Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

“Not Only for ‘Paranormal Romance Girlies’”: A Review of Submerged (A Something in the Water Story) by Ashley Castañón

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:04:56 +0000

(self-published, 2025). ISBN: 979-8-9989790-2-6

First novels are a very big deal, especially when the Author’s Note at the conclusion explains that it was five years in the making. That it wasn’t always easy. That there was lots of support and assistance from family and friends and moments of tear-provoking doubt.

I wrote my first novel 17 years ago. Although I’d already had four nonfiction books published, I still remember the disappointments. The struggles. The moments of tear-provoking doubt. And the celebration when the author’s copies arrived.

I have written fourteen books, fiction and nonfiction, since, and each one feels like it’s the first.

I briefly met Submerged’s enthusiastic, well-spoken author several weeks ago at an indie author event in our local town square. She spent some time looking over my books, selected two, and asked if I wanted to do a trade. Knowing only a little about what she wrote—Ashley is NOT one of those authors who goes into way too much detail when asked what their books are about—I readily agreed.

Submerged is a book that, were I to find it on a bookshelf, I wouldn’t figure was for me—a White, middle-aged, heterosexual male. After all, the dedication is to “paranormal romance girlies.” That’s my daughter and daughter-in-law, who occasionally bring my wife into the fold if the story “isn’t too spicy.” The introduction also references “book boyfriends,” of which I think I understand the meaning…

Nevertheless, appreciating Ashley’s enthusiasm and the courage it took to ask an old, grey-bearded author if he wanted to do a book trade, I took my read, and this review, as an opportunity to both expand my horizons and bring a new author to the attention of the readers of my reviews. In order to ensure I’d succeed, I entered the story of a young Hispanic man with something to prove who’s suffered repeated losses and the Selkie with whom he falls in love with an open mind and open heart.

I’m very glad I did.

At times, Submerged reminded me of Splash meets Pretty Woman (as a screenwriter, I’ve been trained to spontaneously, organically generate binaries like this to prep for pitches), with the obvious homages to The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson much more than Disney). I was well familiar with the legends and lore of Selkies, having told a story dozens of times a decade ago about a Selkie on my haunted ghosts walks and pirate tours on the North Carolina coast.

Ashley brings a lot more to the story of these human–seal shapeshifters than I had time or reason to. The details are impressive, although they never bog the narrative down.

The story itself lives and breathes in Magical Realism. Other supernatural beings, such as Sirens and Orcs, make appearances throughout the story. No one is overly (or actually even a little) nonplussed by their existence, which also serves to move the story along. The abuela of the male protagonist is well-aware of the actual state of things. She also provides a lot of Mother Wit and Wisdom while serving as our guide to Latinx culture.

By the way, if you don’t know the meaning of abuela (or the other Spanish words and phrases sprinkled throughout the book) there’s a handy set of translations at the front.

Woven into this nontraditional Splash-like love story (with its expected attendant villains) are sociopolitical and economic elements that I found to be both refreshing and inspiring. Slumlords driving up prices of rentals is a subject with which many of us are concerned. Greed, human trafficking, domestic abuse, and transphobia also undergird the story to varying degrees, and many of the women in the story, who are rightfully distrustful of men due to physical and emotional trauma visited upon them and their friends and family, unapologetically seize the stage with forceful warnings aimed at the male protagonist. That wasn’t easy for this middle-aged, White, heterosexual male to encounter. My heart often went out to Caspian (a nod to the prince in CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia?), as the Selkie’s girl-gang put him through his paces and kept him on his toes.

It’s not all serious social issues, though. There’s also plenty of food, fashion, fun, and frolicking. And just a touch of “spicy.”

Submerged has plenty of mystery boxes and reveals, and I found myself reacting like Caspian’s abuela—which makes total sense knowing what I know of the serendipities, happenstances, and symmetries that are always operating in the background IRL (thank you to my Gen Z child Jo for teaching me this shorthand. IYKYK).

For a first-time novelist, Ashley Castañón demonstrates a strong talent for story structure, pacing, and character. These feel like people she knows, in one form or another, and they are easy to root for—or against, as the given circumstances demand.

I mentioned that Ashley selected two of my books. Along with Submerged, I also received the sequel.

I look forward to making time in late fall/early winter to see how Ashley progressed as a novelist and what happens next in the “A Something in the Water Story” universe.

“The Highland Game Is Afoot”: A Review of Secrets Taken to the Grave (The Strathbairn Trilogy, Book 2) by Isobel Blackthorn

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:33:34 +0000

(Next Chapter, 2025). ISBN: 979-8272238542

A few months ago, I reviewed the first book in this trilogy, What Happened at the Abbey, which I enjoyed for its vivid locales, Gothic tropes, and interesting characters. Having received the complete trilogy in a single volume, I knew that the story’s heroine, Ingrid Barker—the self-styled widow of Winchester—would return to the formidable, Usheresque mansion in Straithbairn, in the Highlands of Scotland, although I had no clue as to how or why. Her time with the owners, the McCleods, for whom she served as housekeeper in What Happened at the Abbey, was anything but pleasant, and she left under multilayered, malignant circumstances.

Book two opens with the return of Ingrid and her precocious preteen daughter for the funeral of the McCleod patriarch, which launches a set of mystery boxes into motion. Ingrid, being a fan of Sherlock Holmes (Secrets… takes place in 1893; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has just killed off the world’s only consulting detective at Reichenbach Falls) and seeking ways to occupy her time when she is unexpectedly delayed from departing Straithbairn (due to weather and other, unforeseen circumstances), endeavors to unravel the mysteries of the McCleods and the village, in addition to her own. While doing so, she navigates the police, who are in the midst of an investigation related to events in book one, as well as the boundary-challenged McCleods.

