"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” ~ Neil Gaiman

 

My hand grazed the doorframe, sliding over the smooth stubble of the painted wall as I reached for the light switch, finding it and flipping it on, but only darkness greeted me. Had someone cut the power to the house?

I stepped into the room.

Moonlight filtered through the curtains over the kitchen sink, glinting over the dishes piled like a spoiled child’s toy box. Shame washed over me, but I didn’t dwell on the feeling. Instead, I stumbled towards the drawers opposite the sink and rummaged for my electric match lighter. I found it and passed into the dining room, pausing to let my eyes adjust to the dark.

Even though I hadn’t baked anything earlier, the room reeked of strange spices, like mugwort and incense. The rusty smell of blood floated below my nostrils. Sweat lingered in the stillness, and I sniffed my armpits. Someone had been here moments before, leaving an olfactory trail of something human or inhuman. Were they still in the house?

My stocking feet dusted the wood floor as I approached the dining table, dipping my hand deep into a bowl of jagged candy. I plucked a morsel and set my lighter on the table to unwrap it, plopping it onto my tongue and chewing aggressively like a ball player waiting for the mat. Laughter erupted from the living room, quieting to unholy giggles and whispers. Then silence.

I grabbed the lighter again, swallowed, and entered the next room. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The hand lifted high above its shadowy frame, then dropped with lightning speed. I heard a tearing squelch as the knife repeatedly hit its target, over and over, before being pulled clean. The steel blade glistened in the light beaming through the side window, glowing from the neighbor’s porch. They had electricity, while my house sat in obscurity.

I lurched forward and raised my lighter as if it were a weapon. Several figures watched in the darkness, and I knew they were hungry. But for what?

I moved around the room with a swiftness that surprised me and lit the candles arranged in all corners like a witch's boudoir.

Beth set her flashlight aside and dropped to her knees, grabbing a knife. “That’s better. Thank goodness we can see what we’re doing. Do you know how long the power will be off?” she asked.

I shrugged.

Mary plucked the top off her pumpkin and reached inside to pull a trail of seeds and pulp, plopping the guts onto a newspaper lining the coffee table. “I brought chocolate chip pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. Oh, and a pumpkin-spiced cabernet. Do you want a glass? I left it on the dining room table.”

“Sure,” I said.

Beth grabbed a small pumpkin and stabbed.

Rachel snuggled deeper into the sofa and took a sip from her goblet. “It’s really good, and I usually don’t like red wine,” she said, picking a pumpkin seed from her pants.

I was about to return to the dining room to pour myself a glass of red when the doorbell rang. I grabbed Beth’s flashlight before moving to the front door. The beam shone over three diminutive faces that smiled at me in the moonlight.

“Trick or Treat!” they all yelled with glee.

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You can read my book for free on NetGalley this month.

Happy Halloween! 

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The Levitation Game is One Year Old Today. Hooray!

 

The Levitation Game launched on October 17, 2023. 

After my book baby’s roller-coaster year, I hope my book doesn’t experience the terrible twos. Launching a book is every mother’s dream, but it does involve screaming and, quite possibly, incontinence. Sometimes, I felt like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby; other times, I felt like Sally Field after winning her Oscar. "You like my book. You really like it!"

The tumultuous and mixed feelings are normal for every author and every book. Oh, and I'm pregnant again. It may take longer than nine months, but there's another book baby on the way!

You can never leave once you enter the novel writing theme park full of burnt corncobs, sweaty crowds, psychedelic mirrors, nausea inducing rides, and sickly-sweet cotton candy. You must keep writing, and the tickets are steep. The steel gate is locked and your fate is in the hands of a carnie rat. Do you see the grinning carousel animals from the Brothers Grimm? Can you hear the demented organ grinder music gnawing at your brain? Do you need a shot of Pepto Bismal after too many corn dogs? A writer must stay in the clown park, gnashing away forever and ever. But sometimes it's fun. 

“When the music stops, you’ll see him in the mirror standing behind you.” — April, “The Conjuring”

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“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.” ~ Walt Whitman

Before sending my freebies into the universe, I wrapped ten books with celestial wrapping paper and far-out stickers. Fun!

A psychic medium named Matt Fraser confirmed what I’ve always thought: I may not have stumbled upon my life’s purpose without the help of spirit guides. Matt told viewers of CBS Mornings that everyone has a spirit guide or guardian angel. I think he’s right, and I’ll explain why later in this post.

Still, with all the pain and suffering in the world, it’s hard to believe that humans have an ethereal doppelganger riding the same bumpy, neck-craning carnival ride we call life. What do our spirit guides do all day? Eat popcorn and chocolate-covered raisins while watching Netflix? Do they yawn with distracted glee while the world burns? It sure seems like it.

