:thumb116069660::thumb193409018:

Greetings, all, and welcome to my second FABULOUS FRIDAY FEATURE! This week, I wanted to explore the theme of "pine forests," because I've been quite obsessed with that kind of imagery myself, lately At times I kind of had to stretch the theme a bit - some of the pieces are made FROM pine or represent pines or forests. I do hope you enjoy, though! I have also specifically chosen the journal for this theme, so if you like it don't forget to check out the credits at the bottom!

FABULOUS FRIDAY FEATURE

I've decided that now that I've got this fabulous premium membership, I should take the opportunity to get the word out about other deviants and their magnificent work! If you've got someone you think should be featured in next Friday's Feature, send me a note with a link to their gallery and I'll take a peek

I'd also love to hear about other features, particularly themed ones. I'll list those in the bottom section to help spread the word! The same goes for contests or news articles!

Please favorite this journal and pass it on! If you liked this, don't forget to check out last week's feature: fav.me/d5guswg



Visual Art

:thumb255728298: :thumb317852068:

Literature

Of treesDeep ghost-groves of freckled aspen
burn white beneath the winter sun,
whisper hoary adulation,
canticles for the Holy One.
And in the trees, the spirits dance
betwixt the motes of starry snow
illuminated by the lance
of lightning flash and candle glow.
All lights within this place combine,
reflect in splendour, white on white,
and mingle in a trance sublime
that breathes in peace through winter night.
The lofty heads of stately pine
rear up and brush the lowered sky
as if they could, by straightened spine,
so please the God who built them high.
Their incense needles, fragrant, fall
in silence to the chapel floor
and still above, they shade the hall
where ghosts who come by night adore.
Black on black, and brown by green,
create a hush bereft of light
where one may linger safe, unseen,
and sleep in peace through winter night.

Mature Content

Pine TreeHibernating heart of mine –
Drying winter’s skin chapped
like crenellated bark of pine.
No spring dawns in human sap.
Another arctic embrace
wrapped around needles, lasting
beyond another breathy pace.
Cores bound, to bear seasonal fasting.
Alternating freezing of roots
warning of a drought to come.
Winter weather never so unkind
before, when peeling to reveal the suits
of wood flesh in man’s drum.
I’m in a pine tree frame of mind. Storm of Pine and SageThe damp air smelled of pine and sage and wet asphalt, pouring in through the three open windows to cling to her campfire-scented shirt.
She watched as chipmunks and squirrels and other creatures fled from the roaring engine, the merciless wheels, and smiled as the wind and occasional stray raindrop ripped at her in her metal shell.
Music and thunder sang to her, and in the backseat she felt the air grow warmer and damper with the promise of a storm of pine and sage and rain to wash away all that dust.
trees.she climbs frozen limbs until she's soaring over the horizon line and the trees around her don't look so tall. she can see the branches beneath her dragonfly toes fanning out like an aged deck of cards. she mimics it in the spread of her toes and in the fingers grasping at its boughs. she's inhaling clouds and breathing them out as smokey contentment. the bark scrapes at her paper-thin skin and leaves its mark in the crescents of her fingernails. its branches grasp at her hair and carelessly tug at its golden strands marked with the fading light of the sun. there's sunspots in her eyes and freckles making a pilgrimage across the smooth plane of her face.
she's happiest here among the deadspaceclouds and the airpockets found in the swaying conifers. she sells sedimentsshe spoke like pine trees
and walked about as if
snow was stapled to her soles.
she drank from the mountains,
holding sediments beneath her skyblue
tongue and told me:
it tastes just like your heart;
ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLD
:thumb288690574: A Forest at MorningI dreamed of trees. Bright boughs and blooms
Through gloom and morning spilled
While I brushed back their silver leaves
That sunlit skies had filled
With gilded wash--the vermeil sight
Above the dusky bark
Seemed starry trains above the moon
And night's enclosing dark
And I stepped under such a sky:
New-formed, bejeweled, and bright
And wished I could forever dwell
Within its dim half-light.
There nothing stirred; no beast or bird
Dwelt in the forest there
Though I heard silent rivers trill
Still wand'ring swift and fair
Through banks embraced by cattail roots;
Through drooping willow leaves
That rustled in the water's rush
Bereft of any breeze.
Oh, I stepped under such a sky
Composed of darkling boughs
Flushed with the swell of morning leaves
All silver-gold endowed
'Till awe forestalled my reaching foot
And stilled the step, half-made--
And oh! to breathe seemed mortal sin
As if each sound betrayed
Whatever heaven I had found.
But when I breathed at last
And put my foot upon the grou
Rose Marieyou buried the dead bird
we found at the bottom
of the ditch near your house
pine needles rested over
the small grey mound
slender and burnt orange
you taught me quietly
about ghosts as i
crouched on the ground
making crisp snapping sounds
with the needles gathered
in my hands miniature pine treethe pageant of the mind must rest
without its winner;
this mortar thrown at rust and space
to keep the organ in suspense
and waiting to be made
while behind a knob, the onion wilds
through
dock leaves
red ants
black medic
and other beings the sun believes in.
i’ve lived you long enough
to end.
thanks for the advice.
'Over Hazelton'
Cloud shrouded mountaintop
Her green shoulders covered with clefts
And an endless carpet of Lodge-Pole pine: slender and straight as reeds.
"Over Hazelton"

