If you aren’t following Mike’s blog you need to be. Five out of Five on West Coast Review. Stunning Mike!
Category: Uncategorized
imagine
This post warmed my heart. This is beautiful.
Short Story Sunday: Baker Beach
Max heard the Nessun dorma ringtone and groaned. It was his brother Andy. It was an emergency. He could sense it.
He picked up and listened.
“Max, thank God you’re there. I’m by Baker Beach. Some asshole redneck in a truck sideswiped me. The car is totaled. Can you get out here? Right now.”
Max untangled himself from the woman next to him and sat up. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine. Like I said, the car is totaled.”
“Call AAA. I’ll call Uber and get you a ride home.”
“You don’t understand man. I have someone locked in the trunk and he is pissed off.”
———-
Andy watched at the back end of his car became even more mangled by the violent pounding from the occupant he’d locked in the trunk. The noise was even worse.
“Stop it NOW,” he yelled, “or I’ll drain every drop of blood from your body, stuff…
View original post 350 more words
The Pied Piper of Transylvania: Tripping Over Fairy Tales
Well written and super interesting.
“If you want to tell grown-up fairy tales, you have to look for the dark side” – Juan Antonio Bayona
But your match.com profile said “handsome prince”!
Life is not a fairy tale. There isn’t a handsome prince waiting to emerge from the beast. The princess is just a pawn in the game of thrones, and a means to secure dynastic succession. Grimm’s collections, when not properly sanitized for the modern rug rat and their hyper-sensitive parents, are awash in blood and depravity. The fairy tale of ages past was history, philosophy, and cosmology all rolled into one, a warning that at any time, the universe may conspire to befuddle your much vaunted powers of logic and rationality, demanding adaptation to overcome a descent into insanity (or being eaten). We still tell ourselves fairy tales, but they are resounding litanies of social mundanity where the protagonist must enchant themselves into…
View original post 1,351 more words
Of Dreams And Nightmares
I’m inspired by everything. Great post. It made me think of many things – wonderful things.
Cold Coffee, Warm Heart.
Just something about friendship and coffee…
This morning my neighbors and I walked a mile down the road to get coffee. We’re all working at home these days, so anyway, I went to get coffee. I brought Kelly who lives on the left of me, and Shannon who live on the right. I love these women. They are each unique and my friends, though neither one of them knows I’m a Vampire.
As I walked out of my front door I waved at the guys on the scaffolding scraping the old paint off of my house. In three weeks my house will not look haunted anymore. Woo Hoo.
Then as I reached the street I noticed a ghost on my front porch. One particular ghost. Today he was wearing jeans, a puffy down vest, and a red flannel shirt. He pushed his shaggy black hair out of his face, then blew me a kiss. He usually…
View original post 1,674 more words
A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Way Too Far Away
If you aren’t following esoterix.com do yourself a favor and start today. Today’s super interesting post gets five out of five stars from West Coast Review.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” – H. L. Mencken
Interstellar travel sucks…
Douglas Adams once said, “Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet”, but we place enormous faith in the inevitability of technological progress, sure that our scientists and engineers can eventually solve all problems involving natural law. Heck, somebody’s got to be working on an app for that. They’ve got a pretty impressive track record so far, so perhaps our confidence is not entirely misplaced. For those of us born in the 70’s, we were raised on healthy doses of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and stacks of science fiction that made it seem that the expansion of the human race out into the galaxy was a foregone conclusion, and that we would one day meet other sentient creatures and swap stories…
View original post 734 more words
Virginia Woolf’s Nine Tips on How To Read a Book [Eighth]
Love this post. Now I am going to make a cup of tea and read.
Virginia Woolf’s Nine Tips on How To Read a Book
“If to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, you may perhaps conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print.
This point, while timeless, is timelier than ever today…
View original post 90 more words
Why I was Helena (and where I’m at now)
A must read story.
For a while, Helena Hann-Basquiat was everywhere on the blogosphere. She was posting regularly. She had full-length novels she was working on. She was reading and leaving insightful comments on more blogs than seemed possible at times, given there are only 24 hours in a day, and some of those have to be spent eating and sleeping. Her voice was unique and dominating. And then, one day, the truth came out: Helena was a pseudonym being used by a male writer. I invited H.K. Abell to share a bit of his story with our community because it is certainly one that should not die:
1 – Helena
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I never wanted to be a blogger.