Matt also said some people aren’t lucky enough to discover their life’s purpose, and maybe that’s why they linger after death. I found my life’s purpose late in life—writing. But finding your life’s purpose doesn’t mean finding happiness. Any writer will tell you that after reading a bad review. I think living your life’s purpose is important spiritually. But what about people who don’t live long enough to meet their objective?

I don’t think I would have discovered my purpose without divine intervention. Former me: artist and illustrator. Still, as a kid, I’d dabbled in writing angst-filled poems and scary stories. Much later, I started a grammar-challenged blog and attempted a few short and sweet children’s stories, which unraveled almost addictively. Then, one night, during a critique group (fellow children’s book illustrators that met once a month to eat, laugh, and talk about our art), one of the women told me she’d had a curious dream about me. In her dream, she saw me lying in bed, wrapped in a quilt and surrounded by women with hands on my body. I just knew.

The women knew I wasn’t pursuing my life’s purpose, and I didn’t need Matt Fraser to interpret the meaning of my friend’s dream. I understood the mysterious message from my spirit guides: Write, dummy, and sleep when you’re dead! Do the work. Struggle, suffer, and maybe someday, shine.

If you aren’t living your life’s purpose, it’s not too late. That’s the moral of today’s post. If you’re alive, it's not too late to try. But then again, maybe spirits have a heavenly purpose and it will never be too late!

My Goodreads Giveaway netted 4,271 entries, and 3,924 readers marked The Levitation Game as want-to-read! Success! Now, I hope some want-to-be readers will enjoy my book enough to spread the word, rate, and review my book on Amazon. If you haven't left a review yet, please do! 

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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“A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.” ~ Arthur Baer

“Newspapers are horror happening to other people.” — Nadine Gordimer 

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like to read paper books and news that smudges your fingers and is damp on the sidewalk after the rain. The print needs to be gray to the point of vanishing like invisible ink, and the paper needs unrolling and recycling. God help me, sometimes the newspaper arrives inside a plastic bag. I’m eco in many ways, but this is my literary sin. 

These days, with fewer subscriptions, newspapers are often thin enough to need an Ensure supplement, but even so, you never know what inspiration you’ll find between the pages. Besides, what would we put in front of the litter box if not for a newspaper? Reading the Star Tribune’s Science and Health section (which is sadly no longer inside the Star Tribune) offered random scientific data to plump my alien character from my debut novel, The Levitation Game. Did you know birds have a molecule behind their eyes that may allow them to see the Earth’s magnetic field? Thanks to a timely article about the mystery of bird migration, my character, Dob-Dec, became fascinated by how Earth’s avians navigate long distances, and don’t get him started on those eye molecules. I don’t read many nonfiction books, but I love birds, and reading Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds also feathered the nest of my alien character. Weird, right? Before writing and publishing my novel, I worried I couldn’t create an alien genius like I imagined otherworldly visitors to be. So, I created a slightly dim-witted alien that is still smarter than most humans, and a bird book helped me do it. Birds are so intelligent! Who knew that being a bird brain was a compliment? 

Now, I’m writing a book about green witches, and scientific newspaper articles about iconic Sequoia trees, green burial, and the symbiosis between plants and humans are all fodder for my tree-hugging Coven. Please bring back the Science and Health section! Sigh. 

“The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings.” ~ Fulton J. Sheen 

I have happy news this month. My short story, Default 666, is an honorable mention in the 93rd Annual Writer's Digest Competition! There were 3,571 entries from 44 countries. You can find it in the Scared to Death Anthology available on Amazon. Plus, my latest Goodreads giveaway is in full swing until September 1st. So far, over 2,500 people are fighting (or maybe just marginally hoping) to win one of ten signed print copies of The Levitation Game!

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.”
— Mark Twain

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Turnips in a Pool of Bone Marrow Sauce

“A cannibal is a person who walks into a restaurant and orders a waiter.” ~ Morey Amsterdam

Just how pretentious is a new restaurant in Minneapolis? A reviewer described the restaurant as “Covertly dressed in rags woven from baby alpacas.” What does that phrase even mean?

I’ve read restaurant reviews for as long as The Star Tribune has graced our doorstep, and I love good food and reading the newspaper. However, some establishments seem destined for an elite minority, and I’ve always laughed at the jargon used to describe them. How many fussy clients will pay big bucks to eat fancy turnips?

