Category Archives: Elseblog

CD BABY via 123RF

Posted Elsewhere: Sunday Brunch: CD, Baby?

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CD BABY via 123RF

 

Read an excerpt:

I suspect that just as I was part of the first generation to own CDs I am part of the last generation to have held a membership in the Columbia Records & Tapes clubs, which, of course, I didn’t join until it became a CD club, and which, to my ultimate shame, I still have a few CDs from sitting in the rack upstairs still in their original shrink-wrapping… this despite the fact it’s been at last a decade, and possibly two, since I was a member.

Honestly though, most of my music has been digital since at least 2010, and even the CDs I own are typically ripped to my computer and added to iTunes for access from anywhere. My iPhone has become my primary listening device, especially since my desktop computer was chosen for it’s quietness. It makes it fantastic to record on, but I never bothered to put external speakers on it.

 

To read the entire piece, follow the link below:

Sunday Brunch: CD, Baby? at Modern Creative Life

43804508 - back view of a couple taking a walk holding hands on the beach

Posted Elsewhere: Snapshots from the Shore (flash-fiction)

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43804508 - back view of a couple taking a walk holding hands on the beach

 

Read an excerpt:

“Just put your feet in,” she coaxes the man who has come to drive her to the flatlands in the middle of the country. The flyover states, they call them. Except now they’ll be the land-in states. She wonders if the wind on the prairie can ever come close to the soothing sound of her beloved waves.

“No.”

“Come on,” she urges. “Seriously, it’s not that cold. At least take your shoes off. You will not actually melt into goo if your bare feet touch the sand.

But he refuses. And she wonders if maybe she’s making a mistake in choosing someone who doesn’t love the beach the way she does. Still, she splashes in the choppy surf, dodging sharp white-crested waves and body surfing the gentler blue ones until she’s tired and sated.

Swimming in the sea, she thinks, is the only thing that even comes close to being as good as sex with the man she loves.

Visit this link to read the whole story:

Modern Creative Life: Snapshots from the Shore by Melissa A. Bartell

The Coming of the Cardinals

Elseblog: Sunday Brunch: The Coming of the Cardinals

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The Coming of the Cardinals

 

On the first Sunday of each month, I write a column called “Sunday Brunch” over at the e-zine Modern Creative Life. This excerpt is from the piece I published in November. You can read the whole piece here. You can also listen to me read it at BathtubMermaid.com.

Excerpt:

We have a whole family of those bright red birds, and they return every year. The females are feathered grey and rust and red, and arrive with the first signs of being egg-heavy. The males are brilliant crimson and scarlet, and when they cock their heads and stare at me from their bright eyes, I’m convinced they’re appraising me in the same way I’m assessing them.

At the beginning of the season, I watch them building nests, but as the fall deepens into what passes for winter in this part of Texas, they aren’t quite so visible. Instead of witnessing constant activity, a morning visit feels like a kind of gift from Mother Nature herself.

It’s not only live cardinals that come into my life each year, however. As I slowly turn the decorations in my house from fall and harvest, Halloween and Thanksgiving, to winter, Christmas, and even Valentine’s Day, these ruby-plumed birds have a presence inside my house.

Not Exactly Persephone

Published Elswhere: Not Exactly Persephone

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Not Exactly Persephone

Today I have a story over at Modern Creative Life. An excerpt is below, and you can read the full text of Not Exactly Persephone at this link.

It was her trademark, she said. A beret with a butterfly pin was how the world would know she was herself.

The first time she saw him, it was when she rounded the bend just this side of the creek. He was preternaturally still, focused on the winged creature perched on his fingertips (he had long, graceful fingers, she noticed) and she froze mid-step, afraid to disturb him, or spook the colorful insect he was studying.

But even one small-ish woman’s breathing is enough to change the melody of the forest, and when he glanced up, their eyes met.

It wasn’t a cosmic thing, not really. Just two people acknowledging each other’s presence, and moving along on separate paths.

I’d love it if you visited the link for the full story and told me what you think

Not Exactly Persephone at Modern Creative Life

Copyright : Andrey Bortnikov (Follow)

Shameless Self-Promotion – Volume II

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Copyright : Andrey Bortnikov (Follow)

 

Happy Halloween!

