Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Monsters! Whimsy! What more could you ask for?

When both Mary Turzillo and Geoffrey Landis sent manuscripts to NightBallet Press, we couldn't resist the opportunity to release the books of these two dynamite  poets simultaneously, as a Big Bang at the end of NBP's fourth season.  Therefore, we are ecstatic and excited to announce the publication of  


A Guide to Endangered Monsters by Mary Turzillo
and
The Book of Whimsy by Geoff Landis!
 

 
 
 
These books are full of secret things, wondrous things, whimsy, and yes, monsters both physical and metaphysical.

Mary Turzillo's A Guide to Endangered Monsters is packed with many of her award-winning and most-popular poems, everything from the deliciously salacious "We Made Poetry" to the devilishly hysterical "Aesthetics of Evil"...and including some of her haiku


Wandering teacup
Where has the mistress left it?
Ah. Wandering mind.
 
 
...and some of her science-fictional, apocalyptic pieces rendered in the way that only Turzillo can do it:

(stanzas excerpted from "This Is Just to Say")

This is just to say
I have eaten the hadrosaurs
that were grazing in the meadow
and which you were probably saving for further evolution.
Forgive me:
they were so tender and juicy
and also noisy;
they made my teeth itch.

This is just to say
I have blasted a crater
the size of Hyperion
in the Yucatan peninsula.
Forgive me:
it was so green and fertile
and it was in my way.

A Guide to Endangered Monsters contains 44 pages of 37 poems.  The cover is a very pale green cardstock with a rich olive green cardstock insert.  The text is printed on creamy soft white paper.  The cover image, "Spiders from Mars," is an art piece by Ohio artist-poet Kevin Eberhardt*.

The Book of Whimsy by Geoff Landis is subtle and profound, whimsical and witty, with poems such as "Ode to My Lover's Small Intestine" and "Sending My Mother to Mars."  A master of various poetic forms, Landis uses pathos, humor, and often, deft rhyming to write poems that grab you by the shirt collar and pull you in close for a kiss.

Offering whimsy:

November roses
the last late blooms of summer--
wistful memories.

(Mary replies)

Those wistful roses
still blooming in November:
I think they're plastic.


and discovery:

Shout

I have to shout.

I have to shout
inside my head.
I have to shout
inside my head
to drown out the voices.

I have to shout
inside my head
to drown out the voices
of sanity and reason.

I have to shout
inside my head
to drown out the voices
of sanity and reason
so I can reach the madness.

I have to shout
inside my head
to drown out the voices
of sanity and reason
so I can reach the madness
in which genius is hidden.

The Book of Whimsy contains 44 pages of 39 poems, with the text printed on bright white paper.  The cover is a textured white cardstock, with a cerulean blue-gray textured insert.

The Book of Whimsy and A Guide to Endangered Monsters are $10 each, with postage and handling charges of $4 each.  But buy both books together for $20 and NBP will pay the postage!  What a powerhouse team!  And Mary says there are some poems in Geoff's book that even she has never seen before!

Select the PayPal button of your choice below, and get the books of this powerhouse team for your very own!  Soon to be available on Amazon, too!


                                     photo by Irene Vartanoff, used with permission

Mary Turzillo's 1999 Nebula Award winner for Best Novelette "Mars Is No Place for Children" and her Analog novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl are recommended reading on the International Space Station.  Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award.  She has been a finalist on the British Science Fiction Association, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars and Rhysling ballots, and Sweet Poison, her Dark Renaissance collaboration with Marge Simon, was a Stoker finalist and is on the 2015 Elgin ballot.  She's working on a novel, A Mars Cat and His Boy, and lives in Berea, Ohio, with her scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey Landis.  Find her at www.maryturzillo.com.

Geoff Landis is a writer, scientist, and poet.  He has won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Science Fiction, and has twice won the Rhysling Award for Best Poem.  As a poet, he has published several hundred poems in magazines and anthologies ranging from The City to 3Lights: a journal of micropoetry to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.  His poetry chapbook Iron Angels was published in 2009 by VanZeno Press.  He is also the author of the novel Mars Crossing and the story collection Impact Parameter (and Other Quantum Realities).  As a scientist, he works for NASA on Mars exploration, and on developing advanced technologies for spaceflight.  He lives in Berea, Ohio, with his wife, poet Mary Turzillo, and four cats.  More can be found at www.geoffreylandis.com.




