Blog Archives
The Popcorn Burglar
The Popcorn Burglar by Gloria G. Adams is the first entry in the Silvee Spoon, Junior Chef Science Mysteries series. This middle-grade mystery follows ten-year-old Silvee Spoon and her triplet siblings, Parker and Trina, after strange noises echo through their converted factory apartment building and someone sneaks into their father’s restaurant kitchen. Missing food, two abandoned milk glasses, a hidden doorway, and a trail of popcorn give the young detectives plenty to investigate. The setup is easy to grasp, but it has enough twists and suspicious characters to keep the case moving.
Silvee makes an engaging narrator because her curiosity feels active rather than merely described. She notices details, tests theories, and turns her knowledge of cooking into practical detective work. Parker contributes math skills and quick observations, while trivia-loving Trina adds humor, imagination, and the occasional ghost theory. Their orange cat, Hashbrown, brings some welcome chaos to the investigation. Together, the siblings have the comfortable teasing and cooperation of a real family, and their different interests give this children’s mystery book a lively group dynamic.
The strongest feature of this STEM children’s book is the way food science becomes part of the mystery instead of interrupting it. Short science sections explain why popcorn pops, why chocolate melts, and why tonic water glows under a blacklight. Silvee then applies those ideas in the kitchen, most memorably when she makes glow-in-the-dark popcorn balls to track the culprit. Recipes, trivia, and puzzles extend the experience after the story, making the book feel like a blend of science mystery, culinary adventure, and hands-on activity book. The illustrations also help establish the old building’s shadowy spaces, the bustling restaurant kitchen, and the personalities of the Spoon family.
Underneath the clues and experiments, The Popcorn Burglar is a warm story about responsibility, curiosity, and kindness. Chef Spoon’s rules provide a natural moral framework, particularly the reminders to clean up after yourself, control your anger, and sprinkle kindness over everything. The solution adds emotional weight without becoming heavy, showing Silvee that understanding someone’s circumstances matters as much as identifying what happened. With short chapters, playful dialogue, accessible science, and a satisfying case, this educational chapter book should connect especially well with young readers who enjoy mysteries, cooking, experiments, or all three.
Pages: 76 | ASIN : B0H94SYS7B
The Mystics, 1100 – 1400 CE: The Direct Experience of the Divine
Joe Giampaolo’s The Mystics, 1100–1400 CE: The Direct Experience of the Divine is an ambitious historical and philosophical survey of medieval mysticism across several religious traditions. The book begins by reconstructing the political, cultural, and theological environment of the High Middle Ages, addressing subjects such as monastic reform, the Crusades, the Inquisition, medieval art, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Thomistic philosophy. This extensive foundation prepares the reader for the book’s central concern: the tension between institutional religious authority and an individual’s immediate experience of the divine. Giampaolo states the thesis clearly when he writes that “mysticism propounds an egalitarian spirituality” that invites direct spiritual experience.
The book’s considerable range is one of its defining qualities. Christian figures such as Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and Catherine of Siena appear alongside Sufi, Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, and Taoist thinkers, including Rumi, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, Milarepa, Dōgen, Lal Ded, Zhu Xi, and Sun Bu-er. By placing these individuals within a shared discussion of non-duality, detachment, compassion, consciousness, and union with the divine, Giampaolo presents mysticism as a recurring human response to spiritual longing. The biographical sections are especially useful as an accessible introduction to figures whose lives, visions, poetry, and teachings are often studied separately.
Giampaolo writes with conviction, and the book’s argument is openly ethical as well as historical. His treatment of ecclesiastical corruption, religious persecution, misogyny, colonial violence, and doctrinal control gives the work a forceful critical perspective. At times, this approach compresses complex historical and theological disputes into firm moral judgments, and some readers may wish for more sustained engagement with competing interpretations. Even so, the directness of the argument gives the book coherence across its many subjects. Its combination of historical narrative, philosophical commentary, scriptural analysis, quotations, and personal reflection makes it read less like a conventional academic monograph and more like an extended interpretive essay intended for a broad audience.
