Mary Beth Bass's Blog

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Mary Beth Bass Books

New, not yet published books, with fantasy covers!

THE LANGUAGE OF MY FORMER HEART 

New (fantasy) Covers of Old Books!

FOLLOW ME 

Secrets of the Commonworld Chronicles!

ALL THAT WE SEE available now

A WORLD UNSEEN

On the other side of our trees is a place of magic and energy. And love. Everyone there has a defining power, but the Soulmate bond is universal—and unassailable. Or so say the Ones in Power.

They speak a lie. Like here on Earth, in the Commonworld there are those reviled and unwanted, like Thalia Salic, whose only crime is being Invisible. There are those persecuted for their parentage, like Sfodro Vatic. There are those coveted for their knowledge, like nine-year-old Sandy. There are the Worthless and the Loveless, and there are those who oppose evil, like Emma Mathews. In no world can we help what we’re born. We can’t always understand who we love. We can only decide how we’re going to live. Boroughs Publishing Group

The title, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words that Move Them, the underlying concept, and the glittery white and gold cover can make this 2014 anthology seem outdated or naive at best. At worst they seem to imply a willful misunderstanding of the history and ongoing current state of violent gender inequalities. Even though I trip over the title and the cover almost every time I pick it up, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry is one of my favorite books. What it is, and what it achieves, is the opposite of what it seems to be on the shiny gilt-lettered surface.

This morning I read a poem by a poet I didn’t know chosen by a human rights activist I’d never heard of. Now a political commentator in Taiwan, in 1989 Wuer Kaixi, a Chinese student of Uyghur ethnicity, led the protests in Tiananmen Square. He chose the poem “An End or a Beginning” by Bei Dao, who was exiled from China in 1989 because of the belief that his poetry influenced the Tiananmen Square protesters. Bei Dao was permitted to return to China in 2006.

An End or a Beginning (for Yu Luoke)

Here I stand

Replacing another, who has been murdered

So that each time the sun rises

A heavy shadow, like a road

Shall run across the land

A sorrowing mist

Covers the uneven patchwork of roofs

Between one house and another

Chimneys spout ashy crowds

Warmth effuses from gleaming trees

Lingering on the wretched cigarette stubs

Low black clouds arise

From every tired hand

In the name of the sun

Darkness plunders openly

Silence is still the story of the East

People on age-old frescoes

Silently live forever

Silently die and are gone

Ah, my beloved land

Why don’t you sing anymore

Can it be true that even the ropes of the Yellow River towmen

Like sundered lute-strings

Reverberate no more

True that time, this dark mirror

Has also turned its back on you forever

Leaving only stars and drifting clouds behind

I look for you in every dream

Every foggy night or morning

I look for spring and apple trees

Every wisp of breeze stirred up by honey bees

I look for the seashore’s ebb and flow

The seagulls formed from sunlight on the waves

I look for the stories built into the wall

Your forgotten name and mine

If fresh blood could make you fertile

The ripened fruit

Of tomorrow’s branches

Would bear my colour

I must admit

That I trembled

In the death-white chilly light

Who wants to be a meteorite

Or a martyr’s ice-cold statue

Watching the unextinguished fire of youth

Pass into another’s hand

Even if doves alight on its shoulder

It can’t feel their bodies warmth and breath

They preen their wings

And quickly fly away

I am a man

I need love

I long to pass each tranquil dusk

Under my love’s eyes

Waiting in the cradle’s rocking

For the child’s first cry

On the grass and fallen leaves

On every sincere gaze

I write poems of life

This universal longing

Has now become the whole cost of being a man

I have lied many times

In my life

But I have always honestly kept to

The promise I made as a child

So that the world which cannot tolerate a child’s heart

Has still not forgiven me

Here I stand

Replacing another, who has been murdered

I have no other choice

And where I fall

Another will stand

A wind rests on my shoulders

Stars glimmer in the wind

Perhaps one day

The sun will become a withered wreath

To hand before

The growing forest of gravestones

Of each unsubmitting fighter

Black crows the night’s tatters

Flock thick around

– Bei Dao, 1986 (translation by Bonnie S. McDougall)

– Josef Sudek

Writers are often working on three stories at the same time:

1. the one we’re finishing

All That We See (almost at the final editing stage, yay!)

2. the one we can’t wait to get back to

The Language of the Thread (editor-ready draft finished)

3. the one we haven’t started writing yet, but haven’t stopped thinking about

Untitled Third Commonworld Chronicle book (notes taken)

Right now, I can’t wait to get back to The Language of the Thread, a story of past lives and second chances. Actually, I’m thinking about this book and these characters all the time.