My book is like a new bistro or business, and I’ve always wondered how much people will pay to ingest my words. I see the world slanted, askew, and apart from others. So, when my alien neurons hurl words onto the page, will they even find an audience? Fancy restaurants must have the same problem. Books and food are both nourishing and subjective. Spam, lutefisk, and romance novels, I’m looking at you. To me, foie gras is like an encyclopedia, and I wouldn’t enjoy reading it. The jargon on the menu of fancy food halls can be just as alienating. Here are actual turns of phrase from the Star’s fancy restaurant review in the Variety section on March 31, 2024. If the following terms make you laugh, my book might be for you. (See my notes in italics)

*Turnips in a pool of bone marrow sauce. You thought I made that title up, didn’t you?

*Eel tartine that’s not slippery, muddy, or riddled with bones. It will haunt you with its deliciousness. (a few sentences later) The eel is almost as good as the smoked eel sandwich and a 25-dollar glass of G. Richomme Champagne I consumed in France. Snooty overload. Barf.

*The restaurant has exquisite foie gras with no livery alcoholic tang. Yum.

*The food celebrates the midpoint between plebeian and prosaic. What? I need Google.

*Acorn consommé

*Funky blood sausage

*Wild rice furikake No, I didn’t misspell this. 

*Fishy and mushy octopus Bolognese

Dinner is served...

“Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them." ~ P.G. Wodehouse 

I sent my book to the Little Charity Book Truck this month. https://www.littlecharitybooktruck.org/ “Read more, help more.” That’s the LCBT motto. I love it!

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“A bumper of good liquor will end a contest quicker than justice, judge, or vicar.” Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction—gold level! I feel like a soft and middle-aged Olympian, standing on the podium along with other word nerds. Now that I'm a big shot, the media is nipping at my heels for interviews. You can read this interrogation hot off the press:

FIJ (short for Fake Indie Journalist): What will you do with your monetary windfall?

Me: I won no cash, although two editor’s choice books will receive monetary prizes. So what did I win? Cachet among library professionals, booksellers, and mysterious industry professionals. Oh, and bragging rights that I can tag onto every social media post forever and ever. I’m positive that a million-dollar contract with Simon and Schuster is pending as we speak. Indeed, a movie deal will levitate my way like a bird in a wind tunnel.

FIJ: How hard was it to win?

Me: There were 2,400 entries, all judged by booksellers and librarians. I don’t know how many Science Fiction writers entered the contest, but I do know I’m a winner, winner, chicken dinner, and they are chicken poop.

FIJ: What will you do now that you are an award-winning writer?

Me: I plan to move to Cano Island off the coast of Costa Rica and drink like a Hemingway disciple. I may buy the island since boatloads of money will surely rain upon me. I’ll continue to write novels like Chorus of Crows and The Savannah Book of Spells, which I bet will get five stars and glowing reviews from everyone worldwide. The prickly reviewer trolls that plague other writers won’t pester me because I’m an award-winning writer! (Ha!)

FIJ: Do you have any advice for wannabe writers?

Me: Fame and riches can and will be yours if you persevere like I did. Don’t worry about the millions of books published yearly; your hard work will pay off. You don’t need luck, schmuck; just read, read, read, and write, write, write!

"You're about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking contest." Rowan Atkinson

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"Whatever you bee-lieve, you can achieve."

The Levitation Game won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction! So, I’m interrupting standard travel programming until next week. My world is spinning, and I feel like a queen bee, at least until a lousy review stings me. I wish I could pollinate every bookstore with my book, carrying the sweet nectar of my words on my hind legs. Indeed, honey sweetens my story in several places, but you’ll have to read it to discover why. :)

Please help me create a buzz! #ForewordINDIES

"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers." ~ Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

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Going Lloyd

James Cameron calls it “Going Lloyd,” when humans fail to learn from past mistakes. The iconic movie director referenced his naughty cat, Lloyd, who’d jump onto the kitchen table no matter how often he’d get blasted with water. Certain crimes are worth the risk when a leftover piece of bacon might be on the table. Humans know this, too. That’s why we can’t resist repeating life’s indulgences that we know are bad for us. We laugh at the movie The Hangover because it’s hilarious and because we know we’d get drunk and make the same blunders, and it’s fun to live vicariously and not wake up with a missing tooth or a tiger in the bathroom.

If humans didn’t act like Lloyd, what would writers write about? Las Vegas, Global Warming, and Hazelton wouldn’t exist. We might not have Pringles and Oreos. There wouldn’t be any hairless cat breeds like the Sphynx because the breeder never would have repeated that DNA disaster. Cats are supposed to be furry and bad, and acting like cats is good when you’re a writer. Writers must persevere through the litter of agents and publishers who squirt them away repeatedly. Cats know they’re the king and queen of the jungle, no matter how many bad reviews they acquire on chewy.com/badcatreviews. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the confidence of a cat? Cats know they deserve five stars, even after they vomit on Grandma’s handmade bedspread or poop in the bathtub.

The best writers simply sharpen their claws and persevere, and that’s a good lesson for all of us.

When I googled my book, I discovered that many bookstores sell TLG around the globe, from Walmart to Murder By The Book to Harvard Books and beyond. But I don’t know if these bookstores have a physical copy because I haven’t visited them. But now I know at least one place will: Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais, Minnesota, because they told me so. Hooray!

“To err is human, and to purr is feline.” ~ Robert Byrne

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Be – Utah – Ful

All of you have seen my book’s cover, and if you’ve read the interior, the cover’s spiral of space toiletries may have come full circle, revealing the answer to the imagery. I hope the whimsical picture depicting toilet paper and panties made you laugh. I created it to be curiously eye-catching to potential readers. One reviewer said my cover was dazzling, and I’ve held onto those words like water in a desert of criticism. 

And speaking of deserts, the idea for The Levitation Game began in the red rock desert of Sedona, Arizona, and my new novel, Chorus of Crows, travels to Sedona, too. I’m writing to you from the desert of Moab, Utah. Moab is a magical place, filled with muffin-top canyons and spires awash in Martian colors and soaring, dripping, and dissolving rock patterns that defy gravity because some rocks titter on the brink of a needle-like precipice. Moab is a place of petrified fire. It’s also a place where Native American petroglyphs and pictographs depict energy spirals. When I think of energy spirals, I think of space portals and alien visitation. Vortices. There are more UFO sightings in Moab than anywhere else in the USA.

Those spirals inspired my cover, and if you scroll before you roll, you’ll see a photo collage to help you visualize my concept. I’ve seen energy spirals in Panama etched on humble rocks, and I’ve seen them on Mayan art, too. The petroglyphs of the southwest are especially intriguing because other human-like images actually look like aliens with weird, floating bodies and large bug-eyed heads. Some wear helmets. Did Native Americans interact with aliens? As they say on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens program, “Some say yes.”

Creating my alien characters, Rigel, Dob-Dec, and Sula, was fun (They’re all named after stars, which shine bright over the dark skies of Moab), and I hope to revisit my aliens from planet Pleione to explain what happened to Dob’s parents someday. Hint: It involves the deserts of the Southwest. These days, desert travel is my muse. You must add Moab to your bucket list, and I hope you’ve added The Levitation Game to your want-to-read list!

You can read my article, Be Like Samwise and Frodo and Help a Writer Out at Orange Blossom Publishing. Click here. My book traveled to the Bologna Book Fair! Yay! See below.

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Knock-Knock. Who’s there? Leo Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy, who? Nanna Karenina, your business.

Many aspects of book promotion smell like turpentine to me. Whenever I post on Facebook or Instagram and say, “Look at me!” I hate it. The fact that few people actually look makes it even worse. Thank goodness for everyone’s favorite behemoth called Amazon, where my book can look bright and shiny, and my job is like the mechanisms of a clock, hidden underneath but wound and moving. I can let the clock wind down and stop or put a few dollars and mental calculations into keywords for advertising. What would I do if Amazon only meant a river and a rainforest? I was surprised to read about how Mark Twain sold his books last month.

Back then, all of Mark Twain’s major books were issued by subscription and sold by salesmen door-to-door rather than as trade publications in bookstores. As an Indie author or any author, it can be hard to discover your masterpiece in a brick-and-mortar store. What would I do if I had to sell my novel door to door?

Knock, knock.

I wait several minutes, listening to feet scampering behind the bright blue door before me. Over the hedges of the house, an angry face peeks through the window pane, then vanishes. I hear garbled swearing, and then the front door opens.

Who’s there?

My stomach flip-flops, and my spine straightens. I try to imagine I’m Leonidas from the movie 300, except wearing a leather skirt and boob armor. I raise my book. “Would you like to buy my paranormal sci-fi book, The Levitation Game? It’s an entertaining book filled with romance, magic and adventure.”

“Does it come with Girl Scout cookies?”

“No, but I can sign it and throw in a bookmark.”

“Will you mow my lawn if I buy it?”

My hand falls to my side, and I turn away. “Thanks anyway,” I mumble to my feet, wondering if I should take the shortcut to the next house, like the mailman, or walk to the sidewalk.

Knock, knock.

I have big news this month. I’m a finalist in the 2023 Indies Book of the Year awards! Yay! Hooray! 

