The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Sharon Dockweiler

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Sharon Dockweiler, who contributed the short story titled “Picker” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Sharon. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a story begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form or a particular theme?

Sharon Dockweiler: Usually my stories and poems begin with a person who has affected me in some way.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Picker, the piece that will appear in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

SD: “Picker” is about a man I met when I was at a low point in my life, battling bi-polar disorder. It describes our friendship and touches on the joy we brought each other in small ways despite our circumstances.

A&B: Who are your biggest influences in the writing world?

SD: Douglas Adams and Christopher Moore keep me slightly off center in a magical way that gives humor and texture to the serious subjects I often write about. I also love Orson Scott Card and the poetry of Robert Frost, who so simply brings the human condition to light.

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

SD: I love to read out loud. My mother was in a car accident when I was ten, and I spent years reading to her after school. She always commented on my reading: Too fast. Too slow. Enunciate. Use more feeling. She taught me to feel the words I read. I believe it is responsible for the way my written voice can grow to a crescendo of passion, then soften to a place where you want to strain to hear every nuance. That has carried over to a love for poetry open mics.

Whenever I read, I can hear emotional reactions from the crowd that let me know I’m hitting home.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what writing is changed since you first started writing?

SD: I’ve been writing poetry and stories since I was five years old. I still think writing is simply fun. It entertains and teaches. I love that you can take off in any direction and create a new world.

I also love the attention that comes from readers or listeners. As an adult I know writing can be hard work, but, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.”

A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?

SD: Much of my work sheds light on the forgotten: the homeless, mentally ill, addicted… I paint word pictures of individuals to show who they really are, how they got to where they are, and how they deal with that. It can go from heart-breaking to humorous on a hair pin turn.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a writer.

SD: All writing starts with free writing. Begin with a notebook that lays flat, that you aren’t afraid to ruin. Choose a smooth-writing pen. Let the words flow. Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, or sentences. If you can’t think of a word, leave a space or draw an underline and keep on going. When you’re done, let it marinate. Set it aside for two weeks. Then see it as the raw clay that it is, and start to sculpt the actual image you want to convey.

Bio:

Sharon Dockweiler has lived through hell, and now serves as a sherpa for those following in her footsteps. The faith and humor that have kept her going are evident in her writing. She facilitates Writers’ Workshops for Deer Park and Brentwood Libraries on Long Island.

Sharon, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love “Picker” as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is coming soon!

Cendrine & David

The PoArtMo Anthology (Volume 2) Is Almost Here!

Hello folks!

We have more fantastic news to share with you. The second volume of our PoArtMo Anthology has been accepted by our distributor and should be released very soon!

However, the huge issues we encountered over the last several weeks led us to implement a couple of changes.

A New Cover

Initially, we wanted to keep the cover that Cendrine had made. But after what happened, we decided that it was safer to design a new one. As a matter of fact, we actually prefer this one!

New cover
Old cover

A Slightly Different Title

Another thing we did is edit the title, to remain in tune with the first volume we released in 2020. So, the “new” title is The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Congratulations to Our Selected Contributors!

Congratulations to the artists whose beautiful works will be featured in this upcoming new release. Their names can be found below:

Poetry: Amanda Baker, KB Ballentine, Beth Brody, Lakshman Bulusu, Claire Champommier, John Collins, Tara Dasso, Lynn DeLong, Stacie Eirich, Nicole S. Entin, Casandra Hernández Ríos, D. R. James, Emory Jones, Jackie Kirman, Virginia Kovach, Brice Maiurro, Zia Marshall, Julia McNamara, Kathryn Sadakierski, Anna Sallee, Julie A. Sellers, Wesley Sims, Giuseppe Sloan, Mike Todd, and Shelby Wilson.

Six word stories: Cindelle Ancajas, Amanda Baker, Melissa Frentsos, Lisa Marie Lopez, and Chris Slade.

Short stories and flash fiction: TR Biggar, Sharon Dockweiler, Lorraine Horsley, Smita Das Jain, Rati Pednekar, Sabiha Rizvi, Anna Sallee, and J.W. Wood.

Visual art: Azelle Elric, Theodore Heublein, Ángeles M. Pomata, Annette Solakoglu, and Justin Smith.

From the editors: a flashku and a pareiku.

What’s Next?

For the next few weeks, we will be hosting a series of interviews with some of the contributors in this volume on the blog. Everything will start this Thursday.

Next week, we will also announce the official date for the release of The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition. You will be able to purchase copies of the ebook for a special price for 15 days.

NB: Due to the cost involved in printing multimedia projects featuring visual content, we do not release print copies of our anthologies. So, please stop contacting us to inquire about that.

We look forward to (finally) releasing the anthology! Thank you all for your patience!

David & Cendrine.