The feuding siblings of the family McCleod, with whom Ingrid is staying, ratchet up their infighting after their father’s will is read. These three siblings, two brothers and a sister, are trying to get on with their lives despite their personal failings and the crushing weight of generations-old secrets, traumas, betrayals, shifting alliances, resentments, dark defilements, and a buried case of nepoticide that have laid an Usher-like curse upon the house and land; none of them are succeeding. Not that they have much of a chance when their dead, despicable patriarchs stare down at them from portraits hung throughout the house, which further suffers from their oppressive presence through books, family heirlooms, and other physical matter they’ve left behind as pointed reminders of their dark, despicable deeds.

Using uncovered letters, ledgers, diaries, and other documentation (some discovered with the assistance of an intrusive, insistent ghost), Ingrid attempts to piece together the McCleod family history, navigate the dislike of their tragic neighbors, and secure a future for herself and her daughter in daunting, near-dire circumstances. Along the way, we learn the McCleod family history and genealogy, which I enjoyed mapping out.

Although there is also a haunting in What Happened at the Abbey, I found the one in Secrets Taken to the Grave to be edgier and a touch more atmospheric, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting. This increased intensity is appropriate to both the particular ghost and the circumstances of the second book rather than a comparative comment on Blackthorn’s writing.

A word about Ingrid. She’s given to self-doubt and vacillation throughout the first two books, although she’s never reduced to the trope of the helpless damsel in distress so prevalent in classic Gothic literature. She never trusts a man enough to given him her heart, which serves both she and the story well.

As I mentioned in my review of What Happened at the Abbey, this trilogy will appeal to fans of Downton Abbey, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Master of Ballantrae, and a hundred (or thousand) other Gothic and mystery tales (some of which I’ve mentioned in these reviews). The author gives us plenty of authentic Dickensian detail about clothing, furniture, food, and the books and music of the time to ensure our deep immersion—one of the joys of the Gothic genre (and Victorian/Edwardian literature in general) for me. A highlight was the mention of James Malcom Rymer’s String of Pearls, which is the original Sweeney Todd/Mrs. Lovett story, published in 1847, the same year Rymer coauthored one of the seminal tales of its type, Varney the Vampire.

Although it’s best to read the entire series, Blackthorn does an excellent job of providing callbacks to book one for readers who may be unfamiliar with it (or who have forgotten what they previously read). It is important to mention that the frequent callbacks never slow the narrative down.

As with What Happened at the Abbey, Secrets Taken to the Grave concludes with Ingrid’s departure.

Although there is a clue as to why she might return, the larger circumstances of what will unfold in book three are something I look forward to discovering.

“Mothers (and More!) on the Mother Road”: A Review of Aprons Away: Women’s Work on Route 66 by Cheryl Eichar Jett

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:19:36 +0000

“Mothers (and More!) on the Mother Road”: A Review of Aprons Away: Women’s Work on Route 66 by Cheryl Eichar Jett (Reedy Press, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-68106-634-9

Stories about America’s fabled Main Street, Route 66 (John Steinbeck’s “The mother road, the road of flight”), are legion and, in this centennial year, the new books being published are also nearly so. I have reviewed a few of them, including one edited by my friend and colleague Jim Hinckley, Route 66: 100 Years, for which Cheryl Eichar Jett wrote the (excellent) chapter on Illinois. Jett is an accomplished author, known for her writing on Illinois and for her six books for Arcadia Publishing’s popular Images of America series, and it was my recent pleasure to hear her speak in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about her latest book.

Despite the endless coffee table and travel guides published in the past 36 years, which have led to a full-throttle revival of the Mother Road, little attention has been paid to minority populations, whose challenges and triumphs along Route 66 are just as important to the collective America Identity as the ubiquitously represented motels, gas stations, restaurants, neon signs, and muffler man giants that enjoy the lion’s share of attention.

Being a researcher, writer, immersive experience designer, and presenter with a focus on historical education and social activism who has focused on Route 66 for the past 4-plus years, I’m always on the lookout for books featuring minority stories, and Aprons Away went to the top of my list when it was published last month. I read it in a matter of days.

Through the foreword, the celebratory tone and focus are set by Susan Croce Kelly, whose Route 66: The Highway and Its People, kicked off the Route 66 revival in 1989. Kelly is also the author of the only book-length biography of the “Father of the Mother Road,” Cyrus Avery, whom I have been portraying along Route 66 this year. With such pedigrees as Kelly’s and Jett’s I expected nothing less than the engaging read, fount of knowledge, and celebration of women this collection of brief biographies provides.

The book is divided into types of occupation, from architects and designers to restaurant owners; from gas station attendants to innkeepers; from entrepreneurs to those who devoted their lives to public service. Jett also covers the artists, designers, engineers, and documentarians who gave so much to the Mother Road—and to America’s identity. There is also a chapter devoted to World War II and such icons as Rosie the Riveter.

Each chapter comprises a series of profiles written in an engaging, easy-to-comprehend style, using journalism’s inverted triangle. For those looking for specific women to meet your inspirational or research needs, this broad-strokes-to-fine-details structure will make your mission easy. Each biography covers birth to death, marriages (and divorces), career trajectories, and major accomplishments, both on and off America’s Main Street.

Many of these women came from virtually nothing and rose to great accomplishment, despite their having to do so in times when such opportunities and advancement were almost impossible for them.

In the chapter on architects and designers, the name Mary Colter might be familiar to route enthusiasts, along with the Harvey Girls and the line of hotels where they worked. It’s impossible to tell the story of Route 66 without them. I’ve read books devoted to them, and there were still things I learned from Aprons Away. The section on Helen Liu Fong and the Googie architecture movement is particularly fascinating. Jett also features Scheibe’s Café in Livingston, Illinois; Lucia Rodriguez’s Mitla Café in San Bernardino, California (after reading the story, you may never eat Taco Bell again); Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri; and the Golden Spread Grill in Groom, Texas. Some of these establishments—and the women behind them—get short shrift in the coffee table and travelogue books, so it was nice to see them featured here.

