Welcome to the Saturday Saloon, where we can experiment,
drink and have a few laughs. Here are some awesome drink recipes to try this beautiful
Saturday in September.I love this time
of year, kids are in school, it’s right before Halloween and the frosty end of
fall. So of course this makes me think of Apples.
So let’s have our
apples Judy Garland style. Oh yeah.
Poisoned Apple
Ingredients
1 cup ice cubes
1 fluid ounce vanilla
flavored vodka
1 fluid ounce sour
apple schnapps
1 cup lemon-lime
flavored carbonated beverage 1 dash grenadine
syrup
Directions
1. Fill a large glass with ice, and pour in vanilla vodka
and schnapps. Pour in the lemon-lime soda, and top with a splash of grenadine.
Awesome Apple Martini
Ingredients
1 fluid ounce apple
schnapps
1 fluid ounce vodka
1 fluid ounce apple
juice
Directions
1. In a cocktail shaker full of ice, combine apple schnapps,
vodka and apple juice. Mix well. Pour into glasses and garnish with a slice of
Granny Smith apple.
Candy Apple on the rocks
1/2 cup ice
1 (1.5 fluid ounce)
jigger peach schnapps
1 (1.5 fluid ounce)
jigger apple schnapps
2 fluid ounces
cranberry juice
Directions
1. Fill a glass with ice, and pour in the peach schnapps and
apple schnapps; top with cranberry juice.
Freaky Friday presents the awesome Edward McKeown.
I've enjoyed a life-long love affair with
science fiction. I write believable
people in extraordinary situations, balancing romance, humor, adventure and
reasonable extrapolations of science in stories that I believe people will want
to return to. Whether it's in the short stories of my "Lair of the Lesbian
Love
Goddess series" or in the Fenaday and Rainhell novels, classic
"Planet" tales of
a crews of unlikely companions facing unknown dangers, my intent is to give the
reader the sort of page turning, involving adventure that Andre Norton wrote
and
leaven it with the emotional complexity and ambiguity that CJ Cherryh brings to
the field.
While
the experiences of the SF Universe are out of reach of those unable to pay for
a
rocket ride, I use my own background to try for an underlying verity in my
characters. I’ve parachuted, flown in gliders, hang gliders and strapped to the
floor of military helicopters. I’ve been rated as an expert shot and carry a
black belt in the martial arts. I’ve been paralyzed by fear, exhilarated by
love and walked into fights, both literal and metaphorical, that I knew I could
not win. I have the good fortune to be married to the talented artist
Schelly Keefer.
First Book of the Fenaday/Rainhell Trilogy
through Hellfire Publishing in Kindle and trade paperback
Review for Was Once A Hero
Reluctant privateer Robert Fenaday searches the stars for his lost love,
Lisa, a naval intelligence officer whose ship disappeared near the end of the
Conchirri War . He’s joined by the genetically engineered assassin, Shasti
Rainhell, whose cold perfection masks her dark past. Both are blackmailed by
government spymaster, Mandela, into a suicidal mission to the doomed planet
Enshar. Leading a team of scientists and soldiers, they must unravel the
mystery
of that planets death before an ancient force reaches out to claim their
lives.
The classic Planet Stories of S/F have suffered abandonment,
without a rescuer, until now. Edward McKeown's "Was Once A Hero"
combines
adventure and romance with the dark humor and human complexities absent from a
more black-and-white age. Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell are real people.
They make mistakes, they hurt, they stumble in the dark emotionally, and they
save the world. They are flawed, wounded heroes, and they make you realize, as
you hungrily turn each page, that the best fiction contains excitement and
passion; and the best aspect of life is the possibility of personal redemption.
Was Once a Hero provides both." -
Tim McLoughlin, author of "Heart Brooklyn Noir"try" (Movie Title: The Narrows) and Editor of "Brooklyn
Noir"
Blood is Thicker Than Water
Thursday’s—This day is devoted to Vampires and the like.
Do Vampires really exist?
What do you think? Wait! Before you answer, read the story of Mercy Brown.
Mercy Brown
It
was January 17th, 1892 in the small town of Exeter, Rhode Island, when Mercy
Lena, the daughter of farmer Brown, fell victim to the unfortunate fate of
death. The epidemic of Consumption took her life when she was only 19 years
old. The cold winter weather made it difficult to bury her in the frozen grave,
so she was placed in a crypt, close to the corpses of her mother and sister
that had been laid to rest years earlier after their battle with Consumption.
