Melissa Crandall
Nonfiction, Memoir, Fabulist Fiction & Poetry
The Road(s) Not Taken
I think most of us know the theory of multiple worlds; an infinity of choices with an infinity of worlds available to accommodate each of those choices. We’ve all been there more than once, that crossroads where we decide to move in one direction or the other, stay on the side of God or sell our soul to the Devil to play guitar better than anyone, as blues man Robert Johnson was believed to have done. And sooner or later, after each choice, we entertain the notion of “What If….?” speculating how things “would” have gone “better” had we taken the other road when, in truth, we can never know for certain.
I have a friend who through high school dated this guy she was absolutely in love with. He adored her, too, and they dreamed of marrying. But her mother forbade the union based solely on the fact that the man wasn’t Italian, and my friend was forced to terminate the relationship. Eventually, she married a fellow college classmate and raised a family. Despite some tempestuous ups and downs and more than a little regret on both their parts, they made the marriage work.
Years later, my friend’s old boyfriend found her on Facebook and they arranged a visit at her home. She was a bit twitterpated in expectation; would the old fire between them still exist? Might she (even briefly) consider a fling or run off with him entirely?
Neither, as it turned out. What she learned was that for years he’d been an active alcoholic, making life hell for himself, his spouse, and their family. He was recovering now, but her sense of relief at having dodged that particular bullet was palpable when next we spoke. “Just think!” she said. “That could have been me having to deal with all that!” At a stroke, not everything in the life she’d chosen seemed as bad.
Truth is, the grass always looks greener on the other side of that fence, though we’ve no assurance it isn’t actually AstroTurf, plastic Easter grass, or spray paint.
What would I change in the roads I chose?
I’d have had mentors, adults who cared about who I would become and capable of providing me with the tools I’d need to traverse life. I’d have traveled right out of high school, deferring college a year or two. I might have preferred a trade school to “regular” college. (There’s a good chance I’d have made better money.) I’d have grown some confidence and the spine to stand up to certain individuals. I’d never have tolerated the abuser I was with for four years. I’d never have married my first husband. (Not the same person.) I’d have worked harder and longer at my writing and begun submitting work much earlier rather than hold back out of fear. I’d have jettisoned fear from my life entirely, much as that’s possible. In addition to writing, I’d have pursued a career in biology or zoology or paleontology or forensics something else in the sciences rather than buy into the hype that because my math was weak, I was “stupid” (yes, an exact quote) and ill-qualified for those fields.
Then again, the paths I’ve chosen have not come without gifts. I’ve lived places I might never have gone, met people I might never have met. I may never have connected with Roger and written about his elephants. If I’d never moved to Connecticut, lived in that particular area of the state, enrolled in massage school and published a book of short fiction, I’d have missed out on my friends Mo and Ryan, Drey and Scott, Lorain and Bob, Liam and Wanda, Stacey, John and Chelsey and Chris, and Glenn at the Book Barn. (Heck, I’d have missed the Book Barn entirely, and what a loss that would be!)
Believing things would be different “If only….” is a fallacy better left beside your life’s road. Therein lies defeat and madness. So, you’ve made mistakes? Join the queue. You have regrets? Each of us carries a list as ponderous as the chains that bind Jacob Marley. No life is perfect, no life exists without toil and strain balanced on occasion with bright instances that shine stark against the dark, push it back, and illuminate the road ahead.
Curtain Down
Not long ago, my middle sister said to me on the telephone, “Do you ever think about your death? I think about mine all the time.” She laughed dryly. “I don’t suppose you do, given that you’re so much younger than me.” (She’s twelve years my senior.)
“I think about it a lot,” I replied, much to her surprise.
Okay, well, maybe not a lot, but certainly more frequently than I used to. It’s normal and healthy to wonder about how it will happen, when it will come. Will I have the luxury of watching it approach from afar and have time to prepare? (I’d love to throw myself a Going Away Party, a real Irish Wake with lots of food and beer and music and laughter; geez, yes, let there be laughter.) Will death strike suddenly in the guise of heart attack, aneurysm, or automobile collision? Will I I linger in any of a number of horrid ways, felled by disease, rendered immobile, unable to communicate? Will my wishes for a gentle passing and a DNR order be honored, or will my family find themselves fighting those in authority?