What’s more iconic (and indispensable!) on a Route 66 road trip than service stations? Here we find some of the great lady luminaries—Ola Soulsby (of Soulsby Service Station), the women of Gary’s Gay Parita, African American Elizabeth Threatt, Four Women (later Cars) on the Route, the Texaco White Patrol and Phillips 66 Highway Hostesses, and Lucille Hamons, the Mother of the Mother Road.

Along with food and gas is lodging. Jett covers Murray’s Dude Ranch, the Hotel Figueroa, Alberta’s Hotel, and my favorite motel on Route 66, the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, New Mexico. There is a special section devoted to Missouri, with such gems as the Rockwood Motor Court, Boots Court, Munger Moss, and Wagon Wheel.

In the chapter “Entrepreneurs,” you’ll learn about Bell Miller and her apartments (now the Inn at 835), Frieda Ring Paul and the Marvel Theatre, the Funk family’s maple sirup [sic], and Joyce Tarro and the Coliseum Ballroom in Benld (all four are in Illinois). There is also Mary Costigan and two iconic locales in Flagstaff, Arizona—the Hotel Monte Vista and the Orpheum Theater. “Public Service” spotlights four women whose devotion to community significantly impacted Route 66.

Route 66 aficionados are known to seek out all kinds of visual art on their travels—especially murals. The chapter “The Artists” features a variety of Native Americans, Georgia O’Keeffe, the muralists of Maisel’s Indian Trading post, and several women who created art through the Works Progress Administration.

The growth of the New Mexico and Arizona towns along Route 66 owes a lot to World War II, and authors continue to write about this time in the Mother Road’s history for audiences hungry for more. Jett contributes much to the discussion, including the fascinating story of Franti May “Frances” Manbeck Hill and her connection to British fighter pilot trainees in Miami, Oklahoma; “Rosie the Riveter” (including the woman who modeled for her); the “We Can Do It!” poster; the real women who worked in the factories and on the bases all along Route 66; and those who worked in the military and nursing services.

A wide-ranging, eye-opening chapter is “Design and Engineering.” This is the chapter from which I learned the most. There is Mazie Georgiana Krebs, who designed streamlined excursion steamers; Ray Kaiser Eames, who, along with her husband Charles, was one of the most influential of the purveyors of the mid-century design aesthetic; Juli Lynne Charlot, who designed the poodle skirt (its origin story is a highlight); Marilyn Jorgenson Reece, who designed California freeway exchanges; and Harriet Tapp Burns, one of the early Disney Imagineers, who was mentored by Walt himself.

Especially in this centennial year, two questions I often encounter during my presentations, workshops, and Cyrus Avery performances are: What could have been done differently or better when the Mother Road met its almost complete demise by the early 1980s? and How do we protect its legacy and sustain its rebirth moving forward? Much of this work falls to the documentarians, the subject of the final chapter. Luminaries of bygone decades like Lucile Morris Upton, Dorothea Lange (who graces the book’s cover), and Quinta Dunn Scott, who devoted so much of their lives to documenting Route 66 are highlighted, along with those who are key to the second question, such as Susan Croce Kelly, Shellee Graham, and Candacy Taylor.

Although she’s too humble to do so herself, we must include Cheryl Eichar Jett in this list of A-list documentarians. Aprons Away: Women’s Work on Route 66 is essential to any proper library of Route 66, just as the stories of the passionate and talented women who fill its pages are essential to understanding what this long-decommissioned highway means to the American psyche.

This is a book that all young women should read. It’s nothing short of inspiring. I could imagine no more valuable gift to give a teen deciding where she wants to stake her claim in life than Aprons Away. The many photos are also value-added.

Review of The Firehand File, Bob van Laerhoven

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:13:51 +0000

(Next Chapter, 2026). ASIN: B0GGXYZVRD

Over the years, I have come to expect a lot from Bob van Laerhoven’s novels and this one not only doesn’t disappoint—it might just be the best one yet.

The prologue begins in Munich in April 1920 with an evocative diary entry by an unidentified author, written to a dead brother about his murdered dog; it’s barely a page. The novel repeatedly returns to excerpts from the diary, identifying the author only as a rabid antisemite who identifies with Parcival, the Grail Quests, Lohengrin, and the Spear of Destiny and who twists the words of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to suit his warped, weaponized Weltanschauung.

Chapter one opens in April 1921, when antisemitism was already ubiquitous, with lyrics from a cabaret song about cocaine. It’s a time when the “People’s Court” in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison still dispenses “justice” by beheading. A German psychiatrist eyes an exotic, “half-Chinese” woman in the sweltering heat with obvious addiction pangs at a racecourse. After admonishing her companion, a literary translator, for wanting to translate the partly Jewish Marcel Proust into German, he plays on the woman’s need with offers of heroin and cocaine. She readily, salaciously succumbs…

A police inspector in Berlin, whose sister was slaughtered in the 1905 Odesa Pogrom, readies himself for a second interrogation of a confessed Armenian murderer who was motivated by the Turkish genocide of Armenians. A complicator for the inspector: Germany and Turkey are allies, and the professed motive has made the papers. The inspector is already smarting from a missed opportunity to arrest a serial killer called The Skinner.

The intermingled traumas of the Pogrom and the Armenian genocide are potent pistons for driving the novel’s narrative engine. Their descriptions are not for the faint of heart.

From here, we learn that the psychiatrist is a member of the antisemitic, Aryan, occultist Thule Society (which, with their macabre sense of humor, meets near a synagogue).

Moving back and forth between this pair of stories, while lacing in several others, van Laerhoven once again delivers hard-to-read (and fathom), exquisitely rendered accounts of the physical, emotional, and psychological horrors of early 20th-century Europe with efficiently executed, deeply affecting prose (extended through diary entries, letters, poems, and short fiction). This network of stories unfolds through the lives of a cast of sharply drawn characters from a wide array of sociopolitical (e.g., communist vs. Nazi) factions who tout nationalism, intellectual bait-and-switch, mythology, and multigenerational trauma as the motivations and rationalizations for their abhorrent behavior.

