by Lauren Sapala

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the unique position of having my fingers on the collective pulse of writers today. I talk to unbelievable amounts of writers every week. Some of them are my clients, some of them are new people thinking about becoming a client, and some of them are completely random strangers from the internet who email me to talk about writing. I talk to sci-fi writers and memoirists and bloggers and romance novelists and everything in between.

agilely avoiding
eye contact
shuttering pieces of herself
so deep
that sometimes she
couldn’t find them
she evaded direct answers
to the question
with the skill
of a contortionist
past
present
future selves
hung on threads
of hope
and equal parts
terror
wondering whether the reception
to a full confession
would become her salvation
a weapon used
against her
finally damning her
to hell
never a simple answer
to the question
truth was a tangled rope
as thick as her wrist
studded with thorns
shards of broken mirror
pearls
sprigs of fragrant salvia
slippery with blood
and memory
 
© 2017 Revised 2019 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved

This week saw me heading to Amsterdam. I went there at the invitation of international bestselling Belgian author Annelies Verbeke. She has been the writer in residence, or Vrije Schrijver, at VU University this year and her final duty in the role was to organise and deliver the Abraham Kuyper Lezing, an annual public lecture built around a theme of the curator’s choosing.

This year’s title was De taal van de wereld (The language of the world). As part of this, Verbeke was keen for me to speak about my journey through international literature.

It was a great pleasure to be back in Amsterdam. It’s a city very close to my heart: I went there to decompress after I finished my year of reading the world back in January 2013 and the main character of my first novel Beside Myself spends her happiest time there. I caught myself half-wondering…

by Morgan S. Hazelwood

The Next Steps

Well, the next step depends on you. What do you want to do next? There are two main options and either could be right for you.

Heyy everybody!

Welcome back to my blog. Today I’ll be doing yet another of Maggie’s April Blogging Challenge. The topic for today is (as you can obviously tell) 3 songs that put you in a good mood.

Perhaps you’ll find something in common with me here 😉

Uptown Funk Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars

This so is so catchy and perfect for dancing! I always feel so upbeat during this song and after it.

CoolJonas Brothers

Another sort of upbeat song which I really like. Nick Jonas’ voice is pretty unique which makes his songs nice to listen to!!

Don’t ChangeWhy Don’t We

As of now, this is WDW’s latest song for a movie called Ugly Dolls. They are currently my favorite singers because their songs are so goooooood! This song really conveys a good message about loving yourself for who you are. I will totally be watching…

The Minecraft 1.14 update, the “Village & Pillage” release, landed for both the Java (old school) and Bedrock (Win10 and consoles) editions this week.  It has been described by the team as the biggest update to villages ever.

Villagers and Pillagers

And, given the list of new items and changes, I won’t argue with that description, even extending it to the biggest update overall I have seen for the game.

The list of just “new” things added to the game is already pretty impressive:

• Bamboo jungles with bamboo trees and pandas
• Barrels
• Berries
• Blast furnaces
• Town bells
• Campfires
• Cartography tables
• Composters
• Crossbows
• Fletching tables
• Foxes
• Leather horse armor (dyeable)
• Lanterns
• Lecterns
• Looms
• Pillagers
• Raids
• Ravagers
• Wandering Traders
• Scaffolding
• Smithing tables
• Smokers
• Stonecutters
• New flowers
• New dyes
• New decorative blocks

Back over the summer, when they first started talking about this update I thought pandas were going to be the big…