Not long after her death, Mercy’s older brother Edwin had succumbed quickly to
the same disease that took his family, and claimed that one night he had felt
Mercy sitting on his chest, trying to take his life away. Townspeople started
experiencing strange sitings of Mercy, seeing her walking around the cemetery
and in the farm fields. The town concluded that Mercy must have been a vampire
and had returned from the grave to unleash her curse on the rest of her family,
taking their life force away one by one.
Cases of vampirism were taken very
seriously, so two months after her death, Mercy’s father had a few town
officials and a physician from Wickford, Dr. Metcalf, go to the crypt and put
an end to the matter. They dug up Mercy’s dead mother and sister to make sure
that they were each not the vampire responsible for the Brown family curse.
Their bodies were decaying at the anticipated rate, so it could be concluded
that they were not vampires. However, when they opened Mercy’s coffin, they
were overcome by shock and fear because of the image that lay before them. She
had shifted positions in her coffin and her face was flush, her skin intact,
and her nails and hair had noticeably grown. They then sliced her body open and
discovered that her heart and other organs were full of liquid blood. These
were all telltale signs that Mercy Lena Brown was a vampire, immortalized and
determined to kill all of her lasting family members.
To ensure that Mercy would never arise from
her coffin again, they immediately burned her heart on a nearby rock. Some of
her ashes were given to Edwin to eat, for it had been said that consuming a
vampire’s ashes would cure one of their curse. Only this remedy was not
successful for poor Edwin and he died shortly after. Mercy’s lasting remains
were then properly buried under a gravestone that still stands to this day.
Some say that if you visit her grave at night, you can see her apparition in
the form of a glowing orb or, if you are lucky, as a ghostly figure of her
human body. Others have experience unexplainable car problems while passing the
cemetery were she resides. Even long after her death, her legend and spirit
continue to haunt the people of New England.
Tamara McClintock Greenberg, Psy.D.,
M.S., a licensed clinical psychologist, works with patients and family members
affected by acute or chronic illness. She is an associate clinical professor
and clinical supervisor at the University of California, San Francisco Langley
Porter Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Greenberg has written three books and
numerous chapters and articles on aging, illness, as well as issues pertaining
to women. She writes for Psychology Today online and The Huffington Post. She
also speaks to medical, psychological, and public audiences on the impact of
illness, caregiving issues, and dealing with the modern medical system as a
patient or loved one. She is in private practice in San Francisco. Interview between Keira Kroft and Tamara
McClintock Greenberg! Welcome to Keira's Corner! Keira: You
are here today to promote your book When
Someone You Love Has a Chronic Illness. Can you tell us a little about it? Tamara: I offer hope and
practical advice to those impacted by a loved one’s chronic illness. Providing
easy-to-understand explanations for complicated feelings and behaviors, this
book will help you not just cope, but thrive in your day-to-day life. Learn the
important tools you need to help lighten the burden we all feel when someone we
love is ill. Keira: What do you wear, to
write?
Tamara: Sweats or
pajamas.I can never write if I am in
work clothes.
Keira: Is writing your only
talent?
Tamara: I hope not!I am in private practice as a psychologist
and so I hope I am good at helping my patients.That work means a lot to me.I
also do a lot of supervision of younger therapists and I think I can help most
people because I do have an ability to hear about a situation and imagine it as
if I were there.I have always been
pretty good at trying to think about things from another’s point of view.
Keira: Where do you find
time to write?
Tamara: I write best early in
the morning or late in the day.This is
based in part, on my schedule, but I often find that at the end of the day, I
am energized and inspired by my work as a therapist and so I try to synthesize
what my patients are telling me.
Keira: Why are you a
writer?
Tamara: A few years ago, I
would have said because I had to express my ideas and thoughts in writing as a
way to organize what I am thinking. At that time, writing felt compulsive to
me.Now, I am just really interested in
using my ideas to help others and to address causes that I think are important.
Keira: If you could choose
anyone, who would you pick as your mentor?
Tamara: I would love anyone
who writes for the New Yorker to be my mentor.All of the writers are so talented!
Keira: How many hours a day
do you dedicate to writing?
Tamara: I work full-time
outside of writing, so a good day is when I can write for four hours.
Keira: Do you use a
particular writing method?
Tamara: I don’t.I write ideas down when I have them, and
trust that I can synthesize the ideas, though I understand I may have to wait
until I am ready to put something coherent together.
Keira: What advice would you
give to an unpublished writer?
Tamara: Focus on a good
proposal and find people who can help you do this.A good proposal is the foundation for a
book.If you do the work upfront, you
have less to do later on.Think about a
novel idea and one you can sell.Being a
successful writer is only partially about how good of a writer you are.It is often related to a good and catchy
idea.