Through a meeting of the Thule Society, we meet the real-life, self-titled racial theorist Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, publisher of the antisemitic Ostara (its writings were voraciously ingested by Hitler), spewing on and on about Hyperborea, Vril, Götter-Elektron, and Aryan supremacy (the Übermensch) before announcing the start of an Aryan beauty pageant (blonde hair, blue eyes only) organized by the psychiatrist and his conniving addict accomplice. Others will later push the preposterous “science” of phrenology to show that Jews are less than human (the Untermensch).

As the plot expands and seemingly disparate characters are revealed to be closely connected (at times through overlapping vignettes, like in a play by A.R. Gurney), van Laerhoven deepens our immersion with detailed descriptions of architecture, interesting tidbits such as the inspector wanting to arrest the later-to-be-infamous Hermann Göring for “shady dealings,” mentions of Thomas Mann and of Albert Einstein’s lectures at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, a violent encounter between a Nazi brownshirt and the Jewish stage director Max Reinhardt, and an appearance by Marxist writer–director Bertolt Brecht, who’s intensely interested in the reading list of the up-and-coming demagogue, Hitler (whose rise to power through the backing of antisemites such as industrialist Hermann Blohm is deftly woven throughout the novel from multiple perspectives). The novel’s chock full of childhood trauma (and its effect on memory), subterfuge, secret identities, acts of survival, and split alliances. Wars, genocides, and uprisings like the Boxer Rebellion leave scars through damaged psyches and echoed acts of violence.

Although van Laerhoven populates his novels with poets and painters, philosophers and physicists (and the prevalent artworks, books, and theories with which they engage), he does not place them above the fray. They’re very much like all the rest—the policemen, politicians, soldiers, and industrialists (one of whom, Isaac Ochberg, a counterbalance to Blohm, is shipping Jewish orphans to Africa for their protection at his own expense). It’s all degrees of degrees. A poet, for instance, writes a grotesque about the serial killer. He leans into artistic challenge as his reason, but, like the modern Ripper tours in East End London, the victims get short shrift, because the profit derives from the primary draw, which is the killer. Not so with the novel’s author—although the oppressors and oppressed get equal space, there is a subtle weighting regarding where van Laerhoven’s sympathies lie, although, crucially, every character is rendered fully human, including one undergoing gender reassignment surgery at the hands of a surgeon known as Aunt Ambrosia. We’re also introduced to the sinister underground of child exploitation and the dominatrix culture of Berlin, with services encoded in the different colors of their thigh-high boots and laces.

The Firehand of the title provides a massive mystery box throughout the novel, involving no less than Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess, and clues delivered through diary entries and a psychiatrist’s notes.

If you have not already read van Laerhoven’s recent novel of World War II, which I have also reviewed, The Long Farewell, I highly suggest reading them in temporal order, back-to-back.

“Unity in Diversity”: No Bear Is an Island, by Mawson and Mark O’Dwyer

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:34:03 +0000

(2026). ISBN: 978-1-7645894-0-6

No man is an island, entire of itself/Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

—John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624

In a polarizing world, where Othering has divided and not united, where difference is a liability instead of a strength in the eyes of (far too) many (especially those in power), it’s important to teach our children (while being role models) that everyone has a unique (hi)story, set of interests and goals, hopes and dreams, and they are all of equal value. Such recognition of the worth of diversity in our social circles is a pathway to seeing we can learn from others while learning about ourselves when we step out of our comfort zone and engage with those who are different than we are.

This is the beautiful and timely message of No Bear Is an Island. Strength in numbers, communion in community, and the truest truth there is—we all could use a little empathy, help, and compassion to get us through the day and find a little relief from our self-doubts and feelings of not quite being enough.

Photographer Mark O’Dwyer, along with his philosophical, kind-hearted companion, Mawson (imagine a more worldly Winnie the Pooh, although equally gentle and kind), have a knack for delivering messages that make the sad amongst us smile and the alone feel so much less so. In It’s a Bright World to be Lost In, they show us love and loss are often intertwined and that, in time, we heal. In She Ran Away from Love, the message is self-acceptance. In Dreamy Days and Random Naps (which I reviewed and read on my podcast, Saturday Morning Story Time Live!), they show us the indispensable, powerful gift that is dreaming. Mark was also the photographer for another book I reviewed and read live, Carola Schmidt’s When a Brave Bear Fights Cancer, also featuring Mawson and friends.

No Bear Is an Island begins with a solitary Mawson. That’s important to acknowledge—we all need some time alone. As a Creative, it’s essential to both the generation of ideas for and generation of my work. Like me, Mawson is a writer (he’s a poet). We then hear from other bears, some of whom are filled with worry and woe. Even Bleary, the dreamer, worries what might happen if they let go of their dreams. Others want to be loved, hugged, and understood (who doesn’t?), or, like Scotland the Brave (my favorite of Mawson’s friends), to prove to ourselves (even more than to the world) that we are up to the challenge, whatever it may be, although we’re more than a little afraid. There’s even a pirate, who wonders if, now that he’s secured his riches, they will be enough to keep him fulfilled.

Mawson, sensing the distant voices of his fellows (each with a whispered If only…), wants to rise to the occasion to assist and support them. What ensues is a lesson all of us need to hear—and act upon. To read and learn and think about by ourselves, and together, and by ourselves again.

And so, I’ll leave you to it.

