It’s my great pleasure to welcome international best-selling poet, Michelle Navajas, to this month’s Launch Pad spot. Some of you will already be familiar with Mich through her blog, where she posts her unique and highly accessible style of poetry and prose with awesome frequency!
So, let’s find out a little bit more about her. We’ll start with her official author bio:
Philippine-born Michelle Navajas, currently residing in Malaysia. Michelle authored the book After – Rain Skies: A Million Stars, for Perak Women for Women Society (PWW) during their Million Stars campaign. It’s a collection of true and inspiring stories of victims and survivors of abuse and violence in prose and poetry.
Graduating with a Master of Education majoring in English in the Philippines (University Of San Agustin – Iloilo), Michelle was a former college professor, teaching literature, speech and oral communication, creative writing, drama, and theatre arts. She is also a graduate of Mass Communications major in Journalism (Centro Escolar University – Manila).
Michelle is active in her writing profession and works as a freelance creative writer.
She blogs passionately at www.michnavs.wordpress.com, where you can find her prose and poetry on love, life, motherhood, and her advocacy on abuse and violence.
I’d originally approached Mich to introduce her fourth book, I Would Fly To Where You Are, which she wrote during the deepest time of Covid and which was released in May 2021. However, between then and now she’s released her fifth volume of poetry, I Will Love You Forever, Too. Published just a few weeks ago, this latest collection of Mich’s poetry went straight to the number one spot on both Amazon and Kobo on its first day of release: an impressive achievement that most authors can only dream of. Also impressive is the fact that Mich has produced her five books in just two years!
I’ve just finished reading I Will Love You Forever, Too – you can read my review on Goodreads here(or over on the side bar, depending which device you’re using).
Now, let me hand over to Mich now to tell us about her writing journey and how her wonderful poetry books came to be. Over to you, Mich!
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Thanks for having me on your blog, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dreams do come true. And it can happen unexpectedly, anytime, anywhere, when you really deserve it. This has been my life’s mantra. I love to take things slowly and carefully and let things unfold on their own by the grace and power of the universe.
I remember, as a little girl, I’ve always dreamt of seeing my name in the newspapers, magazines, or in a book. And I told myself, one day I will make it happen, though at that time I didn’t know how to make it happen, not even how to begin.
My first book, After-Rain Skies, a collection of true and inspiring stories of abuse and violence in prose and poetry, was born in 2019, unexpectedly. Four decades after the conception of my dream.
It was written and published in 2019, with the sole intention of creating awareness on abuse and violence, with the hope of putting an end to the culture of abuse. It was received so well by many that I followed it up with an eBook copy made available via kobo.com.
The pandemic happened in 2020. We were all forced to stay at home and work from home. That’s how I started writing poetry almost every day. Surprisingly too, my long-time readers and followers, love my love poems. It inspired me to write even more.
What If Snowflakes Don’t Fall In Winter? is my second book, a collection of poems about the nature of love. The success of my first book made me realize that I can be a love poet as well. After-Rain Skies taught me that love, more than anything else was what kept these victims going and hoping; their love for themselves, love for their children, their families, friends, and relatives, and most of all, their desire to want to love again and build a life around its seasons. Celebrate how love always changes, just enough to get better and better and better.
The world stopped during the pandemic. It prompted me to write poetry celebrating humanity’s perseverance and resilience. Oh! Dear One, was born to soothe everyone’s soul amidst the outbreak of a global pandemic.
The outbreak of a global pandemic has led to lockdowns and isolation, which eventually led to the separation of families, loved ones, friends, and colleagues.
I Would Fly To Where You Are is my fourth poetry book, a collection of poetry written during the height of the COVID-19. Reflective of each and everyone’s love and desire to be with their loved ones – the special occasions we all missed to celebrate together like birthdays, anniversaries, baptisms, and many other milestones, and also, reflective of the moment we failed to say our final goodbyes to our loved ones who went ahead of us during the pandemic. This is a collection of poetry on love; love, surviving against all odds.