Let’s
get personal…
Keira: What is your
favorite food?
Tamara: Grilled cheese
sandwich.There is a place down the
street that makes a different grilled cheese sandwich every day.
Keira: What is your guilty
Pleasure?
Tamara: Gossip
magazines.
Keira: What is your
favorite Smell?
Tamara: Lavender.
Keira: If you could change
one your physical feature? Would you? What would it be?
Tamara: My body from the neck down.I would want to look like my perfect-bodied pilates instructors.That said, I can deal with my current
body.
Keira: What is your
favorite color?
Tamara: My favorite
achromatic color is black.My favorite
chromatic color is blue.
Keira: What is your
favorite day of the week?
Tamara: Monday.
Keira: What is your
favorite favorite animal?
Tamara: Dogs.
Keira: Can you tell us a
secret?
Tamara:My biggest pet peeve
is people who sing out loud in public.Life is not American Idol, right?
Keira: Do you have pets?
Tamara: Yes.Charlie is our rescue dog, now 15, who
currently eats out pants.Max is our pug
who has no behavioral problems at all and just wants to be loved.
Keira: What do you consider
a household staple?
Tamara: All natural lavender
dish and laundry soap.
I have seen a huge increase in sales since I started Six Sentence Sunday. Thank you to Triple S ladies and everybody that stopped by and the buyers. I love you :)
Here is part two of a four part arc from of Glow in the Dark, on sale now!
“Yeah, I had a feeling.” Jake examined Corey’s movements as
she laughed with her friend. He could understand where Charlie was coming from
to a point. Corey was officially his girlfriend and had been for some time.
That made her off-limits.
I have seen a huge increase in sales since I started Six Sentence Sunday. Thank you to Triple S ladies and everybody that stopped by and the buyers. I love you :)
You know me as either Dawn Binkley, executive editor at Hellfire Publishing or as one extreme to another (romance to horror) writer, Keira Kroft.
I would like to talk about my favorite season of all…fall.
Football: There is already a cool crispness in the air, here
in Oak Lawn. I was able to kill the air conditioning over the last few days and
pre-season football started. Now, I will wait patiently for our first official
Sunday game of the Chicago Bears game (da Bears!) Late
August begins with preseason football my favorite sport of all and then goes on
to the full season in September—yeah baby!
Autumn Television: My fall preview (because it only comes to
me, lol) TV guide comes in the mail and I actually take their pre-printed
schedule out and sit with the family and highlight what shows we will watch.
Big Bang Theory and the new Chicago Fire will be on that list for sure. Then I
will fill up the DVR for those moments we can spend together watching a little
TV, it’s usually only an hour at dinner each day, but we enjoy it. And let us
not forget the hot release of all those Christmas romances, squee.
Like: I love the fall season and all that entails and all of
the above mentioned bliss is followed by pumpkin (I love anything pumpkin
flavored) season, Affy Tapples and the leaves changing. Then comes Halloween,
my favorite time of year. It’s not too hot, nor too cold, is it just right. I
absolutely adore the costumes, the parties and the horror stories. I have loved
that since I was kid. As an adult I have come to be infatuated with the deep
lure of Halloween, as have many of you. We are into another century where
people are fascinated by ghost, goblins and all the other creatures that go
howl in the night.
Love: My two businesses, my writing career and my family and
friends. I am anxious to hear what you love most during the fall season and all
year long.
Two lucky commenters will win the Hellfire Hot Reads Collection, volume one.
ATTENTION: I will no longer be using the regular Keira Kroft
page. Come to Keira Kroft’s fan page where I will be posting my daily q and
interacting with my awesome FB friends. I will be using the fan page just the
same :) TIP: A like and friend take up the same room on your friend list, so
feel free to unfriend and like :) Thank you. http://www.facebook.com/keirakroft?cropsuccess#!/pages/Keira-Kroft/171750936213533
I have seen a huge increase in sales since I started Six Sentence Sunday. Thank you to Triple S ladies and everybody that stopped by and the buyers. I
love you :)
Here are six more sentences of Glow in the Dark, on sale now!
Tears filling her eyes, Corey laced her arm
around Charlie’s and they walked out.
Emptiness filled
him, but he made no move to chase after her as their forms disappeared through
the crowd. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But she’d hurt him first, right?
He caught
everyone’s glare and knew he’d been the jerk in the first place. God, I’m just
a jealous idiot.
