Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 20

You chose What Happens Next. Now here’s Chapter 2 of our serial novel The Defenestrations (Updated daily).

Photo by Benjamin Talon The Defenestrations Chapter 2 by Allan Carreon Part 1 He thought he was dead. Two seconds later, he realized he was thinking, so he was probably not dead. Iñigo leapt to his feet, a throbbing mass of pain, then saw his phone was damaged. How the hell was he going to […]

Our serial novel The Defenestrations is here. Read the complete Chapter One here, then choose What Happens Next.

All photos by Jessica Zafra The Defenestrations Chapter 1 by Jessica Zafra Part 1 He should’ve known better. Granted, it does not follow that if your forebears met untimely deaths through a window, a similar doom awaits you. Windows, as far as we can tell, cannot commit murder. And yet, if he had given a […]

Our serial novel The Defenestrations begins now. Read Chapter One here.

The Defenestrations Chapter 1 by Jessica Zafra He should’ve known better. Granted, it does not follow that if your forebears met untimely deaths through a window, a similar doom awaits you. Windows, as far as we can tell, cannot commit murder. And yet, if he had given a modicum of thought to his family history, […]

Starting Monday: The Defenestrations, a serial with many authors, including you!

This is the window at Prague Castle where the Defenestrations of 1618 happened. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, poster by Bubblestan. How it works: 1. “Defenestration” is the act of throwing someone out of a window. The Defenestrations is a serial novel that begins in Prague, site of the most famous defenestrations in history. Each chapter […]

Let’s discuss The Remains of the Day, our Bibliophibians selection for January

* * * * * I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day in the mid-90s, just before the Merchant-Ivory movie came out. I may have speed-read it and missed many of its subtleties, and it is the sort of novel where the most devastating revelations are purposely unsaid. Every time I read Ishiguro […]

Podcast Ep 5: Know your rights! with our lawyer, Von Cuerpo

On this PODCATS (not a typo) Can your parents charge you rent? (Hell, yes.) How do you write a will? Can you leave your property to your cats and dogs? How do you get someone certified bonkers? What’s a common-law marriage? If a gay couple splits up, who gets the condo they both paid for? […]

Books are not clutter. Declutter something else.

This is what I think of decluttering my bookshelves. Thank you, Drogon. What’s your self-help guide, Fahrenheit 451? Crammed bookshelves are a good thing. Empty bookshelves = empty minds. Books I can live without, I stuff in a box and give away. Books that I love, I live with. There are a lot of them. […]

Decluttering is Fahrenheit 451-ing. Books are not clutter. Books are lives you are abandoning.

This is what I think of decluttering my bookshelves. Thank you, Drogon. Crammed bookshelves are a good thing. Empty bookshelves = empty minds. Books I can live without, I stuff in a box and give away. Books I love, I live with. There are a lot of them. So we have come to this. Throughout […]

A new Hercule Poirot for these dark times (Though everyone in history thinks they’re living in dark times)

David Suchet’s Poirot was a kind of super-intelligent, eccentric, cuddly penguin. Whenever I am glum, or dispirited, or my brain won’t shut up so I can’t sleep, I put on the long-running British-made Hercule Poirot TV series starring David Suchet as the fussy Belgian detective. I have not read Agatha Christie, but I have seen […]

100 Favorite Books, 2019 edition

The annual list of titles I recommend to anyone looking for an enjoyable read. When I started posting lists some years ago, even before #MeToo, I noticed that there were way fewer few women writers on it, and that wasn’t right. Hello, I’m a writer and a woman. This year, the list is about 50-50. […]