Tag: jamespackwriter

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What’s New Wednesday: February

I have several new things coming. Later this month, I’ll be announcing many things. I have set the date for the release of my next collection of poetry. Titled “Black Chaos,” will be published in eBook and paperback on April 13, 2021, during National Poetry Month. In the next couple weeks, I’ll post about the book and reveal the cover. I will also reveal a design for a bookmark to go along with the book release. I’ll be looking for feedback and opinions about the design of the bookmark before having hundreds of them printed. 

Speaking of bookmarks, I’m designing several different ones to have available for sale on my website. I have more ideas that I’m fleshing out, but soon I’ll have all kinds of bookmarks available. I also plan to have buttons made but this will be a little farther down the road when I have more money saved up. Coming later this year in the summer, to celebrate two years since the release of my short story collection “The Morbid Museum,” I’ll have a new hardcover edition available which will have a different variant cover.

There will be some slight changes to the paperback cover as well, but it will mostly look the same. I may even offer the eBook of “The Morbid Museum” on Nook, but I haven’t decided when I want to do that. The stories and content of the collection will remain the same. It’s only the covers that will be different. The cover of the eBook will remain the same. Those are the major new things. More details for all these things will be announced as we get closer to those dates. If you would like an ARC in digital form of my forthcoming collection of poetry, please contact me and we can work out the details.

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Wacky Wednesday: February 3

The first Wacky Wednesday of February is an interesting one. We are still trekking into the world of old English insults. Our first word of the day is Smell-feast. This refers to someone who turns up uninvited at a meal or party and expects to be fed. The next word is Smellfungus and it has a long backstory to how it came to be. It refers to someone who always finds fault in the places they visit. Below is the long backstory.

“When Laurence Sterne (author of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy”) met the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett (author of “The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle”) in Italy in 1764, he was amazed by how critical Smollett was of all the places he had visited. Smollett returned home and published his “Travels Through France and Italy” in 1766, and in response Sterne published his “Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy” two years later. Part-novel, part-travelogue, Sterne’s book featured a grumblingly quarrelsome character called Smelfungus, who was modeled on Smollett. The name soon came to be used of any buzz-killing faultfinder.”

We have a few interesting holidays. Today is National Carrot Cake Day and this is my favorite kind of cake which makes this a win for me. It is also National Women Physicians Day, celebrated women in medicine and the birthday of Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States in 1849. Today is National Missing Persons Day. About 2,300 people are reported missing every day in the United States. And the saddest part of the day, it’s The Day the Music Died.

On February 3, 1959, there was an airplane accident near Clear Lake, Iowa taking the lives of pilot Roger Peterson, 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 17-year-old Richie Valens, and 28-year-old J.P. Richardson, aka: “The Big Bopper.” The phrase The Day the Music Died was first mentioned in Don McLean’s song “American Pie” in 1971.

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The Tales of Enderas: Woes of a Warrior

He sits skulking in the shade
the home the Winged Horse has made
in this secluded meadow
where He drowns in His sorrows
when asked why He weeps so much
“I have lost the people’s touch.
None know of My sacrifice,
when I nearly gave My life,
and so should have been My fate,
but I failed and was too late.”
with these worlds He humbly sighed
and closed His large gentle eyes
the warrior that we knew
had died that day with the few

The next poem in the series coming Feb 8. From the poetry collection Pariah Bound: The Lonesome Poetry.