We celebrate love, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how painful it is.
We celebrate life and love because there is always tomorrow, a better and kinder tomorrow.
My fourth book is definitely an epitome of true love. The kind of love that only gets better and better over the years and that no matter what it takes, it’s the kind of love worth taking the risk, worth taking the big leap, and worth keeping forever.
Finally, my most recent book: I Will Love You Forever, Too, is a compilation of poetry on the greatest love one can ever have. The kind of love that makes you want to write sappy love poems all the time (even if you are not a poet), the kind of love that makes you want to believe in “happily – ever – after” or “dreams – do – come – true”, it is the kind of love that makes you reflect on all of your “what ifs” and “maybes”, it is the kind of love where you will completely miss your beloved, strangely, even though your loved one is gone just briefly, and it is the kind of love that gives you the courage to commit to love forever.
This book also includes selected poems I wrote, which were requested by some of my very loyal readers and followers.
‘Really, Bryony, people don’t just disappear into buddleia bushes,’ Bryony’s papa frowned his irritation, ‘I always thought you were the sensible one,’ he tapped his cane on the floor, something he did when he was unimpressed, ‘stop playing games and tell Bethany to come out from wherever she’s hiding.’
‘You believe me, don’t you, Mr Eyre,’ pleaded Bryony, watching Papa glare at her tutor. Mr Eyre was about to speak when Papa, Donald Goodwin of HMDS*, cut in: ‘and I’d thank you not to encourage such nebulous ideas in the girls, Eyre,’ he growled, stalking into the hallway.
‘Come, Bryony, if we’re going to search for young Bethany, we should start from where you last saw her,’ Mr Eyre extended an arm to shepherd his charge out into the garden, grabbing a cane from his employer’s collection, which was stored in an elephant foot stand, a souvenir from Goodwin’s service in India.
Mr Eyre advanced across the lawn and began to poke about in the buddleia bush; the cane snagged something in the undergrowth and he crouched down, reaching into the foliage. ‘Aha, what have we here?’ he swiveled round and proffered the object to her.
Bryony eyes lit up.
*His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service (the year is 1912).
Bryony, Bethany and their wonderful tutor, Mr Eyre first appeared in my historical fantasy fiction novel, Following the Green Rabbit. They’ve been begging to go on another adventure and it looks like they’ve got their wish!
Your portal to more Six Sentence Stories awaits you here!
The wheel spins which one will win? how much has each invested? This week’s wage a watch, a car? Too much, for sure don’t doubt it. The stakes are high their dreams are huge the risk of loss is greater. Don’t bet your life on the draw of a card for only the house always wins.
I’m delighted to tell you that I’ve made my latest novel, Song of the Sea Goddess, into an audiobook. It’s been such a pleasurable experience too. Of course, I didn’t do it all by myself. Nobody would want to listen to me stumbling over my own words, and I have neither the expertise or the equipment to create a professional recording.
By great good fortune my husband, when he was teaching at the International School of Cape Town, worked with the wonderful Terry Lloyd Roberts who, aside from being a teacher, is an accomplished voice artist. She in turn introduced me to Devon Martindale, Director at Audioshelf, a South African company dedicated to the production of audiobooks. All I had to do was send a pdf version of the manuscript and they did the rest.
It wasn’t as costly as I might have imagined – the price of a nice overseas holiday – and we haven’t done and won’t be doing that for a while.
It took a little while to record, as the book runs to over 7 hours listening time, but over a period of about 3 weeks, I received the audio files to check, ten or so chapters at a time. What a pleasure it was to hear Terry read the words I had written! Her voice is perfect for the book and she really made my characters come alive.
