Beauty in the Desert

I feel uniquely qualified to write a post with this title. I spent my formative years living in the High Desert of Central Oregon, surrounded by pine and juniper trees, bitterbrush and sagebrush, yellow bunch grasses and gnarled lava rock. The color palette of my childhood was tan, muted green, and gray. The soil was dusty. The air was bone-dry.

It was beautiful.

The skies were perpetually blue. The freezing lakes and rivers were clear. And the isolated, glaciered peaks of dead and dormant volcanic mountains dominated the eye from every meadow. I loved the tiny, anemic-green leaves of the bitterbrush and the smell in the air produced by its equally small, pale yellow flowers in the spring. Orange, fallen pine needles crunched under foot in the summer; dry, white powder muted the world in winter. In the fall, a drive to the mountains might reveal the brilliant red of a lone deciduous bush farewelling its leaves against the black of an endless ancient lava flow.

There is beauty in the desert, not just in spite of its desertness, but because of it.

Exciting Newses!

Before we start, please forgive the poor grammar in this post's title. It was intentional. (This might be why I'm not a copyeditor...)

So! I have news. There has been a LOT going on in the last twelve months. I give you: The List of Significant Things That Have Happened!

The List of Significant Things That Have Happened:

1) I wrote the pilot episode to a TV show I'd love to develop and get produced.

Seasonal Haiku

Recently, a writing group I'm part of posted a challenge to create some haiku poems during this time of strangeness, so I wrote my first ever haiku poems. Check it out:


1. (Of Haikus)

I'll write a haiku
To meet this virus challenge,
But I'm not a fan.


2. Distance

Alone in my room
Stranded far away from home
In Slovakia.


3. Self-Assessment

I'm eating chocolate
Clearly not symptomatic;
No lost appetite.

:)

COVID-19 Poetry

Hello, everyone!

I thought it would be nice, since I'm all alone and since a lot of people are flocking to the internet while they're holed up in their houses, apartments, Hobbit holes and  the like, to perhaps post some entertaining fluff poems.

Fluff poems are what I call poetry that I dash off quickly, without too much thought beyond making sure it's coherent and structured. It's poetry for fun, and it's for your fun, too! So I hope you enjoy my very first COVID-19 poem, creatively titled "COVID-19."  :)


COVID-19


There was a lone poet who lived abroad
In an ancient, Slavic land;
She came to teach and live the life,
Then things got out of hand.
A bat and pangolin, they say,
May have made the brand new strand
Of virus which was spread abroad -
Now travel's mostly banned.

The poet hunkered down inside
Her dorm room all alone,
And thought she'd take a little time
To write this little poem.
And so, to all of you, she says,
"Take heart - we're not alone;
Our God still watches over us
In this strange, new war-zone."


Happy hunkering!

-RL

Work, Stress, and Perspective

Earlier this week, I launched my first novel: Random Walk, Book One in the Fractured Galaxy series. Very exciting.

Also a little nerve-racking because, as my first novel, there's a lot riding on this project's financial success. I moved half-way across the country just so I could afford to live without a day job in order to write this book (and some other writing projects), and many friends and family gave generously of their time and money to help me bring it to fruition.

As such, this novel is theoretically a major litmus test for my future plans to continue not working a day job and writing pretty much full time instead. It's been a tad stressful to think about at times. As the launch of the book and, with it, the proof of the pudding approached, I found myself spending a lot of time in prayer about that. Here are a few things I've learned during this process: