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Hotel Review: Boston’s Verb Hotel Gets 4.5 Fresh Towels
Prefer to listen? Just click for the audio version.
Hotel reviews are based on a Fresh Towel rating. Five means a top destination, one means check in at your peril.
Welcome to the first hotel review. It’s being added to my restaurant reviews (1-5 Yums), and my general travel reviews and blog posts.
Like a lot of people, we’ve been traveling a lot since the removal of pandemic restrictions. We’ve been to Delaware, Atlantic City, and we’ll be heading to California and Las Vegas soon, as well as taking a cruise to Canada in October that arrives back in Bayonne, NJ, on my birthday!
I was especially prompted to kick these off because we’ve come to Boston to visit one of Frank’s oldest friends (who takes the ferry to Provincetown every year in August when we head their for our annual time share). Frank booked us into The Verb Hotel, and I was wowed!
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Dreamshaping Podcast #19: My Robot’s Name is Josh (Adventures in AI Narration)
This is my first adventure in AI, using a service called ElevenLabs voice synthesis. It’s frankly amazing, and it opens up a lot of new opportunities for me as a creator. Podcasts, blog posts, short stories, anything I wanted to have narrated can now be offered as audio. It’s very exciting, and I’m looking forward to new frontiers as a writer and podcaster.
This first one is called ‘When You’re Older, Son,’ and the Slippage of Time.’ As with all things Dreamshaping, it’s a look at the human experience and how we create and experience the ultimate dream of our lives.
‘When You’re Older, Son’ and the Slippage of Time
Are human beings the only animals aware of time passing? Do cats know they’re getting old? Do fish ever wish they’d swum in this direction instead of that one? Is a tree concerned at all with the number of years it has stood rooted in one spot?
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The Twist Podcast #216: Headlines and Horse Feathers, Brad Shreve Joins the Chat Room, and a New Guest Listicle!
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we scan the headlines, introduce our new Chat Room feature with our first chatterbox, author and podcaster Brad Shreve, and treat listeners to a listicle from Allison DeMarcus on the best things about sharing your life with a country musician.
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Q Audiobooks: Enemy of My Enemy (Executive Office, Book 2) by Tal Bauer, Narrated by John Solo
Enemy of My Enemy
Executive Office, Book 2
By: Tal Bauer
Narrated by: John Solo
Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
4.8 out of 5 stars (153 ratings)President Jack Spiers and former Secret Service agent Ethan Reichenbach throw caution to the wind, committing themselves publicly as the first out male lovers and partners to occupy the White House. Jack moves Ethan into the Residence, but as Ethan settles into his new role as first gentleman of the United States, not everyone is thrilled with their choices. When it seems like the world turns against them, Jack and Ethan must turn to each other, finding the strength together to press on.
In the chaos, Jack’s relationship with Russian President Sergey Puchkov grows closer, and the two nations find themselves working almost as allies. But President Puchkov has secrets of his own, secrets that could rip everything apart. And Ethan steps back into the action with Lieutenant Adam Cooper, taking charge of a covert kill team tasked with hunting down General Madigan once and for all.
But Madigan is elusive, and his dangerous reach is long. He strikes at Jack and Ethan from the shadowy corners of the globe, unraveling their entire world. As the mad general draws new allies together, he is single-minded in his quest to destroy the only two men who ever beat him.
Contains mature themes.
©2017, 2020 Tal Bauer (P)2020 Tantor -
Mark on Topic: Subscriber Tree House – ‘Joyful Warriors’ and Cheerful Terrorists
The following is from my Wednesday ‘Subscriber Tree House’ edition of Mark on Topic (Substack). Subscribe here!
Happy Wednesday, Tree House friends! A couple things to relate today from the tin-cans-and-a-string news outlet.
One, I may take a short sabbatical from fiction writing. As much as I love making up worlds and the people who inhabit them, it’s also frequently frustrating. I sometimes suffer from a form of creative constipation, and that’s where I find myself this morning. But it does not mean I’ll be this way tomorrow. It’s likely that I’m just feeling over-extended, and one of those burners has to be put on low.
