Kenny A. Chaffin's Blog

My new collection of prose poetry/micro/flash fiction Prosthetic Amalgams III is now available.

See it here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

Enjoy and please support independent publishing by buying, reading and reviewing independent authors such as myself!

Best Wishes!
KAC

The Consequences of Long-Term Furniture Ownership

More here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

It's that Time -

Mid-Year (writing) Status!

50 – Traditional Poems (Annual Goal 200 trad+prose poems)

2 – Prose Poems (pathetic!)

4 – Microfiction (pathetic! - annual goal 20-50 micro/flash)

1 – Flash Fiction

112 Submissions (annual goal 100 - SCORE!!)

17 Publications (poems prose poems and Microfiction)


2 new collections completed to be published early July (annual goal 2-4 new books SCORE!!)
- The Consequences of Long-Term Furniture Ownership (traditional poems)
- Prosthetic Amalgams III (prose poems/microfiction/flashfiction)

Feeling Okay but still need to keep pushing production and submission/publication

On my blog. Will be publishing in the coming week.

http://mansionsofthemind.blogspot.com...

I hope to release my new collection - "The Consequences of Long-Term Furniture Ownership" in early July.

See the Cover on my blog:

http://mansionsofthemind.blogspot.com...

Enjoy!

After a couple of days of formatting, editing, adjusting and all that jazz. I've got a near-final draft of my latest Poetry Collection - "The Consequences of Long-Term Furniture Ownership" (many SF/F/Surreal as well as realistic pieces). Eighty poems in total so something of a 'big' collection. Many poetry collections have as little as a few dozen. Depends of course on the poet, their style etc. I know most people here are not poets, but if you have a particular interest in reading an advance copy for errors/input and possibly in exchange for a review once it goes live at Amazon let me know. I'll be making a limited selection of advance copies available (ebook only, that's all I do :) ).

Five of my poems have been published in this month's Scarlet Leaf Review

https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poe...

Enjoy!

Sort of in preparation for my next round of publication I made some minor corrections to my Prosthetic Amalgams books as well as addressing a couple of formatting issues and have Republished both of them at Amazon.

I got a start on what will be my next Poetry Collection and will try to pull that together in the next week or so closely followed by a collection of Prose Poetry/Micro Fiction. I'd love to get them both completed and published by the end of June. Quite doable I think. I may actually find that I have enough material for a second new poetry/prose poetry collection as well.

It has been two years since the last book - Prosthetic Amalgams II and something like four years since the last traditional poetry collection publication.

Here we go, wish me luck! :)

My Amazon Author Site: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B007S3SMY8


P.S. Sorry for so long between updates. Life is crazy and so is Trump!

My 2017 Writing/Art Summary

2017 totals (as of 12/23/2017)

Work Completed:
128 - Traditional Poems
48 - Prose Poems
9 - Micro Fictions
4 - Flash Fictions
1 - Nonfiction science/essay

60 - Submissions
8 - Publications (7 @ Speculative 66, 1 @ 101 Word Stories)
8 - still outstanding
44 – rejections

Second Place in the Monthly IBPC September Competition with
“Night Thoughts of a Mottled Songbird”

Art:
7 - significant pencil/graphite portraits

Other:
I had planned on publishing 2-4 book of poetry and/or micro/flash fiction but no book publications this year.

I did put together one short/chapbook for a contest at Rattle.

for next year my thoughts are to push hard on submissions and get the self-published books together and out there.

To Continue Writing lots of poetry and micro/flash fiction but am getting the urge to do a some longer work ... i.e. short stories

Will put together my 2018 goals next week.

my recent poem got a Second Place Nod in the October 2017 IBPC Competition

Night Thoughts of a Mottled Songbird
by Kenny A. Chaffin
from Wild Poetry Forum

Dark as the inside of a dog’s stomach
and brain going a hundred miles an hour
Why can I never sleep no wonder
my songs suffer. I keep slipping off this
branch, that don’t help and I can’t help
thinking that maybe this is all just a dream
Maybe nothing is real, Maybe some kind of trick
Maybe everything I think, everything I see, every song
I hear or think I hear is really just in my own head.

Maybe nothing is real…
Maybe I’m a brain in a vat
or a computer program
or just a fragment
of underdone potato
but, but, but, but, I am
therefore I think.

I think of seeds,
will there be seeds tomorrow
will the sun rise as it always does
will there be rain will I fly
through the air
tree to tree
twittering my song
hearing friends’ songs
or will they
be in my head
in the vat, in the lab
in the computer

Or is it real

I must stop
this
must sleep
must sing
tomorrow
stop the
monkey mind
and rest

Why do I keep slipping
off this branch, did some
fool pig-grease it, should
move to another branch
or is the grease on my feet
or in my mind
Will I slip from that
branch too

How can I sleep
How can I rest
slipping like this
Why me – is it because
I’m mottled – is it
my brain – is it me —
is it everyone could it
be the theory of bird mind
or just pig-grease inside a
black dog’s stomach vat

Please!
God of Birds!
Let me sleep
Let me rest
Let me sing

----
Judge's Comments:
This is very clever. So many of us are plagued with sleep deprivation, yet who but the author of this piece has (perhaps while suffering his/her own bout of insomnia) bothered to wonder if other creatures lie or sit awake all night, puzzling over their own dilemmas and conundrums, slipping off their perches until dawn. Reading this, I could see the bird tilting his head one way and the other, puzzling over how it is with him. It’s so fully informed with humor that it almost becomes a vaudeville routine, or one of those old Heckle and Jeckyl cartoons about the two interminably squabbling magpies tapping off cigar ash and speaking out of the sides of their beaks. Except now both magpies are inside one bird’s head, making him tilt one way and then another in a dialogue worthy of Sam Beckett. These are matters of considerable personal importance to me, since I suffer from both obstructive sleep apneas and late-onset narcolepsy (surely the most surreal of afflictions), but they are of general importance as well. If songs and dreams emanate from the same place, as well they might, how are we to arrive at the former without access to the latter? This poem deserves to have its own Saturday morning kid's show. --Michael Larrain


http://ibpc.webdelsol.com/