The ending chapters bring the historical material into a contemporary discussion of consciousness, identity, compassion, and collective responsibility. Giampaolo ultimately presents mystical experience as a form of inner transformation that can weaken divisions based on religion, gender, nationality, and social position. His final meditation on humanity’s primordial union with the Source gives the book a contemplative ending and clarifies the spiritual vision guiding the earlier historical sections. The Mystics is therefore both an introduction to medieval spiritual figures and a sustained argument for direct experience, ethical awareness, and human unity. Its breadth, moral urgency, and cross-cultural perspective make it a substantial contribution to accessible writing about the history and continuing relevance of mysticism.
Pages: 196 | ASIN : B0G3L8YLTF
A Fine Line To Walk As A Writer
Reset follows a desperate man living in a society where, on your fiftyth birthday, you are returned to your 25-year-old self, and he has to choose what to do with this newly granted time. What first inspired the idea behind the Reset itself?
About 15 years ago I thought of the idea for RESET. I was past 40, my parents were now in their 60’s and the idea of aging was front and center. I had been through a divorce and remarried and thought about how my decisions when I was younger were not the best. As they say: the youth is wasted on the young. I thought about what I would do if I was young but had all my current knowledge. The idea for RESET came to me then.
Tom’s decision is understandable to some readers and deeply frustrating to others. How did you approach writing him?
The hardest thing with writing Tom was to make him a clearly selfish person but then to rebuild his character over time. How selfish to make him and how much he needed to do for readers to rethink their initial feelings on Tom was the hardest part of writing him. It was a fine line to walk as a writer and kept me up many nights trying to thread that needle.
The Awakeners emerge from fear and resentment. What role did contemporary society play in shaping that movement?
The current society has a huge generational divide, and a big part of The Awakeners was using the generational divide in the to gain power. It was very instrumental in shaping that narrative.
Given the opportunity, would you choose to Reset?
The simple answer is yes. However, there are scenarios where I would not Reset. Going into those may give away too much so I will leave it at that.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
“A very enjoyable novel that explores themes that resonate with today’s societal issues… I would definitely consider using it in one of my classes.” — Sander Lee, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, who teaches a class in science fiction novels.
Tom and Elena Miller built a beautiful life over nearly three decades of marriage. But as Tom approaches his fiftieth birthday, the crushing weight of his middle-aged responsibilities and a desperate desire for freedom drive a wedge between him and the people he loves most. He doesn’t just want a break; he wants a second chance at his twenties.
In a society defined by “The Reset”—a global anomaly where anyone turning fifty wakes up in their original, twenty-five-year-old body—Tom’s desire becomes a devastating reality. He chooses to undergo his Reset and leaves his forty-eight-year-old wife behind to live in a downtown bachelor pad, assuming he can just return to her when she finally Resets eighteen months later.
But his selfish “intermission” shatters his family. While Elena struggles to rebuild her life and identity without him, his oldest son, Jack, is driven into the arms of a radicalized movement determined to end the “Immortal Class” by any means necessary.
As Tom navigates the lonely, surreal reality of his new youth, he is about to discover that reversing the clock on his body might mean permanently running out of time to save his family.
The Blue Flame
The Blue Flame by Andy Cash is an illustrated poetry collection and unconventional Miles Davis biography that follows the musician from his Illinois childhood through bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, jazz fusion, the lost years, and his eventual comeback. Cash writes largely through an imagined first-person voice, giving the poems the bluntness, swagger, anger, humor, and vulnerability associated with Davis. This work of biographical poetry turns albums, performances, relationships, addictions, and personal losses into emotional scenes. The book’s structure makes the scale of Davis’s evolution especially clear, tracing how he moved among styles while continually assembling remarkable bands and searching for a new sound.