(Whatever comes, I hope to be carried off by the Death from Discworld. If you aren’t familiar with the Discworld novels by Sir Terry Pratchett, stop when you’re doing and immediately order the entire set and get busy reading. I’m happy to wait.)
It isn’t only my death I contemplate, but that of my husband or my closest friends. How will I cope, assuming I outlive them? If I don’t outlive them, how can I help prepare them for my own leap from the lion’s mouth, my own step into the next Great Adventure?
Without being grisly or grim, I’ve had a larger than normal curiosity about death ever since my niece Leslie died in 1989 after 25 years of battling Cystic Fibrosis. I was one of those at her bedside and when she passed (the oxygen canula being removed from her nose at last) I heard her voice in my head, an exultant shout, “YES!” as a burst of energy surged upward and outward into the universe.
Believe me, I’ve received my share of skeptical looks after telling that story. Whatever. Believe as you like. I know what I know.
But after that, I longed to touch the mystery again, as well as prepare myself for the own parents’ eventual decline and death. I read DYING WELL by Dr. Ira Byock (a game-changer of a book that I recommend to everyone) and I volunteered with Hospice, providing gentle massage. One of the most profound moments was asking a cancer patient if she’d like me to remove her hat and lotion her bare head. Incredulous, she said, “You’d do that?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Why not?”
“I didn’t think anyone would want to touch it,” she said in a tiny voice that made me want to cry.
The skin of her head was taut and smooth; hot, flushed from the chemotherapy drugs. I can feel it even now. “Oh, my goodness,” she all but moaned when the lotion touched her scalp. “That feels so good!“
The patients and families at Hospice taught me both the best and the worst ways to approach your own death or that of a loved one, and taught me not to judge. Some families rally around because of love, and some arrive as carrion crows in disguise. Some folks distance themselves out of unresolved anger, and some because of fear because death, which used to be such an interwoven part of our lives, is now a stranger in our homes. I could tell stories of the patients for whom I recommended removal from their homes due to neglect and outright hostility. I could tell you of the man who promised me that when I get to Heaven, he and I are going dancing while his wife and my husband go play golf.
One of my favorite memories is of the family who, upon learning that hearing is the very last sense to depart, lined up one behind the other outside my patient’s room and entered one at a time to climb into bed with him and tell him how much he was loved, how deeply he would be missed.
I hope that when, and however, that time occurs for me, I’ll live up to their example.
A Gentle Hand
Part of my pursuit of writing….well, perhaps “pursuit” isn’t the correct word, but neither is stalking (I’m put in mind of the old Monty Python skit, “Stalking the Royal Family”)…my wooing (?) of the written word has been to have a gentler hand with myself. No more internal recriminations, a bit less judgement of self (I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t suffer from a surfeit of judgmental tripe, most of it aimed at themselves). I feel a bit like a naturalist, or like poet Mary Oliver walking her quiet away among the woods and ocean dunes, letting Nature come to her as it will. It’s a bit like courting a deer, ready for it (“it” being the ability to write) to bolt and hie off into the woods.
Writing slowly is a bit frustrating, but also illuminating. I take time to search for the precise words, often writing the same sentence over and over again until it feels right. (My former tendency was to just get it down and worry about fixing it on the rewrite. Now I enjoy taking that time to seek what I’m really wanting to get at.
I dunno. It works for me at the moment. Frankly, I’m grateful to be able to write anything. And, as I shared with a few friends this week, I actually finished a piece! Twenty-thousand words written over three months. Not gonna win any marathons with that, but I don’t care. The question remains whether it’s garbage, of course. I don’t want it to be….and I honestly don’t think it is…but it’ll be curious to see what my go-to readers have to say about it.
I’m also starting to take better care of myself mentally. In line with that, I finally tracked down a dog that seemed to fit the bill for what we were looking for. Those of you who’ve patiently stayed with me over the past three years know that we lost our most-beloved Australian shepherd, Holly, in the early summer of 2020. I’ve lost a number of pets through the years and each one hurt, but this was one of the worst. Two years after the fact, I would occasionally find myself wracked with sobs over that silly, marvelous, clown of a dog.