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Scared To Death

My novel The Levitation Game is a finalist in the 2023 Indies Book of the Year Awards! This literary news will nourish me for months.

I wish it were Halloween because I’m announcing Scared To Death, a Goosebumps-style anthology that includes my short story, Default 666. I’m proud to death of my short story and hope it will delight and disgust readers equally. :)

Vampires! Ghosts! Zombies! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!! Within the pages of this anthology lurk stories guaranteed to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up! From a cursed game that turns its players into monsters … a ghost cat on a quest for revenge … and killer snowmen on a rampage, these ten terrifying tales will have you sleeping with the lights on! Read these stories, if you dare! This book includes stories from the following contributors: R. Jeanie Burroughs ● Dawn Colclasure ● Marcus Damanda ●William F. Gray ● Michelle John ● Cyan LeBlanc ● Eric McMillion ●Caitlyn Pace ● Sharon Wagner ● Brandon Wills

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"The cow is of the bovine ilk: One end is moo, the other, milk." Ogden Nash

 

“No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.” Abraham Lincoln

“The household cat is really a tiger that has underwent three counselling programs.” Valeriu Butulescu

A movie actress described her method for acting once. When a script arrives, she picks an animal with traits like her protagonist and imagines she’s that animal later in front of the camera. If someone made a movie of your life, what animal would you be?

I’ve often thought I'd be a crow if I were a bird because I wouldn’t want to be tasty like a chicken. I’m not a night person, so being an owl would be exhausting. Small birds are attractive to a raptor’s claws. Parrots have big brains, but their beauty makes them vulnerable to human kidnappers. So, I’d be a crow. A crow even stared in one of my favorite books, Hollow Kingdom.

But what animal would I be? I love the ocean, but I’m not social like a dolphin. And I wouldn’t want to be anything too small for fear I’d be eaten by predators. Tasty animals like cows are out of the question. Plus, since I have misophonia, I wouldn’t want all the other cows aggressively chewing cud near my big dumb head. Violent animals like tigers don’t resemble me, and I wouldn’t like to consume silty mangrove scraps like a manatee. I’d love to be smart like an octopus, but they prefer frighteningly cold water. My favorite animal is a cat, but I fear I’d be the feline that scratches guests and then runs into the basement to hide behind the dusty shoeboxes and other wares. I think I’d be an elephant now that I don’t have to worry about being abducted by the circus. They are big and not a typical food source for meat-eaters. They’ve been coached into painting canvas by weird humans, and I’m an artist. I could theoretically tap a typewriter with my long, flexible snout, so perhaps I could still be an author!

I have fun book news to report this month. The Levitation Game is en route to the Bologna Book Fair! My short story, Default 666, will be part of an anthology at PsychoToxin Press. I’ll keep you posted. And don’t forget to scroll before you roll. My guest post, On Travel Blogging, is published at Creator’s Roulette. See below. Look to your inbox on March 18 for my next newsletter!

“Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.” Sir Winston Churchill

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Click to visit Creator's Roulette! Read about Central America through my lens, brush, and pen.

Five debut novels are perfect; five hundred thousand books fail inspection.

 

What if books were inspected for literary cleanliness and quality like restaurants? Perhaps all the hoopla about book banning has gone to my head. Or maybe I’m just feeling silly. For a complete list of book inspections, including violations not requiring warnings of missing pages or other administrative action, visit Goodreads. Here’s the breakdown for recent book inspections in Collier County, Florida, for January 1-6. Please note that some recent sequel inspections may not be included here.

So, how did my book score?

The Levitation Game

Follow-up inspection required: Violations require further review but are not an immediate threat to the public. Five total violations, with one high-priority violation

High-priority violation: The novel contains third-person and first-person narratives, confusing some readers. It also has multiple protagonists. See the debut author handbook indicating first-time authors should never write more than one voice. Period. (Yes, I know the word period is a sentence fragment; I’m simply inserting levity and being literal)

Basic violation: a violation against best practices occurred when the author signed with an indie press, ignoring the preferred choice of an agent or big-wig traditional publisher. The fact that the author didn’t have a choice is irrelevant.

Warning: The author must complete her next novel 365 days from the last inspection.

Administrative complaint: Legal action may be required if the author writes another sci-fi novel, as some readers think the author should stick to painting or eschewing words altogether.

Emergency Order: A 24-hour call-back inspection will be performed after an emergency closure of the book because of suspension of belief.

If you see any abuses of Amazon’s standards, report them to Jeff Bezos and the library immediately. Or call 1-800-911-joke.

The end. :)

Check out my latest author interview here! It's over at The Indie View. 

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