Smorgasbord Bookshelf – Summer Book Fair 2022 – #1920s #Historical Beem Weeks, #Psychological #Thriller Stevie Turner

A wonderful surprise. I am humbly grateful.

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Over the course of the summer months I will be sharing the recommended authors who feature in the Smorgasbord Bookshelf along with their books and a selected review.

The first book is one I enjoyed and reviewed earlier in the year, Jazz Babyby Beem Weeks... a story set in a time when the music was an escape from life for many.

About the book

While all of Mississippi bakes in the scorching summer of 1925, sudden orphanhood wraps its icy embrace around Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten, a pretty young teen.

Taken in by an aunt bent on ridding herself of this unexpected burden, Baby Teegarten plots her escape using the only means at her disposal: a voice that brings church ladies to righteous tears, and makes both angels and devils take notice. “I’m going to New York City to sing jazz,” she brags to anybody who’ll listen. But…

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Expansion Pack: Canon

A great tutorial for writers!

Story Empire

Hi Gang. Craig with you again today, and I have an idea for three different, but related topics. These are extras to the writing game, so I’m bringing them to you as part of my Expansion Pack posts.

We’ll have a post on Canon, One Upmanship, and Prequels. Let’s spin the dial and we land upon… Canon.

No matter how you plan your stories, in your head, on a storyboard, or a detailed plot, the minute you start writing, you’re actually building fences. They’re present, even if you don’t realize it. Your job is to live within the fences you’ve built.

In a simple explanation, you can’t have your character suffering from the long term effect of a car crash, then decide it would be cooler to have him be a disabled veteran in chapter seven. The only way to do this is to go back and change the earlier…

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Story Length

Joan Hall has written a wonderfully thought-provoking piece on story length over on the Story Empire blog. Go have a read!

Story Empire

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. Previously, I talked about the advantages of writing short stories and participating in anthologies. Today, I’ll cover story length and the various definitions used in fiction. Later, I’ll pose a question.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

There are several terms to define works of fiction based upon the length of the story. Check a dozen sources and you will likely get a dozen different answers but here is a general consensus of story type as defined by word count.

• Micro Fiction is a subset of flash fiction and is generally defined as any story told in 300 words or less.
• Flash Fiction—stories up to 1,000 words (some say up to 1,500 words). Virginia Wolfe’s A Haunted House (710 words)and Mark Twain’s A Telephonic Conversation (810 words) fall into the flash fiction category.
• Short Stories are usually between 5,000 and 10,000 words but can be…

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Write What You Know? Not Always!

I have a new post on Story Empire. Come on over and take a look around. There are all sorts of great articles for writers and readers alike.

Story Empire

Greetings, SE’ers! Beem Weeks here with you again. Today, I am going to share some brief thoughts on writing those things in which the author may not believe—or even agree with.

Can we, as authors, write about those things in which we don’t believe? I honestly never gave much thought to such a notion—until a young woman questioned me about the subject of reincarnation. For the record, I do not believe we will come back into this world as another person or animal or insect or tree after we die.

So, what exactly prompted such a line of questioning? The woman asking had recently read a story I wrote entitled The Distance. It’s a short piece of fiction about a middle-aged man named Richard Metzger coming face to face with a blond-headed five-year-old boy who may or may not be the reincarnation of his younger brother. I left the…

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Comes this Time to Float!

Stephen Geez chats with blogger Mary Schmidt! Stop by When Angels Fly!

When Angels Fly

Please welcome Stephen Geez to my blog. Hello, Stephen, nice to have you here this morning. Shall we have a chat? Please introduce yourself to those reading this blog post.

I’m Stephen Geez, author of novels in various genres, the GeezWriter How-to series for authors, oodles of scripts for television and other media, a collection of 54 mini-memoir essays, and the book I’m touting today, Comes This Time to Float: 19 Short Stories by Stephen Geez. I’m also the founder and publisher at Fresh Ink Group where I do cover design; editing; web development; trailer and video production; audiobook production; and international publishing of hard, soft, and eBooks.

Has writing always been part of your life and when did you “know” that it was time to start writing your first book?

During grad school I started establishing non-profits and setting up multi-million-dollar outreach programs for at-risk populations. I excelled at…

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