Weekly Winner ~ Get Fired Up For Summer Contest

Eva Minaskanian wins a copy of Damsel of the Hawk by Vijaya Schartz.

Eva, please email bookswelove@telus.net 

to claim your prize. 

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Astral Travel by Eleanor Stem

We are born remembering where we came from, what we can do. While in-utero we are partially with the growing fetus and also within the ether. We divide our time between the two and swear to the heavens we will not forget. 

By the time we reach the age of two or three our spirits are totally enclosed in the fleshly casing we call our bodies and we forget. We start to feel lonely, bereft. The light does not penetrate easily into our souls through dense skin, sinew and bone. 

We forget we can astral travel. 

Now, please bear with me; I promise this will be interesting. You just have to read a little before getting to it: 

I knew this lady who had to move to another town for work, leaving her husband behind. For about 6 months, they visited each other every other month. The only friends she made during this time were two coworkers, a man and a woman. 

She heard about a music festival that was popular in the area. Musicians competed with each other. They sold crafts and funnel cakes but to get there she had to travel narrow roads that wound through long stretches of farmland. As with her life of late, it was located in an isolated area. 

She did not want to go alone but it was supposed to be fun. She also wanted to get some Christmas gifts for her family. Her female coworker was out of town so she asked the guy to accompany her. She did not want to tell her husband. He would be upset. 

Toward the weekend, she became nervous. On Saturday, when she was supposed to meet the guy, she texted her husband to let him know her plans and to trust her. She stuck her mobile into her purse and almost ran out of the apartment. 

The road to the small town and music festival was pretty, but again isolated. She didn’t like her male coworker very much. The more she learned of him, the more his dark moods concerned her. One day he stood near the door of her office as he ground out some ill and she literally saw his aura, brownish, like a dark, disintegrating shield. She backed away. 

They got to the festival and separated, he to a conference call and she to the crafts. After a while, they met where the food was being served. He asked if she liked funnel cake. She responded she’d never eaten one. He said, “Well we can’t have that, can we?” 

As they sat across from each other at a picnic table, people with their children meandered through. Music could be heard in the background, cheers from the stadium where groups performed. 

She cut into her piece of funnel cake, a rich delight of whipped cream, pastry and apples. The guy confided something to her, but she watched over his shoulder, not hearing what he said. His mouth worked as if she were deaf. She found living apart from her husband lonely. Friendly coworkers didn’t help. 

Suddenly she heard a loud pop. Something altered in the ether. She turned in that direction where, close at hand, energy shifted. As she watched, fractured space folded back to normal. 

But she never made the connection to astral travel. A woman had just sent her food remnants into a rubbish barrel. She must have thrown something heavy in there. 

That night, she spoke with her husband. He said he’d been at the festival with her, saw her eat the funnel cake. She wore a white shirt. From what he saw, he knew she was not being disloyal. He felt good, reassured. The pop she had heard was when someone knocked on the door, hurtling him back to their house and onto the couch where he sat. 

Amazed, she explained what she had felt, what she had heard, that the ether had popped. She had worn a white shirt. 

Everyone acted normally. The guy across from her kept talking about his ills and needs. No one had looked up to see if something had made that loud pop. 

She alone had heard the shift in the ether, seen the air move while her husband had been with her.

 ~~~~~~

Many thanks to Terri for her story.

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Homage to the Firefly

 by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Well here it is, July 30^th…again. Here in Connecticut we’re smack dab in the midst of an extended heat wave (yesterday the heat index reached 103 F). I’ll be out with one of the dogs on our “walkies” around the block when a neighbor invariably asks with a big sweaty grin as he pauses from his mowing, “Hot enough for ya?” My answer, usually, is that I don’t mind the heat and find it preferable to freezing my butt off during our overly long, cold New England winters. No, I never complain about the heat. Not that I enjoy peeling myself from the chair I’m sitting in, or having my glasses fog up when I move from the outdoors to the air-conditioned inside (or vice versa), it’s just that summer happens to be my favorite season.

What, really, is there not to like about summer? The trees are in full leaf, flowers are in bloom, and our garden is producing zucchinis, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs faster than we can eat them. The backyard pool has been open since before Memorial Day and Tim, my husband, and Evie, our mutant springer spaniel, take advantage of a refreshing dip throughout the day. It’s a lazy time of year, a time for taking things a little slower, especially when outside playing ball with the mutant. It’s a time of glowing skies long after sunset, of sitting on the back deck with a good read on my Kindle, a baseball game on the radio…and, my favorite spectator sport: firefly watching.

I can’t remember when I first fell in love with those sparkly little critters, but I have memories

from when I was six-or-so running across the lawn in bare feet as I tried to catch them in my hands. And then there was an Independence Day night some 25 years ago when the sounds of fireworks from the park across town seemed in sync with the flickering of hundreds—if not thousands—of those incandescent insects in our yard. Twelve years ago, after a grueling eight months of surgeries, treatment and recovery from breast cancer, I found myself enjoying a warm late spring evening on the deck with no other thought in my mind except to breathe in the night air and give thanks to whatever powers that be for being alive. As if in answer, and totally unexpected, fireflies—like so many stars—lit up the trees and shrubs and flickered over the grass, a simple reminder that life is good and beautiful. I actually cried from happiness.

The sad thing is that “firefly season” is short-lived. By this time, end of July, the most spectacular displays are over. A few stragglers—those late for the party—appear well past dark, sometimes no more than two or three at a time to signal their desire for a mate. And then, within an hour or so, the yard is dark and still, with only the sounds of crickets filling the night.

Over the years I’ve done some reading up on the Lampyridae family of insects, the winged beetle order Coleoptera. No, they’re not flies, and up close they’re probably among the ugliest creatures I’ve seen. There are over 2,000 species of fireflies in the world, but only a few have the ability to emit the yellow, green or pale blue glow we have here in the eastern U.S. According to scientists, the reaction in their bodies that produces their light (bioluminescence) is among the most efficient in that it is nearly all glow and almost no heat. The light comes from luciferin, a chemical in their abdomens that, when combined with oxygen, produces their characteristic glow.

Among the fireflies in my yard, I count four different varieties. There are the synchronistic pulsers, males which signal the females of the species that they’re ready to mate. The females generally lie low in the grass with their answering flicker. Streakers seem to be in a great hurry, maybe to a party in someone else’s yard. And then there are the seducers, cannibal fireflies that mimic the flash of the female to lure an unsuspecting male to his death.

Unfortunately, due to a host of factors such as pesticide use and light pollution, firefly populations are in decline over most of the planet. But not in my yard. We have the perfect combination of damp creek bed in a forested tract just beyond a stand of willows, where the females like to lay their eggs. The larva and even their eggs are known to produce a glow, protection from other critters that would otherwise find them distasteful, even poisonous. In some species, the larvae burrow underground, sometimes for years, before emerging in late spring.

As writers, we’re told to write about what we know, which is good advice, but only to a certain point. In my fantasy novel, The Return of Tachlanad, I found a place for my beloved fireflies (which you can see on the lovely cover by Michelle Lee). At first glance they appear to be the same flickering, flying creatures that light up my summer nights, but these guys have a whole other personality and a bit of magic.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh's Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan's Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon.