Author: Don Massenzio

I purchased and reviewed Fairies, Myths & Magic by Colleen M. Chesebro as part of the Poetry Readathon and Poetry Blog Promotion series I am currently hosting.

I follow the author’s blog and find her poetry to be beautifully written, diverse and intriguing. My enjoyment of the author’s blog led me to purchase her poetry book, released earlier this year.

Colleen runs a weekly poetry challenge where poets are encouraged to express themselves using different poetry forms such as haikus, tankas and cinquains. Colleen proves so excellent instruction on how to writes these poetic variations. You can experience Colleen’s blog here: https://colleenchesebro.com/

What Amazon says

Step into a world where fairies, dragons, and other magical beings converge in a collection of poetry and short stories inspired by the celebration of Litha, the Summer Solstice.

Meet Drac, a dragon cursed by his own poisonous deeds, and two pixies who help an…

This post will drill down into a topic with which I struggled in my early writing. That topic is dialog; when to use it, how to use it, what to avoid, etc.

Before I dive into this topic, I wanted to give a special shout out to my editor who not only reminded me that the punctuation goes inside of the quotation marks, but constantly reminded me that I should “show vs. tell” and sent me links to writing tips to help my early writing.

SHOW VS. TELL

This is one of the hardest paradigm shifts that I had to deal with. I come from a technical, corporate world. This background has affected my writing. I can write narrative and describe business and technical situations very effectively. When writing fiction, however, using too much narrative can come across as dry and uninteresting. It’s much more effective to let your characters…

Some more books on the shelves of the Cafe and Bookstore that would make great gifts this Christmas, and the first is a psychological thriller The Sleeping Serpent by Luna Saint Claire

About the book

Whether by free will or fate, Luna’s encounter with Nico provokes a storm that shatters her perceptions of identity, duty, morality, and self-worth. The storm didn’t blow in from the outside. She was the storm. Its turbulence within her, forcing her to confront the darkness, uncovers her secrets and her pain.

Luna Saint Claire has a loving husband and an enviable career as a Hollywood costume designer. Still, something is gnawing at her. Bored with her conventional and circumscribed existence, she feels herself becoming invisible. When she meets Nico Romero, a charismatic yoga guru, his attentions awaken her passions and desires. Dangerous, but not in a way that scares her, he makes her feel as…

I am very much a latecomer to the Irish short-story writer and journalist, Maeve Brennan, only having read The Springs of Affection, a brilliant collection of her Dublin stories from the early 1950s to the early ‘70s. Virtually all of these twenty-one stories were first published by The New Yorker magazine where Brennan worked as a columnist and reviewer.

While I enjoy reading short stories, I often find them difficult to discuss, particularly if there are no apparent connections or common themes across the individual pieces. However, in this case, the situation is somewhat different as almost all of these stories are linked by virtue of their setting, a modest terraced house in the Ranelagh suburb of Dublin – a house featuring the same walled garden with a laburnum tree, the same three steps down to the kitchen, and the same linoleum on the bedroom floor. Moreover, the stories…