Have you ever been to a clothing-optional (nude) venue, such as a beach, resort, club, party, etc? If so, what did you think of the experience? Would you do it again? If not, would you ever consider going to a clothing-optional gathering? Why or why not?
I have never been to a place such as this and I am not sure I ever would go. The thing is this, if you want to walk around nude or swim or whatever that is fine but I really don’t feel like hanging out playing cards naked, for instance, just to say I play cards naked. Also, I really don’t see the point. Yes, so you are free from judgement of superficial belongings but going just to be naked seems like it is, I don’t know…I don’t want to sit in a restaurant after someone’s bare ass has just sat in a chair and if you are going to walk around with a towel to cover yourself why not just wear clothes? I guess it just seems pointless to me to go to a party, take off your clothes, and then stand around doing the same thing you would be doing at a regular party.
A spellbinding anthology of creepy, twisted, and surprise-ending tales which will leave re-examining your own life and relationships.
Fleeting Chills by Joseph C. Gioconda is a spellbinding anthology of creepy, twisted, and often surprise-ending tales which will leave you wondering if you should re-examine relationships with the people you know, the places you visit, and the thoughts that you think.
Gioconda has put together an anthology of tales that range from murderous plots to contorted ghost stories with a touch of reality leaving you to question if each one is a true story, or close to one. Difficult to talk about any of the tales independently, for fear of spoiling the endings, each tale begins with a somewhat realistic or slightly conventional beginning. Many of the tales are constructed in a contemporary perspective, which lends to its plausibility. There is Jack who believes he died and has come back to find an altered life, a bone collector who acquires an original find, and a suicidal psychopath who is just “following doctor’s orders”. Also included are tales of twisted families; leaving loved ones sleeping alone in morgues, stories of spirits who come calling, and anecdotes of harrowing relationships that just don’t work.
I give this anthology four out of five stars for its ability to keep me absorbed in the irrational and often bizarre stories. Each tale is quite unique and seems to be written in such a way that the twisted endings are a true surprise. The first four or five stories are the most twisted which led to a slight amount of disappointment in some of the other tales, as the madness and absurdity was of a lesser extent than the beginning of the anthology. As a reader who enjoys the bizarre, I was looking for the intensity to increase rather than decrease. Regardless of order, this is a must read for those who love a twisted plot, some irrational characters, and completely insane endings to tales that seem realistic and quite commonplace. Being an anthology was a plus as each story could be read in a short amount of time without having to have any break in plotlines.
Welcome to the blog tour for romantic historical fiction novel, The Colour of Rain: A Kansas Courtship in Letters by author John W. Feist. Read on for details and a chance to win a $25 Amazon e-Gift Card!
The Color of Rain
Publication Date: September 1st, 2021
Genre: Historical Fiction/ Romance/ Based on True Events
Publisher: Winter Wheat Press
Separated by a great distance in the 1890s, can a widower and a schoolteacher overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of their love and commitment? John Feist unfolds a true-love story, old-fashioned letter style, in his historical romance novel, The Color of Rain.
Handsome, well-respected local banker, now eligible bachelor, Frank Wilson is nothing less than a hot-ticket item with “the path to [his] home? a pilgrimage for unmarried women bearing casseroles.” He’s not interested in remarriage right away-except for Irene, a schoolteacher living two train connections away. A long-distance courtship commences. The lovers keep to weekly letter-writing since they barely have the chance to see each other, especially when trials and tribulations convolute their individual lives.
“Feist’s rich writing style stitches historical details, providing a seamless flow from letters-writing to narrative sections that capture everyday life’s realities amid unsettling times. A true-love historical romance that will have readers riveted to the page. Highly recommended!” -Chanticleer Reviews, five stars
Frank could not converse in the carriage Ethan Alton drove behind the green wagon to the railway station for his train home. Frank had brought Allie to the St. Joseph hospital twelve days before she died. Their family doctor had run out of anything meaningful to do or say about whatever it was that put her in bed a week before that. Between visits to her bedside, Frank had talked with the Altons about sickness and mortality until he, too, had run out of meaningful things to say. Today, the Altons did converse but accepted his silence. He looked from one side of the street to the other. A normal day. But the sun-splashed houses, buildings and people he saw were water-colored contrivances not from his world.
The Altons sat with him in the St. Joseph terminal until his train yanked him toward home, toward two sons, their thirty-seven-year-old father now widowed. Their mother would be buried beside two infant siblings in a graveyard which he was later to design as a more formal cemetery. It was now an unshaded patch of hill in the northeastern Kansas town of Horton, founded just ten years before.
The train crossed the railroad bridge over the Missouri River to the Kansas side and started to speed up its run toward Horton, putting soot into the cloudless sky. The tracks of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway would not pass such a waterway again in their transit of the vast Kansas wheat fields and prairie grasses. But, for the next three hours, Frank’s journey would be only fifty miles across wrinkled hillocks of sorghum, oat and corn fields, and over streams lined with willows and cottonwood trees. Soon farmsteads came into view that he knew by name. He had financed those farmsteads. He was banker to these farmers. Today he saw that his fields of collateral needed rain badly.
Seeing familiar crossroads and steeples brought back thoughts of the girl he fell in love with. The smile he fell in love with. Allie lived the love commandment. She held a constitutional belief in the goodness of others. She delighted in her encounters with everyone without reservation or exception. Whoever felt her smile felt improved. Frank did so daily. It was not some occasional, wordless expression to signal mood or assent. It was the emblem of her soul. Her smile was her distinctive song, regular as dawn, constant as breath.
Frank had seen life leave Allie. He had watched the swarm of nurses drift away while he stood stationed at the foot of her bed. A doctor he had never met before declared, unnecessarily, that she had expired. It hurt to hear it. It hurt to smell the still, sultry air. What exactly she died of had not been evident or ever explained. I’ll forever wonder why, he thought. No, please . . . not on the train. He stiffened. His mouth bent downward. He stifled himself. The whistle shrieked.
John W. Feist is the American author of a series of political thrillers, “Night Rain, Tokyo” (2018), “Blind Trust” (2019), and “Doubt and Debt” (2021), plus a literary novel, “Diamond Mornings” (eLectio Publishing, 2016). He is semiretired from a career in business law in California and government relations advocacy in Washington, D.C. His work experiences planted the seeds for his thrillers with their lawyer-protagonist, observations of Japanese culture, and high-stakes international business deals.
Having inherited from his mother, an Equity actor, a love of drama and literature, Feist has appeared on Washington, D.C.-area stages, and provided live audio descriptions of theatre and opera performances for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Kansas and a JD from Stanford Law School. Feist lives in Falls Church, Virginia. He has two sons and two grandchildren who live in California.
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