Kaye Lynne Booth's Blog: Writing to be Read, page 68

Mind Fields: This is Where Your Fantasies Take You

I’ve lived in the world of my sexual fantasies for decades. There are times to put away the fantasy but first I must ask it why it was there in the first place. I’m seventy five years old. I’ve had enough sex in my life, with a number of partners. Men born in the forties and fifties grew up entitled, so they thought, to all the sex they could get. Turns out that things have changed and sex is no longer a perk of the boomer male. Sex is more complex because we became aware (some of us) to the fact that women have been treated with abominable cruelty, apparently forever. There is no style of feminism that comes close to redressing that injustice. I told my partner yesterday, “I’ve been so unfair to you.” It was true. My fantasies pulled me away from her. We are the same age.  She doesn’t’ conform to the image. She’s a granma. Of what sexual use is she? I’ve deleted post menopausal women from my sex fantasy life.

SO… I’ve come to a decision to put away the fantasy. I’m not really horny any more. This issue, the transition OUT of sexuality, is difficult. I‘ve been slow to release it and give it to the process of my emotional maturation. There is an evolution to such feelings. They have to be owned and then governed from within. Honesty is required. This inner transformation takes time and help from our therapists and peers. It’s been something of a wild ride for me but things are settling down. I’m revising my identity. I am an elder. I have been motivated by a sense of my having new tools at my disposal. New insights. I had wanted to bring them into a relationship and that relationship already exists, with my partner and with my peers.

The fantasy of falling in love is powerful. It can be all enveloping, overwhelming. Its allure is its intoxication with a sensual element. Everyone wants those feelings of love: until they have them. Then, it is often a case of getting what you wished for and discovering its unintended consequences. A new vulnerability exists, and a new responsibility. Things are never that easy. Falling in love brings the possibility of confusion and devastating betrayal. It’s a simple formula: one cannot make someone else happy. Don’t look for love to complete you. Be complete. It sounds so simple. It isn’t; but it comes at the right time, when one has prepared the way for being complete.

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Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.

Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, Confessions Of An Honest Man won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Bowlesian! – Detective Robot and the Murderous Spacetime Schism

Detective Robot and the Murderous Spacetime Schismby Jeff Bowles

We found victim one face down in a giant vat of beer. Red beer, frothy, churning and roiling in blood. Not precisely the best brew of the batch, I knew, but I couldn’t help wonder what it might taste like on a mechanical tongue.

“Detective Robot,” said Officer Allen, a short, stocky, often uncharitable young fellow who always seemed to smell of cooked sausage. “I can’t believe they called you out for this.”

I formed my golden jointed lips into a pleasant smile. “Why wouldn’t they have called? Rain or shine, we always get our man.”

My partner and fellow investigation consultant, Gorilla Todd, beat his big furry chest and pulled his lips back over his teeth.

“Step back, beat cop,” he said in his deep, gruff voice. “Let the man work.”

Gorilla Todd was five hundred pounds of hyper-intelligent simian. He was a post-nuclear, neuro-enhanced military lab experiment, lots of those wandering Grim Land. Bit of a bruiser, to be sure, but an honest and a loyal one.

“Thank you, Gorilla,” I said. “Officer Allen, must we really?”

Allen snorted. “Boy oh boy, you fellas need to learn your place. Are we still short-staffed on actual detectives? What’d you do to get the call on this? Grease a few palms? Robots run on grease, don’t they?”

Point of fact, we run on million-core supra-processors the size of toenail trimmings. But I wouldn’t expect a technologic druid like Allen to know the difference. We got the call because the Chief appreciated our work and professionalism. She requested us by name; the place was ours for the next few hours.

“Why a fusion brewery?” I said, taking in our surroundings.

“People don’t die in fusion breweries?” asked Allen.

“Usually not fashion models, no,” said Gorilla. “Not in the middle of the night.”

“And certainly not old women dressed up like them,” I said.

Allen blanched at this.

“Old women,” he said, scratching his head as he turned to face the vat. “Holy cow! She’s gone all pruney in the lager.”