Here is my live reading of the book:

“Film Investing 101”: A Review of Hollywood Money Traps: What Every Film Investor Needs To Know by Alexia Melocchi

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:14:45 +0000

(2026 Little Studio Films). ISBN: 979-8995735335

There are few businesses with the unique combination of deep mystique, risk and reward, and stuck-in-your-throat cautionary tales as the film (and television) industry. The chance for fame and riches—which motivates many industry aspirants—or simply to make a consistent living doing what you love as a Creative (which has kept me in the game as an actor, director, and screenwriter for more than 36 years) often leads to high risks and unfulfilled dreams.

Just as heartbreaking as an unproduced script or career-boosting role that ultimately doesn’t happen is financial loss, which, for some, can be nothing short of devastating.

Although there are myriad books written by actors, directors, writers, and producers about the vacillations and hazards of the industry (I’ve read dozens), there are few that capture the ABCs of its financial aspects in such an organized, easy to read and absorb, case-study format as Alexia Melocchi’s Hollywood Money Traps: What Every Film Investor Needs To Know. I began my read wondering if this would be another bitter indictment of an already much-maligned industry, but this book is miles from that. As a matter of fact, it is a celebration (along with an invaluable guide) to all that is right with this creative, complex, and essential-to-humanity industry to which so many of us have devoted our lives.

Melocchi migrated to America from Italy as a teenager with her single mother with $5,000 and a pair of suitcases, and—almost immediately and “almost by accident”—entered the international distribution business of film and television when she was hired as a translator for an international movie buyer.

A few years later, at 19 years of age, she started her own international sales company, selling independent films in major markets and at festivals. Her success was rapid. She made her first million by the age of twenty, cofounding Axelia International Pictures in 1990 with her mother, Alexandra Yacovlef.

Creatives who wish to be successful in the film industry—are you paying attention?

Hollywood Money Traps is an easy-to-understand guidebook for those who wish to be part of making movies by opening their checkbook. Melocchi starts (and ends… more on that soon) with essential definitions. Although we read in opening titles and end credits terms like executive producer every time we watch a film, few people know what these people do (which, as I recently learned, is very different from those holding the same and similar titles in television). Executive producers are “the people who had assembled the pieces, invested [their] own resources, and were actively pre-selling the film to build the financing bridge that would get it made,” while producers handle the day-to-day financial and creative oversight of filmmaking.

Everyone who’s worked on or tried to make a film worth its salt knows they require considerable resources—money as much as talent—which means investors. Who investors are and how investing works (and doesn’t) make up the core of this book.

Melocchi writes: “[W]ho are these investors? They are not Wall Street professionals with legal teams and financial analysts. They are friends and family. People using credit cards, savings accounts, even their IRAs… [People who believe and who are looking for Creatives who believe] in the power of storytelling. In a business full of smoke and bluster, that authenticity opened doors.”

Amen! Authenticity is at the core of all my teaching, writing, and living as a Creative.

Let’s look at some of the first-person stories Melocchi shares.

The first is about a man who’d worked for Michael Douglas’s production company. He brought her a based-in-fact “World War II story set in Poland, with a major casting director attached and a roster of A-list actors that included Christopher Reeve.” In other words, it checked a lot of boxes! What followed was complicated, without a happy ending.

The second case study also features what seems like, as far the intellectual property, a sure-fire formula, especially in the late 1980s—explosions, beautiful women, exotic locales… Again, it fell apart. Aptly, the term smoke and mirrors applies. The third case study parallels these themes: based on a “celebrated piece of literature, with a recent male Oscar nominee and a rising female star attached, along with a strong directorial vision.” Great pedigree, but another lousy ending…

Remember—Creatives (directors, writers, and actors) are skilled at illusion and “casting spells.” It’s how we make our living. Producers can be con-men playing shell games with other people’s money (sometimes for nothing more than tax breaks), so a crucial question Melocchi urges potential investors to ask is, “Do they have skin in the game?”

From there, she tackles misuse of funds, the complexities of distribution and music rights, using an A-list actor’s name illegitimately (a sadly common practice), and casting mediocre talent as a favor or in trade (a toxic practice that often leads, as related here, to preferential treatment and the sabotaging of other actors). Melocchi writes, “The glamour of the project is the trap. The show around a film is not the film. Just because someone is at Cannes doesn’t mean they are legit.”

It is probably already clear that the film industry can be a dangerous, deceitful, duplicitous place. So how can investors and producers protect themselves? Luckily, each of the case study chapters ends with a “What This Story Teaches Every Investor” section that breaks down what happened and how it could’ve been different. Such important aspects as the fallibility of sales projections, defining the Ask and the Take, how distribution expenses and producers’ fees work, what film festivals are and aren’t, and the illusion of box office revenue (issues that are prominently spoken about by the producers with whom I’ve worked) are all broken down in language that is easy to understand and act on.

One of the topics is near and dear to my heart as an actor because it directly affected my career (not once, but twice): How to problem solve when a film is 80% funded. If only the producers who cast me in their films had known this…

Chapter 14 is a checklist that pulls together all the advice from the preceding chapters/stories. Any potential investor should follow this checklist thoroughly when making their decisions.

The book concludes with a helpful glossary: 50 terms every film investor must know. I would advise the same for actors, directors, and producers.

For more of Alexia Melocchi’s insights and advice, see An Insider's Secret: Mastering the Hollywood Path and The Heart of Show Business: Your Road Map to Hollywood, which she wrote specifically for filmmakers, actors, and storytellers. She also has a podcast, The Heart of Show Business. She’s available for consulting, speaking engagements, and podcast appearances. Her contact information is at the back of the book.

“Highland Gothic”: A Review of What Happened at the Abbey (The Strathbairn Trilogy, Book 1) by Isobel Blackthorn

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:07:49 +0000

(Next Chapter, 2025). ISBN: 979-8272238542

Five years ago, I was asked to review The Ghost of Villa Winter, the fourth book in a series written by the talented and prolific writer of thrillers, Isobel Blackthorn. I was deeply impressed by her ability to bring a locale to life, to make it an essential character in a well-crafted, page-turning mystery. Blackthorn does a great deal of research concerning the locales about which she writes (like Stephen King and Castle Rock, Maine), which draws the reader immediately and deeply into the story.

What Happened at the Abbey (the first of a trilogy), although the locale, characters, and time period are far different than those of The Ghost of Villa Winter, offers the same opportunity for reader immersion through palpable atmospheres and authenticity of Time and Place.

I am a fan (and writer) of thrillers, especially those with a Gothic setting and atmosphere, and the Scottish Highlands offer Blackthorn a perfect canvas and palette for her to paint an engaging, intriguing tale full of sharply drawn characters, deep/dark secrets, and high-stakes storylines in a formidable, memorable locale.

The heroine of the story, Ingrid Barker, is a single mother on the run in March 1890, seeking a fresh start as a housekeeper on a best-days-are-behind-it estate in a town from her youth. She is suitably complicated and vacillating, which fuels her arc as the center of the story. Her daughter, a precocious preteen with a doll who’s treated as an integral member of the family, is both motivator and complicator (if you’re a parent, you’ll understand).

The occupants of the house (permanent and temporary), both upstairs and down, are akin to the memorable stock characters one might find in Downton Abbey, The Fall of the House of Usher, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Master of Ballantrae, and a hundred (or thousand) other Gothic and mystery tales. This is not to say that this is a book you don’t need to read. It is anything but. If you love this genre, with all its powerful tropes, What Happened at the Abbey should be high on your list.

It is a challenge to review a thriller. Early on (many [many] years ago) in my work as a reviewer, I took my lumps by revealing too much about a book and getting scolded by the author. Ever since, I have endeavored to raise interest while leaving the details for the reader to discover, a course I follow here.

Instead of ruining a deftly constructed mystery-box plot expertly unfolded, I’ll illuminate some of the techniques and choices used to impressive effect by the author. The first is that there are two first-person, present-tense voices trading the narrative back and forth without any indication of who is initially speaking when a change is made. This literary conceit threw me a little at first. The voices are those of the heroine and one of the grown children of the owner of the estate, a son name Miles home from university at the behest of his professor to collect samples of moss from the nearby mire (which operates, like the moor in Hound of the Baskervilles, as a character). These two points of view, one from upstairs, one from down, one male, one female, are essential to the forging of the keys that unlock the mystery boxes hidden throughout the plot.

Along with Miles in the family McCleod are his father, brother, and sister. As far as the staff, there are the Gothically requisite cook, gardener, and handman—each playing their role, in turn, as conspirators, agitators, complicators, deliverers of information, suspects, and saboteurs. Other characters, deceased or absent, float like spectres through the windswept halls and grounds.

Speaking of McCleod, both this surname and another, Frazer, happen to be prevalent names in two beloved stories of the Highlands: Highlander and Outlander. I notice these things, author intention or not, which I find to be value added.

As one would expect from this beloved genre, there are plentiful dreams, nightmares, hidden letters, grotesque illustrations, destructive secrets (some revealed in delightful twists), hints of hauntings, and glaring, staring portraits. Other locations on the estate, such as the hills and woods, distillery, and especially the ruins of a former abbey, add to the Gothic atmosphere and provide challenges for the estate’s inhabitants. Blackthorn’s ability to deliver rich, Dickensian detail without slowing down the narrative rivals that of Anne Rice, Robert Harris, and Ken Follett. Foods, clothing, home furnishings, and tools of the various trades are rendered with so much detail you can almost taste or touch them.

What Happened at the Abbey has a self-contained arc, with plenty of satisfying resolution, while keeping a firm hold on enough unanswered questions that the ending begs for it not to be. Blackthorn gives us a tantalizing last event that builds wonder and anticipation at the circumstances that’ll keep our heroine in contact with such a forbidding, formidable place.

I look forward to reading the second book in the series, Secrets Taken to the Grave, rather soon.

A Review of Guru Within Guru Without by Padmanabha

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:43:49 +0000

(Infinite Heart Publications, 2026). ISBN: 979-8-9958409-0-9

There are few words/concepts when it comes to the pursuit of the spiritual that are more misunderstood, maligned, and mysterious than the word guru. The dictionary definition is surprisingly straightforward: A Sanskrit term for a spiritual or intellectual guide, teacher, or master. All students, after all, require teachers and guides. In 30-plus years of spiritual study and practice, I have had many teachers and guides, but not a single one that I would term a guru. For many folks who grew up in the sixties, the word guru conjures images of the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi falling in and falling out. Those with a deeper knowledge of student-seekers and their gurus might think of Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) and his guru Neem Karoli Baba, or even Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love encounters with (the unnamed in the book) Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Bali’s Ketut Liyer.

No matter your level of knowledge about gurus, if you have interest in this highly evolved class of teacher-guide, I highly recommend this book—a combination of autobiography, hagiography, poetry, photographs, and illustrations by the author, Padmanabha (Gene Van Dyke)—which takes the reader on a very personal journey with his guru, Baba Muktananda. Although it is not translated in the book, Padmanabha means lotus-navelled, a reference to Vishnu. The prose is fast-moving and engaging… not quite stream of consciousness, but clearly energized and swept along by a high vibrational energy. It is filled with “chance” encounters, such as the author entering the “wrong” room on his way to see a film by Fellini and instead meeting the guru who would quickly transform his life. That was 56 years ago. The author, at the time of writing, is 94. A musician, painter, and, in 1950, one of the first American surfers, Padmanabha has traveled the world—he was in Havana the day that Batista fled revolutionary Cuba. According to his bio, he watched Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Ernest Hemingway fire rifles into the air in celebration.

