-
‘Black Cat White Paws’ Audiobook to Be Read by Holly Palance
I couldn’t be happier to announce that Holly Palance will be reading the audiobook version of Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery. This first in a new series has been out just three weeks and has 16 consecutive 5-star ratings. I have high hopes for Maggie Dahl, and I couldn’t imagine anyone better than Holly to voice the book. And she works quickly! Expect to hear her terrific reading sometime in August.
I’ll have 15 free download codes for email subscribers! Look for an announcement on the audiobook’s release.
About Holly Palance (HollyPalance.com):
Born into an acting family where breakfast table monologues, musical numbers and one arm pushups were normal (!), Holly left to train at the Webber-Douglas Academy in London spending eight years trodding the boards playing starring roles in productions of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, LeRoi Jones and Brecht at top regional theatres and London’s West End and appeared in multiple ITV/BBC productions …
… As a journalist, Holly was twice nominated by the WPA for her Buzz magazine column on Hollywood, “The Hills” (USA Today raved: “Palance is one of the funniest writers in the business”). She was editor-in-chief at Santa Barbara Magazine, (under her leadership it won the WPA Award for Best City Magazine), and editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times lifestyle publication, Distinction. She is a HuffPo contributor.
Holly has studied with two outstanding audiobook coaches—Audie Award Winner PJ Ochlan and Audible Hall of Famer Scott Brick – and is currently working on her first novel.
-
Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: What?
By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail
Photo by Sue Hardesty When I first put in the hearing aids, I felt a giant exhalation of tension. Though I knew of my relatively modest hearing loss, I was unaware what a strain it put not just on my marriage and public life, but on my mind and body.
Grandpa Lynch, a retired Railroad Engineer, had big clunky hearing aids. Grandma Lynch needed a pair, though her family said she could hear perfectly well when she wanted to. There was definitely hearing loss on my mother’s side, but her parents couldn’t have afforded hearing aids if they’d wanted them, which they didn’t any more than Grandma Lynch did.
Shame was attached to the very idea of needing such devices. Do people reject hearing aids out of pride? Vanity? Was it the stigma of disability? Maybe back then the new-fangled things weren’t very effective. Probably they were uncomfortable.
-
The Twist Podcast #72: Midterm Blue, Frenemy of the People, and Living the RV Dream
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we take a look at the headlines, scan the horizon for that blue wave, discuss the free press, and dream about life in an RV.Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, YouTube, and right here at The Twist Podcast page.
Copyright 2018 MadeMark Publishing
-
Dave Hughes: Retirement is Like a Buffet. Will You Stuff Yourself or Starve?
By Dave Hughes, RetireFabulously.comThere’s a buffet restaurant a few miles from our home called Pacific Seafood Buffet. Most of the food is Asian, and the primary draw for us is the opportunity to eat all the sushi we care to eat for one price. Of course, there are a lot of other good dishes there too: tempura vegetables, shrimp, crab cakes, and many things you typically find at Asian buffets. And there’s green tea ice cream for dessert!
The lunch price is very reasonable, so we go every couple of months. It would be dietarily disastrous to go any more often than that. We all know that buffets are invitations to overeat, and our visits to Pacific Seafood Buffet are no exception. On the drive home, we usually bemoan the fact that we have eaten too much.
-
‘Black Cat White Paws’ Now In Lahaska and Doylestown Bookstores
-
Before and After Zucchini Bread and Muffins
-
The Twist Podcast #71: The Twist eBook Giveaway, Queen Elizabeth Snaps, ‘Pose’ Strikes a Chord, and Prepping for PrEP
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we take a look at the headlines, dig the royal shade (it’s all in the brooch), appreciate the greatness of Pose, and discuss PrEP and #AIDS2018Live. Also, we’re giving away Kindle copies of ‘Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery‘ to the first 8 listeners who email us at TheTwistPodcast @ Outlook.com
About Black Cat White Paws:In Black Cat White Paws, recently widowed Maggie Dahl finds herself faced with challenges on all fronts: life alone in a new town, running a business she and her husband had dreamed of and started together, and now pursuing a killer. Her sister Gerri moves from Philadelphia to Lambertville, New Jersey, to support her sister and start a new life of her own. Together the women search for a murderer, helped in critical ways by their neighbor’s cat. A black cat with white paws. A cat whose independence sets it all in motion and sees it through to the end.
Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, YouTube, and right here at The Twist Podcast page.
Copyright 2018 MadeMark Publishing
-
After the Storm
-
6 Questions for Author Jean Ryan
By Mark McNeaseThis interview originally appeared at LGBTSR.org, February, 2015
I’ve recently had the pleasure of getting to know Jean Ryan, a gifted writer and generous spirit whose story, Manatee Gardens, opens the collection Outer Voices Inner Lives. Jean has since kept up a correspondence with me and had several of her blog posts featured here at lgbtSr. Her collection, Survival Skills (Ashland Creek Press) is available for anyone interested in superb writing and stories with deep insight into the human experience. I couldn’t think of anyone better for a 6 Questions feature. – Mark/Editor
MM: It’s been really good to get to know you more since we “met” through the Outer Voices Inner Lives collection. Can you tell readers a little about Jean Ryan? Native Vermonter, now in Napa, CA …
-
A Dog’s Life
-
One Thing or Another: Still Life with Benefits
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all. By Mark McNease
I read once that the most revolutionary thing we can do is slow down … And now, in the woods, with darkness and animals just on the other side of the wall, I am doing that: slowing down. It is revolutionary. It changes and transforms.
It’s that time of year when custom encourages us to take a look back over the past twelve months and contemplate what we’ve been through. It’s always a lot. Have you ever reached the end of a year when there weren’t events of great significance? January begins with hope and December ends with surrender—that’s the annual passage we take again and again until the journey ends. Some of us lose loved ones, some of us change jobs, some of us find joy above and beyond simply waking up each morning slightly amazed we’re still here. I don’t know about you, but that’s really how I feel most days when I find myself conscious once more: what in the world is this? How did I come to be, and how am I able to ask that question? It’s as miraculous as anything will ever be.
-
Dave Hughes of RetireFabulously.com Releases ‘Smooth Sailing into Retirement’
I’ve been singing Dave Hughes’s praises for several years now. His columns on retirement at RetireFabulously.com have been incredibly helpful and I can’t recommend them enough. Whether you’re retired, single, coupled, or planning this most enjoyable phase of your life, Dave has the experience and guidance that can help you navigate this sometimes stormy sea. Oh, and you’ll notice it was edited by yours truly! An honor and a privilege.About ‘Smooth Sailing Into Retirement: How to Navigate the Transition from Work to Leisure’:
Smooth Sailing into Retirement will guide you from your last few months of work through your first year of retirement. It identifies the many ways your life will change and prepares you for the emotions you may experience along the way. At each step, you will receive strategies for dealing with these changes.
-
‘The Cat in the Window’ Short Story Now on Amazon for .99 Cents
“… truly excellent — New Yorker-worthy, one might say. It was a perfect little Sunday-morning read.”– Michael Craft, author of Inside Dumont and The Mark Manning Mysteries
I recently gave a complimentary copy of my short story, The Cat in the Window, to email subscribers as a ‘thank you.’ Now it’s available to anyone with just a click and .99 cents.
