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Snow eyes
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: The Mightiest of Books
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
As an adult, I’ve had no interest in children’s books. I left them behind half a century ago. Or did I?
Chicken Little, for example, has been a powerful influence in my life. I was a nervous child—that hasn’t changed—and the Little Golden Book didn’t help. First my mother read it to me, then I read and re-read it on my own. I didn’t have many books then, which might help to explain why visitors never see walls in the home my sweetheart and I share. The walls are covered by bookcases.
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Twist Podcast #35: Our 2017 Predictions, This Week’s Headlines, and Recipes for Success
Join co-hosts Rick Rose and Mark McNease for news and opinion with a Twist. This week: culture commentary, predictions for the New Year, twisted headlines, and our recipes for success.Enjoy The Twist Podcast on iTunes, Libsyn, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and YouTube. Are you listening?
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6 Questions for Author Sandra de Helen
Author Sandra de Helen By Mark McNease/Editor
Sandra de Helen is the author of the lesbian thriller Till Darkness Comes. She also pens the Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson series. A writer in many mediums, Sandra is a poet, journalist, and playwright. Her plays have been produced in the Philippines, Ireland, Canada, Chicago, New York City, and in thirteen states. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Dramatists Guild. Her books are available online, at Another Read Through Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, and Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. Samples of her work are available on her website.
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One Thing or Another: Auld Lang Anxiety (So Long 2016)
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
By Mark McNease/EditorI’ve witnessed the end of a few years in my time, but seldom have I welcomed their passing as much as I welcome the final days of 2016. It has been both a year to remember and a year to forget, the way one allows painful memories to fade. While I wouldn’t trade the year for, say, a wrinkle in time that caused me to jump from 2015 to 2017, I can say without hesitation it’s been a year of cataclysm, change, overwhelming emotion, and degrees of stress I hope to never experience again.
I could write about job loss for the year, the death of one pet and health scare for another. I could write about getting shingles that still itch. I could write about an entire year consumed by political news that went from the entertaining to the grotesque, to the utterly heartbreaking. And that would be just the beginning.
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One Thing or Another: Shingle Bells
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
By Mark McNeaseI don’t know what’s more excruciating, living through shingles or attempting to write a humor column about them. But since I consider laughter a true medicine, and a sense of humor vital to surviving this life, I’ll do my best to smile through the pain.
It seems appropriate to end my Year of Living Stressfully with a case of something we’re led to believe only strikes people over the age of 60. I celebrated my 58th birthday in October, so while I’m not that far from the mile marker beyond which shingles waits for one in every three of us, I still thought I was safe for a few more years. I obviously have not had the vaccine I see commercials for every hour or so (do our television sets know what products to market to us yet, the way websites do?). I also couldn’t tell you until now that I’d had chickenpox as a child. I don’t remember my childhood diseases, only its discomforts, which were many.
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Author Joe Cosentino Talks Audiobooks
Author Joe Cosentino By Mark McNease/Editor
It’s a pleasure to welcome back author Joe Cosentino, “the hardest working man in M/M romance” … and mysteries and novellas and, now, audiobooks! Joe currently has four audiobooks out, with more on the way. Audibooks are the fastest growing segment of the publishing world, and I wanted to get Joe’s take and experience on this increasingly popular way to enjoy our favorite books. (You can read previous interviews with Joe on his writing and life HERE and HERE.)
MM: Joe, thanks so much for finding time to answer a few more questions. You’ve got four audiobooks out now. Can you give us a quick rundown of the books they’re from?
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Gay Travelers Magazine Interviews Tim Evanicki, National Tour Producer for ‘Naked Boys Singing’
Reprinted with permission from Gay Travelers MagazineNaked Boys Singing
Six guys. Sixteen songs. No clothes!By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong
Since 1998, people everywhere have been laughing and cheering their way through every moment of the off-Broadway hit Naked Boys Singing. Orlando, Florida producer Tim Evanicki is overseeing a national tour of the international hit musical revue.
