Blog Archives
Assassin’s Love
Assassin’s Love, by Chris Neo, is a compact romantic thriller built around desire, deception, and a murder contract that becomes unexpectedly personal. Wealthy Valentino and his dissatisfied wife, Heleanne, encounter a family of Romani merchants who trade in suggestively named products and far deadlier services. After Heleanne begins an affair with Alexi and hires his clan to kill her husband, assassin Rafaella enters Valentino’s home disguised as a maid. The setup has the heightened energy of a stage melodrama, with a small cast, dangerous attractions, and motives that become clearer through confrontational dialogue. Neo moves through the story briskly, giving each chapter a specific dramatic purpose.
The book’s most interesting relationship is the one between Valentino and Rafaella. She arrives prepared to seduce and poison him, but their attraction unsettles her professional discipline and forces her to decide what she values more than the assassins’ code. Valentino is equally intriguing because his genial manners and domestic habits conceal a mysterious past. Their romance is sensual, earnest, and deliberately tied to the novel’s central idea that genuine love reveals itself through sacrifice. Heleanne and Alexi provide a darker reflection of that idea. Their passion grows out of greed and fantasy, while Valentino and Rafaella gradually demonstrate loyalty through action. That contrast gives the story a clear moral shape without slowing down its plotting.
Neo’s dialogue-led approach makes the book feel immediate and theatrical. Characters flirt, bargain, threaten, and confess with very little narrative distance, so readers are rarely left waiting for the next confrontation. The recurring pancakes, pink juice, dogs, poison, and yellow swallow tattoo work as playful clues that later become important to the resolution. The erotic scenes occupy a substantial portion of the book and establish the emotional turning point in Rafaella’s mission, though their length and repetition may be more detail than some thriller readers expect. The broad characterizations and extravagant coincidences suit the story’s playful, fable-like atmosphere, especially during the final fight and the revelation of Valentino’s connection to Baba.
Readers familiar with James Patterson will recognize the short chapters, direct prose, and steady supply of hooks, but Neo gives the formula a more intimate and romantic focus. Patterson often expands suspense through multiple locations and intersecting investigations, while Assassin’s Love concentrates its tension inside one troubled marriage and one secretive clan. The result is closer to a dark romantic folktale told with the momentum of a commercial thriller. Its pleasures come from watching seduction turn into devotion and from seeing every early joke about assassins acquire a literal meaning. For readers who enjoy heightened romance, explicit sensuality, and twists delivered with a wink, this is a lively and memorable short read.
Pages: 82 | ASIN : B0BKQNKXP5
‘Hey Baby’ – The Elk that Survived!
‘Hey Baby’ – The Elk that Survived!, by Pamela J. Howard, tells the story of a young injured elk found on a snowy road in the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. PJ spots him limping and badly hurt, and when official help doesn’t come, she and Annie begin caring for him with water, hay, patience, and tenderness. Over the long winter, the elk they both call “Hey Baby” slowly heals, grows stronger, and eventually returns to his herd, leaving behind a bittersweet memory of trust, kindness, and letting go.
I found this children’s book genuinely touching because it understands something children often feel deeply: animals matter, even when they aren’t ours to keep. The writing is simple and direct, sometimes almost conversational, which gives the story the feeling of being told by someone who still remembers every cold morning and every worried drive past that pine tree. I appreciated how the book doesn’t rush the hard parts. Hey Baby is hurt, lonely, scared, and uncertain, and the story lets that sadness sit on the page.
This isn’t just a rescue story. It’s also about restraint, about loving a wild creature enough to help him survive and then letting him belong to the mountains again. That part felt quietly powerful. The artwork supports that feeling with snowy blues, wide mountain landscapes, soft animal expressions, and scenes that make the winter valley feel both beautiful and harsh. The illustrations are polished and vivid. The strongest images, especially Hey Baby alone beneath the tree or returning to the herd, have a tenderness that carries the story beautifully.
I came away from ‘Hey Baby’ – The Elk that Survived! feeling warmed by its sincerity. It has a homespun quality, but that’s part of its charm, and its compassion feels earned rather than decorative. I’d recommend it for young animal lovers, children who are learning about empathy and wildlife, and families who like picture books that open the door to gentle conversations about helping, hoping, and knowing when to say goodbye.