Thanks to my friends Nuchtchas and Mark, and my husband (who kept the dogs quiet), there’s a special Halloween episode of The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub.

It’s an audio presentation of three of the stories I’ve written for HorrorDailies this month (Lips, Under Glass, and The Ghost Waltz), and  the run-time is about half an hour.

Where can you find it, you ask?

Click here: http://www.bathtubmermaid.com/2016/10/tbm-1610-31-spooky-short-stories-vol-ii/

 

 

Copyright : Andrey Bortnikov (Follow)

Shameless Self-Promotion: The Bathtub Mermaid – Spooky Short Stories

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Copyright : Andrey Bortnikov (Follow)

 

I’m dealing with some severe autoimmune issues this autumn, some of which mean I have either no brain or no energy to write on any given day. That’s been the case for a good chunk of the week, but yesterday, I didn’t write because I spent half the day stitching three of the stories I’ve already written and posted into an episode of my podcast.

If you want to hear my friends and me doing audio interpretation of “The Rules,” “The Lady of La Paz,” or “Egaeus’s Protege,” please click through to:

The Bathtub Mermaid: Spooky Short Stories

The total runtime of the episode is about twelve minutes.

Happy HorrorDailies!

 

 

Copyright: captblack76 / 123RF Stock Photo

Sunday Brunch: The Ghosts We Choose

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Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_captblack76'>captblack76 / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

 

I’m cheating a little with this post, because I’m really just providing an excerpt to this month’s Sunday Brunch column over at Modern Creative Life.

Here’s the excerpt:

A bottle of Clinique make-up, left in the medicine cabinet in my guest bathroom, smells like clay, but it also smells like Halloween, 1976, when my mother costumed me as Pocahontas and used her normal color to darken my fairer skin. (Cultural appropriation wasn’t a hot topic, back then, but even if it had been, my costume was an homage, not a mockery.)

Forty years later, that scent is so closely associated with my mother that when I see her and she no longer carries that aroma (because she’s long since changed her make-up routine), I have to stop and remind myself that she’s the same woman who bore me, raised me, and whose opinion is still, always, vitally important.

And here’s the link to the complete piece. Sunday Brunch: The Ghosts We Choose

eclipse

Sunday Brunch: August Nocturne

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eclipse

 

When All Things Girl still existed, I had a regular column called “Sunday Brunch.” Well, the core team of ATG launched a new ezine, Modern Creative Life, in March, and I’m writing “Sunday Brunch” over there once a month. Here’s an excerpt from this month’s post:

With the flip of a calendar page (or a swipe of finger on a smartphone) July is gone for another year, and it is August, my month. The first summer month when, even though the sun is still reluctant to set, the days are discernably shorter, and the nights incrementally longer.

I’ve always been attuned to the night. While some people are morning people, happy and chirpy at first light, the only time I typically see dawn is when I haven’t yet been to bed. I have never been afraid of darkness; rather I crave it.

I come by it naturally.

The night before I was born, there was a full moon and an eclipse. If that doesn’t lock you into a special relationship with nighttime, I don’t know what does. (Recently, I asked my mother if she remembered any of that, and she reminded me that she’d been a little preoccupied with being in labor.)

You can read the rest of the post at Modern Creative Life, and if you’re so inclined, consider submitting an essay, poem, or piece of short fiction to our next issue, which launches in September and has the theme of  Wisdom.

 

 

Image copyright: solerf / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Audio: The Bathtub Mermaid on Crayons

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I climbed the stairs to my studio to record lines for an audio drama, and ended up working on a podcast as well.
Actually, first I recorded new opening and closing bits for my podcast so I finally have a general template for easy, easy production.
Then I riffed on crayons in a personal essay. I’m not sure what the exact schedule of the podcast is going to be, but probably around the first and fifteenth of every month. It works for me, I think to do it regularly, but not to the point of it being a stressful project.

Listen to On Crayons: http://www.bathtubmermaid.com/2015/09/tbm-1509-16-on-crayons/