The strongest sections treat jazz history as something physical and lived. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and others enter the poems as mentors, collaborators, rivals, brothers, and ghosts. Cash’s jazz poetry often adopts short, percussive lines that feel closer to spoken word or improvised phrasing than traditional narrative verse. That approach works particularly well in pieces such as “Illinois Rap,” “Café Bohemia,” “So What,” and the compact “Fusion” sequence. The language can be abrasive, but it has energy, and its repeated references to breath, blood, blue light, electricity, rhythm, and silence create a musical vocabulary that holds the collection together.
This music biography also spends meaningful time with Davis’s family and romantic relationships. His parents emerge as foundational forces, with his father representing pride, education, independence, and discipline, while his mother brings music, beauty, and a fiercer emotional presence. The poems involving Irene, Juliette Gréco, Frances Taylor, Betty Davis, and Cicely Tyson explore affection, regret, possessiveness, racial pressure, addiction, and recovery. Cash doesn’t separate Davis’s artistic brilliance from the damage surrounding it. Poems such as “The Darkness of Porgy and Bess” directly confront his controlling treatment of Frances, while the lost-years poems move into paranoia, illness, isolation, and creative exhaustion.
Visually, The Blue Flame is as much an illustrated biography as a poetry book. Cash’s portraits and loose, neon-like figures have the spontaneous quality of drawings made while music is playing, and the recurring blacks, blues, white outlines, instruments, flames, and distorted faces complement the collection’s shifting moods. The background notes are a valuable closing section, explaining the historical events, recordings, and musical ideas behind each poem without interrupting the main sequence. Taken as a whole, this illustrated jazz poetry collection is an expressive tribute to Miles Davis’s restless creativity. It gives readers a lively route into his life and music, while longtime jazz listeners will recognize the albums, collaborators, transformations, and contradictions that kept his blue flame burning.
Pages: 102 | ASIN : B0H3814M8B
A Mirror For My Own Growth
Choice is a practical guide that uses travel as a pathway to greater self-awareness, intentional decision-making, and personal growth. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I wrote CHOICE because I wanted to show how the PARQS method actually works in real time, through real, lived moments.
Writing this book was a mirror for my own growth. I show how taking these practices home after a trip was what allowed them to really take root in my everyday life. That’s what I want for the reader, too: a chance to prove to themselves that this works. Travel gives you a clear testing ground. When you try PARQS on the road, you discover it’s a simple, repeatable way to pause, check in with how you’re actually feeling physically and emotionally, and make decisions that align with what you truly want, rather than just reacting on autopilot.
Why do you think unfamiliar environments often reveal parts of ourselves that remain hidden in everyday life?
When we’re at home, we run on comfortable routines. We know where the coffee is, we know how our days flow, and our brains get really good at running on habit. It’s easy to hide from ourselves when everything around us is predictable.
When you step into an unfamiliar environment, all those automatic routines fall away. You don’t have your usual distractions or safety nets to lean on. The noise gets dialed down, and whatever you’ve been pushing aside in your normal life, whether that is exhaustion, tension, or even a deep need for change, comes straight to the surface. Travel forces you to be in the present moment because you have to be, and that’s where the hidden stuff finally has room to speak up.
How can travelers remain open to new experiences while still honoring their own needs and boundaries?
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking travel has to be all or nothing: either you strictly plan every minute, or you say yes to every single thing out of fear of missing out. I’ve definitely had times where I was running on empty but kept pushing myself to do “one more thing” just because I felt like I was supposed to (I share a few of these examples in the book).
The key is to pause and ask yourself a really honest question: “Am I doing this because I’m genuinely excited, or because I feel obligated?” Honoring your boundaries isn’t about shutting down adventure. It’s about checking in with your physical and emotional tank so that when you do say yes to an experience, you actually have the energy to enjoy it.
Which exercise from the book do you most hope readers will try first?
I invite readers to start with the 1-Minute Sensory Grounding Exercise: the 5-4-3-2-1 check-in.
I am grateful that I learned this technique, which is widely credited to Betty Alice Erickson. It takes sixty seconds and works anywhere. You can do it sitting at a noisy gate at the airport, lying in an unfamiliar hotel room when your mind won’t stop racing, or right at your kitchen table before a busy day. You just name five things you see, four you feel, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste. In one minute, it pulls you right out of your head, settles your nervous system, and puts you back in your body. In one minute, it pulls you right out of your head, settles your nervous system, and puts you back in your body. It’s a practical way to hit pause before making your next choice.