Pages: 30 | ASIN : B0FDKB1J8F
Shadows of the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Mythological Creatures
Shadows of the Archipelago, by E. R. Escober, is a dark anthology that reimagines Philippine mythological creatures through tragic, emotionally heightened stories of love, terror, betrayal, and vengeance. Across tales centered on the Nuno sa Punso, Tikbalang, Manananggal, Diwata, Multo, mermaid, Batibat, and Aswang, the book treats folklore not as decorative mythology but as a living force: something old, wounded, and still watching from the edges of human life. These are monster stories, yes, but the deeper concern is often what people do to the misunderstood, the lonely, the beautiful, and the cursed.
I was struck by how insistently the book asks me to reconsider the word “monster.” Escober’s creatures are frightening, but they are rarely simple villains. The Nuno becomes a protector whose love is misread as horror; the Tikbalang’s violence grows from persecution and grief; the Batibat becomes less a random nightmare than a moral reckoning. The book’s strongest moments come when folklore and human cruelty collide, creating a kind of gothic pressure in which the supernatural is not the scariest thing in the room. I appreciated that the stories don’t merely parade legendary beings across the page. They give them sorrow, appetite, dignity, and doom.
The style is dramatic, sometimes operatic, and it leans into excess: curses crackle, grief burns, bodies transform, and love tends to arrive already shadowed by catastrophe. That intensity won’t be for every reader. But the book’s fervor also gives it its peculiar magnetism. It reads like folklore retold around a fire by someone who refuses to whisper, someone who wants each legend to feel less like an artifact and more like a warning pressed into your palm.
I would recommend Shadows of the Archipelago to readers who enjoy folklore, mythology, dark fantasy, supernatural horror, gothic tragedy, creature horror, and mythic retellings with a strong emotional core. Readers who admire the folkloric menace of Neil Gaiman or the culturally rooted darkness of Silvia Moreno-Garcia may find a similar pleasure here, though Escober’s work is more fevered and melodramatic in its delivery. This is a book for those who like their legends blood-warm, grief-soaked, and morally thorny.
Pages: 210 | ASIN : B0GP2QB14K
Unavoidable Element of Time
What’s It Like To Be Old? is a candid poetry collection that addresses what happens when the self still feels vividly alive, but the body has other ideas. Were there any poets or other writers who influenced your work on this collection?
I guess life was the main source of ideas and insights for this book. I have always admired Thomas Hardy’s excellent poetry, much of it written in the context of his old age. And of course Dylan Thomas and W. B. Yeats made famous statements about old age. But those tended to the heroic, and I wanted to explore the day-to-day consciousness of being old, a rather different thing than a defiant whoop. I did not find many writers who looked steadily at the life of the old, happy, painful, resigned, or entered into a psychological state that I defined as ripeness from Shakespeare’s touching lines.
How do you know when a poem is truly finished?
My poems often come out from a deeper place in my mind where they seem to be always already finished. I might struggle to find words for the middle, but the beginning and end seemed already written, and when the final lines came out, though I might mess with them a bit, I knew the poem was written: a rather mysterious process, I grant.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting together this poetry collection?
I had a great number of poems on the subject of what it is like to be old. I had recently entered into the life of older people, my 70s, when I would hit upon a statement, or a dramatic voice of someone, or a point of view, and so on, and I would create a poem. I edited all the poems very carefully, but then came the hard part: picking the ones worth putting in a book of poems on the subject. If they had made it through my editing process, they had some value, and it was hard to know which to select. I settled on distributing them into a kind of plot of poem sections that would eventually constitute the major sections of the book. It was then easier to see in a comparison of those in each section which would provide a new perspective and a superior poetic statement. Still, I was sorry to see certain ones have to go.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I have finished four more books that are already slated for publication: these are a book on life in the unavoidable element of time, entitled Being in Time and Change, a work that follows many of the themes of time in What’s It Like To Be Old? Another is called Political Poems and asks the reader to think about our national and social hopes and despairs– so potent just now; it focuses on dominations and their harm. Next is a book of vivid impressions of life as we experience it daily; it is called Seasons: Moments and explores directly our brilliant or terrible life on the planet. Then there is another book of poems focused on my wonderful dog, Maisie, and her remarkable experiences in a life outside in Central Park.