But now there’s Sika.
She’s not a substitute for Holly, nor a replacement (there could be no such thing), but she is a creature entirely of herself; an Aussie/Golden mix (the rescue’s best guess) taken from a bad situation by an animal rescue group in Kentucky and then given to the wholly remarkable folks at Australian Shepherds Furever (yes, that’s how they spell it), who fostered her for two months, showed her off on Facebook, and were kind enough to approve our application. She’s been with us six weeks, and in that time I’ve been blessed to watch an animal’s miraculous ability at recovery. A dog who should hate people greets everyone with joy. Heck, she greets everything with bliss – dogs, cats, horses, you name it. (Even a skunk we met on the trail, who blithely tipped his hat, stepped around us, and went on his way without spraying.)
Sika is rescuing me as much as I’m rescuing her, a true-ism any number of animal people have declared. She gets me out everyday, walking two, four, sometimes six miles. She makes me laugh, makes me smile. We go to sleep listening to the sound of each other’s breathing.
And that’s more than enough.
Attention Writers and Readers: Introducing Shepherd.Com
A bit ago, round about the time I received my concussion, I also received an inquiry from the book lovers/promoters at Shepherd.com about whether I’d like to promote ELEPHANT SPEAK by also helping to promote the work of others. I did a bit of poking around and all looked good, so that’s what I’ve done. The result is this wonderful page where you can learn about my writing, and my recommendations of books about human & animal relationships. (The banner for my page is below.) I hope you’ll all take a moment to check it out, and maybe even hang out for a bit of browsing to see what’s out there just waiting for you to discover it.
Loganberry Books, August 20
For those of you in the Cleveland and surrounding areas, I’m proud to be taking part in the 15th Annual Author Alley at Loganberry Books ( http://www.loganberrybooks.com/) on August 20 from noon to 4 pm. This section of the Alley is for nonfiction and illustrated literature. Come on out, support Loganberry and your local authors, and find some good reads. Remember…the holidays are coming and books make wonderful gifts!
Exquisite Project, Track 2 is LIVE!
To reiterate from my previous post for those of you who start here:
From 2012 to 2018, I participated in an annual prograqm called The Exquisite Project, hosted by the Bill Library in Ledyard, CT and organized by the brilliant and talented Andrea Hoshaw Buka. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the idea is based off the Victorian parlor game “Exquisite Corpse” in which one person draws part of a body on a piece of paper, folds the paper so the next person can’t see what they’ve drawn, and then the next person continues, doing the same until the last person is finished and the paper is unfolded to reveal the composite creature. (Think “The Telephone Game,” where one person whispers into the ear of another, and that person relays what’s been said to a third person and so on, until the end, where the last person reveals what they think has been said and it’s compared to the original statement.)
The project was a lot of fun and wonderfully creative, with Andrea providing the initial prompt to the first person in line, then alternating writers and artists in each track with the subsequent creators not knowing the prompt and only the piece that directly preceded theirs. We all were deeply saddened when she informed us that EP would not continue past 2018 due to budget constraints imposed by outside forces. (The library is located in a town where some of the people in power would dearly love to close it down. Can you imagine?!)
Fast forward to 2020 and the onset of Covid and all the other things we’ve endured. As I’ve addressed elsewhere, I found myself unable to write during much of the past two years, and was almost physically ill at the thought my ability might have deserted me. In an effort to be creative in some small way, I asked for, and received, Andrea’s blessing to exhume EP and try it on my own. I sent out invitations for five writers and five artists to volunteer, in order to form two tracks. Track 1 would run Artist/Writer/Artist/Writer/Artist, and Track 2 the opposite. Both would be initially generated by a prompt supplied by me to the first person in line, and unknown thereafter to all the others. I’m happy to say that those who signed up were deeply enthusiastic and gave it their all. And now we’re ready to reveal!
Track Two Prompt
#1
Woodland Recital Disturbed
He reminds me of a centaur I once knew
but in profile—so I can’t be certain
Head a thatched cottage filled with rhymes
plashing about like fish in a stygian bowl
With perfect performance posture he sits before
a splintered upright littered with curling leaves.