Some people that I have talked to on the subject think that
Resurrection Mary and Bloody Mary are the same person. They are not. I am here
to tell you the story of Mary Worth, so that you can compare it to yesterday’s
blog and see that there is a difference. But I don’t mind, both are very
interesting stories. The first difference is that Bloody Mary...is a drink...
:)
Bloody Mary Recipe
Nothing is better in the morning (as a brunch cocktail or
hangover cure) or on a cold day than the spicy tomato flavor of a Bloody Mary.
You can make it as spicy or mild as you want, using either more or less hot
sauce, or (better yet) add the spice of tequila by making a Bloody Maria.
Bloody Marys are often garnished with a celery stalk, but many will either use
a pickle spear or both. For a non-alcoholic version try a Virgin Mary and you
can also make a pitcher-sized batch by using a Bloody Mary mix like this one.
Ingredients:
•3 oz tomato juice or I prefer V8, especially a spicy one
•1 1/2 oz vodka
•1 dash of Worcestershire sauce or I prefer Louisiana Hot
Sauce •celery salt
•celery stalk for garnish •lime
wedge for garnish
Preparation:
1. Build the liquid ingredients in a highball glass over ice
cubes.
2. Mix well.
3. Add the seasonings to taste.
4. Squeeze lime, drop in and Garnish with celery stalk.
Read below and then prepare the drink from above, rather
quickly, to calm your nerves.
The other Bloody Mary~ The Scary One.
Historically, the ritual encouraged young women to walk up a
flight of stairs backwards while holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a
darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to
catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that
they would see a skull (or the face of the Grim Reaper) instead, indicating
that they were destined to die before they married.
In the present day, the summoning ritual requires that the
lead participant must not look directly for Bloody Mary, but at their own image
in the mirror. Variations of the incantation ritual involves: the number of
times Bloody Mary's name is called; spinning (or not) after every repetition of
the name; and the adding of the phrase "I've got your baby." The
modern ritual addition of taunting Bloody Mary regarding her baby indicates the
legendary figure's tenuous connection to Queen Mary I, also known as
"Bloody Mary", whose life was marked by a number of miscarriages or
false pregnancies
Results
Bloody Mary allegedly appears as a corpse, a witch or a
ghost; sometimes covered in blood. The lore surrounding the ritual (if she is
summoned properly) states that participants may endure the apparition screaming
at them, cursing them, strangling them, stealing their body or soul, or
drinking their blood.
Troxler's fading and self hypnosis have been posited as
explanations for the Bloody Mary phenomena.
In popular culture
The legend of Bloody Mary has served as inspiration for a
number of movies and television shows dealing with the supernatural.
Description
according to the TV Show Supernatural
In suburban Nebraska, a group of partying high school teens
jokingly dare their friend Charlie (guest star Marnette Patterson) to look into
the mirror and repeat 'Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary," not knowing
this will unleash a series of mysterious murders. Sam (Jared Padalecki) and
Dean (Jensen Ackles) realize that Bloody Mary has the power to travel through
all reflective surfaces when she is hunting a victim. Worried that teens are
accidentally summoning Bloody Mary, Sam and Dean race to destroy the violent
spirit before she can kill again. add in
website.
Full Synopsis
Toledo, Ohio: House: Focusing in on a girl party, three
young girls are having a slumber party and playing "Truth or Dare".
One girls asks another girl, Lilly, an embarassing "would you want to make
out with..." question. Lilly doesn't answer it and is forced to do a dare.
The dare was to say "Bloody Mary" 3 times in the bathroom, which
Lilly does and is scared when her 2 friends shake the door in order to scare
her. Then Lilly's dad, Steven Shoemaker, asks them to quiet down, then he goes
into the bathroom, looks in a mirror and his eyes start to bleed. An older
sister walks in "past curfew" and goes upstairs and sees her father
on the floor, dead. Read More
I was at a party once and we played the Bloody Mary game. I
went into the bathroom, turned off the light and said bloody Mary, three times...suddenly
there was this face behind my shoulder and I could see it in the pitch black. Everyone
else that went in the bathroom ran out screaming, with the same claims. Was it
real? Or were our minds playing tricks on us? They say that groups of people
drinking can invoke group paranoia. Did the owners of the apartment have
something rigged up in the bathroom?I
will never know, because I won’t be doing that again.
Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for Six Sentence Sunday.
Good Morning and welcome to the tie-in to today’s daily
Facebook question.
Daily GTKY question:
What spooky legend have you grown up, hearing about, perhaps even believing?
My answer is Resurrection Mary. I grew up not too far away
from Resurrection Cemetery and have gone down Archer road on many spooky nights and
swearing to God, that I have seen her.