PoArtMo Anthology (Volume 2): Update to Selected Artists List!

Hello everyone!

We have some fantastic news to share with you. We know that it will be both exciting and a massive relief to you.

Further to our previous communication, our PoArtMo Anthology (Volume 2) has now been filled with additional content and we have enough material to move forward with the Anthology!

Congratulations to the artists whose beautiful works will be featured in this upcoming new release. Their names are found in our updated artists list below:

Poetry: Amanda Baker, KB Ballentine, Beth Brody, Lakshman Bulusu, Claire Champommier, John Collins, Tara Dasso, Lynn DeLong, Stacie Eirich, Nicole S. Entin, Casandra Hernández Ríos, D. R. James, Emory Jones, Jackie Kirman, Virginia Kovach, Brice Maiurro, Zia Marshall, Julia McNamara, Kathryn Sadakierski, Anna Sallee, Julie A. Sellers, Wesley Sims, Giuseppe Sloan, Mike Todd, and Shelby Wilson.

Six word stories: Cindelle Ancajas, Amanda Baker, Melissa Frentsos, Lisa Marie Lopez, and Chris Slade.

Short stories and flash fiction: TR Biggar, Sharon Dockweiler, Lorraine Horsley, Smita Das Jain, Rati Pednekar, Sabiha Rizvi, Anna Sallee, and J.W. Wood.

Visual art: Azelle Elric, Theodore Heublein, Ángeles M. Pomata, Annette Solakoglu, and Justin Smith.

From the editors: a flashku and a pareiku.

What’s Next?

Now that the future outlook of the Anthology is finally looking a lot more secure, we are looking for some passionate individuals who are keen to promote it and themselves when it comes out.

Are you one of the selected artists on the list above? If so, we would like to offer you the opportunity to be featured on our blog or PoArtMo Podcast. Rules:

  • If you have paid the full fee ($6 per piece), you are entitled to a full interview on our blog or our PoArtMo Podcast. You will have to let us know what you prefer.
  • If you have paid a partial fee / donation (starting at $3 per piece), you are entitled to a mini-interview on our blog (3-4 questions).

Contact Us Via Email to Either Confirm or Reconfirm Your Interest

Because of our very busy schedules, we are unable to contact each selected contributor separately. So, whether you have previously confirmed your interest in the interview or not, we are asking you to reach out to us via email. This extra step will ensure that we can save time and publish the Anthology within a reasonable timeframe.

Email address: info@abpositiveart.com

Deadline to confirm your interest in being interviewed: October 10, 2021 (11:59 p.m. CDT)

(Once again, only the selected contributors who have paid a fee will qualify for an interview on our blog or a guest spot on our PoArtMo podcast)

We look forward to sharing further news with you soon regarding the Anthology, once the editing process is completed!

Happy creating folks and as always, thanks for reading.

David & Cendrine.

Update to Last Week’s Announcement

Hello everyone!

Last week was a roller coaster of emotions for us. After our announcement about Volume 2 of the PoArtMo Anthology, several people decided to withdraw their work from the publication. Others felt angry at us and let us know about it.

But most importantly, many of you reached out to show your support. We thank you for your words of encouragement and truly appreciate them.

Our Current Situation

Now, because of those last-minute withdrawals, we find ourselves with an incomplete Volume 2. But there is great news! We have quite a few entries for Volume 3. So this is what will happen: We will merge all the entries we have for Volumes 2 and 3 into one volume!

Of course, this means having to redo everything:

  • waiting for the remaining selected contributors to respond and confirm their interest in being in the PoArtMo Anthology,
  • triple-checking that the content is not already available online,
  • proofreading,
  • editing,
  • formatting,
  • re-uploading to Draft2Digital, and
  • waiting for confirmation that the ebook is good to go.

We will need several months for all those steps to be completed. Of course, we would love for everything to be done faster. But Auroras & Blossoms is volunteer work for us and this is an extra (and unplanned) workload. We have day jobs and can only do so much on our own. So, thank you for your patience!

We will update you on the anthology as soon as we are done with the formatting. In the meantime, please support us with shares to social networks and comments. 🙂

We Are Keeping the Cover!

We love the cover we revealed to you the other day. You do too! So we are not changing it. 😉

Our New Rules

Let us be very clear. Last week’s events have dire implications for us. Our account has been flagged by Amazon and Draft2Digital and we have been issued a warning. One more issue and it will be closed.

What does it mean? All our publications and books would disappear, including the books that we have released individually and as part of the PoArtMo Collective. As a result, not only would we have to start everything from scratch elsewhere, but we would also no longer be able to offer payments to our contributors. Needless to say that Auroras & Blossoms would have to close shop if this were to happen.