I am now pulling together and editing a collection of reflections on dying and death, and our response to these realities. As with my other poems, they offer a panoply of points of view, personal, social, or eternal. I am liking these poems as I go through them, even though the subject itself is so unlikeable.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Moonlight Desires
Moonlight Desires is a Gothic, moon-drenched Cinderella retelling that begins in familiar sorrow and then slips somewhere stranger, sadder, and more haunted. Aurelia, abused by her father, stepmother Julia, and stepsister Lysandra, is lifted out of drudgery not by a fairy godmother but by Princess Kipira, a royal figure cursed into spider form after an act of pride and cruelty. What follows is a tale of enchanted web-woven dresses, silent spectral coaches, a courtship with Lord Samuel, and a surprisingly weighty meditation on forgiveness, selfishness, and the difficulty of true kindness. What stayed with me most was the book’s doubleness: it offers the pleasure of romance and transformation, but it also keeps pressing into darker moral territory, especially through Kipira’s confession and Charlotte Sophia Janicker’s closing reflections on the old Cinderella pattern itself.
I admired the atmosphere almost immediately. Tocher writes as if he wants the fairy tale to keep its ceremonial bones while letting rot, grief, and desire show through the silk. The image of Aurelia being carried over the ground on Kipira’s web, laughing into the speed after years of misery, is one of those moments that feels both eerie and liberating. The spider-silk gown, alive with the shifting Ingridelite Weave, is gorgeous in exactly the right unsettling way, and the coachman’s macabre delight in how “the dead travel fast” gives the whole transformation sequence a morbid charge that separates this book from sweeter, safer retellings. I also liked that the prose is unafraid of lushness. Sometimes it leans almost incantatory, then suddenly turns intimate or severe. That tonal elasticity gave the story real texture for me.
What interested me even more, though, was the book’s moral and emotional argument. Aurelia’s repeated return to her mother’s little poem about goodwill and forgiveness could have felt merely dutiful, but here it becomes the story’s beating heart. Her mercy toward the people who degraded her is moving precisely because the novel does not pretend forgiveness is easy, clean, or instinctive. The most fascinating character in the book for me is Kipira. Her letter transforms the story from a dark fairy tale into something more searching because she understands that even her generosity has been contaminated by self-interest. That idea, that a good deed can be hollow if its hidden motive is restoration of the self, gives the novella a spiritual unease I genuinely appreciated.The erotic honeymoon passage plus Charlotte’s explicit feminist afterword create a sharp shift in register. For me, though, that oddness was part of the book’s identity. It doesn’t smooth itself into one thing. It remains a little thorny, a little hybrid, and more memorable for it.
I found Moonlight Desires sincere, peculiar, and unexpectedly compelling. It’s a fairy tale retelling that blends romance, horror, theology, sensuality, and a self-aware literary sensibility. That mix makes the story feel distinct. I came away feeling that the writing is at its best when beauty and dread are touching, and that the book’s deepest idea is not enchantment but the hard, almost painful mystery of becoming good. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy darker fairy-tale revisions, Gothic textures, and stories that are willing to be earnest about mercy, longing, and moral struggle.
Pages: 72 | ASIN : B0GDHV1151
The Woman in the Third Floor Front
Richard Scharine’s The Woman in the Third Floor Front is a story collection arranged in sections: Utah, Law and Order, Past Lives, and Close to Home, and it moves through romance, regional fiction, political reflection, memory, family, and elegy with unusual ease. The title story opens with Jack, hobbled after a motorcycle crash and freshly divorced, stumbling by chance into a stopover town where an airline delay, a widow who runs a hotel and massage business, and a child grieving his father turn accident into reprieve; elsewhere, the book ranges from a journalist’s reckoning with western land politics in “When I Go, I Leave No Trace” to intimate, family-centered pieces later in the volume that turn more openly autobiographical and reflective. What binds the collection is Scharine’s interest in people who are no longer where they thought they would be, yet are still trying, stubbornly, to make a livable meaning out of the remainder.
What I admired most was the book’s tonal confidence. Scharine is willing to let a story be earnest without turning syrupy, and willing to let intelligence arrive wearing ordinary clothes. In the title piece, music is not decoration but structure: standards and country songs keep surfacing as emotional evidence, almost like witness testimony, and by the time Constance answers “He’ll Have to Go” with “He’ll Have to Stay,” the scene has become both a small-town performance and a public act of choosing life again. I also liked the collection’s tolerance for crookedness, for wounded people, compromised people, people who embarrass themselves before they improve. Jack is not noble at the outset; that matters. The redemption here is not glossy. It limps. That gives the best stories a hard-earned warmth rather than a prefab glow.