The subtitle today, ‘Joyful Warriors,’ comes from the name of an upcoming convention in Philadelphia being hosted by the Moms for Liberty kitchen-table terrorists with their massive dark money backing. You know Besty DeVoss is lurking in there somewhere, salivating at all the public education dollars she’ll be able to funnel into her Good Christian friends’ pockets as our educational system is destroyed. Knowledge and freedom are the wood, Moms for Liberty are the termites.
These vipers are at the door, slithering closer as they take over school boards across the country. This happened, quite sadly, in Bucks County, PA, just across the river from our home in New Jersey. The new board, with a 6-3 nutjob majority, has banned Pride flags, ‘safe space’ stickers, and anything else that might make a non-white-Christian child or educator feel safe. Gay? Trans? Black? Forget about it! The only safe spaces these people want are white, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender spaces. The rest of us will be peering in the window hoping we don’t get arrested for trespassing.
I’m currently part of a growing pushback on this cheerful terrorism. I’m on a committee to identify and elect school board members in my district. I’m also part of the Kingwood Democratic Club and the Hunterdon Democrats, as we scramble to recover from the ambush (Mom-bush?) of these joyless authoritarians. I had no interest in being an activist at this age, but it’s come to that. What waits ahead, no one knows, but we cannot simply lie down in the middle of the road and let ourselves be run over by the Momster trucks.
In other news …
I’m interviewing comic and activist Robin Tyler later today. She’s 80-years-old and as much a door-kicker as ever. She and Rev. Troy Perry called for the first March on Washington, and I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say about our current state of affairs.
Buy local …
Many thanks to Babs and her Bucks on Bridge coffee shop. She hosted a reading of mine in January, and she’s selling my books at the shop.
The Twist Podcast with comedy duo Mark McNease and Rick Rose is moving to Sundays! I no longer work on the Lord’s Day, so we’re relocating and loving it. Upcoming Twist-erviews: author and podcaster Brad Shreve, and San Antonio’s very own drag warrier Queen Fantasia. Fasten your headphones!
And lastly, I’ve just signed up with an app called HealthyWage. It sounds like a scam but it’s not. I’m betting $60 a month for 6 months ($360) that I’ll lose 30 pounds by August. When I do (not ‘if’), I’ll win $745, nearly doubling my wager. The reality is most people don’t succeed, and that’s how they make make money for themselves and the payouts for people like me, who will not fail. So … wish me good eating!
Today’s parting shot …
Enjoy what you hear and read here? Subscribe for regular updates!
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An App for That: HealthyWage Lets You Lose Weight and Gain Money!
It sounds like a scam but it’s not. I just joined HealthyWage as a way to make some money while I lose the extra pounds. The plan is very simple: you wager an amount (payable monthly or in one lump sum) against the pounds you want to lose, and when you succeed within a certain amount of time, you get the winning payout. For me, it’s $60 a month for six months ($360), with a calculated winning of $745.
The formula is easy to understand: If you don’t lose the weight, they keep the money, and use the income to pay those of us who do make our goal – which I will! I’m wagering that I’ll lose 30 pounds by August. Success is the only option.So if you’re looking to lose weight and you’re confident of success, check out HealthyWage and see if it’s a nice little side gig for you. I will report back in August when I hear that ca-ching!
Enjoy what you hear and read here? Subscribe for regular updates!
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Restaurant Review: The Inn at Barley Sheaf Farm Rates 5+ Yums (Holicong, PA)
The Inn at Barley Sheaf Farm
5281 York Rd., Holicong, PA 18928
(215) 794-5104
Food: 5+ Yums (out of 5!)
Service: 5 Yums
Atmosphere: 5 Yums
Price: $$$$‘Astonishing’ is not a word you see much in restaurant reviews, but in this case it’s required. The meal we had at The Inn at Barley Sheaf was nothing short of amazing from start to finish. Hyperbole, you say? You won’t think so once you’ve eaten here.
We have a dear friend visiting from Delaware, so it was appropriate we take her to a terrific restaurant. Frank and I had been there once before and knew you get what you pay for, which is considerable and worth every penny.
Once owned by playwright George S. Kaufman and located in historic Bucks Country, PA, the Inn sits on over 100 acres of pasture and country gardens. It’s just an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, two hours from New York City, and it offers the very definition of destination dining. Along with the stellar restaurant, the Inn is a bed and breakfast, offering guest suites that feature, in some cases, whirlpool tubs, steam showers with body sprays, private balconies, individual fireplaces and more.