We would like to reiterate that we will no longer accept content that has been published elsewhere. The content you send us must be original. Because our multiple explanations of Amazon’s very restrictive rule keep falling on deaf ears, leading to our current situation, we have also decided to stop distributing our publications to Amazon.

Finally, we now require membership into our PoArtMo Collective to be able to submit to us. This is a very important step for three reasons:

  1. We vet members before allowing them to join us;
  2. We will not promote people whose behaviors go counter to what they claim they are and/or who defame or accuse us falsely; and
  3. We want our anthologies to be truly reflective of the PoArtMo concept: quality, positivity, inspiration, upliftment. Membership is free and comes with several perks. For more info, click here.

Please note that submissions to our PoArtMo Anthology are now closed for adults. We are still looking for more entries for the Youth Edition, which should blow your mind!

Thank you for reading us. Have a great week!

Cendrine & David

Special Announcement: Update to Our Rules

Hello folks,

Today was supposed to be a joyous day for us. We were going to announce the release date for Volume 2 of the PoArtMo Anthology—September 27, 2021.

Unfortunately, something happened that forced us to postpone the release for now. We wanted to tell you about it, so you know what is going on.

We love giving inspirational people an opportunity to be seen. In fact, this is the main purpose of our platform.

When you submit to us, you are automatically bound by rules and guidelines that are in place to ensure a smooth publication process. Unfortunately, for the last 18 months, we have had to deal with abuse of our guidelines, time, and efforts.

The two rules that get abused almost constantly are:

  • Content previously published elsewhere
  • Simultaneous submissions

We have explained those rules so many times that we could write a book on the topic. Still, most people choose not to follow them. This is getting very tiring to say the least.

What Happened

When we submitted the volume for publication to our distributor, we received the following notification in our inbox.

This problem happened before, so we were quite surprised. We emailed Draft2Digital right away to figure out who the culprit(s) was/were. As always, D2D was very responsive:

Hello, 

There are portions of your book found on the web. Once such location was this, [link]

Please keep in mind that this may not be the only place portions of your book can be found online as our system may return different results each time, and with our Amazon distribution, we cannot send anything that has been posted online for free. We must strictly enforce this rule with Amazon and will not be able to submit books which have portions of it posted on the internet. 

D2D was even more specific when we asked for additional information:

Hello, 

After several rescans of the book that appears to be the only link that continues to come up.  That said, if our scans are finding a few, Amazon’s scans will find ALL. They have much more robust scans than we do. As such, you must make it very clear to every person who wishes to include content in this anthology that they need to scrub any and all content that is posted freely available online from either the online source, or from within the book. Once our scans no longer detect any portion as being freely available online, we can submit it Amazon, however, if Amazon’s scans find any portion freely available online, they will not only flag the book and block it, but they’ll flag our account as well. As such, we’d ultimately remove your Amazon access entirely and prevent any future listings from being submitted to Amazon through our service, as well as delist any past titles live on Amazon due to non-compliance. Amazon takes a very harsh stance on this, and has it written into our contracts that we are not permitted to submit content that is freely available online, and that doing so risks our entire Amazon account.

If you are uncertain about the availability of the content, we recommend you submit through a direct KDP account because Amazon allows up to 5% to be freely available online as part of their marketing and promotional efforts when posting on a direct KDP account. Through an aggregate service, it’s 0%.

What Happened Next?

We emailed the culprit right away to let them know what was going on and how this situation inconvenienced everyone involved in the anthology, including other contributors. Instead of a simple apology, the person chose the confrontational approach. They said that we did not do our jobs as editors and that we were spreading false information about Amazon. They admitted to lying about submitting to other publications and also asked us to remove their piece.

Now What?

Removing the piece implies that all our formatting and layout are now off and that we have to redo everything—hence throwing dozens of hours of work out of the window. Another option is to include a selected piece from Volume 3 into Volume 2. But overall, this means that we cannot publish Volume 2 just yet. To be honest, the whole thing could take weeks. We are both extremely busy and Auroras & Blossoms is volunteer work.

(Another issue that may arise is the potential flagging of our account with our distributor, resulting in us not being able to publish the anthology at all…)

No matter how everything ends, we find this situation absolutely unacceptable. It also saddens us a great deal. As a result, we have made two decisions:

  • The culprit is forever banned from submitting to us; and
  • From now on, we will only consider original content. You can no longer submit content that has been previously published, no matter where it appears—blogs, websites, forums, Instagram, Facebook (public / private pages, profiles, groups), Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Wattpad, etc.

We know this is a harsh decision. Unfortunately, we do not have a choice anymore.

Auroras & Blossoms is dedicated to promoting quality content and rewarding contributors for their hard work. We can no longer condone behaviors that jeopardize our reputation. We care about your work too much to let that happen.

Thank you for reading us. Have a great weekend!

Cendrine & David

Page 20 of 32

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén