{Exclusive Poem} Flight to the Deep by Sarah Porter & Carolyn Turgeon

Check out the Splash into Summer Main Pages at 
A Backwards Story, and Mermaid Vision Books 
where you can access the schedule!
You can also go here to get involved!

I've previously reviewed MERMAID by Carolyn Turgeon! Carolyn has also done an interview, guest post, and vlog with me, and I'll be working with her again in August to promote her new book FAIREST OF THEM ALL. I've also reviewed her non-mermaid (Though still swishy!) novels GODMOTHER and THE NEXT FULL MOON.

I've also reviewed LOST VOICES, WAKING STORMS (and explored its mythology!), and THE TWICE LOST by Sarah Porter. I've also done an interview with Sarah and featured her splashy guest post!

I love both of these ladies so much, and they've collaborated to bring us a beautiful, splashy treat.
I hope you'll love it as much as I already do!

~*~

Carolyn Turgeon is the author of five novels: Rain Village (2006), Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story (2009), Mermaid (2011), which is being developed for film by Sony Pictures, and The Next Full Moon (2012), her first and only book for middle-grade readers. Her latest novel, The Fairest of Them All, comes out in August 2013 from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster and is about Rapunzel growing up to be Snow White's stepmother. She lives in Pennsylvania and New York and teaches fiction writing at the University of Alaska at Anchorage's Low-Residency MFA program. She's currently at work on a new novel about Dante's Beatrice, set in thirteenth-century Florence.

Visit Carolyn at I Am A Mermaid for all kinds of splashy mer-treats,
on her website, Facebook, and Twitter!

Sarah Porter is a writer, artist, and freelance teacher. She teaches creative writing workshops in the New York public schools via Teachers and Writers Collaborative; she's worked with kids in grades K-10, but has focused on junior high and high school for the last several years. She doesn't think she would have written a YA novel if it weren't for that experience! Reading her students' intense, passionate poetry and stories recalled her own emotions at that age. LOST VOICES was her attempt to write the book she most needed as a twelve-year-old struggling with what it means to be human: a book she never really found. She lives in Brooklyn with her wonderful husband Todd, an artist and fabricator of electronic art, and their cats Jub Jub and Delphine. She has an M.F.A. from City College.

Visit Sarah on her website!

  ~*~

Flight to the Deep

by  Sarah Porter and Carolyn Turgeon

The ocean looks into me, echoes my form with its coiled lights,

And I can forget that its eyes are not my own.

I remember the world above, where I left him, where he waits now, 

Wondering if I will return. I will not return.

There is beauty enough here to veil any memory,
And the whales' cries will drown out his voice.

If I never sleep, I'll forget that there was anything else
But this: the ocean splitting on all sides of me. 

The luxuriance of waves meets empty air above,

But those who walk through that thin medium are heavy,

Dragged down by hearts like clay.

I used to dream about a place where I'd be free--

From this water always pressing in, the salt in my eyes, 

The medusas, plankton, seahorses catching in my hair...

But the weightless sky can crush what the sea cradles.

My freedom is green and deep, and its sun streaks in fingers,

Not with the slap of a burning palm on lucid fins.

I swim away from him now, away from the sky, 

From palms that burn, from clay hearts

And legs that ache, as if knives cut into them. 

O F F I C I A L   I N F O:

Title:  MERMAID
Author: Carolyn Turgeon

Release Date: March 1, 2011

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group / Random House

SUMMARY:

Princess Margrethe has been hidden away while her kingdom is at war. One gloomy, windswept morning, as she stands in a convent garden overlooking the icy sea, she witnesses a miracle: a glittering mermaid emerging from the waves, a nearly drowned man in her arms. By the time Margrethe reaches the shore, the mermaid has disappeared into the sea. As Margrethe nurses the handsome stranger back to health, she learns that not only is he a prince, he is also the son of her father's greatest rival. Sure that the mermaid brought this man to her for a reason, Margrethe devises a plan to bring peace to her kingdom. 

Meanwhile, the mermaid princess Lenia longs to return to the human man she carried to safety. She is willing to trade her home, her voice, and even her health for legs and the chance to win his heart... 

A surprising take on the classic tale, MERMAID is the story of two women with everything to lose. It will make you think twice about the fairy tale you heard as a child, keeping you in suspense until the very last page.

Title:  LOST VOICES
Author: Sarah Porter

Release Date: July 4, 2011

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

SUMMARY:

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below, but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. 

Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: the mermaids feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their enchanted voices to lure ships into the rocks. Luce possesses an extraordinary singing talent, which makes her important to the tribe—she may even have a shot at becoming their queen. However her struggle to retain her humanity puts her at odds with her new friends. Will Luce be pressured into committing mass murder? 

The first book in a trilogy, LOST VOICES is a captivating and wildly original tale about finding a voice, the healing power of friendship, and the strength it takes to forgive.

~*~