Scharine sometimes overexplains a motive or theme just after dramatizing it well, and now and then the narration steps in with a teacherly finger raised when the scene has already done the work. But even that has a strange charm, because it feels continuous with the book’s larger personality: learned, conversational, unembarrassed by references to songs, politics, Shakespeare, journalism, and grief all sharing the same table. I came away feeling that the collection’s real subject is not plot but afterlife in the secular sense, the second act after divorce, bereavement, disillusionment, professional diminishment, or the long weathering of a place. Several later pieces deepen that feeling by turning toward kinship, memory, and haunting, making the book less a display case of separate stories than a cumulative meditation on what remains.
I’d recommend The Woman in the Third Floor Front to readers of literary fiction, short story collections, regional fiction, character-driven fiction, and contemporary historical fiction who like humane books with a little grain in the wood. Readers who admire the plainspoken emotional intelligence of Kent Haruf, or the way Elizabeth Strout lets ordinary lives carry uncommon weight, will probably find familiar pleasures here, though Scharine is more discursive and more musically inclined than either. This is a book for people who believe stories can be rueful, civic-minded, romantic, and haunted all at once.
Pages: 164 | ASIN : B0GGF1V3BC
Moments Rooted in Gratitude
Field of Memories is a memoir told through a long chain of short, self-contained stories sharing moments from all stages of life and touching on themes of gratitude, faith, and remembering. How did you decide which memories belonged in the book?
Choosing which memories to include was one of the most challenging aspects of writing Field of Memories. Ultimately, my guiding question became not which memories mattered most to me, but which ones might resonate most deeply with a reader. I included recollections that carried universal emotions and experiences—those common threads of humanity that connect us across age, circumstance, and belief. By focusing on moments rooted in gratitude, faith, and remembrance, I hoped to create stories that felt both deeply personal and widely relatable.
Why are sensory details—cars, smells, objects—so important in your storytelling?
Sensory details anchor my stories in a specific time and place. They allow me to translate what I see and feel so vividly in memory into language that the reader can experience. By layering these details into my storytelling, I invite the reader to move beyond observation and into immersion, to not just read the story but to travel alongside me through it.
How has your understanding of grief evolved over time?
It has been essential for me to honor my grief, not as something to overcome, but as a spiritual journey deserving of reverence and patience. Grief is the deepest evidence that love existed—that it does not disappear when someone is gone. Over time, my understanding has softened and matured. Healing has arrived in quiet, incremental ways, not because the loss has faded, but because I have learned how to carry love and loss together. Grief no longer feels like an interruption to life; it has become a companion that has expanded my capacity for compassion, presence, and meaning.
If you could add one more vignette today, what would it be about?
I would include a vignette about an influential elementary school math teacher who made it his personal mission to ensure I truly understood fractions and percentages. I struggled at first, but instead of letting me fall behind, he was determined to help me build both the skills and confidence I needed to succeed. Through his patience, unwavering kindness, and individualized attention, my understanding grew—and so did my belief in myself. By the end of the year, I was an A student. Mr. Smith’s dedication transformed my experience with learning, and his compassion left a lasting impression.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Norris’s writing is imbued with a profound sense of nostalgia, celebrating the warmth and comfort of family bonds, the innocence and wonder of youth, and the resilience that emerges from overcoming loss. The stories span several decades, beginning with the author’s earliest years and progressing through significant coming-of-age moments, family traditions, and historical events that have left an indelible mark on her life. Central to the narrative is the enduring influence of the author’s mother, whose presence and guidance serve as a touchstone throughout the collection. The joys and sorrows of growing up are explored with sensitivity and insight, highlighting the universal experiences that connect us all.
A key theme in “Field of Memories” is the importance of preserving family stories for future generations. Norris emphasizes how these stories serve as a bridge between the past and the present, allowing us to honor our heritage and pass on valuable lessons to those who come after us. The narrative is enriched by vivid character sketches, introducing readers to a cast of neighbors, teachers, friends, and relatives who each contribute to the rich tapestry of the author’s life. These characters are portrayed with warmth and authenticity, reflecting the complexities and nuances of real human relationships.
Throughout the book, Norris reflects on universal experiences such as childhood innocence, friendship, grief, forgiveness, and the bittersweet passage of time. Her stories are interwoven with poems and reflections, offering readers moments of both laughter and tears. The inclusion of poetry adds a lyrical quality to the narrative, deepening the emotional resonance and inviting readers to pause and contemplate the themes presented.
Ultimately, “Field of Memories” is a celebration of legacy, love, and the power of storytelling to connect generations. Norris’s writing encourages readers to reflect on their own lives, to cherish the memories that have shaped them, and to recognize the enduring value of sharing stories with others. The collection serves as a reminder that our experiences, both joyful and sorrowful, contribute to the fabric of who we are, and that by honoring these memories, we can find meaning, healing, and connection.