“Ale,” I said. “Shall you fetch the net or shall I?”

* * * * *

Fusion brewing, popularized at the dawn of the last nuclear holocaust, involves the high-speed collision of plutonium-rich barley nuclei with the nuclei of hops machine grown in the atomic soils found in the ancient ruins of Hackensack, New Jersey. The resulting photonic explosion produces a bubbly, effervescent ale, light on the tongue, but with just enough zing to potentially threaten male fertility (as all nuclear beverages should).

Zippy Beer, or rather, Zippy Beer’s northeast production plant, did seem a rather strange place for homicide. Zippy was known throughout Grim Land as the safest, most environmentally conscious nuclear beer on the market. Fifty years without a tainted batch, their ocu-tisements often declared. Fusion belchers spat florid ale, sluicing through sloshers, roaring down pipeways, collecting and aging in anti-grav refrigeration closets.

I studied Allen carefully. He looked tired and overworked.

“I swear to God, she was young when I found her,” he said.

“Sure she was,” Gorilla Todd chuckled. “Makes all the sense in the world. Hey, mac, you been smokin’ them funny cigarettes?”

I tapped my chin with platinum fingers and examined the poor old dead dear. We’d pulled her from the vat and sprawled her out on the tiled factory floor. I searched and picked at her with the robo-pincers I used for toes.

“You’re having us on, aren’t you Officer Allen?” I said. “You see that high, high ceiling all those many meters up above? See how there’s no skywalk, no roof access?”

“Yeah?” said Allen.

“Now do you see this is the last vat in the line? Eleven vats down that way, but here, just the one. No ladder, either. Do you see?”

Gorilla Todd jumped to his feet and waved an arm over his head. “I know this one, robot! I know it!”

I nodded at him agreeably and opened up my chest slot with a bleep, bleep, bleep, CLACK. A high-protean banana cube flopped out and jiggled on the factory floor like jelly. All five-hundred pounds of Todd landed on it and gobbled.

“She materialized in the beer,” he said, smacking his lips. “And she aged on the spot. Some kind of schismatic time disruption, I think.”

“Very good, Gorilla,” I said. “You see, Officer Allen, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the—”

A hole tore open in the air above us. It went Riiiip, and then it stretched itself wide in a kaleidoscopic clash of colors and voices. Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, fell through and landed on Officer Allen with a heavy thud.

Gorilla Todd shouted, “Holy cannoli! Who is that?”

“It’s Abraham Lincoln,” I said. “And he’s been shot!”

I checked my tertiary memory banks to be sure. The beard, the hat, it was Lincoln, all right. Bullet wound in the back of the head. He wasn’t dead yet. Eyes fluttering, gasping, but not dead yet. He’d arrived only moments after his famous assassination. Remarkable. His body aged on the spot, grew older by the second. Wrinkles, thinning skin, hair gone long, gray, brittle.

Allen wheezed like strangled bagpipes. He gave a final stifled groan, then he lay his head back, twitched, and went limp. I rushed over and checked him for a pulse.

“He’s dead, Gorilla,” I said. “The Great Emancipator snapped his neck.”

“Hmph. Don’t look too great to me.”

“Granted, though I’m certain he’s not at his best. Struck down by a cowardly actor. That’s democracy for you. What precisely are we dealing with, Gorilla?”

“Black magic?” said Todd.

“Doubtful.”

“Sinister Martian technology?”

“Highly unlikely, though you earn top marks for making me chuckle. No, Todd, our suspect resembles nothing so much as thin air.”

“What do you mean?”

I walked over to another vat and kicked at the release valve until golden nuclear beer gushed out and sprayed my feet. Bending low under the faucet, I proceeding to fill my robot super stomach with hoppy ale.

My supple jointed fingers tapped a supple syncopated rhythm on my forehead. Performed a million mental processes. A million plus fifty. The span of a single human heartbeat.

“Eureka!” I exclaimed. “The cause of the murderous spacetime schism is—”

Rather out of the blue, a naked caveman came screaming at us from the shadows. He shouted, “Gooba! Blabba!” and then proceeded to club me over the head with a tree branch.

