Featured Author:   J. Naomi Ay

1.  Please introduce yourself. Tell us a little about the person behind the pen.

I’m a former CPA and businesswoman, who out of boredom more than 20 years ago, started writing a science fiction/fantasy story purely for my own entertainment.  Mr. Ay and I have two boys one would consider adults although they are still on our medical plan, a daughter who is fourteen and has just started high school, and a Pomeranian.

2.  What made you decide to write (the genre of your book), were there any influencing factors, or were any of the stories based on true events.   

I’m a life long fan of Star Trek and Star Wars and have also enjoyed historical fiction.  The Two Moons of Rehnor has a lot of elements from all that.  In fact, recently a reviewer called it “Game of Thrones meets Star Wars.”  I…

This week I have a guest post by Kathryn Chastain Treat. I met Kathryn when we began following each other’s blogs. She’s an amazing human being with a deep inner strength and a passion for writing. I’m honored to have her here today to share about her new book.

I would like to thank Jen for hosting “Allergic to Life:  My Battle for Survival, Courage, and Hope” on its first ever book blog tour.  Jen has been a loyal reader of my blog.

“I feel so utterly alone.  I don’t really have any friends.  Everyone is out doing his or her own thing and here I sit.  It’s like I don’t have a life any more.  My heart aches for my life back.  I try to make appearances of things being under control but they aren’t. I can’t go anywhere with the girls (referring to my daughters).  I can’t take…

Robbie’s Big Adventures, Book 1: The Best Saturday Ever!

By Gary Cook

Adam Sward, illustrator

Scarletta Kids

Back Cover:  On a rainy Saturday, power goes out. With no TV and no chance of going outside, Robbie wonders how he could possibly have fun! With his imaginations going wild, will he even notice when the rain stops and the lights come back on?

Opening:  The weekend’s finally here. And that means no school today! Hey, what’s going on? Why is it so gray? It’s storming outside. The rain’s all I can see.

About the Story: Robbie wakes up on Saturday to a gloomy, rainy day. Soon all the power goes off, leaving him without video games and television. Mom assures him he can have a great time without TV. Robbie takes one look at the hero on his wall and has an idea. Robbie transforms himself into “The Amazer,” ready…

This video is called Douglas Bruster Identifies New Shakespeare Prose.

From the New York Times in the USA:

Much Ado About Who: Is It Really Shakespeare?

Further Proof of Shakespeare’s Hand in ‘The Spanish Tragedy’

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

Published: August 12, 2013

For nearly two centuries, scholars have debated whether some 325 lines in the 1602 quarto edition of Thomas Kyd’s play “The Spanish Tragedy” were, in fact, written by Shakespeare.

Last year, the British scholar Brian Vickers used computer analysis to argue that the so-called Additional Passages were by Shakespeare, a claim hailed by some as the latest triumph of high-tech Elizabethan text mining.

But now, a professor at the University of Texas says he has found something closer to definitive proof using a more old-fashioned method: analyzing Shakespeare’s messy handwriting.

In a terse four-page paper, to be published in the…

THE ADDRESSING OF CATS
by T.S. Eliot

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
To understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are same and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse–
But all may be described in verse.
You’ve seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But how would you address a Cat?
 
So first, your memory I’ll jog,
And say:  A CAT IS NOT A DOG.
 
And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste–
He’s sure to have…

Death always takes us by surprise. Even when you know someone is terribly sick, when the end comes, it’s still a shock.

Thus it was that in the darkest part of a winter night, with the temperature hovering just above zero and heavy snow expected, the phone rang. Of course I knew. I could feel it. Death was in the air. Expected though the call was, it nonetheless hit me like a bludgeon. Forever. My father was dead. At 90, he had passed over. I hoped he’d gone to a better place, but felt the odds were against it. There would be no reconciliation, no happy ending.

Edith, my father’s lady friend of the last 5 years, was on the phone.

“You father passed away during the night,” she said. Her voice broke as she told me. “He went in his sleep,” she added.

“A mitzvah,” I said, reflexively. To die…

AUTUMN HAIKU
by Matsuo Basho

a strange flower
for birds and butterfly
the autumn sky.

.

Ariel Bradley, Spy for General Washington

By Lynda Durrant

Joe Rossi, illustrator

Vanita Books

5 Stars

.

Press Release:   Based on a true event. The real life adventures of nine-year-old Ariel Bradley, reveals the anxieties of the Americans who needed desperately to win the battle in the first months of the Revolutionary War. It also shows General Washington’s keen sense of humor and his wily, perceptive view of his British adversaries. Ariel Bradley is Washington’s boy spy who pretends to be a country bumpkin (a “Johnny Raw”). He ‘stumbles’ into General Howe’s camp “looking for the mill” his father has sent him in search of.

In reality, he is assessing the strength and numbers of the British and their Hessian (German) allies. After he is sent on his way by the unsuspecting English, he reports this to General Washington and his staff. This information proves key in what…