I’d like to find a three quarter portrait of Bowie
torn from a fashion mag—paste it atop the bare torso
But any movement of my own might disturb
the brittle leaves as they dance across the keyboard
A ghost mantis leading with mahogany legs
taps along the spear of sunlight piercing the copse.
I peer between two leafless boughs
and wonder—how is it I’m not seen
The centaur is too intent upon his song
nor does he take notice of a sudden gust
Gathering its skirts and lifting the spent leaves
high above him to create a spiraling crown.
But the clever mantis saves itself.
Digs its claws into the centaur’s shoulder.
Turns its pyramidal head to look at me.
#2
#3
It must have been a dream, but how could it have been? A thousand years of
memories, my people, the wars and triumphs, the famine – the great
coalescence. Yet here I am. As I try to wipe away the dream with the sleep in
my eyes, I cannot shake it. How could I dream for a thousand years? How
could I wake from a lifetime? How can I return to the dream?
I grab fleece and recall the feel of linens in the palatsi, soft, like clouds.
The blanket, coarse, jagged, rakes across my breast. Nothing feels smooth.
Nothing feels real. My foot reaches the floor and recoils. When did it get so
cold? Where is the comfort of grass and sand? I know I am here, but,
somehow, I don’t feel I am here. I still feel the warmth of the suns and gentle
breezes of the hinterland.
“Siunaus talle paivalle, olkoon kaikki elava.” I whisper.
I don’t even know what that means. It’s slipping away from me. I’ve made it
as far as the door, and I want to walk backward and crawl into bed. A song,
one from this world, reminds me, “…Once you wake up, you just can’t fall back
to sleep anymore.” And I push forward.
Somewhere inside the motions, muscle memory tells me I have always been
here. The coffee gets made, brush teeth, run water for bath. When my toe
breaks the surface tension of the water, I feel I could slip back into
Kalandria. There is it again. What is the other that I feel? Bath, water,
gestational fluid, welcomes me back home.
I slip beneath the surface, the embrace of Aiti. Ayatee? Mother? I feel the
words. I recall the oath. “Maailmat Yhtena.” “Maialmat Ushtena.”
Worlds as One.
I rise from the waters gasping for breath. I was there. I know I was. We were
all there. Ding. What? Coffee. Coffee is done. Standing, I feel the waters, the
memories, drip from my naked soul. Towel is rough. Air is cold. Where am I?
And why do I still bear the mark of the Druidi?
#4
#5
The only time she got relief from the masks and shields and gowns and gloves, from
the phone calls with fraught loved ones (both her own and her patients’), and from the
struggles of the dying was in her dreams. There
the clock ran backward, and strange glyphs danced on its face that were almost, but not quite,
familiar. Every night her exhausted brain
took her to a mirror world where all the terrible events of the day
reversed themselves before her eyes – patients sat up and smiled, coworkers
removed their masks and laughed with each other. Her father
walked from the cemetery to her childhood home and puttered in his garden.
She felt the fear ebb and hope flow in, a counter-tide to her days.
After a twelve-hour shift, she raced home through the empty streets, stopping only
to get take-out, which she devoured after showering. Feeding her body in anticipation of slumber
and the door.
In her dreams she stood before a door, able to make out
a yin-yang carved into its surface on both sides. On this side
the lighter yang was more prominent. She knew on the reverse that the yin prevailed,
warning of the darkness. It was the boundary
between dark and light, stress and relief, pain and joy.
Every day she woke to the same – masks and shields and gloves and gowns, patients
dying no matter what she did to help them. The fear and exhaustion
filled her as if she were drowning. And then, inevitably, one day she awoke
on a gurney – her coworkers rushing her to the triage area – fever and low oxygen, breaths
that were hard to pull in, and fatigue that permeated every atom of her body. Closing
her eyes, she thought of the door and the strange clock that ran backward. Then
she was stepping across the threshold. She soon found herself walking
up the front steps of her father’s house and hearing him call out “Hey kiddo, are you hungry?”. Joy
flooded her heart until it burst from her chest, like in the religious paintings of Mary. Her emotions
took tangible form, becoming objects she could touch.