“Ouch!” I shouted. “Help me, Todd, you great galoot!”

Gorilla Todd ripped the branch away and roared a mighty challenge. The caveman roared back. His skin rippled with flash wrinkles, hair going brittle and gray, just like Lincoln’s. Hearty fellow, he attacked Todd, ripped out a chunk of gorilla hair and fish-hooked my simian companion.

“You rotten mook!” Gorilla shouted, caveman fingers sliding in and out of his mouth. He wrapped his meaty hands round the caveman’s throat and began to throttle the poor fellow.

“Gorilla, no!” I said.

Five new holes ripped open in the air above us. One long, continuous Riiiip, and that same kaleidoscopic clash. Out of the holes fell a cute orange kitten, a young renaissance painter, a popular ancient professional football quarterback, a potted cactus, and lastly, Richard Milhous Nixon.

Nixon crumpled to the ground, got one look at Lincoln and shrieked, “Jesus Christ! What happened to that poor bastard?”

All of them aged. The kitten grew, got fat, got skinny, and died. The renaissance painter, fingers covered in vibrant red and green oils, said something in Italian about unfinished masterworks, choked on his tongue, and summarily expired.

“We gotta do something, Robot!” said Todd, still choking the dwindling, gasping caveman.

“Do what?” I said. “And stop choking that caveman!”

Nixon died screaming, gurgling, clawing at the air.

“Todd,” I said, “we have to dump the beer!”

“The beer?” said Todd.

“It’s a bad batch! It must be. There’s no murderer here. Tainted Zippy Beer has caused a schism in space and time!”

Seven more air holes ripped open. From them dropped a sea bass, the Marquis de Sade, two members of a light contemporary jazz quartet, an earth worm, Eddie Murphy, and a two hundred twenty-five foot tall California redwood tree.

The redwood thudded to the factory floor, split the concrete, rose and sprawled, broke through the high white ceiling. The factory lights flickered. Ceiling chunks rained down on us.

“The beer, Todd! Dump it!”

Todd let go the shriveled caveman. He leapt for the redwood, scaled its trunk hand-over-hand. He braced himself against the vat, pushed at it with all his might.

“It won’t budge!” he said.

Three more air holes ripped open. A snail, a circus elephant, a street vendor holding tacos.

Think. Think.

I tapped a rhythm on my forehead.

“Eureka!” I exclaimed.

I leapt for the tree, climbed for a branch, squared my shoulders, and then I dove into the beer.

In haste, I began to drink it, slurp it all up. My robot super stomach swelled. Five hundred gallons. Seven hundred, a thousand. The roiling, bloody fashion model beer, it washed down my throat at a hundred-thousand PSI. Rushing, roaring through my alloy sternum. My body rocked and strained. I groaned like industrial machinery.

“It’s working, Robot!” said Todd. “The holes are slowing down!”

A riip here, small rip there. And then it stopped.

Bodies grew old and died; the redwood rotted, split. Half fell and crushed the factory wall. In rushed the night air, our arid post-nuclear wind. Our city out there—Grim City One—twinkled like starlight. Bricks and heavy steel beams and girders fell all around us. Clouds of dust lifted and lingered until well after relative stillness had filled the factory.

Gorilla Todd gasped from exertion. He stumbled down from the remnants of the redwood and sat against its trunk, eyeing the bodies, all the destruction.

“You did it, Robot,” he said. “You’re a friggin’ genius, you know that?”

Of course I knew. I also knew I was big as a house. Big like a beer vat and just as full. Body engorged, I looked like a head swimming in sea of scrap metal, jammed into the vat like some kind of sardine.

“Tainted spacetime-schismatic beer,” I wheezed. “I might have known! Perhaps a super-accelerated atomic contaminant—a mutation in the solitary photosynthetic apparatus, for instance—exceeded localized time dilation barriers and generated contiguous Einstein-Rosen pathways. And to think, Albert Einstein believed time was non-real!”

“Erm, Ein-who?” said Todd.

