- Musings
- Aiden Ryan’s Gift re the Little Game
- Brother Dave Duford’s Stephen Must Die
- Sister Clarabelle Miray Fields busy Busy Busy!
- Writers’ Workshop
- Wendy Leeds and Dave Crotzer at Bound Together Books’ Authors’ Exchange
- Talk with the Editors
- Sister Rika Chandra’s Newsletter
- Crysalis is available as an eBook
It has been another fascinating, challenging, intriguing, educating month here.
It all stems from two tied events. Singly, not much, nor am I preaching that coincidence equates to which confuse me.
Okay, one doesn’t confuse me because it’s typical and fairly straightforward; people believing their worth more than they are.
Note we’re talking perception and subjectivity,
Or reality and fantasy.
I’m not sure which.
I can understand someone with a proven track record, established and verified data points, some kind of history to point to which substantiates their claims, saying their time comes at a premium.
But someone with none of the above charging premium rates because…because…because they want others to think they’re in the premium league? Because they want to believe their in that premium league?
This has nothing to do with performance. I’m sure some of these folks can deliver top quality, I’m more curious who’ll take a chance on them without proof of deliverable.
Okay, that’s one.Two, I do not understand what causes a person to deliberately and intentionally mislead someone. I know this is SOP in politics. It’s also SOP in business (things may have changed since I was in business and I’m cynical in this).
Don’t tell someone something if you don’t want them to know it. A simple “Sorry, I’m not going to share that right now” is all that’s required. If the other person presses the issue, see the first item mentioned in this musing. People pressing an issue indicates they believe they have more value or worth than you’ve assigned them, and such behavior indicates you need to reevaluate the relationship.Lots has been written and shared about how to spot deceit, and yes, I lump 1 and 2 above as deceit. The first is primarily self-directed deceit, the second other-directed deceit, and if one is true, two will soon follow because the individual engaging in self-deceit can only persist in that state if others support that deceit.
Psychology now labels such supports as enablers, which is another societally condoned position I’ve never understood as I’ve never been willing to trip over elephants regardless of what room they appear in.FWIW, I sometimes teach a “Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less” training. No, I can’t teach you these techniques in ten seconds, I can teach you how to determine how someone is thinking in ten seconds, and no, not what, how, and yes, there’s a difference.
Knowing a person’s exact thoughts takes years of training and only those with a fierce dedication develop skills to that level. But knowing how someone is thinking is teachable in about ten hours of classes, and is a reasonable second option for those who are interested. You’ll find them in my That Th!nk You Do trainings.
July 2026 AnnouncementsThere were no winners per se to last month’s Little Game. Aidan Ryan did win the previous month’s game and already has a signed copy of Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires Volume 2. Because he’s a nice guy, he’s offering his winning copy to the first person to contact me asking for it.
Go for it, folks. Remember, FIFO rules wins.Brother Dave Duford’s Stephen Must Die recently released his Stephen Must Die short story collection. This collection includes - The Veiled Connection – When a Halloween hunting trip flips sideways, Frank Taylor must confront a sinister presence hellbent on making him its prey.
- Last Walk – Craig vows to send his aging beagle across the Rainbow Bridge himself. With a loaded Beretta pistol and a heavy heart, he walks the old girl one final time.
- Taken Down – Randall White is on the trail to find his brother’s killer. Little does he know that the secret lurking in these dark Vermont Woods may be his undoing.
- Stephen Must Die – “I’m here to kill Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King. Tonight.”
- Rudy’s Rescue – Melissa travels down an improbable path to find her missing Jack Russell Terrier. What she discovers along the way will challenge her grip on reality.
- Fresh Flowers – Three lifelong friends struggle with PTSD and the rapid march of time when one of their own develops a fatal, familial disease.
- Free Car – When Marc finally finds the car of his dreams, he learns it comes with a heartbreaking catch. The Mustang is free, but can he afford the emotional cost
- The Unburnished Truth – Two siblings scramble to unlock clues to the mystery their deceased grandfather left for them to solve, yet some truths are meant to stay buried.
Sister Clarabelle Miray Fields busy Busy Busy! – Clarabelle’s published two poems in How We Made the Moon Cry – A Comics & Prose anthology about how the moon may feel about those that adore her, two poems in The Anthropocene Epic, and one poem in Eternal Haunted Summer ~ pagan songs & tales.
But it doesn’t end there. She’s lso received word two of her poems have advanced to the final round of the 2026 Rhysling Anthology and one in the 2026 Dwarf Stars Anthology!
YOU GO, GIRL!Writers’ Month Long Workshop – August 2026’s writers’ workshop covers many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The workshop is on Wednesdays, 5-26 July 2026, morning and evening openings available.
Note there’s an extra session this month! Go for it!
Sign up here.
You can an idea of what craziness (and learning!) will ensue on my Experiments in Writing posts.
Wendy Leeds and David Crotzer at Bound Together Books’ Authors’ Exchange – - Wendy is a Medfield, Ma based psychotherapist, speaker, author, and three-time cancer survivor who calls herself a Secret Fiction author. Her most recently published books are the non-fiction Calm & Sense: A Woman’s Guide to Living Anxiety-free and Solving the Anxiety Equation: The Formula to Free Yourself from Fear. She’s also host of the Anxiety Connection podcast.