Community News, Features, and Fun(ny) Things

Community Portal: October 7thNews
Love dA Lit: Issue 97
If you'd like to have something added/mentioned in this journal or the article please send me a note!
HugQueen
About Love dA Lit
Love dA Lit aims to promote volunteer opportunities, various resources, prompts, challenges, and workshops, as well as highlighting various contests, and spotlighting a specific group every week. This is by no means a complete list of all the literature going-ons, merely a tool to help you get involved and stay informed.
Love dA Lit is published every Sunday, by HugQueen via news article, and the Community portal will be updated in accompaniment with it!
Literature Links!
There is no 'Lit Community'
Inner Divinity Contest! FINAL WARNING! You have ONE DAY to finish up your entries! The contest folder will be closed as of 11:59PM tomorrow, October 31! Thanks so much to everyone who has entered so far! If you're in need of inspiration, consider checking out the current submissions: http://wordsmiths-guild.deviantart.com/gallery/39247216
Yes, that's right! I'm starting up another contest to try and revitalize the group. AND WE'VE GOT PRIZES!
So here's the concept:

This contest is all about celebrating inner divinity. Poetry, at least for me, is always about the spiritual on some level. In this contest, I invite you to try to explore an aspect of your spiritual self by writing from the perspective of a deity of some kind.
Let me emphasize: you do not have to be religious for this contest prompt to work. Go out and find a deity from a religion - ANY religion from ANYWHERE in the world (I will also accept saints) - that you identify with on some level.
Feel fre
The Favorites Project #168, #169, #170:iconlitplease:
Presenting the LITplease Favorites Project!
Quick Notes
Anyone can (and should) suggest any piece of quality lit! Scroll below for our guidelines and details.
Feature #168

Elysian Autumn by melodythelittlepony
....and is it because
you are not
quite as
gentle
as me
that I
fear and despair?....read more
Suggested by: LadyofGaerdon
Featured by: 
LadyofGaerdon Vigilo 
xMotherMoonx  awholelotofflowers Raneva
Feature #169


Why we were not meant to touch by crossing-ariel
....If I leaned close into yo The Ladies of Lit: Volume XXVWelcome to volume twenty-five my Literature series, The Ladies of Lit!
  
The premise here is simple. Below you will find an assortment of Literature features from a selection of female deviants here on DeviantART, all of them suggested by you. In this article, you will also find a variety of other things of interest, including:
This article’s deviant spotlight: featuring the lovely UntamedUnwanted. She has offered to answer a few questions as well, to tell us a bit about what inspires her writing and which piece in particular she favors.
Additional information about our upcoming events, including a special critique Q and A session in our official TheLadiesofLit chatroom. And we also have a selection of other interesting Literature news links to share with you.
Our “meet our contributors” section. Be sure to
Fantastic Feature Tuesday #14hello!
this is a weekly feature of amazing literature that i come by during my
travels across deviantart. this is only a small sample of a vast amount
of wonderful pieces of literature written by absolutely fantastic
writers. each deviation was carefully selected from a writer's gallery
based on structure, impact and word usage. i try (try!) to feature
deviants who get less spotlight than others and i will never feature the
same person twice.
these are truly some spectacular works and i urge to you take a look! i only pick the best, you know! (;
please take the time to read through each one - seriously, it takes five minutes - and be sure to the journal! (:



:thumb299719690: someone's october by moondrums
----
while i'm here i just want to apologize for being so inactive lately, and i don't only mean my lack of Maim Your Protagonist Halloween ContestYou create them. You love them. You nurture them. You literarily give them the world as their playground. 
And then you put them through hell. 
Here at lacoterie we want to see exactly how rough you can be on your protagonists, and, in honour of Halloween, we're bringing you a contest to do just that. 
The Rules
Protagonist must be maimed in course of narrative.
 55-1000 words, prose. 
 No obvious maiming - i.e. legs, arms, heads*.
 Maiming must cause some sort of problem for protagonist (i.e. it can be a papercut, but that papercut better do a helluva lot of work to impact the narrative. like. earth-shattering epic papercut).
 Protagonist must hate themselves at the end.
 There are more ways to cause injury than harming the body.
Incorporate a wedding (in honour of betwixtthepages); how you incorporate it is entirely up to you, but it needs to be in there somewhere.
Must
30 Writers You Should Discover: Volume XIWhat's This?
Below you will find a new assortment of various writers on DeviantART who are worth getting to know. All of their respective galleries are packed full of tremendous works that I enjoy and hope that you will too. And, if there is a writer that may not be listed in this edition, you may wish to read the first 12 Shades of Red12 slightly different shades of red.
(According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_red) Also note that these are not going to be exact, but only the general idea.)
Falu Red
Falu red or Falun red (in Swedish Falu rödfärg) is the name of a Swedish, deep red paint well known for its use on wooden cottages and barns. The paint originated from the copper mine at Falun in Dalarna, Sweden. The traditional color remains popular today due to its effectiveness in preserving wood.

Scarlet
Scarlet (from the Persian säqirlāt) is a bright red color with a hue that is somewhat toward the orange. It is a pure chroma on the color wheel. It is redder than vermilion. Traditionally, scarlet is the color of flame. It may also refer to the color of the blood of a living person.
:thumb5818
Autumn Alliance Contest!All right, boys and girls, and variations thereof (woo Doctor Who reference.......note to self: don't type up contest blogs while hyper!)
Yes, that's right I said CONTEST BLOG! :iconpanicatthediscoplz:
To try to make up for my most woeful absence of late (and also because it will be FUN) I have decided to hold a Lit-Visual-Alliance contest. Contests, actually. Rotating contests based upon the seasons.
:iconlit-visual-alliance:
What is the Alliance, you ask?
The Alliance is a project group intended to encourage visual and literary artists to work together. I've felt for some time that the dA Literature Community can at times be somewhat insular - to its detriment. We in the Lit Community are also sometimes prone to griping about the lack of exposure our work receives when compared to that of visual artists. So in the spirit of ^thorns brilliant  TWG's Featured Deviant of the Month - October 2012 Hello, lovely members! LadyofGaerdon here to continue our series:

Featured Deviant of the Month 

 for
 :icontalentedwritersguild:
 October's Featured Deviant is..........
 
:iconstardivider1plz::iconstardivider3plz:
:iconexistencewesummonyou:
ExistenceWeSummonYou 
:iconstardivider1plz::iconstardivider3plz:
TalentedWritersGuild is a literature group committed to the encouragement, collection, and archival of high quality prose and poetry works. To find out more about the group, please click here.
 Here at TalentedWritersGuild, we encourage deviants to select only their best pieces of literature for submission. As judges, we look for pieces that simultaneously move us, challenge us, and inspire us as readers; pieces that stimulate us emotionally and intellectually; and the pieces that display true technical skill. When we vote,




Visual Art
Just up:
Coming Soon: whenever I get around to it - a wendigo


Prose
Short Stories
Just up: The Love Song of H Philip Lovecraft
Coming Soon: The Dream-Makers - Part III (Not a chance in hell!)
Not-So-Short Stories
Just up:
Coming Soon:


Poetry:
Just up:
Coming soon: Whatever strikes me

100 Poem Project
Current progress: 59/100
journal: azizriandaoxrak.deviantart.com…
blog: 100-poem-project.blogspot.com/
Also note that the terribly sweet SayaStarshine took a look at my list and decided she wanted to do it, too! She is using the same topics as me, and you can find the link to her stuff here.

Designed by KovoWolf & coded by sergbel