“Call in a containment unit, Gorilla. Call in the best they’ve got. And get the Chief down here, too. I fear, Todd, our troubles are just beginning.”

Gorilla Todd huffed. He pondered a moment, and then his thick brow lifted as realization dawned.

“Oh no,” he said. “You don’t mean….”

“Precisely,” I replied. “In approximately thirty-nine minutes, I will have to void my robo-bladder like a racehorse. The game, as they say, my dear Gorilla Todd, is afoot.”

END

Jeff Bowles is a science fiction and horror writer from the mountains of Colorado. The best of his outrageous and imaginative work can be found in God’s Body: Book One – The Fall, Love/Madness/Demon, Godling and Other Paint Stories, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces, and Brave New Multiverse. He has published work in magazines and anthologies like PodCastle, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, the Threepenny Review, and Dark Moon Digest. Jeff earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Western State Colorado University. He currently lives in the high-altitude Pikes Peak region, where he dreams strange dreams and spends far too much time under the stars. His latest novel, Resurrection Mixtape, is available on Amazon now.

Delilah and I need your support

The Kickstarter for Delilah and the Women in the West adventure series starts today and we need your support. You can show your support for as little as five dollars, and recieve a digital copy of the book in return. And there are signed print copies and other great rewards for the higher levels of support as well, including plus some pretty cool add-ons that I’m excited to share with you. I’m asking each one of you to click on the link below and check it out.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kayelynnebooth-wcp/delilah-women-in-the-west-adventure-series

Some of you may know why this book is so special to me, but I’ll briefly tell you, in case you don’t. Delilah was the first book I ever wrote. It started as an assignment meant to get me to write outside my comfort zone, and turned out to be a genre I truly enjoy writing. After I got it written, I received some feedback that caused me to make changes that affected the second half of the book.I had it in a publisher’s hands for five years, but they didn’t do a whole lotto promote it and they only sold a few copies. I tried two different covers for it, including one that I designed myself, and if I’m honest, they were both pretty awful.

When the contract was up, I got my rights back, revised the book to reflect the original story, and began developing the idea for this series. In the Women in the West adventure series, each book features a strong female protagonist and cameo appearances by bold historical female characters for a Western Women’s Historical Fiction series which may be the first of its kind. At this time, there are three books planned: Delilah the tale of a woman who overcomes all odds in the Colorado frontier as she sets out to avenge the wrongs done to her and rescue Sarah, her ward who was abducted. Sarah’s story after being traded to the Utes makes up the second book. The heroine of the third book, Marta, is a Mormon woman who we also met in Delilah, and her story tells us her fate after being abducted by the Utes and then returned to civilization.

Women in the West is going to be a great series. Delilah is scheduled for release on March 21, 2023, but Kickstarter supporters will recieve their digital copies early and for less than the 5.99 retail price. So please drop by and see what all the fuss is about. If a Kickstarter campaign doesn’t fund, or meet it’s goal, the creator doesn’t get anything, so your support will be greatly appreciated. I think Delilah is a wonderful story, which readers of westerns, historical fiction, or womens fiction will enjoy. Please come on over and join the campaign today.

Book Review: Lover’s Moon

Lover’s Moon is a part of Mark Leslie’s Canadian Werewolf series, with co-author Julie Strauss. This is the romance story that tells the tale of how the two lovers, Michael and Gail met. And since one of the lovers is a werewolf, I guess that makes it a werewolf romance.

Although the audio book has a version narrated by professional narrators, the version I listened to was a free podcast version on Spotify, narrated by the authors. Mark narrates Michael’s parts and Julie narrates the parts for Gail, and for me, they will always be the voices of those characters, because they did an amazing job.

Technically, this might be considered a podcast review. I mean, what do you call it when the authors release a serialized version of their audio book in a podcast format for their readers for free? I call it brilliant!