Do you think that, me and the thousands of other Chicagoans that believe,
are crazy? Tell us what you think. And tell us about your spooky local legend.
Disbelievers say that this pictures like these are fake. Experiencing
it first-hand myself, I say...it’s probably the real deal.
The following Information
is provided by the Internet.
Resurrection Mary is a well-known Chicago area ghost story.
Of the "vanishing hitchhiker" type, the story takes place outside
Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, a few miles southwest of Chicago.
Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer
Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery have reported
picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat
formally in a white party dress and is said to have light blond hair and blue
eyes. There are other reports that she wore a thin shawl, dancing shoes, that
she carried a small clutch purse, and/or that she was very quiet. When the
driver nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman asked to be let out,
whereupon she disappeared into the cemetery. According to the Chicago Tribune,
"full-time ghost hunter" Richard Crowe has collected "three
dozen . . . substantiated" reports of Mary from the 1930s to the present.
Mary’s Story
The story goes that Mary had spent the evening dancing with
a boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument
and Mary stormed out. Even though it was a cold winter’s night, she thought she
would rather face a cold walk home than spend another minute with her
boyfriend.
She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue.
She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run
driver, who fled the scene leaving Mary to die. Her parents found her and were
grief-stricken at the sight of her dead body. They buried her in Resurrection
Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dancing dress and matching dancing shoes.
The hit-and-run driver was never found.
Reported sightings
Jerry Palus, a Chicago southsider, reported that in 1939 he
met a person who he came to believe was Resurrection Mary at the Liberty Grove
and Hall at 47th and Mozart (and not the Oh Henry/Willowbrook Ballroom). They
danced and even kissed and she asked him to drive her home along Archer Avenue,
exiting the car and disappearing in front of Resurrection Cemetery.
Burned section of the
front gate bars.
In 1973, Resurrection Mary was said to have shown up at
Harlow's nightclub, on Cicero Avenue on Chicago's southwest side. That same
year, a cab driver came into Chet's Melody Lounge, across the street from
Resurrection Cemetery, to inquire about a young lady who had left without
paying her fare.
There were said to be sightings in 1976, 1978, 1980, and
1989, which involved cars striking, or nearly striking, Mary outside
Resurrection Cemetery. Mary disappears, however, by the time the motorist exits
the car.
She also reportedly burned her handprints into the wrought
iron fence around the cemetery, in August 1976, although officials at the
cemetery have stated that a truck had damaged the fence and that there is no
evidence of a ghost.
In a January 31, 1979 article in the Suburban Trib,
columnist Bill Geist detailed the story of a cab driver, Ralph, who picked up a
young woman – "a looker. A blonde. . .she was young enough to be my
daughter - 21 tops" – near a small shopping center on Archer Avenue.
"A couple miles
up Archer there, she jumped with a start like a horse and said 'Here! Here!' I
hit the brakes. I looked around and didn't see no kind of house. 'Where?' I
said. And then she sticks out her arm and points across the road to my left and
says 'There!' And that's when it happened. I looked to my left, like this, at
this little shack. And when I turned she was gone. Vanished! And the car door
never opened. May the good Lord strike me dead, it never opened."
Geist described Ralph as "neither an idiot nor a
maniac, but rather [in Ralph's own words] 'a typical 52-year-old working guy, a
veteran, father, Little League baseball coach, churchgoer, the whole shot'.
Geist goes on to say: "The simple explanation, Ralph, is that you picked
up the Chicago area's preeminent ghost: Resurrection Mary."
There was a movie a few years ago based on the so-called “legend”.
For those of you that need more information, here is website
dedicated to the subject of “Resurrection Mary.”
Our recent cool, Halloween like weather has inspired my
spooky side. So I decided to add in another blog or too, feating the supernatural and other scary subjects. Many people think that Bloody
Mary and Resurrection Mary are
the same person, but in fact they are not. Come back tomorrow to see the
difference.
To catch a great scary story in the meantime...check out
Hellfire Publishing...where the “Scary and Supernatural” are always “in”.
Leave a comment for a chance to win the eBook version (now) and the print book version of Hellfire's "Hot Reads Horror Collection Volume One" when it comes out next month.
Here are six more sentences of Glow in the Dark, on sale now!
He whirled around and strode
out of the office. Corey Nolan sat at a bar table in the back, wrapped in a
blanket. With each footstep he took, tension rose along his spine.
He couldn’t deny it any
longer. Something was going on here. He watched as her body shook, fingers
trembling as she clutched the blanket around her tighter.
Ingredients