Author Links: Goodreads | Instagram | Facebook | Website
When you travel, the stress doesn’t disappear—it follows you, fueled by the constant hum of autopilot living and the weight of expectations. You look successful on paper, but on the inside, you’re numb. You’ve spent years being the “fixer” and the “doer” for everyone else, only to realize you’ve become a passive passenger in your own life.
LEARN HOW TO INTERRUPT THE CYCLE
In CHOICE, strategic guide Elaina Kelly Smith shares the PARQS Method—a flexible, five-element guidance system designed to help high-achievers pause, step out of autopilot behaviors, and reclaim their integrity. This companion guide offers a sophisticated framework for staying present, anchored, and in relationship with yourself, even in the middle of a high-pressure journey.
Through the PARQS Method, you will learn:
• Preferences: Identify what you genuinely want, despite your “shoulds” and others’ expectations.
• Awareness: Use sensory grounding tools to stay present, observant, and connected during high-stress transit.
• Right Action: Learn to make a choice that honors your integrity and builds a foundation of self-trust you can stand on.
• Questions: Turn daily delays, detours, or moments of confusion into a space for open-ended curiosity.
• Self-Acceptance: Learn how to validate your raw emotional responses with self-kindness and self-empathy that begin with two words, reducing internal resistance, which then opens you up to your next clear step.
Elaina Kelly Smith’s personal odyssey took her from a highly restrictive upbringing to confident solo exploration across all seven continents. This book contains the powerful, practical PARQS framework she developed and continues to use on her own “brick by brick” journey of building self-trust. She shares it to help you move off autopilot and return to who you already are.
Jigsaw: Temporal Apocalypse
Jigsaw: Temporal Apocalypse is a sprawling time-travel adventure that combines historical fiction, supernatural fantasy, science fiction, political intrigue, and a generous amount of pulpy action. It’s the tenth Jigsaw novel and the fifteenth book in the larger Jigsaw Universe, and the author recommends reading the earlier installments first. The story follows the Guardians as they try to stop Lilith, Ahriman, Pilo, and their allies from reshaping history and triggering a Temporal Apocalypse. The plot moves across centuries, from Roman-occupied Judea and medieval trade routes to postwar Europe, 1910s Arizona, the Russo-Polish War, and the strange political experiment in Fiume. That scale gives the book the energy of a season finale in which nearly every character, artifact, rivalry, and historical thread has returned for one enormous confrontation.
David Alyn Gordon’s greatest strength here is his enthusiasm for overlooked history. The novel doesn’t treat the past as scenery. Labor struggles, racial violence, extremist movements, wartime upheaval, political opportunism, and religious traditions all become active parts of the story. The shifting missions in Arizona, Poland, and Fiume gradually connect through the fragments of a powerful amulet, while the Nazi Bell and other temporal devices add a science-fiction framework to the supernatural conflict. There’s a lot happening, but the structure creates the feeling that separate pieces of history are clicking into place. Gordon also has a knack for choosing settings that are dramatic on their own, then finding ways to raise the stakes with demons, immortals, vampires, zombies, and time travelers.
For all its apocalyptic danger, the book is often funny and affectionate. Noah, Francesca, Tori, Mueller, Mariah, and the rest of the Guardians speak to one another like people who’ve survived far too many bizarre missions together. Their teasing, arguments, romantic bonds, and family connections give the story warmth between battles. The dialogue can be blunt and deliberately theatrical, especially when the villains explain their plans or heroes trade jokes during a crisis, but that style fits the book’s larger-than-life personality. The emotional farewell scenes near the end are particularly effective because they draw on relationships built across the series. Even after the central conflict is settled, the final chapters leave room for births, reunions, new beginnings, and the amusing realization that retirement may be harder for these characters than saving history.