You too can enjoy this delightfully entertaining werewolf romance for free, and read by the authors here: https://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Moon/dp/B0B1Z3QBYB/

Lover’s Moon

You can purchase a copy of Lover’s Moon in ebook, print, or audiobook format here: https://books2read.com/b/loversmoon

My Review

After listening to the audio book, Canadian Werewolf in New York, I was in love with the characters of Micheal and Gail, and I was left with many questions. Michael was the P.O.V. character, so you knew where he was coming from, and he obviously has still has feelings for his old flame, and regrets for having to end the relationship. Gail appears again after a long period when she had been out of the picture and her character was a bit more unpredictable. It was clear that there is history between these two, and I wanted to know more.

Lover’s Moon is the tale of how Michael and Gail met, their relationship and their break-up. If you’ve never read a werewolf romance, this quirky tale might be just for you. Lefebvre’s Canadian Werewolf series isn’t horror with a lot of blood and guts, but stories told with a touch of humor from the human perspective of the werewolf, and Michael’s relationship with Gail is a touching one, with the ups and downs of a roller-coaster. Their story will steal your heart. It did mine. And co-writing with Julie Strauss, having her write, and narrate, the chapter’s that are Gail’s perspective absoulutely works. Her portrayal of Gail in the narration is priceless.

Lover’s Moon, by Mark Leslie and Julie Strauss, is a quirky werewolf romance that will steal readers’ hearts, and create a dire urge to read or listen to the rest of the series. What more could a reader ask for? I give it five quills.

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Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? You can request a review here.

Still 3 days left for the Smashwords End of Year Sale

You may have heard about the recent merger between Draft2Digital and Smashwords. Since WordCrafter Press publishes through D2D, that means that WordCrafter Press books are now available through the Smashwords Store, as well as through he retailers which they have always been available through. It also means that WordCrafter Press books are included in the Smashwords End of Year Sale. There are three days left to get all WordCrafter Press books at great discounts, many are free. WordCrafter Press books have never been this discounted before, so get them while you can. And there is a plethora of other indie books set at great prices, too.

https://smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

WordCrafter News

Delilah‘s Kickstarter campaign

I’m gearing up for the Kickstarter for Delilah and the Women in the West adventure series which starts on January 2, and runs through the whole month. This is a special project for me, because Delilah was my first completed novel, and she helped me to discover my love of writing in historic western settings. Originally published with Dusty Saddles Publishing, this WordCrafter Press edition has been revised and reverted back to the original story as a part of this wonderful western historical women’s fiction, with each book featuring appearances of historical female characters and strong female protagonists.

You can learn what all the excitement is about by visiting my pre-launch page, which will be the campaign headquarters once we launch. It runs through the whole month, from the 2nd to the 31st, and we have some great rewards and add ons available for you for your support, including copies of the ebook, signed copies of the print book, some of my short fiction in PDF and audio forms, an interview with Delilah’s character facilitated by Sara W. McBride, and a chance to name a character in Sarah, book 2 in the series, which will be scheduled to release in 2024. Please take a look at the pre-launch page and sign up for notificaation upon launch.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kayelynnebooth-wcp/delilah-women-in-the-west-adventure-series

And of course, I hope you will also support the campaign once it goes live. This is my first Kickstarter campaign, and I really want it to go well. My goal is $500 and I think I have a good chance of funding it. Any support you are willing to give will be greatly appreciated.

Blurb

Her homecoming from prison quickly turns into a quest for vengeance when she is brutally raped and left for dead, and her fourteen-year-old ward is abducted. Sheer will and determination take this tough and gritty heroine up against wild beasts of the forest, Indians and outlaws to Leadville, Colorado.

Can the colorful inhabitants of the Colorado mining town work their way into Delilah’s heart, offering a chance for a future she thought she’d lost along with her innocence?

If you like strong and capable female protagonists, you’ll love Delilah.

2023 Contest Theme Revealed

On January 1st, the 2023 WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest will be open for submissions. I grew up on Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Jonathan Kellerman, and John Saul, so for the 2023 contest, I want you to send me your scariest tales in the horror, dark fantasy and paranormal genres, with a 500 word limit. The winning story recceives a $25 Amazon gift card and and inclusion in the 2023 anthology.

Submission Guidelines

Genres: Paranormal, Dark Fantasy, Horror or any combination there of.