Creating A Safe Space
Sista, Can You Feel a Brother’s Pain? is a compassionate, faith-centered exploration of the silent wounds men carry, revealing how childhood trauma shapes identity, relationships, and faith, while offering a biblical path toward healing, accountability, and restoration.
The phrase “Men hurt. Men hide. Men hope.” feels central. What do you think most people misunderstand about men’s emotional lives?
I believe one of the greatest misunderstandings about men’s emotional lives is the assumption that silence means absence of feeling. Many people interpret a man’s quietness as strength, indifference, or emotional unavailability, when in reality it is often protection learned behavior shaped by expectation, culture, and survival.
Men are often taught early that vulnerability is risky. So instead of expressing pain openly, they internalize it. They carry disappointment, fear, rejection, and pressure privately, believing their role is to endure rather than reveal. When men hide, it is rarely because they do not feel it is because they feel deeply and may not feel safe enough to express it.
The phrase “Men hurt. Men hide. Men hope.” captures a truth that is often overlooked: beneath guarded emotions is hope. The hope to be understood without judgment, respected without performance, and loved without conditions tied to strength alone.
What many misunderstand is that men are not emotionless; they are often emotionally unpracticed in environments that welcome honesty. When given permission to be human instead of merely strong, many men show remarkable depth, tenderness, and resilience.
Understanding men emotionally begins not by asking them to feel more, but by creating spaces where they no longer have to hide what they already feel.
Were there particular stories or patterns that stayed with you?
Yes, many stories stayed with me over the years they are, in fact, what prompted me to write the book. While the circumstances differed, the patterns were often the same. The actions that caused the trauma were similar, even though the faces of the victims changed. And in many cases, the outcomes were heartbreakingly alike.
Many men carried unspoken pain, living under the pressure to appear strong while quietly struggling within. Their hurt often revealed itself not through words, but through distance, anger, overworking, or withdrawal rather than open conversation. Beneath those behaviors, however, was a deep desire to be seen, respected, and truly understood.
One pattern I noticed repeatedly was silence not because men lacked words, but because they lacked safe spaces to speak them. Creating an environment where men felt heard and valued made all the difference. That safe space is exactly what the MITE (Men in Transformation Education) Program provided: a place where men could begin to release what they had long carried in silence and start the journey toward healing and transformation.
How can women better support the men in their lives after reading it?
Understand the power of being present without pressure; love him without trying to manage the process. Here are 5 ways women can walk alongside a man in silence and still genuinely support him, with wisdom, compassion, and strength.
1. Offer Presence, Not Pressure – recognize that sometimes the most healing words are unspoken.
- Sit with him.
- Stay emotionally available.
- Let him know you’re there without asking him to perform vulnerability.
Biblical wisdom:
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted…” Psalm 34:18
Support looks like: “You don’t have to talk for me to stay.”
2. Create Safety Through Consistency – His silence is rooted in pain and he’s waiting to see if your love is temporary.
- Be steady, not reactive.
- Don’t withdraw just because he’s quiet.
- Let your consistency preach louder than questions.
Biblical wisdom:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” — 1 Corinthians 13:7
Safety says: “I’m not leaving because this is uncomfortable.”
3. Affirm His Worth Without Demanding Disclosure – Many men fear being seen as “less than” if they speak.
- Speak life into who he is not what he shares.
- Affirm his strength, character, and value apart from his story.
Biblical wisdom:
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” Proverbs 18:21
Support sounds like: “You matter even in your quietness.”
4. Respect His Timing While Holding Healthy Boundaries Walking alongside doesn’t mean disappearing yourself.
- You can honor his silence and still be honest about your needs. “Me Time” some say self care is important for you
- Support does not require self-neglect.
Biblical wisdom:
“To everything there is a season” Ecclesiastes 3:1
Wisdom balance: Compassion without self-abandonment.
5. Cover Him in Prayer, Not Control – Prayer reaches places conversation cannot.
- Pray for healing, not forced revelation.
- Ask God to do what only God can do.
Biblical wisdom:
“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
Spiritual support says: “God is working even when I can’t see it.”
Pearls of Wisdom for Women supporting or walking along with someone in silence is not passive, it’s active trust.
But remember: You are a companion, not a counselor; a supporter, not a savior.
And for men: Be Silent No More. Silence may have kept you alive but love, safety, and God’s grace can lead you toward healing. Give yourself permission to be healed.