Three heroes, Three heroines, One love.

The Language of the Thread

“She was ten years old when her grandfather had first greeted her on that Saturday morning, shrinking from her too small shoes, no socks and dirty hair. Her mother had deposited her at the back door and left.



The sound of his voice, framed by broad vowels and sturdy consonants like wattle and timber on a medieval house, made Nell feel safe for the first time in her life. That sound couldn’t be broken. And like the wind or thunder it would never disappear, would always, always return. That sound was part of the things that lasted.”

Thomas Ott illustration

If you are bookish, or movie-ish, or a resident of the imagination-nation you have likely fantasized about visiting a fantasy world. Middle Earth. Hogwarts. Tatooine, before the troubles. I certainly have. And sometimes elements of fantasy rise up in real life (Smok, the beloved baby dragon who lives in my house!).

The Eolian is the music venue and bar in THE NAME OF THE WIND. I’ve always wanted to go there, in part because Patrick Rothfuss writes so evocatively about what it feels like to play and listen to live music. Also there are drinks and food. Two of my other favorite things.

Billy Beans in Danbury is like the Eolian for me. Thousands of bars host live music and serve drinks and food, but there is an amazing alchemy at Billy Beans right now. The live, local, independent music is so good it feels like the Eolian to me. And everyone, from the awesome bartenders Don and LJ, to the regularly appearing musicians, to the patrons, everyone is invested in sustaining this piece of breathing magic in the heart of a hard-working city that once produced 4.5 million hats, and gave birth to modernist composer Charles Ives. Cool! Right?

Tonight at Billy Beans, punk rock sweethearts Two Fisted Law is playing to raise money for a van for their spring tour. Download their Self-Titled EP. It’s awesome. And if you live near Hat City come out to Billy Beans to hear Two Fisted Law, and eat, and drink and support local live music!

Billy Beans Two Fisted Law HEY YOU! menu:

The TFL burger, whiskey and BBQ never sounded so good. It’s a ½ pound burger topped with cheddar, raw onion, onion ring, whiskey BBQ sauce served with fries. Comes on a roll or wrap, Your choice of burger or chicken $11.95 or go veggie burger for additional $1 

“TFL”

The TFL Veggie burger and spinach salad. A classic spinach salad and a Veggie burger, hold bread on this one. Have any of our signature flavors. Or do it as grilled chicken at no additional charge $ 12.50 

“TFL”

Two Fisted Fajita Fries, sizzling onions and green peppers, seasoned and served over fries but smothered in cheddar. $8.25. Add chicken to that if you want. $2 

“TFL”

*   *   *

THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss is one of my all-time favorite books (and not just because there is music, food, and drinking in it) so here is a little bit from that book:

 My name is Kvothe…  

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. 

You may have heard of me.

CHARLES IVES, Variations On America

Just in time for the sequel all that we see (releasing soon from Boroughs Publishing Group), everything you know has an awesome new cover and (punk rock drums here) is available in print!

Click here for the paperback version of everything you know. 

*   *   *

“The orange sun burst between two buildings, blinding Joe for a second. He shaded his eyes and looked around. The detainee tower was straight ahead, just to the right of the setting sun. If he stayed reasonably clear of it he’d be able to avoid the Masevo, he hoped, and if he kept it in his sightline he wouldn’t get lost. Emma was somewhere in the city. He was sure of it. And he was sure the vision in the water meant he had to reunite her with her family, wherever they were. He just had to find the tunnel and Emma before the Masevo.

Joe’s clothes and shoes had dried in the wind and his jeans had shrunk until they were uncomfortably tight. The air was getting cooler as the sun sank lower. He wished he had a jacket.

The outskirts of the city were dotted with small houses fronted by little walled gardens. The architecture was a strangely appealing mix of modern and medieval, as if Frank Gehry had designed house-sized castles made of steel and stone. A few gardens had flowering vines that climbed over white walls. Joe heard laughing. He saw a few winged kids flying and playing above their yards…”

“I suppose if Ray Bradbury or Richard Matheson had written (or could have written) with your level of palpable sensuality, they may have approached what you do here.  What I find extraordinary is how you present sexual attraction as a legitimate and lasting binder between two people, strong enough to cross the gates of hell and as equally essential to a relationship as mutual respect and consciousness. Absolutely brilliant.”

Best reader email ever.

in the place where she fell

Last night I dreamt about the warm-up circle.

