a paragraph, but sometimes there may
also be several unified points (this tends to happen more often in formal
writing like essays or other non-fiction works rather than in fiction, where
very long paragraphs risk slowing the pace of the work). A paragraph break
is also used to give readers a pause where one seems to be needed.
You really have to do it by feel.

I was told when I began to write - one new paragraph for each character's dialogue. This was turned on its head when in some classic novels more than one character spoke in the same paragraph. Like Jessica says - you really have to do it by feel.

Free read Short story Night Meeting at www.authorsden.com/laurellamperd

A bitter sweet love story

An excerpt below

"Damn," Darren cried aloud when he stopped the motorbike in frustration and realized what he'd suspected for the last twenty minutes. He'd taken the wrong turn.

He rode along slowly, looking for somewhere to camp, when in the fading light he noticed the cottage by the river. He traversed the little used track leading to the building. Getting off the bike, he stood for a moment outside the broken gate, staring at the small garden enclosed by a tumbledown fence. The grass grew thickly as it tried to smother the sprawling lavender bush and straggling red geraniums. Pushing open the gate, he went along the stone path and up the few wooden steps and knocked on the weather beaten door. When no one answered, he tried the door handle. It opened protesting. "Is anyone home?" he called a couple of times.

The room was sparsely furnished with a wooden table and several chairs pushed into it. Against the opposite wall was an open stone fireplace. Beside it was a small stack of wood.

He called again but no one answered. The place looked deserted.

Writers Reading

Are you a writer who reads?
Was there a book in which you became completely lost in the characters? I read Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and became involved in the characters in their struggle of good against evil. Tolstoy's books have made me aware that theme is repeated in some form or other in most of the books I've read. 

Suzannah from Write It Sideways has some thoughts on Writers reading.

1. Renew Your Love of Reading

Do you remember the first book you ever loved, perhaps one that was read to you over and over again as a child? Or the first book you read all by yourself? Or that love story you read as a teenager that made you fall in love with falling in love?

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.” — Ernest Hemingway

I’m wiling to bet there isn’t a writer, dead or alive, who hasn’t been transformed by reading. But when was the last time you got lost in a wonderful story?

If you believe, as I do, that writers do half the work and readers do the other half, then the act of reading is an act of writing.

Maybe we need a new word to describe this phenomenon, but for right now, make a writerly commitment to enjoy reading on a regular basis. Make a date with the library or that pile of books on your nightstand, and rediscover the joy of reading.

Read the rest of this article. Contact suzannah@writeitsideways.com>

Waiting Women Poem

My poem, Waiting Women, is up at my website, www.authorsden.com/laurellamperd as a free read.

I wrote the poem from a Japanese print by Harunobu displayed at Claude Monet paintings and Japanese prints exhibition held at the Perth Art Gallery some years ago. Monet was interested in Japanese prints, some which he owned and kept in his private collection.

Waiting Women [excerpt]

She saw the young woman

Seated next to a lamp.
A painting by Harunobu.
And knew it was her
Waiting for her lover.

The poem has been re-published again in the WA poetry download magazine http://creatrix.wapoets.net.au
Perhaps you might like to read it there with poetry from other WA poets.

I used another Japanese print for the cover of my short story and poetry book available for download at www.kobobooks.com and other download sites. In this one, a woman is sitting at a loom.

Sonybooks.com is up for sale

When I tried to find Laurel's latest novel at Sonybooks.com I discovered the site is up for sale.
I wonder what has happened to all of the ebooks there. When I did the search for Laurel's Journey from Walara I was directed onto the web to look from there.

I wonder if the authors have been notified. Has this been in the media?

Here is the link to Laurel's Journey from Walara 

This ebook is only $3.99. Might be wise to get it while you can, since the Sony site will soon disappear.

New Books Published

Looking for an interesting book to read? You can't go past http://museituppublishing.com/

New novels just published.

Rosalie's Skinner's fourth book in her saga Exiled: Battle for Enderseer Hold

The Man in the Boat by Cheryl B Dale

Nic Brown's A Grave St. Patrick's Day

Earrings of Ixtumea - Kim Baccellia

Balance by Peter Giglis

Read about the books on http://wendylaharnar.blogspot.com/

Wendy Laharnar's latest book is, Billy the Bonsai Bull

Download from Kindle books   & Smashwords

My latest book, Journey from Walara, the second book in the Hennessy family saga is available for download at http://www.sonybooks.com/

It is WW Two. Danny and Will, the two sons of Jack Hennessy, are off to fight for king and country leaving Jack to manage Walara, the huge Hennessy sheep property in Western Australia.