Wayward Cat Publishing
Dianna Dann   Dana Trantham   D.D. Charles

Fiction-wise
I feel like now might be a wonderful time to settle in with some good reading...

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
...the author of Station Eleven
"Vincent is a bartender at...a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Jonathan is running an international Ponzi scheme. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call." This one sounds weird and suspenseful, maybe a bit creepy.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
"Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. [17 years later] Jacob has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past." The description of this book troubles me. I might have to read it.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
"...when [Dannie] wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. It’s the same night...five years in the future. After a very intense...hour, Dannie wakes again back in 2020. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind...until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision. " This one sounds cool. 

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
"Set in the coastal town of Danvers, Massachusetts, where the accusations began that led to the 1692 witch trials, We Ride Upon Sticks follows the 1989 Danvers High School Falcons field hockey team, who will do anything to make it to the state finals—even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers. In chapters dense with 1980s iconography—from Heathers to "big hair"—Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective progress of this enchanted team as they storm their way through an unforgettable season." What fun!

Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony
"It's early one morning on a hot day in August, and millennial congressman Alexander Paine Wilson (R), planning his first reelection campaign and in deep denial about his sexuality, receives a mysterious, over-sized FedEx delivery on his front stoop. Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark. This outrageous, edge-of-your-seat novel hurtles between contemporary Washington, D.C., where Wilson tries to get rid of the unsightly beast before it destroys his career, and Victorian England--where we meet Titus Downing, the taxidermist who stuffed the aardvark, and Richard Ostlet, the naturalist who hunted her. Our present world, we begin to see, has been shaped in profound and disturbing ways by the secret that binds these men." Holy Moly! What a romp this one will be.

What's New in Horror?

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
"Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt." Spooky!

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
"Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, Kate flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Then Christopher vanishes and for six long days, no one can find him. Until [he]...returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again." Very strange...

The Toll by Cherie Priest
"Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon and have reservations in the Okefenokee Swamp cabins for a canoeing trip. But shortly before they reach their destination, the road narrows into a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car. Much later, Titus wakes up lying in the middle of the road, no bridge in sight. Melanie is missing. When he calls the police, they tell him there is no such bridge on Route 177..." Creepy!

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
"Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you." This one might be too scary for me!

(All book descriptions are quoted from Amazon.)

Here are some weird science words. So many to choose from! I got these definitions from the Science in Action blog at blogspot.com

Auscultation: Listening. Especially listening to the sounds of the internal organs, as with a stethoscope.

Borborygmus: pl. borborygmi, Rumbling and gurgling noises from the intestines. Stomach "growling"

Bromhidrosis: Body odor, B.O. From the Greek bromos, a stench, and hidros, sweat.

Eructation: Belching, burping

Osculation: Kissing; a kiss

 

An appias drusilla and a bumble bee enjoying some thistle along Black Point Wildlife Drive in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. February 2020.

 

 

by Thomas Carew 

      
Mark how the bashful morn in vain
Courts the amorous marigold,
With sighing blasts and weeping rain,
Yet she refuses to unfold.
But when the planet of the day
Approacheth with his powerful ray,
The she spreads, then she receives
His warmer beams into her virgin leaves.
 
So shalt thou thrive in love, fond boy;
If thy tears and sighs discover
Thy grief, thou never shalt enjoy
The just reward of a bold lover.
But when with moving accents thou
Shalt constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms
With open ears, and with unfolded arms.