For those who are skeptical to the point of cynical, some of the events that take place in the book may appear to be at best exaggerations and at worst fabrications, but there is ample documented, scientific proof that there are certain individuals—gurus, sadhus, mystics, wizards, witches, shamans—who can manipulate matter and energy in ways akin to the miracles related in the Christian bible. Fittingly, Padmanabha evokes the incident of the loaves and fishes when two hundred unexpected attendees show up for one of Muktananda’s events. Muktananda tells him to keep dishing out the food without looking at the pot and all the attendees will be fed. And so they were. The next day, the guru only speaks of the “miracle” to say that the Occult is only a means to doing good and never an end in itself. Although I have never had a guru, my wife, a gifted energy healer and walker between the worlds, is a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba and some of the experiences of which I am aware through her and others align quite closely with those related in this book. Some are incredibly profound.

A long-time student of shamanism, I am interested in the figure of the trickster in Indigenous culture, and much of what Padmanabha relates about Muktananda (which closes matches what Ram Dass related about the methods of Neem Karoli Baba) fits closely with the idea of one who mediates dualities through humor and ascended wisdom. There is clearly growth in the author as a result of his experiences with a clever teacher who would tell him that something was not to be done and then tell everyone it was to be done just to keep his student on his toes and aware that, no matter the message, it was sent with Love. In this way, Muktananda was able to turn criminals from their black-road paths, inspire thousands of followers, and unlock a person’s coiled Kundalini with a touch.

The author was an essential part of the teams that traveled with his guru to major cities in America, most often cooking for the multitudes in the kitchen. Muktananda had some very successful, well-known friends they visited along the way, like John Denver and Chogyan Trungpa Rimpoche, and the anecdotes are entertaining and oftentimes profound.

There are also profound instances of the dance of life and death, and the benefits of (severe, life-threatening) illness, including the author’s suffering a brain aneurism and having near-death and out-of-body experiences, from which he healed on multiple levels, which is highly shamanic.

The poetry in the book, which is presented both classically and in prose, resonates like a sutra, begging numerous reads. Its simplicity is a mirage; its repetition an energetic, healing wave. This is to be expected, given that it was born of the lessons and the love-enveloped work–play dance of Padmanabha serving his guru, in life as well as after Muktananda had left the earthly plane.

In the end, this beautiful love letter to his guru and to Love and Life is essential reading for those on the spiritual path, whether they have a guru or not.

“Coming of Age in the West”: A Review of Destined to Ride Alone by R.G. Yoho

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:27:00 +0000

(Naples, FL: Speaking Volumes, 2016). ISBN: 979-8-89022-307-4

It was at the West Virginia Writers Conference in 2012 that I first met Western writer R.G. Yoho. We’ve stayed in contact ever since, as he’s steadily gathered awards for his ten classic Westerns, including this one, written for young audiences. Not only am I a lifelong fan of Westerns on the screen and page; I love and write in numerous genres, which are a special type of literature where the tropes are not only expected—they are the criteria by which the reader judges the writer’s specific contributions.

While I was reading Destined to Ride Alone, I was also reading the seventeenth book in Louis L’Amour’s Sackett saga and Comanche Moon, the second book in Larry McMurtry’s Gus and Call tetralogy. Although they are each writing for different audiences, Yoho, L’Amour, and McMurtry are all masters of the Western trope.

Destined to Ride Alone (the title itself is the trope of all Western tropes) takes as its centerpiece the journey of Jimmy Yeager, a parentless fourteen-year-old who rides the fabled Orphan Train to the American West in 1860, in the hopes that he will be adopted by a welcoming family. For reasons left unstated, Jimmy remains unchosen as the other orphans, one by one, are placed with families at stops along the route.

Providence (smiles? scowls?) on our hero in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Jimmy’s chosen by a gruff, mannerless farmer named Bates, who’s adopted from the Orphan Train before. The fate of the previous boy is tantalizingly NOT what it seems in Bates’s matter-of-fact response to queries about what’s transpired. As you might imagine, Jimmy’s more a slave than adopted son as he adapts to the relentless and back-breaking work required of him on Bates’s farm. Bates’s wife, a melancholy but kind (and of course attractive) younger woman named Esther, comes to Jimmy’s assistance now and again—at their mutual peril.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. But the beauty of Destined to Ride Alone is that it stops well short of the terminus of its seemingly inevitable trajectory and takes a turn that is both surprising and ultimately as heart wrenching as if Jimmy’s story had never deviated at all. It is here that Yoho shines most brightly in the proud tradition of Western novelists by giving us a warts-and-all study of the vast spectrum of human nature (the extensive array of characters is often what I love best about Westerns). For most of the middle of the book, Jimmy is navigating a sea of greed, deception, lust, and abuse of power and privilege. He has no choice but to grow up quicker than any teenager should.

After Jimmy is pushed from the frying pan into the fire, he exits Iowa to seek his fortunes elsewhere, while keeping an eye on his past, which seems determined to come back and haunt him (another beloved Western trope). After Jimmy arrives in St. Joseph, Missouri—at the time of the firing on Fort Sumpter and the founding of Kansas—the action unfolds with well-known Western history as its backdrop, which was value added for me. Jimmy takes a job with the short-lived, long-mythologized Pony Express, right before it’s supplanted by the telegraph companies (there’s always progress at a cost in a proper Western). Through his eager answer to the call of adventure, he meets James Butler Hickok in Rock Creek Station in the Nebraska Territory (on the Oregon Trail), where the soon-to-be nicknamed “Wild Bill” is a stockman. Jimmy gets there just in time for a historically accurate was-it-murder-or-self-defense situation involving Hickok that mirrors one from which he himself is trying to run.

As Jimmy forges a future with one eye on the past, more of the Western genre’s most beloved tropes unfold, including the pretty girl with the wealthy father, the drinker–gambler, the dangers of the prairie, heroism, and the ubiquitous Pinkerton Detective Agency. All these tropes and the ones I mentioned earlier are contextualized by the sure hand of a veteran writer of Westerns, with all the sights, sounds, smells, and sociocultural details long-time readers of this most American of genres rightfully expect. The violence (physical and emotional) is both detailed and real enough to carry the narrative forward while still being more than appropriate for teenagers.