We did the warm-up circle at the beginning of class every day at ETW. A leader was chosen. Students gathered in a circle and made eye contact with the person directly across, and kept that eye contact through-out the exercise. No one spoke. The leader began the series of repeated movements, some strenuous, some less so, always in the same order. The leader chose how long to stay with one movement. No matter how long it took, no one quit or broke eye contact. Students drew strength from the connection with the person across from them, and offered strength to that person in return. The environment was safe and you could rely on the support of the person across from you.

I love, love, loved the warm-up circle. So much that I wanted to somehow reincorporate it into my life after I left the Experimental Theatre Wing. I didn’t do that, but a friend I went to NCSA and ETW with taught it in various places later, which is cool.

The warm-up circle was about pushing yourself past what you thought you were capable of doing, past your this-is-my-most-painful-place. It was a daily, lived-through, physical experience of Becket’s “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

And that place you thought you couldn’t go past? It was never what you thought it was. You could always go past it. No matter how much you believed you couldn’t keep drumming your feet on the floor, you could always take more pain and more exhaustion than you thought you could.

This idea is not new, but it’s easy to forget. I forget and re-remember it all the time. And sometimes, apparently, I have to remind myself in a dream because awake-life remembering isn’t strong enough to stick.

We are almost always stronger, braver, and more capable than we think we are.

Five of these songs are on the new Two Fisted Law Self-Titled EP.  Click here to download it: Two Fisted Law Self-Titled EP. It’s awesome.

ALL THAT WE SEE playlist.

Iris, The Goo Goo Dolls

Across the Universe, Rufus Wainwright

Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright

Now My Heart Is Full, Morrissey

Hold Onto Your Friends, Morrissey

Lost, Morrissey

Shame Is The Name, Morrissey

Lust for Life, Iggy Pop

I Wanna Be Sedated, Ramones

Broken Home Kids, The Jukebox Romantics

Monster Hands, The Jukebox Romantics

Benson NC, The Jukebox Romantics

Blue Collar Hero, Two Fisted Law

My Brother’s Keeper, Two Fisted Law

Ballad of Forgotten Souls, Two Fisted Law

Hate the World, Two Fisted Law

Last Man Standing, Two Fisted Law

Drag Me to Hell, Two Fisted Law

Keith Haring, The Jukebox Romantics

Supply + Demand, The Jukebox Romantics

One State, Two State, The Jukebox Romantics

Enough for Me, The Jukebox Romantics

No Vacancy, The Jukebox Romantics

Untitled, The Jukebox Romantics

This Is How Honesty Sounds, The Jukebox Romantics

Are You Gonna Be My Girl, Jet

Last June I started writing a story from a single sentence.

No one would have called him beautiful.

I didn’t really know what it meant but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  By the middle of July I had 2/3 of a story I loved, and still couldn’t stop thinking about, but no ending or any solid idea of where it was going. I went back to my notes and saw this sentence.

She is guarding something other than herself. 

Oh. Yes. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know what it was she was guarding or why, or even who she was because there was something breathing inside that idea.

Writing fiction, creating anything really, is a dance with an invisible partner. Sometimes you’re leading. Sometimes the mystery is leading. When the dance is over you turn around and look at the pages, or the song, or the painting, or the performance, and you see it. Oh. Yes. This is what that dance was about.

In a crumbling otherworldly society once dedicated to life, love and beauty, one young woman must risk all to free…the Uske.

“The sun had begun to set but it was light enough for Alder to clearly see the thing in his hand.

It looked like nothing. Three inches of black stone or glass: rough and rounded at one end, hooked like a tail at the other. Vertical indentations lined the surface between the ends. He held it up to the light. The grooves were marked by spikes and shallows, difficult to see except by close inspection.

What difference would it have made if he’d looked at it in her presence? He had no idea what it was. Or why she thought it belonged to him. For a second he considered leaving it in the woods. He didn’t want a reminder of her. A reminder of the hot slice in his chest. A reminder of her early-morning gaze. Of the way she’d smiled at him. Of the way she’d waited until he took her hand in order to give him something. Not to take something from him.

For that reason alone he decided to keep the black stone thing. He put it in his pocket and sat near the entrance of the cave until dawn.

Even his kind couldn’t stay in the forest for longer than the length of a day or a night. He wouldn’t die like the others, but the painful consequences would be hard to recover from. Worse, it would make the others notice him more. Want him more. He’d never have time to sleep or get away. Or be alone.”

THE USKE available on Amazon, All Romance E-Books  and Boroughs Publishing.