Just a quick note to say that my final poetry collection VI is on sale for the first time since it’s release – the ebook is 99c across various retailers and I have a few print copies left, which I’m selling for $10 posted 🙂
(click the image to choose your preferred retailer)
And you can contact me via e-mail to order a print copy 🙂  [   mountain0ash[at]gmail[dot]com   ]
You can also sample some of the poems here:
four poems
each pale song
into a tin can
Thanks to Maddalena for the awesome interview, had a great time talking about the books!!
Serialized novels are becoming more and more frequent these days, in a sort of call-back to the 19th century, when books were issued in weekly installments. Australian author Ashley Capes choose to do so with his Book of Never, and I now understand how those enthralled readers must have felt back then, as they waited to know what happened next.
Never’s story is both an adventure and a quest, and follows the journey of this intriguing character as he moves across a colorful and dangerous imaginary world in search of answers about his identity and his past, while the current civilization stands on the brink of war, a conflict that seems to be instigated by mysterious forces beyond anyone’s control.
There are many indications, along the way, that Never’s world used to host a more advanced civilization, one whose remnants are either puzzling mysteries or dangerous places, and…
View original post 1,574 more words
Imperial Towers (Book of Never #5) is now available for pre-order!
Here’s a mini-blurb:
Only one thing stands between Never and answers – his brother.
Driven toward the enemy-occupied Imperial City, Never’s doubts grow. Even with new knowledge about his powers, can he truly keep his friends safe in a warzone? Or, like too many times before, will he end up responsible for the deaths of those he should have protected?
Barnes & Noble are a little behind again, so for now Imperial Towers is only available for pre-order with Amazon and Kobo but updates are coming.
Below, you can click a ‘global link’ which should send you to a retailer in your territory 🙂
Official release is still set for March 1st – see you then!
Ashley
Here’s another poem from the collection, hope you enjoy it – you can sample more from this post (which also has purchase links if you’re enjoying the poetry a lot :D).
into a tin can
a home
in the silks of grass
with fresh tar
on estate roads
too new
to have had
even a single innings
played upon them
streetlights go snapping on
and I’m still trailing
Goliath’s finger
across a map of Europe
we say to one another
we’ll just work harder
but there’s
such slow terror in staying put
I peel another banana
and kick off the same
sequence
of tin-can surprises
I don’t want to leave the house
anymore
and when it rains
no-one can collect a single drop,
everything
scrambles in gutters
and when they cross the fields,
even rainbows
tangle
in barbed wire
Hi everyone!
Today I’m happy to finally send VI out into the world 🙂
This one feels a bit bittersweet actually, seeing as right now, it seems that VI is going to be my last* collection of poetry, so I hope folks find poems within the covers to enjoy and also poems that will hold them over until something changes for me.
Long-term readers might see perhaps a bitter note running through the collection but I’m sure that there are some uplifting moments in there too 🙂
If you missed my previous posts about this book, you can sample some of the collection right here at the blog – here’s four poems, along with each pale song and one more to give you an idea of what’s inside with stage show yellow.
Ashley
*That’s a little dramatic, I guess. It’s probably more accurate to say that I don’t know when I’ll be releasing any more free verse. Haiku might pop up again one day, but there’s no real plans for either in the future.
Here’s some links I’ve cobbled together if you’d like to grab a copy:
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each pale song
your hair has grown deep
into the green stone of age
just as hills have grown between us
and oceans salt everything –
sunbathers
and their pastel umbrellas
get away with nothing here
and driftwood piles
in hours
heaped upon
what few memories I have gathered
even as my head spills them
in a dance of clouds,
torsos thin,
each pale song
a gouge in my chest
but it is simple enough:
I want you
and now the statues have turned all
shoulders
tear-drop smooth
and the polish of feet
across your body,
how many is it now?
your hands were so wide,
as if to rival Atlas
who was always just out of sight
who was slowly unfreezing
and whose pulse
was seismic
but who could not fit you
within his stern gaze
and I will forgive every stumble
each scratch
each sour bite you give
when ignored
and even, envy so great
as to rattle my very bones
but you hid so well,
caught,
suspended
between a breath
and the settling of night
your sweet face
I wonder
did you ever truly need to paint it?
your own voice grew young
in my listening
and
I leant against cool railings
and you called me back to see
secrets
that were everyone’s
but become ours
by the whispers I couldn’t fully unearth,
as crowds of automated eyes
pillaged you
as I myself would later do
as so many could not resist to do
and what I kept
could never satisfy
your immortality dried
as we worked,
great deserts in our fingertips
and dust in our kisses
and though I cannot feel more shame
knowing that I want more
at least when change came
thank god
you were not part of its neon creeping.
About 12 days to go until release of VI 😀
cicadas play back-to-back sets
eventually
emptying their entire bodies of music
and when nothing but the shells remain
the wind comes to tickle them
I walk a town sweltering
beneath yellow gels
like a stage show set in Mexico
with dogs sticking to their water bowls
and policemen in the ice-creamery
and no-one can move without
sweating
no-one wants to talk at all really
and so we pass like liquid robots
all looking for a new sound:
the hush of ice
whispers in the shade
or the splash of a long river
bending back
into a blue miracle.
from VI – due Feb 1st, 2017