After a time that felt both long and short, she made her way back to the door and turned
the knob. It was locked.
The Participants
Once more, inexpressible gratitude to the artists and writers who gave their time and talent to this project. In order of appearance:
Shifra Shaman Sky has this to say about her piece: “What immediately struck me was the mannequin’s resemblance to a young, shaggy-haired David Bowie.” Shifra’s first chapbook, Touching the Nooksack, was published in October 2021 by Finishing Line Press. You can learn more about it here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touching-the-nooksack-by-shifra-shaman-sky/
Theresa Dupont is a versatile artist whose endeavors include sea glass/driftwood boats, small stone Christmas trees, and portraits of her dog, Princess Bubba. She really knows her way around a kitchen (as I have good reason to know), and should really have her own bakery.
Ryan Twomey-Allaire, aka His Lordship, is a jack of all trades who can turn his hand to any craft or repair job and have it come out (occasionally with some swearing) better than it was before. He enjoys cooking, but won’t touch dessert. In addition to a full time job or three, he’s helped run a small press, Bookateer Publishing, along with his beloved main squeeze M.J. Allaire (from Track 1). He lives in the back of beyond where he’s renovating an old house when he isn’t doing one of a million other tasks and cursing the chiggers.
Robert Farace is, by his own admission, “never entirely happy” with the art he produces. Those of us who have followed his work for years beg to differ. In addition to being an accomplished sculptor and musician, he’s a talented handyman and mechanic, restoring life to an old house or a reluctant engine. In his day job, he’s a “word mechanic, but others break them faster than I can fix them.” He’s also one of the world’s nicer people. He plays bass guitar as a member of Post Traumatic Jazz Disorder, along with his partner Lorain Ohio Simister. See them here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN7E-gOQ3muY3VWyRWAOMyA
Andrea Hoshaw Buka is the instigator behind the original Exquisite Project. She’s talented at more things than is fair to the rest of humanity including sewing, cooking, participation in Society for Creative Anachronism, makers’ workshops, library cataloger (including Chair of the Consortiums Catalogers Committee), history buff, re-enactor, and let’s not forget full-time wife, mother, grandmother, and friend. Drey doesn’t know the meaning of the word “no” and will always help in a pinch.
Exquisite Project, Track 1 is LIVE!
From 2012 to 2018, I participated in an annual prograqm called The Exquisite Project, hosted by the Bill Library in Ledyard, CT and organized by the brilliant and talented Andrea Hoshaw Buka. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the idea is based off the Victorian parlor game “Exquisite Corpse” in which one person draws part of a body on a piece of paper, folds the paper so the next person can’t see what they’ve drawn, and then the next person continues, doing the same until the last person is finished and the paper is unfolded to reveal the composite creature. (Think “The Telephone Game,” where one person whispers into the ear of another, and that person relays what’s been said to a third person and so on, until the end, where the last person reveals what they think has been said and it’s compared to the original statement.)
The project was a lot of fun and wonderfully creative, with Andrea providing the initial prompt to the first person in line, then alternating writers and artists in each track with the subsequent creators not knowing the prompt and only the piece that directly preceded theirs. We all were deeply saddened when she informed us that EP would not continue past 2018 due to budget constraints imposed by outside forces. (The library is located in a town where some of the people in power would dearly love to close it down. Can you imagine?!)
Fast forward to 2020 and the onset of Covid and all the other things we’ve endured. As I’ve addressed elsewhere, I found myself unable to write during much of the past two years, and was almost physically ill at the thought my ability might have deserted me. In an effort to be creative in some small way, I asked for, and received, Andrea’s blessing to exhume EP and try it on my own. I sent out invitations for five writers and five artists to volunteer, in order to form two tracks. Track 1 would run Artist/Writer/Artist/Writer/Artist, and Track 2 the opposite. Both would be initially generated by a prompt supplied by me to the first person in line, and unknown thereafter to all the others. I’m happy to say that those who signed up were deeply enthusiastic and gave it their all. And now we’re ready to reveal!