What I wanted – what I have come to understand is impossible – was just to write, and to have that writing stand alone, on…
View original post 1,724 more words
Short Story Sunday: True Friends
A warm hearted story about friendship…
The scratching noise was driving him nuts.
“What do you plan on doing with them?” James leaned back in his chair and downed his wine.
“I’m not sure,” said Andrew. “I’ve never had an infestation this bad before.”
“You should just kill them. I’ll help you.”
“They’ve already ruined the rugs in the living room. Damn it James, you were with me when I purchased the Turkish Kilim. I’ve had it for eighty years. I loved that rug.”
“I know a guy who might be able to fix it. He can do wonders with blood stains.”
“It isn’t the stains. Look at the holes in it. Totally ruined.”
James stood up and walked around the rug. “I think we should kill them and dump their bodies in the bay. Or I know a guy who can do that for us.”
Andrew stood in front of the window looking out at…
View original post 246 more words
THE NEW WPaD HORROR ANTHOLOGY, CREEPIES 2: THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE CLOSET, IS OUT!
This book is insanely scary good!
Short Story Sunday: Stranger No More
“What are you? You never grow old or change. You made love to my great grandmother. She said to my mother that women took you as a lover because your seed would not give them children. It would be like a cat with a dog. Nothing would come of it. You were brought here to be our spiritual mascot, an oracle, a healer, but since we’ve arrived here you’ve been shy about your feelings and observations. You’ve turned within yourself, or maybe within a world mortals like my troops are not privy to. You’re tall, but as beautiful as a woman. You’re lithe, but stronger than the largest gladiator. You evoke joy into the hearts of those who know you, yet you can freeze the soul of a man and bring fear that makes a heart stop. What are you? ”
So I answered him. “I am a man, like you, only different…
View original post 1,132 more words
First collection of contest submissions
Halloween Poetry Contest – Enter and Win – or just have fun a pick a favorite!
We proudly present the first collection of contest submissions for the
1st Halloween-poem contest.
Picture courtesy of: http://preventioncdnndg.org/eco-quartier/eco-tips-for-halloween/
Kiss Of The Dark
Late at night each Halloween
I wander the graves, aroused, unseen
Hoping for a skeletal hand
I wander the graves, aroused, unseen
Hoping for a skeletal hand
To drag me ‘neath the living land.
Cowering before the court of bones
Hidden under crooked tomb-stones
I sink to my knees to await
My longed-for and desired fate.
Cowering before the court of bones
Hidden under crooked tomb-stones
I sink to my knees to await
My longed-for and desired fate.
A shadow whispers through the dark
My bared neck waits for my lover’s mark.
The warmth of lips against my skin.
The shudder of lust swells deep within.
My addictive Queen is dark and tall.
One look and I could not help but fall
for the vampire’s seductive charms
and the bliss of lying in his arms.
With rising moon our passion grows
The sweet sting as my lifeblood flows
And soft cries of depraved delight
Melt into…
View original post 681 more words
Love in the dark, and in the light that always shines
Eleora couldn’t remember what she did yesterday, but she could tell stories of her childhood in excruciating detail. My daughter and niece sat next to her, holding her small hands in theirs. They looked like three young women about the same age. My Clara is 16, Lauren is 21 and Eleora is, well, nobody knows how old she is. We know Eleora is over 2,000 years old but no exact number has ever come out.
The girls heard stories their parents and grandparents had never heard. These were ancient lost tales that she’d hoarded until she found the right audience.
Tellias, her husband, told the girls to watch if they went outside. Eleora might wander off on her own and not find her way back.
He watched the woman he loved, his eyes filled with pain. Sometimes I’d see a rare bit of anger. Of course there is always love…
View original post 586 more words
Kind of like worms in that weird old kids song
The Ghost is back…
As I sit pondering… the cat walks over to the dog bowl and check it out. There is nothing there she desires.
It is odd how random thoughts go in and out. Kind of like worms in that weird old kids song.
The worms go in
The worms go out
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
Anyway, on the way home this morning, after dropping Clara off for a Mock SAT test, I was thinking about what I’d write today. Junior year in high school is busy. All week long she has been seeing college recruiters and now tests. Mock SAT today (the new test), PSAT next week during school, then the real SAT and ACT. Then the AP tests. Then my mind goes off in other directions. What songs would I include on a play list for old boyfriends? It has been a while since we played wii Just…
View original post 633 more words
West Coast Review 