Length: up to 5000 words

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2023

Pay: Royalty share

Rights: First Anthology Rights and audio rights as part of the anthology; rights revert to author one month after publication; publisher retains non-exclusive right to include in the anthology as a whole. 

Open to submissions from January 1 through April 30, 2023.  

Submit: A Microsoft Word or RTF file in standard manuscript format to KLBWordCrafter@gmail.com

If you don’t know what standard manuscript format is, review, for example, https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/

Multiple and simultaneous submissions accepted.

Find some helpful tips for submitting short fiction here, but mainly just follow the guidelines.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Merry Christmas!

You’ve got better things to do with your Christmas day than to read lengthy blog posts, so I won’t post one.

Wishing you happy holidays from myself, WordCrafter Enterprises and Writing to be Read.

If you leave your holiday wishes in the comments and which of the books published by WordCrafter Press in 2022 is your favorite, I’ll send you a digital copy for free, but only if you respond on Christmas Day. After that, we’re on to New Year’s and 2023.

Book Review: The Necromancer’s Daughter

The cover for The Necromancer’s Daughter, by D. Wallace Peach is what first caught my eye. It promised an intriguing world, perhaps a winter wonderland, and at least one interesting character and of course, I just had to read the book. And I was glad that I did. This story is a skillfully chrafter hero’s journey, the protagonist thrown into an unfamiliar role which she hadn’t asked for with an objective that seems impossible to achieve.

Denied a living heir, the widowed king spies from a distance. But he heeds the claims of the fiery Vicar of the Red Order—in the eyes of the Blessed One, Aster is an abomination, and to embrace the evil of resurrection will doom his rule.

As the king’s life nears its end, he defies the vicar’s warning and summons the necromancer’s daughter. For his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade. Armed with righteousness and iron-clad conviction, the Order’s brothers ride into the leas to cleanse the land of evil.

To save her father’s life, Aster leads them beyond Verdane’s wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a wilderness of dragons and barbarian tribes. Unprepared for a world rife with danger and unchecked power, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son.

Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX/

My Review

The Necromancer’s Daughter, by D. Wallace Peach, is an exceptionally well crafted dark fantasy story, with well developed characters and a wonderfully crafted world of haves and have nots, with most fearing what they don’t understand. Peach has constructed a segregated world, where those of like kind are seperated and sadly, misunderstood. Into this world, she injects Aster, a reborn princess, raised as the necromancer’s daughter, since those who have been healed of death are not widely accepted in the mountains of Blackrock.

But when the King Aldring is murdered, leaving no other heir, the Vicar of the Red Order will do anything he can to prevent Aster from claiming the throne, including blaming the necromancer for the King’s murder, and sending she and her father into hiding. Her father is all she has in the world, and she flees to her mother’s people in the neighboring kingdom, in order to save him. In the strange land of Catticut’s forrest, with foes on all sides, Aster makes new friends in unlikely places, as she makes her way to her uncle, the King of Blackrock to make her plea, and hopes beyoond hope that he will aide her in rescuing her father.

I was totally engaged with Peach’s characters and completely emmersed in her world. I give The Necromancer’s Daughter five quills.

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Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? You can request a review here.

Dark Origins – Myths and legends of the Shona People #Shona #Zimbabwe #stonesculpture

Introduction

The Shona people are part of the Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The primary home of the Shona is Zimbabwe, where they are the majority ethnic group, as well as Mozambique and South Africa.

There are five major Shona language groupings/dialects as follows: Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Manyika, and Ndau.

Creation story

The Shona creation story goes as follows:

“God (Mwari) created the first man, Mwedzi (the moon) in a great depth of water. Mwedzi became lonely and yearned to live on land. Despite Mwari’s warnings, he insisted on being released to the earth. Once there, he found that the earth was indeed a lonely and desolate place and begged Mwari for a partner. Mwari sent him morning star (Hweva / Massassi) and the couple gave birth to all the vegetation on earth. After a period of two years, the lovers were separated, leaving Mwedzi desolate once again. He petitioned for another wife and was given evening star (Morongo / Venekatsvimborume) and together they gave birth to the herbivores and birds of the earth and then to boys and girls. Morongo also gave birth to wild animals and reptiles but then created a great sin when she mated with a snake. This snake eventually bit Mwedzi and made him ill. His illness marked the dawn of all human suffering.