We asked Tim Evanicki, Producer of Naked Boys Singing, about the show.
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One Thing or Another: Heaven’s Diner
[clickToTweet tweet=”One Thing or Another editor’s column: Heaven’s Diner. ” quote=”I wonder how different the world would be if we met in diners instead of on Facebook or through apps designed for brief encounters.”]It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Mark McNeaseI recently read an article about New York City’s disappearing diner culture. The writer lamented the loss of a sense of community diners gave the city over many decades, falling victim now to ever-rising rents and changing tastes. (The concept of community that takes place outside a smartphone is apparently strange and foreign to many people today.)
This, one day after ending a visit to relatives by having breakfast in a Richmond, Virginia, diner. When we walked into the place I immediately looked around at the colors inside. The exterior, in black and red, had told me I could expect something exceptionally diner-ish. The booths were red and black, the tables yellow. The two waitresses were distinctly post-punk, with tattoos and neon hair. The crowd, as is usually the case in diners, consisted of people who knew each other from years of eating there. Only first names were necessary, if names were needed at all. And each of them – men, women and children – looked as if they’d enjoyed lives filled with grits and hash browns, without a single kale salad from cradle to grave. My kind of people.
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One Thing or Another: Country Mice
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
By Mark McNease
It’s the morning of the time change, that twice-yearly, incomprehensible turning of the clocks by an hour. We’re told, as if it’s an extra treat for puppies, that we’ll have “another hour to sleep.” This is ridiculous, since most of us inhabit bodies, not clocks, and rather than sleep another hour (something I would relish) we just wake up sooner. So here I am an hour earlier than I would have been yesterday, sitting at my living room desk in the true darkness of the countryside, listening to the few sounds a small, old house in the woods has to offer this time of morning. It’s a house I’ll soon be moving to with my husband and two cats. A house I’ve loved for ten years but only experienced as a weekend getaway. That’s all about to change.
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6 Questions for Author Michael Nava
Michael Nava By Mark McNease
As a mystery writer myself, it shouldn’t be surprising I jumped at the chance to interview Michael Nava, an icon in the genre. His seminal Henry Rios series was heralded as the gold standard when the books came out, beginning with The Little Death in 1986.
In communicating with Michael for this interview, I discovered we were both in Los Angeles during the same time period, and both considered queer bookstore A Different Light (Silver Lake location) central to our writing and reading lives. This December we’ll see the release of Lay Your Sleeping Head, from Kórima Press (now available for pre-order), a reimagined and substantially rewritten version of that first book. I had the great pleasure of reading an advance copy, and was struck on the first page by its literary strength, its meticulous, rich detail and the aching humanity of its characters, as well as its finely crafted plot. Nava, as was declared of him in the New York Times, was, and is, “one of the best.” I’m delighted to share his answers to ‘6 Questions’. (And for all you audiobook fans, check out his Henry Rios series on Audible.)
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One Thing or Another: The Joys of Being an Almost Halloween Baby
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
It’s that time of year again when all the world celebrates a birth like no other … mine! What’s that saying? ‘60 is the new 55.’
October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes itself felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is near. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And, How about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.
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One Thing or Another: Electile Dysfunction
[clickToTweet tweet=”Set for another disheartening, demoralizing “debate” in which both sides will declare victory and everyone loses.” quote=”Yet another disheartening, discouraging, demoralizing “debate” in which both sides will declare victory and everyone loses.”]
By Mark McNeaseIt’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I’ve always been able to identify the lowest points of my life by an inability to find anything funny. My sense of humor is a remarkably reliable barometer with which to gauge my well-being: The less I’m able to laugh at myself and the world around me, the more I’m in need of immediate therapy. Someone needs to talk me off my ledge of despondency. In those dark times I neither smile nor appreciate the smiles of others. I find them grating, in fact, and may even want to wipe them from people’s faces, gently. But then it passes; the clouds reveal a sun that has always been behind them. I appreciate the phenomenon of consciousness again, and find myself engaged in a world that is generally as marvelous as it is overwhelming.
