This short story collection will be tied to an album of music on which each song on the album matches a story in the collection. We're in the final editing phase and am thinking about releaseing each story and song together as individual releases, with a combing compilation collection near the end of 2024 or early in 2025.
In The Fifth Circle has an obvious reference to one of the five circles of Hell in Dante Alighieri' Divine Comedy. But more specifically, it also refers to a fictional nightclub in Saint Petersburg, Florida, called The Fifth Circle, which was so named as a play on that fifth circle of Hell, which was a marsh fed by the River Styx, where the wrathful must fight anyone and anything on the muck, but the Sullen, the ones who are overcome with fury, choke on their own anger under the mud and can do nothing else. The Fifth Circle nightclub is well known for its venue length mural which depicts that fifth circle, and fits in with the nightclub's clientele, which tends to trend Goth.
All of the short stories in this collection part of a fictional event which happened in that nightclub, and each one addresses common dreams which the patrons of the nightclub have been having up until the event. These are the stories the patrons shared with one another as they each tried to decide if they were crazy for essentially being in one another's heads.
When The Winds Blow was the only album by Windhaven, Wicasta's acoustic band with Victoria Sadler Lovelace. This collection of Southern recipes came about because of my mother's interest in creating a cookbook of her own based upon her decades as the cook at the family restaurant she worked at with her sister, Loretta. She had done quite a bit of work on it, and posted her favorite recipes to a web site we set up for her, MamaPeggy.com, for years before her death in 2011. Sadly, Mama never got to see the cookbook finished or published. It took a long time and a lot of healing, but we finally finished it and got it published in 2018. These are Mama Peggy Chaney's favorite recipes along with some of the staple, signature dishes from Peggy's Restaurant, which was in Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
Mama Peggy's approach to cooking could be summed up by something she used to say. “It’s the simplest thing in the world.” This cookbook captures those simple, old-fashioned Southern recipes that were Mama Peggy's signature during her many years cooking at Peggy's Restaurant. This isn't food that's meant to fancy. These are just simple, delicious recipes. While there are many of the Peggy's Restaurant recipes in the book, the cookbook includes many of Mama Peggy's favorite recipes, as well as some of the humorous stories she used to post to her web site before her death. A woman of mischievous wit and firm Christian faith, this cookbook provides a wonderful insight into the depth of her character, and the reasons why she is still so sorely missed.
“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” ~ Lorrie Moore
I failed the 9th grade because I wrote a novel that year. Homework / classwork was for the weak. I was an artiste! I felt justified. I always made 100s on my tests. So clearly “they” weren't teaching me anything. Might as well get some real work done, right?
Gods, I was insufferable.
But you have to start somewhere, right? This section is where you'll find references to some of the material I don't think exactly sucks. You may disagree, of course. But it is what it is. And these are some of the things I think are worth remembering.
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