The End.“

Read more about the creation story and other fascinating facts about the Shona people here: https://blog.rhinoafrica.com/2018/10/15/5-fascinating-facts-about-shona-people-of-zimbabwe/

Vadzimu, Ngozi and Mashave

The spirits of the ancestors are called Vadzimu and they are very concerned about their living family and their welfare. The most important Vadzimu are those of a person’s father, mother, grandmother and grandfather. If a message is to be passed on to Mwari, the spirit of the father is called upon to pass the message back to his father and so on until it reaches the ears of the deity himself. A Vadzimu of a chief is more powerful that that of a commoner as the ancestor spirit retains the position that the person held in life.

A Ngozi is the vengeful spirit of a person who was harmed during his life by any one of his close relatives. A Ngozi returns after death seeking retribution. A Ngozi is always dangerous and if the presence of one is suspected, his victim is banished from his family clan to do penance for a period of one to two years. On his return, he must offer a goat to the Ngozi in order to bring about a reconciliation.

The Mashaves are spirits of foreigners or of wanderers who died far away from their family clans and did not receive a proper burial. As a result, Mashaves are destined to roam restlessly through the bush until they find a living host in which to reside. If the host is unwilling to accept the Mashave, then s/he will become ill and a diviner is needed to transfer the spirit into the body an an animal and then drive the animal into the wilderness.

Alternatively, if the host accepts the Mashave, the sickness leaves immediately and the individual is initiated via a special ceremony into a cult made up of groups whose members possess similar Mashaves. These cult groups possess special skills imparted to them by the Mashaves such as midwifery and herbal lore.

Spirits in Stone: Sculpture

The art of sculpture has been practiced by the Shona since the 11th century. The first sculptures were based on ancient birds, which eventually became the national emblem of Zimbabwe.

Serpentine stones us used for the sculpture of Shona cult figures. This stone is sedimentary and comes in a variety of hardness’s and colours. Shona sculpturing is a means of expressing the relationship between the physical and the spiritual worlds and is used as a way of exploring legends, ancestry, beliefs and the human condition.

Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has become well known for its stone sculpture.

Zimbabwe Sculpture: a Tradition in Stone, Atlanta, USA, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport between concourses T and A Reconciliation by Amos Supuni

Writer’s Corner: Great Beginnings

Some opening lines are so well known as that the story can be identified just by them and nothing more.

“Call me Ishmeal.” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, 1984, 1949

Memorable opening lines like these are strokes of brilliance on the part of the authors, perhaps with a little luck and a bit of literary magic mixed in. But for the common author, the trick is to find the best opening possible, especially with the growing numbers of books and authors that are out there competing for readers. We need to find words that will make our work shine above the rest, words that will catch readers attention and draw them into the story, words that will be unique and memorable.

The beginning of a story can serve many purposes, only one of which is giving us a place to start. The opening sentences of paragraphs also need to draw readers’ interest, stirring questions that will make them want to read further, but they can also introduce the characters or offer a senseof place and time with vivid descriptions of setting. All my life I’ve heard about how important the opening lines of a story are, but it never really took root until I compiled five short fiction anthologies over the past two years.

My regular readers will remember that I sat on the editorial team for the Gilded Glass anthology and compiled a volume of Weird Tales to earn my M.A. in publishing. For new readers, who don’t know the story, we had over 600 submissions to comb through for Gilded Glass, and toward the end of the initial readings, if the beginning didn’t grab me right away, it was gone. There were just too many submissions to waste time on ones that I couldn’t engage with from the very beginning. This was rather painful for me, believe it or not, because I knew there were probably some good stories in there that just needed to be reworked a bit to become gems, and I didn’t have the time, or energy to find them.

