Category: Nonfiction

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What’s New Wednesday: March

There’s a lot of new stuff coming up. A few weeks ago, I announced a new collection of poetry was coming on April 13, Black Chaos. I’m still doing some stuff for promotion and am awaiting a couple reviews. Once I have those, I’ll share with everyone so you can see what others are saying about the collection. I have also had some bookmarks printed for the release of the new book. I should get those in the mail by next week. I have more details about those and other bookmarks I’ve designed later this month.

I will also expand the reach of the eBook for my short story collection, The Morbid Museum. KDP select end for that book on March 9. After that, I will include the book on other e-reader platforms. I have also redesigned the paperback cover, so it looks a little cleaner and I’ve put together a hardcover edition. I plan to get a few more reviews of the book to put quotes on the back cover of the hardcover and the new paperback. I expect to have these ready by the end of April or begging of May. I’ll have more details on that as we get closer.

The biggest change that’s coming to blog posts is our Wacky Wednesday words. Starting on March 17, I’ll focus on words from 1920’s slang. We’re gonna’ bring back the Roaring 20’s. The rest of the blog will have business as usual and I’m preparing for April and National Poetry Month. Once again, I’ll have a poem every single day as well as the other posts you’ve all come to enjoy like Wacky Wednesdays, Coffee and Contemplation, Snapshot Saturdays, etc…Are you excited? I’m excited. Let’s make sure we have fun this year.

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Wacky Wednesday: March 3

Welcome to the first Wacky Wednesday of March. It’s a pandemic in March…again. We are on our second to last post about old English insults. I think you’ll enjoy these. First, we have Wandought. Wandoughty is an old word for impotence and wandought refers to a weak and ineffectual man. There are many of those in the world. Next, we have Whiffle-Waffle. This refers to an indecisive, time-wasting ditherer. There are many of those kinds of people too. You could even call someone who posts random nonsense, like words and holidays, a whiffle-waffle.

There are several holidays to celebrate today. For our token food and drink holidays, we have National Cold Cuts Day and National Mulled Wine Day. Cold cuts go by many names including deli meats, sandwich meats, and lunch meats. Mulled wine is usually made with heated red wine with various spices and fruits. Though not intended to celebrate a food, today is also National Soup it Forward Day. Learn more about this holiday that started a few years ago by the Soup Sisters. To sum it up, spread love and kindness with a bowl of soup.

Today we also celebrate National Anthem Day. March 3, 1931 is the day the “Star Spangled Banner” written by Francis Scott Key became the National Anthem of the United States. And finally, today we also celebrate National I Want You to Be Happy Day. It’s a simple as it sounds. Help spread joy and happiness in others. Try to see the happiness from the other person’s perspective. Genuine happiness requires effort. Sometimes everyone needs a little help or a boost to keep that happiness going. So, help out a stranger or a friend and spread some happiness.

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Coffee and Contemplation: Beloved by Toni Morrison

The first book I’m looking at in my studies of supernatural storytelling is “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Published in 1987, it won the “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction” in 1988. The genre is American Literature. This is not a horror novel; however, something supernatural takes place in the story. The story is about a family of former slaves living in Cincinnati after the American Civil War. Their home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Part of the story was based on a true-life incident that happened in 1856 involving an escaped slave from Kentucky, Margaret Garner.

The spirit in their home is a character in the story. The spirit doesn’t kill anyone but does cause problems for the family. Overall, the novel is not that scary. It’s not supposed to be. There is one scene that was difficult to read. This was the scene that depicted the real-life events of Margaret Garner killing one of her children to prevent them from growing up as a slave. The scene is important because the family believes the spirit in the house is the child that was killed. This is not a novel for children because of the adult content.

I recommend this book to everyone. If you haven’t read anything by Toni Morrison, you should. 

Spooky Spider Scale (How scary was the book?): 1/10 spiders – 🕷️

Overall rating: 5 stars ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