She also managed to sail over a number of typos and missed words. I thought that between me and my beta-reading team we’d caught all those. Not so. Apologies to everyone who’s had to suffer those! I’ve since corrected them and reloaded the paperback and ebook onto Amazon. That was the only downside of curling up under the covers on a succession of winter weekends with my paperback copy and read along with Terry. But it’s a great way to proof-read a book! I was slightly placated by Devon, who said: “…with every single book we’ve produced into audio, we have picked up at least a few errors in the text, so don’t feel too bad.”
Once I’d received and read over all of the audio files, all that remained for me to do was to find a platform from which to publish the audiobook. I took Devon’s advice and went to Authors Republic who offer audiobook publishing and distribution worldwide. I emphasise the worldwide, since outside of North America, a range of restrictions can make it quite tricky for indie authors.
After signing up, completing a US tax form, and adding my paypal account details, all that remained was to fill in the book details, load up a square version of the cover and upload the audio files, which had been perfectly prepared by Audioshelf. Much less stressful than Amazon/KDP. Now, just a week or two later, my audiobook is available in all sorts of places – even ones not available to people in South Africa!
You can listen to the short (5 min) sample below and see how beautifully it’s narrated. Would it be wrong of me to say that I loved my own book when I listened to it?
‘It’s probably too noisy here in London,’ Bryony whispered,straining her eyes in the pre-dawn darkness to see deeper into the shrubbery, ‘it’s not as if this is Bluebell Woods where we used to live.
Bethany shivered slightly, the early spring frost was creeping through her sandals and pricking at her toes, as she crouched beside her elder sister, peering into the flower bed; nevertheless, she was determined not to give up yet.
‘Just because you read about them in your new poetry book, doesn’t mean they exist, especially at the bottom of our garden,’ Bryony hissed, ‘and I really don’t imagine it’s going to be like last summer after we read ‘Alice in Wonderland’ together.’
Undeterred, Bethany crept a little closer trying to avoid trampling the pretty patch of primroses which lay in her path, ‘look,’ she exclaimed delightedly, ‘here’s a perfect little glade for them to skip about in… oh! oh! oh!..’ she cried out, losing her balance and tumbling into the arching foliage of an unruly butterfly bush.
Puzzled by the sudden silence, Bryony rose to her feet and stepped into the shrubbery, parting the waving fronds of the foliage.
Some of you will remember these two plucky young heroines from my historical fantasy fiction novel, ‘Following the Green Rabbit’, which celebrates its second book birthday today. To celebrate, and in a shameless bit of book promotion, I’m offering the Kindle version at the special price of $2.99 (or your local currency equivalent) until the end of August. You can find it here: mybook.to/GreenRabbit
If you’ve read any of my books you’ll know that animal characters feature somewhere in all of them. Sometimes they just hop in and hop out again, like the baby rabbit in The Silver Locket, or Astra, the small back cat with the white star on her forehead, who wanders in and out of Following the Green Rabbit. Others play a much more prominent role, like little Toti, the Professor’s small sidekick in Song of the Sea Goddess or these two, pictured above.
You can always rest assured that no animal in any book I write will ever come to any permanent harm. And, fellow authors, I’ll tell you, I become deeply distressed if you kill off one of your animal characters, never mind the fact your story might demand it! If an animal appears in a book I’m reading, I start to fear for its safety and I’ll frequently page though the book to find out whether it makes it to the end.
I write for my own pleasure and that, I hope, of my reader too. None of my novels are particularly serious. All are spattered with at least an element of fantasy, and a handful of quirky characters, especially clever animal characters, tend to come with the territory. Or at least they do in my writing. All my principal characters have a responsibility to contribute to the plot and to move the story forward; they have a duty to draw each other out and offer one another opportunities to demonstrate different facets of their personalities. The non-human players are no exception.
My animal characters frequently feature in my favourite scenes and I particularly enjoyed writing those which included Asmar and Fingers in my Liverpool-based book, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. These for me are the superstars of my pages, but from what part of my imagination did they spring?
