Advice to the casual book reviewer--

Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Hand with heart from the interior
decorations for Thaliad.

If you google "how to write a book review," you'll find wheelbarrow loads of advice on writing a book review that looks just like almost everybody else's review. Since that's the case, I'm not going to repeat the usual advice. So here, my two cents worth of not-the-usual advice:

• Go on trust. Always assume that the writer might actually know what he/she is doing. Try and figure out what he/she is doing if it doesn't fit your ideas of what a book should be. Maybe the book's not working, and that's why it doesn't fit. But maybe the book is good but differs from your expectations. 
• Don't pay any attention to the label or genre that the publisher chooses. Remember that labels are for marketing. A label can be misleading, as it may well be incorrect or reductive. Many books are complex things, not happy with a label. Instead of relying on genre conventions for an idea of what a book should be, figure out what the book is on your own. Describe what it is--not the plot, but what it is, what it cares about, what terrain is important to the book and its characters, what purposes and vision drive its events and structure. 
• Think about shape. All made things have a shape.
• Each novel is its own world, with its own laws. It may resemble our world closely. Or not. You should be able to detect whether it fulfills its own promises, obeys its own laws.
• Think about what propels the story forward. Is it causality, or something else?
• Ignore the age label on the book, if there is one. It, too, may be incorrect, or the book may be what is often labeled as a crossover, and appeal to various ages.
• Does the book have energy? Is it alive? Are the characters alive?
• Does the book feel like a clone, or is it a unique individual? How so?
• Does the writer appear to take pleasure in words and sound? 
• Read some of the book aloud--mandatory! Get a feel for how the author writes; hear it in your own voice. You'll know more about sound and style and the writer's ear (tin or golden) by reading one page aloud than by reading a whole book to yourself. (This one is, of course, essential for collections of poetry.) 
• Rereading is the most telling reading. Even a little rereading is helpful.

goodreads giveaway

Just home from ferrying a child who is off to Paris... September in Paris sounds so very lovely.

And now I see that a goodreads member, Janan Cheskis, has won the signed copy of Maze of Blood. Congratulations, Janan...

And thank each and every one of the 698 people at goodreads who signed up for a chance at the book, and to the 275 who popped it onto their to-read list.

Hodgepodge, with medieval prayer-nut

The Annunciation Carved in a Medieval Prayer Nut

Here's one of the poems I wrote for Phoenicia Publishing's Annunciation anthology, forthcoming in the not-too-far-off future. Being the sort of person I am (you can call that mad, or you can call it in love with making things and words), I wrote seven, so that editor Elizabeth Adams could pick one from a group. So this poem is not going to be in the anthology, but it is HERE, and also in the print version of "Books and Culture," edited by the most widely-read reader I have encountered, John Wilson. (The poems in the anthology will be: "Mystic Journey," "The Annunciation Appears in a Painting by Andrew Wyeth," and "Iconography of an Imaginary Medieval Painting.")

I also have a couple of poems in the just-out current (print, though I expect that issue 13 will eventually be up at trinacriapoetry.com) edition of Trinacria, edited ("by invitation") by the feisty, formal-poetry-defending Joseph Salemi. And those two are "Solitaire" and "In the Dream Behind My Eyes."

Photos: This is a sixteenth-century prayer-nut on display at the British Museum. Photo credit is unlisted at my source... though I'd be happy to credit more than the British Museum! If you want to see more prayer-nuts (they are fascinating) in a round-up of examples, go to My Modern Met.

"Macbeth" with gulls and Glimmerglass and Glimmer Globe Theater

Lovely evening at the new Hamilton amphitheater behind Fenimore Art Museum, starting with a champagne picnic with shrimp salad and duck enchiladas and baguette and meringue cookies, followed by "Macbeth" with newlyweds (well, a year out--still new!) Michael and Danielle Henrici as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Must say that a pregnant Lady Macbeth adds to the drama of many lines. So fine to see a great play with Glimmerglass lightly wrinkled in the background and gulls flashing white against the hills.

Photo from the Fenimore Art Museum album on Facebook.
Michael Henrici as Macbeth

Danielle Henrici, Lady Macbeth,
above Hamilton amphitheater at the Fenimore Art Museum.
Photograph by Macbeth, aka Michael Henrici!

Goodreads giveaway / jacket copy / pub date

"a haunting tale of dark obsessions and transcendent creative fire, 

rendered brilliantly in Youmans' richly poetic prose."  --Midori Snyder

Official pub date is rapidly approaching: September 1st.
I will soon be doing events in North Carolina and Virginia,
but if you have a special interest in my work, please spread the word,
as this is a book from a university press and could use a kiss
from the lovely Lady Word of Mouth.

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Design by Mary-Frances Glover Burt.
Mercer University Press

If you are on Goodreads and haven't signed up for a chance at a signed copy of Maze of Blood, please do so! It's a short giveaway, with 330 people signed up so far. It helps spread the word, and some lucky person gets a free signed book and postcard.  