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‘Triple Threat: 3 Marshall James Thrillers’ Hits #1!
It’s a hit! ‘Triple Threat: 3 Marshall James Thrillers’ hits #1 in LGBT mysteries. Now I KNOW I have to write another book in the series.
You can listen to the first three chapters of Book #2, ‘Beautiful Corpse,’ narrated by the amazing Sean Rhead HERE, as an episode of the Mark McNease Mysteries Podcast.
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The Weekly Readlines February 17
Now with a side of audio!
The Weekly Readlines (rhymes with headlines!) offers news you can use every Friday.
Say it ain’t so: Amsterdam bans weed in its red light district. And the Eagles lost the Super Bowl.
Quote for the Week: “Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won.” – Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S TOP STORIESFirst the good news: California moves to enshrine marriage equality in their Constitution. And Senator Diane Feinstein announces her retirement at the end of her term. We salute you, Senator Feinstein!
Governor Ron ‘New Sheriff in Town’ DeSantis secretly wanted guns banned from his election night bacchanal, asking the venue to say it was their idea. They refused. And in a pointless gesture, Nikki Haley announced her run for the Republican nomination (but her speech was pretty good).
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BookBub Featured Deal! Triple Threat: 3 Marshall James Thrillers (February 17 – 22)
I’m delighted to announce another BookBub Featured Deal, this one for my recently-released triple-header. Triple Threat: 3 Marshall James Thrillers combines all of the Marshall James books in one page-turning collection. It’s reduced to just $1.99 for five days, February 17- 22. That’s three, three, three thrills in one. I’ve also marked down most of my other books to .99 cents for the duration of the deal. So head over, and prepare to stay up late for a few nights. You won’t be able to put these down.
Update: For fans of the series, rest easy! A new Marshall James Thriller is on the way. He just needed some time on a beach, but he’s got a return ticket booked for 2024.
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The Twist Podcast #215: Super Bowl Freakout, Mardi Gras Grub, 80 Years Young, and Our Move to Sundays!
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we consider the right-wing freakout over the Super Bowl, imagine the great food Rick’s going to scarf at Mardi Gras, confirm Biden’s running again, and announce our move to Sundays!
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Cat Talk Radio with Molly DeVoss and Dewey Vaughn: Dr. Brian Hurley, DVM, Talks About Dental Care for Cats
How important is it to have an annual feline dental cleaning? Why is it SO expensive? Do cats get cavities? Does feline dental disease lead to other medical issues? What are the signs your cat is having dental issues? What are things you can do today to prevent problems with your cats teeth? Brian Hurley, DVM and Molly talk about all things cat dental in this episode.
Cat Talk Radio is all about cats, what makes them do what they do, why they occasionally misbehave and what cat guardians can do to fix it. We educate you on how to modify unwanted cat behavior by providing the proper environment and stimulation, enabling cats to express their natural behaviors in ways that are preferable for both the humans and cats. You will learn how to have fun with your cat, fascinating cat facts and be inspired to try new things, which will lead to a happier relationship and closer bond with your cat. We’ll also call attention to the plight of cats in our country, feel compassion for their challenges and share the message.
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Mark McNease On Topic: Detachment As a Survival Skill
The Following is from my Monday Musings edition of Mark McNease On Topic. Sign up here!
Living in a house in the woods, miles from anything resembling a town, has its advantages. As much as I would like to be able to walk to a coffee shop or a restaurant for breakfast, I’m reminded every day how apart I want to remain from a world gone mad. Maybe it was always insane and we just didn’t see it, limited to three networks and the quaint idea of the Fairness Doctrine, tossed on the trash heap by Reagan and the likes of Roger Ailes to make way for the smoldering, self-validating information bubbles most people live in now.
Then came the internet, and things really exploded beyond the ability of reason and objectivity to ever contain it again. Sometimes I think evolution realized it had a pile of toxic sludge on its hands and decided to dump it all into an unwanted byproduct called homo sapiens.
Now that I’ve gotten that bit of cheer out of the way … a couple things for my Monday Musings readers and listeners. Here we have my recent interview with historian and author A.J. Schenkman. A.J. is such an uplifting, fun guy. He loves his 7th grade students, he loves history, and he makes it all sound so fascinating. Listen in!