Asmar the cat belongs to Cynthia, a charming and independent woman ‘of a certain age’. Her cat is the perfect match for her, an exotic Abyssinian, both beautiful and intelligent, with an instinct for tracking and a sense of adventure. The ‘real’ Asmar, both in name and appearance, was a cat that belonged to the chef-patron of a tiny restaurant in a village in northern France where we stayed on holiday, many years ago. With a gentle nature and an enigmatic bearing, he stepped delicately into the role.
Fingers is the naughty young monkey who accompanies Bob in his transit van, doing errands and striking slightly dodgy deals for his market-trader gran, with whom he stays. Both characters might well be referred to as ‘scallies’ in scouse (Liverpool) slang: ‘rascal or miscreant, scallywag.’ But these two aren’t malicious or wicked, they just do a bit of ‘dodging and weaving’ to get by. They represent many people of the time: the book is set in the 1980s, when the city was at its lowest and jobs were very hard to come by.
The excerpt below, is one of my favourite chase scenes. It also includes a potential cameo appearance for my husband, sitting in a battered red Ford Capri, which he used to drive back in the late 1980s – just in case the book is ever made into a movie😉.
Excerpt from You’ll Never Walk Alone
Gary pounded down the road following the sound of Bob cursing. He soon caught up with him. Bob was clutching a lamp-post by the entrance to Princes Park. He was breathing heavily. Bob nodded to the road opposite. “He headed off up Princes Road there,” he gasped, “following that cat of Cynthia’s.” He caught his breath and shook his head, “I dunno what’s got into him.”
Gary scanned the road in front of them. A movement caught his eye. “There he is,” he pointed to a bench on the central area between the two carriageways which formed the once elegant boulevard. “The cat’s there too.”
The two animals perched on the graffitied bench, watched as Gary jogged towards them. Bob followed a little way behind. Gary slowed down as he neared the bench, then suddenly Asmar leapt down and scurried away further up the road. Fingers chattered excitedly and followed, loping after the cat.
“They’re off again,” Gary shouted over his shoulder to Bob who was already lagging behind him. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch the little blighter.”
“Right behind you,” Bob called out breathlessly.
Gary set off at a run this time. He’d been a good sprinter in school and was determined to catch up with the little monkey who would surely tire soon. Asmar, no doubt, could keep this up for a while, but then he could look after himself. As Gary narrowed the gap between them, Fingers changed direction and headed for the trees which lined the pavement on the left-hand side of the road. Swinging from branch to branch, he continued after Asmar, who’d also crossed the roadway and was hugging the low wall below the swaying branches.
Gary raced on keeping both animals in sight. As the trees came to an end, Fingers dropped down onto the wall below. Asmar changed direction and headed down a side street on the left. Fingers was now on the other side of the wall and Gary lost sight of him, but he could see Asmar trotting along the pavement. The cat looked purposeful, as if he knew exactly where he was going, and there was no doubt in Gary’s mind that Fingers was following him. He would just have to do the same. He turned to see Bob some way behind, he waved and pointed where they were heading next.
The wall ended and Fingers emerged just behind Asmar who shot across the road. Gary heard the sound of an engine and turned to see a car coming around the corner. Fingers was loping across the road following the cat, totally unaware of the danger from the oncoming vehicle. Gary stepped off the pavement waving his arms in the air. The car driver slowed. Gary could see the driver was mouthing something at him. He glanced the other way to see Fingers safely across the road, then turned back to the driver who was shaking his head at him. Gary shrugged and mouthed ‘sorry’ at the driver. As the car drew level with Gary, the driver continued to shake his head, mouthing an obscenity before accelerating away.