Wendy’s event is on Saturday, Aug 1, 2-4pm. - Dave is a kidney transplant survivor and considers himself a science fiction author. He wrote about surviving the kidney transplant in Diabetes to Dialysis to Transplant—What You Can Learn From My Recoveries and authored Creation of Life Energy: What is Common Between Worlds in our Universe. Dave’s event in on Saturday, Aug 15, 2-4pm.
Come by, say hi, get well.
Talk with the Editors – Wilderness House Literary Review EIC Steve Glines and I (Senior Fiction Editor) hold monthly open chats with authors interested in a) writing for us, b) improving their craft in general, and/or c) increasing their chances of being accepted by other markets.
Meetings are held via Zoom on the last Friday of each month from 9-10amET.
So, want to know how to write for us? Want to know what gets our attention? Want to know how to write better for whatever market you’re interested in? Join us for our next “Meet the Editors” Zoom session. Seats limited! Sign up and talk with us. We’re relatively easy going and fun to be with.
Sister Rika Chandra’s Newsletter – I found Rika’s recent missal sobering and melancholy, and I know it’s due to recent events in my life.
That noted, she opens withA quiet moment overlooking downtown Detroit after celebrating a wedding reminded me how quickly life moves from one chapter to the next.
In the space of just ten days, I attended a funeral and two weddings across two continents. Someone jokingly described it as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sri Lankan style!Rika’s newsletter is “monthly musings on memory, legacy and the stories that shape us.” I encourage you to visit her site and read up on her offerings. I did and they’ve served me well ever since.
Crysalis is available as an eBook
Chrysalis is a story of personal recovery from childhood and adult trauma told in three parts:
The Echo
Welcome to My Sandbox
The Stone in God’s SlingThe Echo In a bizarre nightmare world, Gerrold is relentlessly attacked by groteques which thwart his every attempt at escape until an angelic being, Acquiesce, appears and offers him a way out. Acquiesce does not do the work of escape for Gerrold and instead guides him to make his own discoveries about escaping and what it means to be free. With Acquiesce’s help, Gerrold realizes escaping the nightmare means challenging the taking control of the nightmare and robbing it of its power over him.
Welcome to My Sandbox Freed from his personal hell, Gerrold realizes freedom comes with a price, and the price is to help others escape their personal hells. This means realizing some people would rather remain in their hells, meaning he is powerless to help him. But this confuses him; how can someone recognize they’re in hell and not want to escape?
Acquiesce explains freedom is a choice, that every moment of a person’s life is a matter of choice, and freedom’s responsibilities can be frightening to those not willing to do the work of healing and compassion.
This revelation causes Gerrold to realize some responsibilities are obvious, some are hidden, and now he wonders if he’s fully paid the price of his freedom. He decides to confront the source of his nightmare to learn the truth of it.
The Stone in God’s Sling Gerrold travels to his nightmare’s source and faces its creator only to discover he has constructed the nightmare himself. Can Gerrold destroy the part of himself which has imprisoned him, set himself free, and heal from the things he’s let happen?Fans of Guillermo del Toro’s and M. Night Shyamalan’s work will appreciate this dark psychological fantasy which forces the reader to recognize their own hells and offers paths out of them.
Brother Greg Hickey’s in Southern France
In Greg’s sci-fi crime novella The Event Horizon Murder, Detective Marcus Carver uncovers an illicit “Sade house” while investigating a murder case. After arresting the owners, Carver and his partner bust open several locked doors to find nude, bound women. As Carver describes the scene:On a triangular table in one corner was a pair of AR lenses and a cylindrical controller. I put on a pair of gloves, picked up the controller, held the lenses a few centimeters in front of my eyes and turned them on. The room appeared unchanged. I looked down at the controller in my hand and saw a braided leather whip with several barbed falls. I thumbed a button on the controller, and the whip became a wooden paddle studded with conical metal spikes. I pressed the button again and saw myself holding an electric cattle prod. I dropped the controller and flung the lenses onto the bed in disgust.
Brother Greg doesn’t hold back in this novel, and those with a taste for Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon or Jonathan Lethem’s Gun, with Occasional Music will enjoy this novel.
Cicatrix needs first readers Initial comments are both strong and good (whew!) and I can always take more.
Synopsis: Paul is a mathematical genius. Nobody doubts that. His thesis demonstrates a way to mathematically bridge realities, to bring what’s “over there” to “here” and vice-versa.
The problem is nobody really knows what’s “over there,” and people can only imagine based on their experiences. You can describe the ocean to someone but until they experience it first hand, they really don’t understand it. Similarly, committees shouldn’t be allowed to design horses. Paul experiments with his reality engines, but much of what he conceives of being “over there” is based on childhood trauma. There are monsters over there, and Paul’s equations bring one “here,” to finish the work his parents began years ago.
Cicatrix is ~20k words, novella length. Email me if you’d like to be a first reader, let me know what needs fixing, and how to fix it.
I’m Published Here – This was a good month. Two pieces, Inhaling Light and Exhaling Light in A Daily Gift of
Inspiration and Sema: A Tale of The Northern Clan in Legends: Monsters that Go Bump in the Night.
A Little Game – Every story in Legends: Monsters that Go Bump in the Night is based on a myth.
The first five people to get back to me with a correct answer to what Sema: A Tale of The Northern Clan is based on get a signed Chrysalis ebook. The first person to get back to me with answers that make me laugh gets a signed print copy of Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires Volume 2 (and no looking it up on the internet, folks!).That’s it for July. See you next month!
Enjoy!
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