Unique Times

Happy Monday Everyone!

It’s with great pleasure that I give you the inside scoop of Selma Martin in her own words but first I wanted to chime in on the buzz on the blogosphere.

A quick shout out to her on her wonderful new Poetry Book: In The Shadow’s Of Rainbows out on Kindle for Pre-sale NOW!. She needs no introduction since she is making a splash all over social media with her great marketing and the amazing 5 Star reviews she has already received.

“Selma’s poems leave indelible marks on your heart clearing the storm, and leaving rainbows etched there. Each word sends knowing chills from darkness to light”.

She hasn’t missed a beat is sharing her well thought words through each of her poems that are often influenced by some of the great writers of poetry.

Each poem tugs at your heart inviting query of your own life as she invites you into her world with many lines that return often in her verses. My favorite is seeing rainbows on eyelashes that come from shadows that she has lived when tears turn to color and sheer bliss.

Selma spreads her love through her poems whether talking about deep subjects, her heart, her experiences and stories that bring introspection which invites you to do the same.

You can’t help but be drawn into your own life while pondering her poetry as she takes you with her through her journey.

I connect deeply with Selma’s love and gifts of nature where she spent many of days that inspired her in the same way they inspire me which makes this one of my favorite poems of hers:

Poetry 

I came out to write a nature poem out here by the silent trees cloaked in deep concentration
to prove my mind’s prowess.  Oh, if only the bees would stop buzzing
and the squirrels would hurry with their tasks! Ah, if the birds would cease chirping
and grant me peace and quiet at last.  I came out to write a nature poem about squirrels, birds, trees, and me, but I’ve been dazed with distractions— think I’ll go for a nature walk to see.  As I steal close to the duck pond,
I find them enraptured in lessons today, so I sit down to write my nature poem and hope that they don’t interrupt me.  But an owl hoots at me from a distance, and the cicadas start to sing,
butterflies pirouette on my shoulders, Geez, can’t a poet do anything?  I put aside pen and paper
And drift to the red hibiscus
Find a zunzuncito* in midair frisk 

But just who is Selma Martin?

To me she is one who buzzes around our atmosphere sending love and light to all of those she meets, participating in many prompts and always giving a shout out and sharing our work on social media, singing us praises. She has a fun whimsical way about her that always leaves a smile on my face. She is bright, deep and comical in her poetry with a diverse ability to tackle different styles of poetry always leaves her imprint on the deepest part of our soul.

Here are 9 things she wants you to know:

ONE:

At The Beginning

The year was 2017. There she was, getting her hands dirty in her garden and daydreaming about all she wanted to do with her patch of dirt after she retired. She had raised her children to adulthood, taught Japanese children to sing easy songs, to recognize common vocabulary words, and to distinguish and put together easy words into coherent English sentences, and persevered in learning as much Japanese as possible to get along: she was ready to explore the possibilities of a wild garden or at least to see where she could take the big piece of land that no longer played a part to her children’s entertainment in the wilderness the birds had created. So there she was when her husband gave her his old, still fully functional iPad. The good man had often offered to buy her a new one, but she refused, not wanting to get sucked into ‘needing’ something as vain as an electronic device. “Ok, I’ll take it,” she said, unsure she could convince herself to use it well. Never attracted to the tube, electronic gadgets, or talking on the telephone, the hand-me-down lay dormant until, one fine day, the husband came home and introduced her to internet radio. Now, listening to the radio, that was something she loved doing. With the advent of Internet radio, it didn’t take long to learn about podcasts. Soon, her sons helped her to discover iTunes and audiobooks. Ah, it was then that she fell in love with the iPad, which became her indispensable treasure—this is the reason for where Selma is today.

TWO

Sarah and The Vine
Selma would be doing Sarah a disservice if she didn’t tell you that Sarah was the first to say to her repeatedly that she was a Writer (with a capital W). Selma already wrote every day, and Sarah’s validation that this already made her a writer empowered Selma.
Surely, you must know Sarah Rhea Werner of the Write Now Podcast.

Selma heard this affirmation long enough that she started to believe it which inspired her to The Write Practice (TWP), the writing community responsible for making her open a Facebook account to participate in an internet writing competition.

From there, the vine extended to The Tribe Builders Network, started by Jeff Goins, the middleman that mentioned TWP in the newsletters she subscribed to.
Sarah is also responsible for encouraging Selma to start a website. Start it, she did, with the help of TWP, but it never took off until 2021.