A classier and tidier version of the car my husband used to drive
Unfazed, Gary jogged across the road. Up ahead, Asmar had stopped and was sitting on the pavement licking a front paw. Fingers was nowhere in sight. Gary scanned around. Then he saw the little monkey perched on the bonnet of a tatty red Ford Capri which was parked at the kerbside. Fingers had his back to Gary and was peering at the driver through the windscreen. The man was hunched down in his seat as if trying to remain unobserved. Gary walked slowly towards the car, hoping to scoop Fingers up before he noticed his approach. He watched as the man in the Capri sank down even further behind the small steering wheel. Fingers had turned his attention to the car’s aerial and was prodding it curiously, watching as it sprang back and forth. Gary was level with the bonnet of the car; he sprang forward, grabbing Fingers around the middle with both hands. Fingers squeaked in surprise and wriggled furiously, but Gary had him firmly in his grip. Fingers clutched at the aerial trying to resist capture, all the time screeching in protest. Gary glanced at the driver who was furiously gesturing for them to get away from the car. Gary pulled, Fingers held onto the aerial. Suddenly it snapped and Fingers ricocheted into Gary’s chest, brandishing the broken aerial aloft. Gary looked at the driver. His hands were gripping the steering wheel and his head was resting between them. Gary sprinted off clutching Fingers to his chest and ducked into the first back alley he came to.
Gary leant against the rough brick wall. Fingers had quietened down and was sitting calmly in his arms, still brandishing the car aerial. Gary peered around the corner into the street but all was quiet. The driver was still in his car. He sank back onto the wall.
“Gaz! Gaz! Where are yer?” Gary heard Bob shouting as he hurried up the road. “Alright, mate,” he said cheerfully, knocking on the window of the Capri. “Have you seen a fella chasing a monkey? Must’ve come down ‘ere.”
“Come on, here’s Bob now,” said Gary to Fingers. “Over here,” he called to Bob, as he emerged from the alleyway. Gary watched Bob shrug his shoulders at the occupant of the Capri. “Suit yerself,” he muttered.
Seeing Bob, Fingers let out a loud chirrup. Gary set him down on the pavement as Bob held out his arms to the little monkey. No sooner had he done so, Asmar appeared from the other side of the road meowing loudly. Fingers turned towards the cat who immediately changed direction and dashed off up the road.
“Oh no you don’t mate,” said Bob reaching down to pick Fingers up, but the little monkey was too quick for him. Gary almost got a hand under him, but he bolted off after the cat, dropping the aerial in the road.
“Here we go again,” said Gary turning to follow.
“Hold on, Gaz, I don’t how or why, but look,” he nodded his head at the two animals who were now sitting on a low wall at the corner of the street. “They’re waiting for us to go after them. I’m sure of it.”
“So we just follow them?”
Bob shrugged. “Seems weird, but I guess so.”
You’ll Never Walk Alone is available from Amazon in paperback and ebook and on Kindle Unlimited USA~ UK ~ CAN ~ AUS~ IND ~ the rest of the world
Stretching out your hand towards the familiar face, the one you remember from the mirror, your fingertips brush lightly over the surface of the tank; the occupant’s eyes blink open and the mouth gapes back at you in surprise – or is it horror? Recoiling from the unexpected engagement, you step back, a silent oath escaping your lips, as your companion – or rather, your colleague – takes you gently by the elbow and steers you to a desk in the corner of the room.
Gazing nervously over your shoulder, you look down at the journal that lies open before you. Recognizing your own handwriting, your eyes explore the text, the calculations, the diagrams – it’s all here – your head whips around once again and the face which floats behind the glass implores you: end this!
Mind whirring, you page desperately through the journal’s dated entries – puzzle pieces click and unclick, form and re-form – you sweep the journal from the desk and rush from the room, through the door and into the corridor; footsteps follow as you hurtle down the stairs to the exit, where you throw open the fire escape doors and run into the street; your only instinct is to flee… straight into the waiting arms of the blank-faced orderly.
He eases you into the waiting wheelchair and pushes you back into the building where the homely-looking nurse in her crisp white uniform stands waiting, clipboard in hand; she smiles: ‘Welcome back, Dr Conel, we’ve been expecting you.’
Confused? You might be! Read previous episodes of The Facilityhere.
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