Cat Thursday - The holidays...Happy New Year!

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Cat Thursday - Christmas, Week Four

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Cat Thursday - Christmas, Week Three

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Yearly remembrance - Anne Rice

It's hard to believe you've been gone for a year. I miss your delightful and intelligent posts from your page that used to pop up in my Facebook news feed. You were definitely dedicated to your "people of the page." I like to think you're smiling, wherever you are, at the brilliant interpretation of your characters in the "Interview with a Vampire" AMC series. You will live on forever in your characters. Even knowing that though, you are still missed greatly by many. 

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Classics Club Spin #32

My spin selection is 

The Writing Life - Annie Dillard

A cry goes up to the universe...give me something I can actually finish. 

1. Collected Works - Algernon Blackwood
2. Complete Ghost Stories - M.R. James
3. Negotiating with the Dead - Margaret Atwood
4. The Witch of Ravensworth - George Brewer
5. The Vein of Gold - Julia Cameron
6. The Writing Life - Annie Dillard
7. Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot
8. The Collector - John Fowles
9. Writing Past Dark - Bonnie Friedman
10. Writing Down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg
11. The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson
12. Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for Witches, Warlocks, and Covens - Paul Huson
13. Steering the Craft - Ursula K. Le Guin
14. The Forest for the Trees - Betsy Lerner
15. Some Dogmas of Religion - J.M.E. McTaggart
16. The Faith of a Writer - Joyce Carol Oates
17. The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
18. The Creative Habit -Twyla Tharp
19. If You Want to Write - Brenda Ueland
20. The Writing of Fiction - Edith Wharton

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Cat Thursday - Christmas, Week Two

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Cat Thursday - Christmas, Week One

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

First, let me apologize for totally forgetting to post last week. I was in Thanksgiving prep mode since I was hosting at my house. It completely slipped my mind! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving (my U.S. readers, that is). 

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Damnation and Cotton Candy by Alan S. Kessler - Review

The very first poem, Good Business, told me I was going to like this collection of poems. This poem is commentary on war being "Good Business" and the useless loss of life for greed. At least, that's what I gleaned from it. Very powerful. 

The next standout for me was Waiting. I could not help but believe that this was Edgar Allan Poe himself in the grave. "He returned, not to her, but to belladonna's unfurling black cape. The drinking. The lost life. The forgotten grave."

Insanity was an insightful look into a homeless man's life. "Mothers hold their children close. Others don't see him. He shuffles mumbling."

Gram was very poignant. I did not have a grandmother that I was particularly close with (though I loved both of them), but my mom is a wonderful grandmother to my sons and to my sister's children. I could really see her in this poem. "But Gram loved me, rubbed my legs when they ached, hated the snake forever, the name she gave a 5 year old for pushing me once in a game."

The subtitle of this collection is "Poems best served with hot cocoa, melancholy, and a sharp knife." The latter part of the subtitle I believe is a nod toward some of the more scary poems in the collection. I was struck by The Head (for the kiddies) and Another Poem for the Little Ones (Best read at bedtime). Both brought to mind Stephen King coming-of-age stories, and while reading The Head, I was reminded of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. 

A final mention, and the standout of the entire collection, in my opinion. A page with the title *Mother...a blank page, and then at the bottom "*Some poems don't require words." 

Very much how I feel about my mom. 

This collection was thought-provoking and memorable, and tugged at many heartstrings, and some fears too. I highly recommend it. 

About the collection

The poetry in it is about war, climate, family, childhood, reality, illusion and ghosts — many ghosts; Includes statement poems in free verse and prose that are personal, political, sometimes painful; sometimes a surrealistic convergence of opposites: “…the gray rainbow trails of stone-eyed butterflies.”

About the Author
Alan S. Kessler lives in Vermont with his wife, children, dog, and two cats. He’s authored six novels. Damnation and Cotton Candy is his first book of poetry.

Available on Amazon

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Cat Thursday - Holiday preparations

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

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Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (115) Jack Ketchum

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come acros s, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author (with a birthday during the month), pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.

Dallas William Mayr (born November 10, 1946) better known by his pen name Jack Ketchum, was an American horror fiction author. He was the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards and three further nominations. His novels included Off Season, Offspring, and Red, which were adapted to film. In 2011, Ketchum received the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award for outstanding contribution to the horror genre.

A onetime actor, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk, Ketchum credited his childhood love of Elvis Presley, dinosaurs, and horror for getting him through his formative years. He began making up stories at a young age and explained that he spent much time in his room, or in the woods near his house, down by the brook: "[m]y interests [were] books, comics, movies, rock 'n roll, show tunes, TV, dinosaurs [...] pretty much any activity that didn't demand too much socializing, or where I could easily walk away from socializing." He would make up stories using his plastic soldiers, knights, and dinosaurs as the characters.

Later, in his teen years, Ketchum was befriended by Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, who became his mentor.

Ketchum worked many different jobs before completing his first novel (1980's controversial Off Season), including acting as agent for novelist Henry Miller at Scott Meredith Literary Agency.

His decision to eventually concentrate on novel writing was partly fueled by a preference for work that offered stability and longevity.

Ketchum died of cancer on January 24, 2018, in New York City at the age of 71. (from Goodreads)

Today is his birthday...in your memory, hope you are resting well.

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