New Book Release: Poisons and Potions: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology

 

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Magic thrives within…

Whether hiding from the law, trying to live a simple life or diving into danger, each of these witchy stories drags you along for an adventure. And when you have magic, nearly everyone wants your help. Attachments – like friendships, relationships – can be woven like threads of pretty silk, only to strangle victims later.

Featuring 18 stories by the following authors: Desirae Gracyn, J.E. Feldman, Roberta L. Smith, Hubble Stark, Faith Auad, Benjamin Adams, Elizabeth Hosang, Matt Spencer, Barend Nieuwstraten III, Adele Liles, Nicola Lombardi, Rod A. White, Diana Parrilla, Sawcy, Kelly Zimmer, Estelle Tudor, Jessica Lee Minneci, V.L. Jones, and Amanda Rein.

New Book Release: An Immigrant's Song - by Eleanora Ioffe

 

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How do we become who we are, what shapes our identities? Does changing the physical landscape of our lives break the chains that tie us to our past?

I grew up under a political system that did not allow citizens to think independently or speak freely. Inside my family, uncomfortable subjects and emotions were avoided. For years I yearned to break away, to leave behind the world based on conformity and lies, and to escape the stifling environment of my family’s life. Both wishes became reality when I left my country of birth and my family of origin to come to the United States—to live on my own, to live free. Yet I discovered over the years that the world I had left behind had not entirely left me.

This memoir began as an attempt to preserve my family’s history, but in the process became much more. A return to the landscapes of memory—both tender and difficult—revealed a deeper meaning to early experiences, and with it, an understanding that not everything needs to be resolved in order to accept the past.

An Immigrant’s Song is a story of memory, identity, and the long journey toward becoming oneself—across borders, across time, and across the invisible lines that shape our lives.

The deadly shiver - rooted in science - by Vijaya Schartz

 

Award-winning series, action, adventure, alien planet, strong heroines, brave heroes
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I follow a few scientific groups for sci-fi research and recently came upon an interesting tidbit. A study about the shiver, the frisson, the sensation crawling across your back when you are exposed to extreme cold, or when you come inside from the heat with sweat on your skin and feel the icy blast of AC as you step into the grocery store. We’ve all experienced it in this superhot summer.

As it happens, that electric sensation on the skin surface constricts the blood vessels, slows the flow of blood, and temporarily suppresses your body’s ability to fight infections…

Rapidly transitioning between hot and cold environments and inhaling dry, cold air can also stress your immune system and dry out your nasal passages. This makes it significantly easier for airborne germs to enter your body.

As a consequence, if you happen to be exposed to a dangerous virus during that vulnerable time, it will find its way inside your bloodstream and hide, waiting for a moment of weakness to attack and spread.

I live in the Arizona desert, and I never liked that goosebump sensation from hot to sudden cold. Now I understand why. My body was telling me it wasn’t good for me. It’s why I keep my AC on the warmer side at home.

Scary, I know.

Action adventure on a space station with telepathic cats
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The studies do not mention the poetic frisson or the thrilling shiver you experience while reading a book, however. That’s good news.

Stay safe out there in the summer heat. And if you are relaxing at the beach or enjoying the AC inside, I recommend a few feel good action novels like these:

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Happy Reading.

Vijaya Schartz, award-winning author

Kick-butt Sci-fi Heroines, cats, romantic elements

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New Book Release - What Surrounds You - by Roxanne Doty

 

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Here is a book you will want to read more than once, first to dip into the poems, then a second time to savor the words, slowly immersing in them. Roxanne Doty’s fine and powerful collection is full of precise imagery, boldness of the senses, and a profound sense of place. Poems take you through an unfolding narrative dispersed across the country. Her straightforward and pure lines of reflection announce themselves: “I see our other selves, / the ones we can never be,” and “write past this moment / name the unnamable.” This collection takes you over highways and underpasses, motels and mobile homes, through our various Americas, from the breaking of families to the spacious wonder of starlight over Arizona mountains.

Kate Green, author, If the World Is Running Out and Tourist in the Pure Land

In Roxanne Doty’s poetry collection, What Surrounds You, we travel through the poet’s life via her poems. Her mother applying lipstick or driving a car with her as a little girl, not on vacation, but “running.” Her dad who says, “I’ll be right back … Keep the doors locked,” as he heads into a bar, a man who “will break so many responsible father rules. Except the one about love.” Throughout these poems that span years, “fragile as glass, flakes like tiny mirrors,” Doty remains “the child whose heart beat with unwritten poems … who believed anyway in radiance, sunrises and cloud paintings.”

Susan Vespoli, author, Therefore, Illuminated and One of Them Was Mine

What Surrounds Youdoes exactly that, envelops one in an epic, spanning the vulnerable early childhood through accomplished adult decades. With retrospective clarity, Roxanne Doty details unending hope and ultimate salvation. When Doty points toward the poisonous incarceration that the “American dream” demands, slivers of light prevail, escaping the darkened hallways of addiction, racism, bigotry, and the mortgaging of one’s soul for an Ideal. She dares to examine deeply some painfully beautiful moments from her past.

Freda Jayne, author, Awake and Dreaming