Best deal!  Get both Guide and Whimsy for only $20 with free shipping!




Get Mary Turzillo's A Guide to Endangered Monsters for $10 plus $4 shipping




Get Geoff Landis' The Book of Whimsy for $10 plus $4 shipping



(*Publisher's note: All of Kevin Eberhardt's art, including the one pictured on Turzillo's book, is for sale; if interested please contact Dianne Borsenik at NightBallet Press for details.)

 

Sunday, August 2, 2015

When Newspaper Taxis Appear on the Shore, Mike Finley Gets Going!

NightBallet Press is enormously pleased to present a new collection of poems by Pushcart Prize-winning poet and native Ohioan Mike Finley...
Newspaper Taxis Appear on the Shore!
 
                                        
                        

The pale buff cardstock cover of Newspaper Taxis Appear on the Shore boasts a gorgeous color photo of a three-dimensional sculpture, "Waiting," by artist James Shefik (www.jamesshefik.com), and the text is printed on soft ivory textured paper. 

The last time Mike Finley visited Cleveland in August 2013, NightBallet Press published a twenty-page mini chapbook, For the Young Poets of Cleveland, which contained eleven poems.  Newspaper Taxis Appear on the Shore is twice that size, at forty pages of thirty-seven poems!  And oh, what wondrous poems they are!
 
 
The Revolving Door at Higbees, 1968
Seeing the old man step tentatively
into the glass cylinder,
the girl slowed down,
the two tiptoed around one another,
palms high.
He smiled at his partner,
and she, who had never before
danced the minuet,
stepping out with the old,
stepping in with the new,
did likewise
 
 
Irradiated Love                                                                                              

How I enjoy seeing you
in your paper shoes and hat
and lilac scrubs.
Do with me what you will, Aurelia—
enlighten me the way you do,
I want to shimmer and scramble your screen.
I love the merry expression I see in your eyes,
the jokes the two of us make
as you put me in the position,
then disappear behind the lead-lined door.
 
   
Mike Finley is a professional communicator with 30 years of experience in print, broadcast, in-person and online, as a best-selling writer, poet, and videographer.  Finley is one of only two Lorain County poets, and one of only three Cleveland-area poets, who's won the prestigious Pushcart Prize in poetry!  He's also written for the Rolling Stone, and in the Rock and Roll city of Cleveland, that's no small thing to note! In 2013, his book Growing Up in Amherst was published online, describing through poetry and prose his childhood in the small town of Amherst, Ohio.  He now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

A recent article about his upcoming visit to Ohio was recently published in the Chronicle-Telegram:


               
Oh, did I neglect to mention...YOU CAN HEAR MIKE FINLEY READ FROM HIS BRAND NEW BOOK OF POEMS THIS MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 6, 2015 AT MAHALL'S IN LAKEWOOD, OHIO!

Yes, that's right!  Mike Finley will be one of the features, along with poetry cohort Danny Klecko, and Erie, PA poets extraordinaire Marisa Moks-Unger and Tracie Morell at Mondays at Mahall's, 13200 Madison, Lakewood, Ohio!  You may recall that NBP published Moks-Unger's book, Mud and Stars, about seven weeks ago, in June (the same time Crisis Chronicles Press published a book for Morell).  This will be a smashing event, a blow-the-roof-off reading, and you won't want to miss this Powerhouse Four!

        Danny Klecko and Mike Finley       
  Marisa Moks-Unger and Tracie Morell
                        

Finley's book (along with Moks-Unger's book) will be available for purchase at the reading.  At only $10 each, both are a steal, and you can save on shipping charges!  Unable to attend?  You may also order a copy through PayPal or on Amazon! 
 








So, see you tomorrow at Mahall's at 7:30pm, and prepare to have your flip-flops flipped!  Woohoo!