Jacket copy: Begin with what seems the end of things—how Conall Weaver lifts a gun to his head. And now dive backward into the labyrinthine worlds of home, where Conall is the center, into the maze of love, where Conall seeks and strives with his soul-mate, and into the maze of imagination, with its population of weapon-wielding heroes and local-color Texans…and then on, into the maze of childhood, where time seems illusion and all the threads and stories start. Red for the blood of frontiersmen and Indians, Conall thought, red for the blood of proven heroes and mother, the martyr of Cross Plains. Maze for the looping coils of a snake that ended in a rattle that shook out revolutionary warning: don’t tread on me! Maze for veins of blood. Maze for family. In Conall Weaver, the mundane world and the wonders of the imagination collide and shoot out sparks. Inspired by the life of pulp writer Robert E. Howard, MAZE OF BLOOD explores the roots of story and the compulsions and conflicts of the heart in a Southern landscape. “Marly Youmans is a great writer. Her prose is immaculate.” —Laird Barron “Marly Youmans is a novelist and poet out of sync with the times but in tune with the ages.” — First Things “I cannot recommend an author more than Marly Youmans, whose fantastic prose is absolutely gorgeous and haunting.” —Seb Doubinsky 

Maze of Blood page at Facebook

Maze of Blood page at the blog

Maze of Blood page at Mercer

Maze of Blood is still in pre-pub pricing at Amazon and bn.com, 
and perhaps in a few others....

Find an independent bookstore at indiebound.org.

One of the gorgeous division pages
with art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Goodreads giveaway--

The first giveaway for Maze of Blood is scheduled to open for entries at midnight on Friday, August 21. Entries will come to an end at midnight on Sunday, August 30. The official pub date for the book is September 1st.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Maze of Blood

by Marly Youmans

Giveaway ends August 30, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Eligible? If you are a Goodreads member in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United States Minor Outlying Islands, or the Virgin Islands, you are eligible to enter. Why those countries? WHIM.

Again, the giveaway will be open for entries starting midnight on Friday, August 21 through midnight on Sunday, August 30. Click on "giveaway details" to go straight to the book listing.

24 Camellias to give away

A case of books (that's 24 copies) of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage has just been promised to Goodreads for April 15-May 15 giveaways. Thanks to Barbara Keene and Mercer University Press. So if you're a Goodreads member or a reader who might want to become one, please sign up for the giveaway--hope you'll like it enough to talk about it there and elsewhere. Right now the giveaway is listed as "pending" and evidently takes several days to go up.

First chapter, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, to read or download is at Scribd.

My misbehaving protoplasm: I drew a line through my choir engagements for the weekend because the voice still isn't quite right. I'm startled to be still sick with the Bassett bug, so am going curl up, drink ginger-honey-lemon tea and work on my talk for MALIA this Good Friday morning. I might even take a nap. Be sweet, out there, and happy reading. :)

The Throne Jacket, goodreads, etcetera

THE BEAUTEOUS JACKET

See that? That, my dear friends and well wishers and passers-by, is the design for the hardcover jacket and the paperback cover of The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, April 2011.) The smashingly lovely image is by my friend (more about books with him in an upcoming post) Clive Hicks-Jenkins. The designers seem to have manipulated it--the image is flipped, which we suggested, but it also seems to have pulled the layers apart slightly to create more of a 3-D effect. In the process, the sunflowers go softer and the levels of image separate. Interesting. (Graphic design: Burt & Burt Studio of Macon, Georgia.)

GOODREADS

The paperback is already listed at Amazon, and I found the cover first at goodreads.com. Speaking of goodreads, I joined today because my friend, the bookstore manager extraordinaire and author Erica Eisdorfer. She twisted my arm (note arm-twisting motif continued from cover.) Not sure why I avoided it earlier. Fear of trolls? Fear of even more shredding of time? Don't know. But I shall try it. See you there, maybe.

YOUR SHOPPING LIST

Be sure and buy several (or several dozen or more!) copies if you wish to save me from anxiety! Six books forthcoming: I can't figure out if that's bad or that's good in terms of getting them out in the world. It's a little intimidating.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Speaking of social media and books . . . I had come to the conclusion that facebook was a place mostly for utter frivolity and silliness (and not so much for bookishness) when I asked a question of poets about 1:00 a.m. this morning. I was working on my galleys for The Throne of Psyche. Tiny question: 145 comments. So maybe facebook is more bookish than you would think. Than I would think! However, somehow a blue paisley garter belt and a pink slip crept in before we were done. So maybe it has an insane and irretrievable bent toward the frivolous

PODCASTS, ETC.

I am making some podcasts for six poems due out at The Flea and qarrtsiluni. And am wondering: to what degree is multi-media the way to market poetry books. I hate to be thinking so much about marketing . . . and yet three poetry books will need a certain amount of push to fly off into the world, won't they? My friend Paul Tree (who is not really a Tree) tells me that multi-media is the way to go.