Track One Prompt
For the Track One Prompt I chose part of a quote from writer Arthur C. Clarke:
“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts…”
And here is how the track played out:
#1
#2
Reckoning
In a chrysalis of our own making
We’re waiting to develop wings
While this moment’s for the taking
And we don’t know what tomorrow brings
Yet we exist in humble silence
Lest we dare to raise a voice
And the world is marked for violence
As if it (n)ever had a choice
Will today be the day that we emerge
From the buffer of our contentment
Or will these apathies converge
On a point of shared resentment
Chorus A:
Our fellow man is beckoning
About time we joined the reckoning
It’s all for one and one for all
Learn when to stand and when to fall
Open your eyes, let in the light
Arm yourselves, prepare to fight
Bring your conscience, bring your reason
Bring your condemnation of this treason
Bring your goodness, bring your virtue
Brandish these, they can’t hurt you
In a cocoon of our own devising
We’re immune to the call of duty
While the temperature outside keeps rising
And hot spots threaten to obscure beauty
Yet we hesitate to disturb the peace
Lest we shock the reverie of complacence
And humanity is held under lock and key
As if we confused paralysis with patience
Will today be the day that we break out
From the comfort of our disillusion
Or will truth be seen in shades of doubt
Despite reality’s intrusion
Chorus B:
Our fellow man is beckoning
About time we joined the reckoning
It’s one for all and all for one
Learn what to do, not what’s been done
Let in the light, open your eyes
Clarity comes when darkness dies
Bring your wisdom, bring your kindness
Bring your aversion to this blindness
Bring your love, bring your compassion
These are weapons without ration
Bridge:
Why bloody up the battlefield
When we can walk on common ground
There’s infinite room behind this shield
Under which we’re honor-bound
(Repeat Chorus A & B)
#3
#4
“The Cycle”
She had grown weary of the cycle. Its existence was immutable, though the circumstances changed constantly. There had been slews of clichés throughout the centuries which touched on its essence, but her favorite was the one about not learning from history and being doomed to repeat it. Humankind never did learn, and as such, was doomed to repeat the cycle, until they were finally no more.
The blissful periods of peace and prosperity sometimes lasted for decades. New life was created, new lives were forged, sometimes directly from the ashes of war. They sprouted, basked, and grew in the kind, gentle warmth of the sun, flowered, and brought forth even more life.
Those same rays of benevolence, however, had a hidden insidious effect. It also slowly faded the horrors of war from the collective consciousness, memories waning in the flow of time. Tales told by ever-aging survivors passed from hearing, echoes lost in the distance. Humankind forgets, but time does not.
Why had The First allowed them to get to this point, ensnared in this endless coda of tragedy? One of the many ‘mysteries of the First’, she supposed, though that too was cliché. It was largely an experiment, a release of control, which seemed to ‘amuse’ the First. Or, more likely than an amusement, a test of Their omniscience. They saw the inevitable, held out hope that Their creation would overcome itself and reach Them, knowing they would not.
The foundation for this tragic tale was laid when they were provided self-determination. Folly, the First had to have known, but They were eternally optimistic. When They designed life in this particular system, this ‘universe’, as the self-important humans named it, They hoped the spark of creation would imbue a sense of the Design. It did, in some, but only in large part, not in the whole. Hope was constantly reborn in every new soul drawn forth from the Well, but rarely survived childhood.
She surveyed her charges, now coming out of the horrors of War. The fabric of their souls was torn asunder by it; no, more frayed, damaged, rather than destroyed. With the impending peace and prosperity, however, the damage would be repaired, wounds healed with the scars of time. New life, new Hope would spring forth from the reminder War provided, as to what was good and important in the world. Children would be born, grow, and demand a change, a revocation of the cycle. They would, however, in time fail to heed the lessons, and return once more to the path of destruction.
There were many more worlds, many more experiments with which she could be tasked to oversee when this one finally ended. She found Hope within herself that one of them would prove wise enough to learn, wise enough to escape the cycle of the Well and the World, and return home. Then the First could move forward.