On the other side of things, there were so many really good stories submitted that there was no way we could include them all, so many of the stories I truly loved didn’t make it into the anthology, and I felt it was a shame to have to turn them all away, so I kept a list of stories that I had fallen in love with, and after the final selection for Gilded Glass were made, I invited each author to have their stories included in a WordCrafter Press anthology. Not all of the authors accepted my offer, but enough did that I had material for three anthologies, and Once Upon an Ever After, Refracted Reflections, and the Visions anthologies were born.

Although I’ve strayed a bit in telling you all this, my point was that many of the stories included in those three anthologies got there because they had beginnings that were good enough to make me continue reading. Let me share with you three of my favorite story beginnings from the Visions anthology.

“I followed the two men down the beach for over an hour before I realized they were kidnapping me. I noticed howm far we’d strayed when the sun touched its reflection on the Carribean horizon, forming a perfect figure eight that shot rays of gold in all directions. The failing light and my primitive camera meant an end to the day’s photo shoot, so I decided to let them take me.

Julie Jones – “Tourist Trap”

“Tourist Trap” is one of my favorites because it not only does a great job of giving me a sense of place with its setting description, but also leaves me with several questions, which now must be answered because my curiosity has been picqued. The nonchallant delivery of the words gives the impression that our character is not concerned by what most people would consider to be unusual, and maybe even alarming, circumstances. Why? Come on. Be honest. Now that you’ve read the above paragraph, don’t you just need to read more?

“He came toward her. His body moved lithely and confidentely, muscles rippling under tight-fitting jeans and white T-shirt. Thick, black hair covered his well-shaped head with its tawny skin and lightly stubbled jaw.

She peeped at his eyes. Those mysterious eyes she’d heard about. Her stomach dropped, lips numbed, and a strange ringing started in her ears.His eyes shone amber in the late afternon sun, like a predator before the kill. Even if she hadn’t known who and what he was, those awful eyes with their many sides like a diamond, would have filled her with terror.”

Roberta Eaton Cheadle – “The Bite”

This visceral opening comes from the winning story from the 2022 WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest, “The Bite”, which is feaatured in the anthology. It sets the tone for the story, while offering hints about the characters, and stirring up just enough questions to make readers want to know more. Cheadle describes some very unusual eyes, and hints that this character is more than what he appears to be here. Who is this guy?

“I was staring out across the darkness of space, ignoring my hunger and isolation, when an alarm blared, startling me out of my meditations. I pulled my thoughts from where they’d wandered, sinking once again into my real-time brain, just as I pulled in my two-dozen tentacles in toward my body. Instead of presenting a sprawling mass, I was now a streamlined bullet.”

Leah Cutter – “The Survivor”

The opening for “The Survivor” offers up a lot of information about the setting and situation, and enough about the character to make readers curious, and make them want to read more. Who is this lone character in space? Obviously not a human. Why is the alarm blaring? Has Cutter picqued your curiosity as much as she did mine?

It wouldn’t be fair to use the openings of others without taking a look at one of my own, so let’s take a look at my contribution to the Visions anthology, as well. My story was “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, which was originally published in The Collapsar Directive anthology, by Zombie Pirates Publishing in 2017. Give it a look and see if you think I did my job well with this opening.

“The way everyone was acting, you’d think it was a crime to be happy. And looking back, maybe it was, or at least, it might as well have been.

I think it started on a Saturday, or maybe a Sunday, so no one really noticed at first, including me. Everyone had recieved their regular allotment of S-Dopa for the weekend, so if they noticed anything, they would have assumed I’d just recieved a double dose, which didn’t happen often, but it did happen. On Monday however, when I sang along with the radio which ws always playing in the background at the computer factory as we slaved away everyday, the others gave me sidelong glances, as if, perhaps, I’d lost my mind.”

Kaye Lynne Booth – “If You’re Happy and You Know It”

You can hear an audio excerpt from this story here: https://youtu.be/2X-7XiL3uHg or you can purchase a copy of Visions here: https://books2read.com/u/49Lk28

Which beginnings make YOU want to keep reading? I invite you to share your favorite beginning in the comments below. It will make it more of a conversation, (as Joanna Penn says).

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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