West Coast Review

It is a great pleasure for me to announce the
4th Halloween-Poem Contest
on ‘Writer’s Treasure Chest’.
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Every author and poet are invited to participate and deliver a “Halloween-Poem” to my email address: aurorajean.alexander@aol.com, together with their picture and a link to their blog/page.

There are a few rules to follow:

1. Your poem needs a Halloween theme.
2. Your poem needs a minimum of 99 words.
3. Your poem has to be delivered to my email address between October 10 and Halloween, October 31, 2018, 9 pm Central Standard Time.
4. Your poem has to be delivered together with your picture and a link to your blog/page.
5. Please avoid violence, bad language, and sexual content within the poems. It would be disqualified.

Every poem that meets the rules and is delivered within the deadline will be published here on “Writer’s Treasure Chest” together with the provided picture.

End of this month…

A story from my friend Bart. He’ll tell you all about it (you might have heard this before but it is a story well worth repeating – I’m sure a lot of you can relate.) At the end I will have a few more thoughts of my own.

Slut

A lot of us have kids in college, or starting college in the next year or two. One of the big things everyone is talking about is sexual assault on campus or in college towns. I’ve talked about it with my two kids who are in college. Everyone has, at least everyone who is a decent parent.

So I get this call from Hodge Williams. Yes, that Hodge Williams. Everyone remembers him.

“Bart, how are you?” As soon as he spoke I wondered what he wanted.

“Hodge. Fine. Great. Life is good. What’s up?”

“I’m writing a story on the history…

Constantine Jones sat on the bottom of the museum steps wondering what just happened.

Earlier that evening he’d put on his best Armani suit, a Hermes silk tie, and was feeling good about the outcome of the evening. It was to be a charity event. Beautiful people would be there dressed up. Everyone would be relaxed, and happy, and it would be delightfully fun.

After discussing art and drinking champagne he’d lured a few well-heeled patrons to remote galleries to see some unusual modern art. There he took a few pints of blood from wrists and left his donors with no memories, except those of a delightful conversation with a well dressed, nice looking young art expert. Well, a 165 year old art expert, but that was besides the point.

Then in the main gallery, the California Room, he saw her standing in front of the Thomas Hill grand painting…

William Keith – Dusk Near Monterey

I was in my dining room, one cat sitting on the table and one in a chair ready to take a swipe at the other’s tail. My eyes went to the painting on the wall and I allowed myself to be transported to the coast. It was dusk. The wind was in my hair, the cats were playing around my feet. The waves made what would turn into the music of the night.

My brother Max and Grandmama Lola still keep a cottage there, from their days hanging out with artists and other Bohemian types. I still love to spend time there in the cottage that now acts as a safe house of sorts.

Then I’m back in my house, transported back to another place in another century.

As I’ve often said – I can’t explain the wonder and awe and feeling of being…

Quite readily I would say I am a visual person; if something captures my attention I will probably want to look at it in depth. The same is certainly true for things which fall into the Gothic category, and old or new, so long as the style is true, I will enjoy it.

This isn’t going to be an analysis of Gothic imagery, simply because I have other books I want to right first! Instead, I will simply discuss what I like and why.

Fair warning, this may be a long post…

Without death, there is no life

Gothic fiction is something we can trace back to the Victorian era of England, a point in time where people we relatively interested with death and the like – though Gothic as a term was around long before this.

I think, however, what is key to remember here is that this isn’t…

I grew up in a household with a lot of pets. I remember one summer when we had two wolfhounds, a medium sized black dog of questionable lineage, three cats, an eighty year old parrot, and a cage full of mice. Outside of the house were three horses. There were also five children. Four boys. One girl.

It was 1867. My brother Aaron, the middle child was the most responsible and serious of the lot. He was eleven at the time, and feeling as if he was living in the shadows of his eldest brothers. He was also tired of feeling responsible for his younger two siblings. The wolfhounds belonged (if they could belong to anyone) to our eldest brother Max. The black dog was the family dog. The three cats belonged to themselves, but spent most of their time with me. The parrot was named Louis and was just…

In the wee hours of this morning I was scanning my Twitter feed (no you haven’t landed on the White House Web Site) and kept seeing stuff about The Bachelor. You know, the TV show where about 25 women wear tight clothing and fight over the same man. I doubt if they have knock down drag out physical fights (but it would be fun if they did) but I’m sure they get plenty catty.

I’d usually ignore something like this because I don’t watch the show but I noticed something weird. All of the guys look the same. Seriously they look like a set of fraternal quads – kind of like armadillo pups.

In fact I saw #cookiecutterguys on one of the threads. These guys are so white-bread boring that it is a wonder any girl would want to take the time to dig and claw her way to…