THREE

Indeed!
She knew that Sarah R. Werner was right: she was a Writer!
But, Selma couldn’t tell anyone this as she didn’t feel comfortable in her skin yet. And so, she practiced earnestly at TWP.
Two months later, when Joe Bunting, the big guy at TWP, informed her that she was ready to write her first novel, she brushed him off.
But Joe already knew more about Selma than she did. Ultimately, Joe asked her to give him some money, and he and his team helped her to complete her first manuscript in a program Joe called The 100 Days Challenge.
By golly, it worked! 70,000 words miraculously appeared on that first try. Now mind you, if it hadn’t been for this Joe Bunting guy, those words, that story she never knew she’d been carrying inside, would never have seen the light of day. An entire novel!
“Is it good,” you want to know.
A shoulder shrug here, a wink there, and a “Methinkso!”

FOUR

Author Name
Jamili Selma Martinez was born to parents who did their best to raise her. She’s the second-born, but her sister died within the month of being born, so by virtue of being alive, Selma’s considered the big sister in her family of origin. Her mother always told her that losing her first baby that way made her extra careful and extra loving with her. Selma’s forever grateful for that; she feels love radiating from her ears and cannot contain herself. Love is the way to go.
Anyway, you will know this author as Selma because Selma, her middle name, which means Peaceful, is the name she identifies as.

FIVE

Humble beginnings
Selma was born in Corozal Town, Belize, a colony of Great Britain that you probably remember as British Honduras. The official name was changed from British Honduras to Belize in 1973, and full independence was granted in 1981. It’s the only Central American country whose native tongue is English.
Geographically situated between Mexico and Guatemala, Belize is also bordered on the east by the majestic Caribbean Sea, and the small country boasts the second largest barrier reef in the world, only second to Australia.

SIX

By the By
Selma has lived in Mexico and the United States of America for short periods and has lived in Japan for thirty-three years — a decade longer than in her native Belize. She loves Japan mostly because the people she loves most in the world all live here.
She is married to an amazing Japanese man she met in Chicago at a Sushi Bar; she entered alone, hoping to eat grilled sardines.
She loves fish—particularly sardines—grilled.

SEVEN

Imposter Syndrome

As you’ve gathered from TWO and THREE, after Sarah made her aware of who she was, she hardly had breathing space before she delved into novel writing. While writing her novel, she felt like a fake eighty-five percent of the time.

She went through The 100 Days Challenge at TWP several times, editing and adjusting things, and when she topped 100,000 words, she finally decided she needed to learn a way to say something with fewer words. That decision landed her in the poetry community at WordPress in 2021.
Selma still feels like an imposter, but far less than she did while writing the novel that she is determined to complete one day.

EIGHT

Shunning the Spotlight

Selma’s favorite pastime growing up was memorizing words and their meanings in the dictionary. This could have helped her enormously in every spelling bee, but, never one to crave the spotlight—
“I’d rather be a frogthan be the last onestanding in the middleof that stage.”
—she intentionally misspelled words. She never won a spelling bee. Such is life!

NINE

One Last Thing

Besides English, Selma’s fluent in Spanish and Japanese but a slow reader in any language. There’s just something about the written word that makes her want to linger on a page.
Readers are amazing humans… and Writers— well, among Writers is where she wants to be.

I hope you enjoyed these fun facts about her and insight into just who she is as a person and author and enjoy her book as much as I did.

CONGRATULATIONS Selma and all the best to you as you launch your book on July 15th!

The Kindle version of In The Shadow of Rainbows: A Collection of Songs of Presence is on preorder on Amazon at this time. In The Shadow of Rainbows: A Collection of Songs of Presence.The paperback version launches on July 15, 2023. You can follow Selma Writes, https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/135545397/posts/23510 ,and EIF- Experiments in Fiction, https://experimentsinfiction.com/2023/07/05/in-the-shadow-of-rainbows-now-available-for-pre-order/, for updates.

I rarely do reviews which is something I truly want to do more of after feeling so blessed by all of yours. It is a way I want to start giving back and I am going to try to do a monthly Fun-Fri-Yay review of books I’ve read but I must tell you I’m a slow reader. I will start with those from ages ago and wade my way through. I truly want to give back to our community in this way and will do my best to do so but as you know I’ll be knee deep in diapers soon. 🥹

Blessings,

💗

Cindy

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