Mari’s Midnight Garden

This month’s edition of Absolute Blank at Toasted Cheese has been posted:

May 15, 2008 | Writing as a Not-So-Solitary Pursuit

This month’s Absolute Blank article is Writing as a Not-So-Solitary Pursuit: Ye Olde Guide to Wryting Groupes by TC Editor Stephanie Lenz (Baker)

Okay. I’ve been using Evernote for about a month now.

One thing I like is that it automatically syncs to your online account - so you basically have a backup. It took me forever to figure out how to name my notebooks - duh, it uses the first line of the note. It puts a link in your Outlook program (if that’s what you use for mail) and in your Internet browser, including a link in your context menu - so you can clip selected text to keep/share.

Am likely, as much as I like the program, going to ditch my Stickies program in favor of Evernote. Evernote “travels” and even has blog widgets and a personal “wikinote” if you want to take it that far. All Stickies does is sit on my desktop and wait for me.

I first heard of Evernote from Joe Nassise at his XTremeLife blog. I’ve since seen quite a few people on my Twitter list who also use the program and give it good review (and good use!).

Anyone else using Evernote? How do you like it?

Preston and I bused downtown today and walked to the cemetery. I got some fantastic pictures, if I do have to say so myself.

[from Apex Book Company:]

Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel opens to pre-orders this Mother’s Day

[May 11, 2008]

Nothing good comes of the closest ties in Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales, the new collection from Fran Friel and Apex Publications (www.apexbookcompany.com). Things can go especially awry when the tie in question is the one binding mother and son.

The Bram Stoker Award-nominated novella “Mama’s Boy” is the cornerstone of this 14-story collection from author Fran Friel and Apex Publications. A man whose mother’s demented love for him has turned him from an innocent boy to a serial killer to a near-comatose mental patient opens his world to a psychologist determined to reach him as a way of dealing with her own mother’s battle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But is she helping, or is there more damage to be done?

In “Mashed,” a son’s simple request for potatoes with his birthday dinner opens up a world of past fears and childhood torments for his mother, while the flash fiction story “Close Shave” presents a horrifically funny solution to an everyday women’s issue.

From mother and son to broader family ties, Friel explores the bonds of human connection into every dark turn. The humorous yet wickedly creepy “Under the Dryer” begins as a tale told by the family dog and ends in a bloodbath; “Special Prayers,” perhaps the most disturbing offering in the collection, exposes a family secret of abuse and power; and the tragically soft and beautiful “Orange and Golden” explores the purest form of the human-animal bond as the sun sets on a natural disaster.

Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales is now available for pre-order. Releases on June 14, 2008.

FRAN FRIEL is a Bram Stoker-nominated author residing in rural New England with her husband and their band of animal masters. She writes weekly columns for “The Horror Library Blog-O-Rama” and “Yada, Too,” and she is a fiction editor for Dark Recesses Press. As a full member of The Horror Library, her short fiction appears regularly in the Fresh Meat department.

Friel’s work has been featured in the 2006 anthology release Horror Library, Volume 1, as well as publications online and in print at The Horror Library, Insidious Reflections, Wicked Karnival, The Lightning Journal, Lamoille Lamentations, The Eldritch Gazette, and Dark Recesses Press.

APEX PUBLICATIONS (www.apexbookcompany.com) is a small press dedicated to publishing exemplary works of dark science fiction and horror. Owned and operated by Jason B. Sizemore, Apex publishes the critically acclaimed Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. In 2006, Apex Publishing branched into producing novellas, collections, and anthologies, earning a Bram Stoker Award nomination for the Aegri Somnia anthology in 2007.

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We’re only doing 100 copies of the hardcover. All copies will be signed by Fran Friel and Billy Tackett (cover and interior artist).

A standard trade paperback will also be released.

PRE-ORDER THROUGH THIS LINK - http://apexbookcompany.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=24 - Show your mama how much you love her!

Blessings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace,
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Infancy’s the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mother’s first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow–
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Woman, how divine your mission
Here upon our natal sod!
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Blessings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
And the sacred song is mingled
With the worship in the sky–
Mingles where no tempest darkens,
Rainbows evermore are hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

–William Ross Wallace (1819-1881)

Eight years ago, I went to my first Beltaine Festival. When I came home, a little grey and white kitty was hanging around the apartment. Nothing new. She’d been there off and on for a while. I petted her and went on. But then she kept showing up - one morning in the Dumpster just before the trash was collected, which scared me to death. I got her out of there, but then she left again. When she showed up the next time, I brought her in and looked at her close. She was in bad shape, so I called a friend to come pick her up and take care of her.

My friend named her Grey Lady, which was very apt. That tiny cat was regal, and she knew it. She was beautiful. And she seemed to stay under my friend’s sofa or the bed unless Preston was there. She would always come out and sit on Preston or Preston’s bag. She absolutely adored Preston.

And then she got to where she’d stand at the front door and cry when we’d leave. And of course it eventually got to me. And then the weekend of the Woodland Arts Fair that August, I gave in and brought her home.

We had her with us until January 19th, 2007. Looking back at her pictures, she had gone downhill in a bad way between the previous August and November. But we hung on to her because we didn’t want to admit to ourselves that she was as ill as she was. Around Christmas, she started going to the door and crying, begging me to let her outside. I knew what she wanted, and I refused. She and I had arguments about this. I refused to let her win on that account no matter how much she begged.

But then by the middle of January, I knew we had to let her go. It was long past time for that. So I called and made the appointment and took her in. And she went to sleep in my arms. With her eyes open. I sat there bawling with laughter bubbling from me. “Grey Lady, you silly thing,” I said and kissed her forehead before the ‘nurse’ (what are they called in the vet’s office?) took her from me. She asked me if I wanted her to fix the cat’s eyes, but I said, “Please don’t.” When both the nurse and the doctor looked at me funny, I clarified. “She always slept with her eyes open.”

I carried her out to the car, got in, placed her on the passenger seat, got ready to pull out, and turned on the radio. I never listen to AM, haven’t since I was a child, but Preston does now and then just because he can. As I put the car in reverse, the first strains of Spirit in the Sky began to play. I absolutely lost it. But then I started laughing my ass off. And since then, it never fails that we’ll be thinking about her, and that song will play. (in fact, a commercial was just on the TV with the song playing in the background)

Grey Lady was special. She had more love in her little fuzzy body than most people I know ever dreamed of loving. She was our special girl, a little angel. And now she is our angel.

And I still miss her like crazy. I miss her so much it hurts.

From the Apex blog:

Closing to subs in June every year since the beginning of time (March 16th, 2005, release date of Apex Digest #1), we have taken off the months of June and December and closed to submissions.

We love tradition around here, so we’re giving the hard-working Apex editors a break this summer. Apex Digest will be closed to all submissions from June 1st-June 30th. We will re-open July 1st. Any submissions sent during the break will be deleted and unread.

We’re open for the next 22 days, so get those manuscripts to us!