I’d recommend Temporal Apocalypse most strongly to established Jigsaw Universe readers, especially those who enjoy seeing long-running character arcs and earlier plot elements brought together. It’ll also appeal to readers who like alternate-history adventures packed with real historical figures, supernatural mythology, political commentary, and fast-moving ensemble action. Someone fascinated by lesser-known episodes from the aftermath of World War I or early Arizona history will find plenty to explore. Because the story assumes familiarity with a large cast and extensive backstory, its biggest rewards will go to readers who’ve already traveled through the earlier books and are ready for a crowded, energetic culmination.
Pages: 258 | ASIN : B0H28LCRTT
A Gray Cat Showed Up One Saturday
The Great Contagion follows an ancient, sharp-witted cat with a human soul who helps a man confront a deadly sickness sweeping the land. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The idea for The Great Contagion came to me when I was working on Cat Sidhe, another novel in The Merliss Tales series. Cat Sidhe takes place about fifty years after the events in The Great Contagion. I mentioned that the results of a great plague were still visible at the time of Cat Sidhe. After calling attention to this plague numerous times, I decided that I needed to find out what had happened. The result of that exploration was The Great Contagion.
More interesting is the idea for Merliss herself who is based on a real feline. A very thin, sickly, gray cat showed up on our driveway one Saturday and tried to get into our breezeway. We gave it some food and then took it to an emergency vet. The cat had no microchip and was not terminally ill. She was suffering from a respiratory infection, an eye infection, malnutrition, and thousands of fleas. In other words, she needed antibiotics and TLC. A few hundred dollars later, we left the vet with a new cat named Smokey, who was the sweetest lap kitty you can imagine. We never knew how old Smokey was, possibly pushing twenty. She spent her last two and a half years being spoiled by us. Thanks to Smokey, I felt inspired with the idea for an ancient gray cat in a fantasy setting.
What drew you to writing a fantasy centered on healing rather than conquest or warfare?
Many fantasy stories centered on conquest and warfare focus on protagonists occupying the upper strata of society. If you want your characters to directly influence events and you’re dealing with politics and warfare, the characters will need to be in positions of power. I wanted to write stories about characters outside the circles of political and military power and show them dealing with events outside their control, struggling to have an impact on their environment. The healing arts are one area in which a relatively low-status character can impact many others, including high-status characters. Healers also travel through villages and the countryside as part of their work.
How do you build tension in a story that unfolds at a measured pace?
The Great Contagion is composed of numerous subplots that interact and conflict. Some of the subplots center on conflicts and problems related to the people. Others revolve around Merliss, the old gods, and other magical creatures. There is also a subplot involving Merliss and the local cat population. All the subplots are tied together by the contagion, and Merliss is a witness to all the events described. I build tension by staggering high points from the various subplots and planting seeds to set the stage for later scenes of intense action. The level of action increases throughout the book.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book in The Merliss Tales series is The Forging of Merliss. The origin tale, this novel is set thousands of years in the past and will tell how Merliss’s spirit came to occupy the body of a cat. I hope to release this book by spring 2027.
Author Links: GoodReads | BlueSky | Website
Merliss is no ordinary cat. She’s a young girl’s spirit trapped in a cat’s body. While the magic that banished her has snatched away her ability to speak to humans, it has given her a life spanning millennia. For centuries she has lived with the cunning folk, assisting their efforts to heal the sick and ward off malevolent creatures. Now a bleeding sickness has thrown the medieval community into chaos.
The cunning man Hailaird and his apprentice Fendrel are in danger from the disease. The life Merliss has worked so long to build is in jeopardy. Before she entered the cat, she had trained to be a shaman. Do her centuries of experience hold a secret to a cure? But disease isn’t her only nemesis.
A pair of malevolent creatures have crossed the moor into the forest, threatening more havoc. With disease and monsters ravaging the land, Merliss is hard-pressed to survive. It couldn’t be worse, until a mob looking for a scapegoat turns its wrath on Merliss. Tooth and claw and magic may not be enough.