#5
The Participants
I can’t begin to express my gratitude to these, my friends, for their willingness to play and (for a time) set aside the world’s craziness. I so appreciate each of them sharing their talent with the world. Here, in order of appearance, I’m happy for you to meet:
A.E. Marlowe says of his piece “Clarke’s quote (and the lines that follow the fragment) speaks to me of the expectations and debts owed to the dead. Behind my figure are figures representing ghosts, scattered amongst them is detritus and the shattered remains of their failed goals symbolized by the broken lightbulbs. The main, haphazard figure is walking on a path of glass tile and reaching toward yet another goal. That goal is likewise imperfect, but holds a bit of promise (in the form of the small key). The ghosts influence the situation with their observation. They cannot speak, hear, or listen, but they can perceive somehow. They are there, watching the living as they try and interact with a new goal. Will the living succeed or will this be another shattered bulb scattered on the path forward? The larger figure knows it is being watched. It knows it owes a debt to the dead.” You can see more of Marlowe’s work at http://3houses.art
John B. Valeri is a book critic, author, and host of the well-regarded web series Central Booking. He’s written for CrimeReads, Crimespree Magazine, Criminal Element, Mystery Scene Magazine, The New York Journal of Books, The Strand Magazine, and Suspense Magazine. His popular online column, “Hartford Books Examiner,” ran from 2009 to 2016 and was praised by author James Patterson as “a haven for finding great new books.” You can explore more of John’s work, and watch past episodes of Central Booking at http://johnbvaleri.com
M.J. Allaire is best known as the author of middle-grade fantasy and mystery, including the celebrated Denicalis Dragon Chronicles series. She is the recipient of a Mom’s Choice award for her novella Into Thin Air. She lives in the middle of nowhere with her husband, Ryan, several semi-feral cats, and three rambunctious dogs. You can learn more about her at https://www.mjallaire.com/
Scott Buka is a Renaissance man of the first stripe, a punster, a lover of good food, drink, and music, utterly devoted to his family, and one of the nicer people on the planet. (And he’s fortunate enough to be married to Andrea Hoshaw Buka.)
Lorain Ohio Simister has this to say about her piece “This is created from found art supplies. My favorite piece is the tiny brown piece of pottery. I found it on a lawn chair and fell in love. Through researching, I discovered it is the nest of a potter wasp; harmless, non-aggressive, mosquito eater (I think aphids, too). And the pot is perfect. Hope to find another one some day.” In addition to being an accomplished artist, Lorain is a professional singer and culinary wizard. She lives with her best-beloved, artist Robert Farace, another of the world’s nicer people, and together they make up one-third of the band Post Traumatic Jazz Disorder. http://thewingagency.com/artists/PTJD/
“Nothing to be Afraid Of” is LIVE!
The London Reader UFO issue with my story “Nothing to be Afraid Of” is now available. To paraphrase The London Reader itself, this volume delves into that part of our imagination that ignites when we see strange lights in the sky, or pause to think of the conspiracies behind them.
You can access the collection at the links below. There’ll also be a stand-alone book issued next year.
Print or eBook edition: http://www.patreon.com/LondonReader
Kindle Edition in the United States: http://www.amzn.to/2gDSdG6
Kindle Edition in the UK: http://www.amzn.to/2fvO7Th
As always, thank you from my heart to all those who support my work, and the work of others.
Three Weekends of Writers
We’re a (very) short three weeks and four days from the beginning of Loganberry Books’ Author Alley gatherings. For three Saturdays in a row, the good people at Loganberry Books will bring together up to 30 area authors to talk about their work. Each event runs from 12pm to 4pm.
August 6 – BIPOC authors
August 13 – fiction
August 20 (that’s me) – non-fiction and illustrated lit.
Find out more on the Loganberry Books website (http://www.loganberrybooks.com/).
If you’re local (and even if you aren’t), I hope you’ll make a point to come out for one of those days to support Northeast Ohio authors and Loganberry Books.
Coming Soon to an Ohio Near You
Please pass the word along to your reader friends near and far. We’re bound to have a fun time talking about elephants, not to mention all the other stuff that crops up. Hope you’ll join us in September at the Thompson Branch of Geuga Library! https://geaugalibrary.libcal.com/event/9221398
Melissa Crandall 