Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

Well, it's about time. I guess they were waiting until it was worth the effort:

A claim that Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code copied the ideas of two other authors has gone before London's High Court.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh say Mr Brown stole "the whole architecture" of research that went into their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.


I think a collective "No shit!" is in order. However, I don't know if here in the U.S. fiction authors can really be sued for taking nonfiction theories and fictionalizing them. That seems odd, doesn't it? I mean, could I be sued by Earl Doherty or Robert Price for writing a novel about the idea that Jesus never existed? And if Dan Brown is successfully sued, that leaves open the film industry, who is just about to release the movie, doesn't it?

Maybe Dan Brown's intellectual laziness is coming home to rest.

Yesterday was the deadline for making recommendations for the Bram Stoker Awards in the Horror Writers Association. I've been reading between trying to get my life details in order, working, writing, interacting with and rewriting for agents, and generally attempting to manage my life. However, I was able to read an armload of stories and make recommendations. I still need to read Weston Ochse's Scarecrow Gods, as well as the Outsiders anthology. I've picked up the latter on Amazon with my Llewellyn astrological calendar. (Damn, but that calendar is useful!)

Anyway, to my delight, I checked the 2005 Bram Stoker Awards recommendation list this morning to find that they've posted the "Verification Draft" of the Preliminary Ballot. When they make the official announcement, I should have two stories on the ballot: "Veil of Skin" in the Long Fiction category and "This Body of Death" in the Short Fiction category. Both stories received the second highest number of recommendations in each category, too!

Despite all my eye drama, I'm a very happy girl. At this point, the HWA Active Members (that is, those who meet certain professional qualifications) will vote on the works in each category. The top four (or five, in case of a tie) works in each category will receive an official nomination. I don't know if either story will get that far, but now they have a chance. The last time I had two stories on the Preliminary Ballot was in 2001, both in Short Fiction. I had just joined the HWA and didn't really know many people, but I loved the people I did know -- like Tina Jens, David Thomas Lord, Larry Santoro, Simon Wood, Denise Dumars, Weston Ochse, Yvonne Navarro, Karen Taylor, and really just too many to list. Last year, at the Stoker ceremony, I met Corrine De Winter, who I love dearly. She's a fantastic poet, and she won the Stoker for her collection, The Women at the Funeral.

It would be nice to win the little brown house. My astrological transits for the weekend that they award the Stokers are insane. Maybe the little brown house will come to my house? Probably not, but it's fun to dream. And in my dreams right now, I'm dreaming more about healthy eyes.

Gregory Colbert is a profound artistic and spiritual genius. I saw this "nomadic museum" exhibit today at the Santa Monica pier. The still images of sleeping children and women amongst totem animals in dark river waters and the wispy desert sands are at once astonishing and deeply serene. While there are numerous still images, there are also three 35mm films playing in loop with music by musicians such as Lisa Gerrard, written especially for these works. The only part I did not really see was the novel that accompanies the exhibit. It's 365 letters from a man to his wife after he has disappeared for a year: a letter each day describing his travels. The most amazing part of the entire exhibit is that none of the movement in the films is choreographed or scripted, and none of the images are collaged or superimposed. What you see are cheetas, Asian elephants, the sacred ibis, meerkats, manatees, falcons, ocelots, eagles, whales and numerous other animals in perfect harmony with humanity, often lying elegantly in potentially dangerous situations.

So, an artistic genius you can probably understand. But spiritual genius? As you watch these people with their eyes closed sleeping, breathing and meditating with these animals, in murky waters and on rippling sand dunes, the tao sinks right into your heart. While the psychologist in me was marveling at the imagery of the subconscious and animal natures living peacefully unguarded -- a perfectly beautiful and whole interpretation in and of itself -- my spirit was moved to tears at the sight of the perfect trust of these children as they slept in the crook of an elephant's leg or sat blindly in the winds of the Sahara surrounded by cheetas. The waters flowed around the dark tresses of women lying like Ophelia in narrow wooden boats and I understood the principal of wu wei: without doing, causing or making. The water being the flow of spirit around me and the natural world, which makes no mistakes. Only we imagine them.

I go down with the water and I come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself.

To not only grasp that wisdom but to then project that in images and music is spiritual genius. Perhaps inseparable from his artistic genius, but nonetheless beyond the capability of all but a very few.

It's no wonder that Colbert is making this his life's work. It's his soul's work. And we get to enjoy the extraordinary beauty of it.

The story eventually landed somewhere around 7400 words. I sent it to Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett, as it came from the pitch they accepted for Hot Blood. This is the last Hot Blood; they're ending the anthology series that I believe started in 1988. The best part of this short story was preparing to write it. I've learned a thing or two about play piercing. My boyfriend and I have enjoyed the rewards of that, I must say. :) It's an incredibly intimate act, unlike any other kind of BDSM play.

Meanwhile, I'm doing some revisions for Writers House in the hopes that they'll rep my dark fantasy novel, Mr. Wicker. This is astonishingly good luck, and I'm pleased that someone has taken the time for me. It's my first book, so I'm quite humble enough to take notes. (Of course, we'll see how I'm am at Book #10, but I don't see this as much of an ego-charging process, really.) I also have queries and proposals circulating for what I call my nonfiction Top Secret Project(tm), with one agent so far asking for two more sample chapters. I'm anxious to see what happens with that. It is, by far, the most commercial piece I've ever written.

This has all been scary business since I got Lasik on the 20th. My left eye is having some complications. I'm told what's happening is normal and that I should be fine. To not worry. But other than writing and music, worry is my greatest talent, I'm afraid. Still, I'm trying to stay positive because my vision the morning after surgery was 20/15, with freakish, bionic clarity. I'm hopeful it will return to that. The Lasik doctor says there's no reason it shouldn't. He says my surgery went absolutely perfectly and that my eyes are healing extremely well.

What is it Tori Amos sings in "Cruel"? "Why can't my ba-la-loon stay up in a perfectly windy sky?"

I think I'll go play with my sinking ba-la-loon now and try not to get any needles near it.