If you’re looking for an inspiring and educational YA novel about responsibility, honesty, and achieving your aspirations, I highly recommend Destined to Ride Alone. Jimmy is an example of how you retain the light within your soul when called upon to stand against humanity’s darker inclinations. And it’s not just a great first book to introduce YA audiences to Westerns—it has a place on the shelf of long-time, adult fans of the Western like me.

“A War Without, a War Within”: A Review of Bob Van Laerhoven’s The Long Farewell

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:41:00 +0000

[Translated from Dutch by Vernon Pearce] (Next Chapter, 2025). ISBN: 978-4824156709

In 2021, I was asked to review a novel by an author named Bob Van Laerhoven. Set in South America in a time of revolution and turmoil, Alejandro’s Lie had the kind of depth and dark beauty of story and character that reminded me of Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, and Frank Delaney’s Ireland—novels that you don’t just read; instead, you enter them fully and inhabit them, as they inhabit you.

After such a memorable, moving experience, I welcomed the chance to review The Long Farewell, especially when I saw that it took place before and during World War II. Although I’ve long been fascinated by the rise of the Nazis, with all that’s happening today (especially in America, where I reside), I’ve been compelled to read book after book about the years 1938 to 1945. As I started The Long Farewell, I’d just finished one book by Erik Larson, In the Garden of the Beasts, and was halfway through another, The Splendid and the Vile. I’d also just watched Nuremberg. The story of psychiatrist and military intelligence officer Douglas Kelley’s suicide after his warnings of future fascism were ignored brought tears of frustration to my eyes.

If only those warnings had been heeded…

Those who wish to educate themselves about other warnings about fascism should read the works of Albert Camus.

If there’s one key thing I’ve learned in 12 years of study, it’s that the cut and dry Good (Allies) versus Evil (Axis) narrative of World War II is anything but; some of the “Good” were as exceedingly ruthless, anti-Semitic, and greedy as the Evil. This is one of the many things I appreciate about Van Laerhoven’s novels—life (morality, politics, industry…) is messy, and Good and Evil are really a matter of degrees.

The Long Farewell opens with the insidious mission-vision of Adolf Hitler, in his own words: “[A] genuine peace, founded not on the olive-branch waving of weepy lament, rather on the triumphant sword of a master race that will make the world subservient to the building of a higher culture.”

The story takes place from 1934 to 1945. At the onset, our complex protagonist, Hermann, is a member of the Hitler Youth, although he’s unsure of the legitimacy and worth of the cause. His once-attendant father is an officer in Ernst Röhm’s SA (the Brown Shirts)—sullen, withdrawn, and, not surprisingly, given to violence. Hermann’s converted Catholic, Belarusian mother fled to Germany in 1919 as a refugee from the Russian revolution, believing the Germans had “saved” her and her people (illumination of the truth slowly unfolds over the course of the narrative).

If this sounds like a potent mixture of personalities in a single household, you’ll not be disappointed. It’s the key domino in what will be a complicated, intricate series of collapses.

In the early part of the novel (1934 through 1937), we meet Hitler (still Reich chancellor), Goebbels, Röhm, and Himmler (along with his infamous rubber stamps). Through the actions of these damaged, ambitious, psychotic individuals, the author explores the power struggles and purges that ultimately (and thankfully) weakened the Wehrmacht and introduces the larger theme of the fluid nature of allies and enemies (familial, interpersonal, political, economic, etc.), with which the novel is primarily concerned.

It is through the powerful struggles that undid Röhm that Hermann’s father is transferred to the SS, and then the Gestapo, his viciousness and blind obedience multiplying to the point that his family ultimately implodes.

Through the family of Hermann’s friend Carla, we are introduced to myriad philosophical, artistic, and literary concerns for which Hermann is not yet ready. Carla’s family fares no better than his, as dangerous secrets and weakening alliances lead them to swim in a river of blood. It’s also through Carla’s family that superstitions, mythologies, and supernatural entities such as demons are explored (extending beyond the typical focus on only Nazi occultism), adding additional colored threads to the complex tapestry of Europe during World War II.

These higher-order concerns, along with the power of one’s imagination, are explored through the lenses of Corrupted, Coopted, and Pure, enlivening what might otherwise be your typical war-novel characters and bringing a well-covered subject into the realm of the exquisitely intimate through attention to individuals instead of nations. This is the alchemical necessity of compelling historical fiction.

As events move into 1938, with Hitler annexing Austria, the novel thematically explores love of country, family legacy, and the motivations, indoctrinations, and rationalizations of those who aid and abet Evil. Truth becomes increasingly malleable and illusive as Hermann navigates Paris and reunites with people from his past. As relationships and world events become steadily more complex, the absolute dichotomy of heroes and villains becomes untenable. There seem to be zero heroes. In a few short pages, a double tragedy abounds, out of nowhere, as is the way of senseless violence, the year culminating with Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938.

1940 and 1941 situate the novel in England at the time of the Luftwaffe blitz. This is not only the subject of the Larson book I’m reading, but a core element of the recent Peaky Blinders film. As Hermann is pulled into the world of espionage and codebreaking, the morality line blurs further. Who has the right to judge who’s worth saving and who’s left behind when refugees are referred to by the war’s supposed protagonists as “human debris”?

The protagonist’s time in London includes conversations in cafés between people from America, France, Russia, Germany, and England, encompassing the international scope of the war and allowing the author to fluidly weave metaphors and impressions into the story delivered through the lenses of painting, quantum physics, and philosophy, with politics and economics skewing each, as they do with all the novel’s themes. Dichotomies fuel the novel, with one of the most compelling being the nature of a god—is it something divine achieved through singing in the face of death or is it the power to give the order that precipitates that death?

While conversationalists ponder such propaganda fodder as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and intimations of the antisemitism that kept the US out of the war for far too long, Hitler is postulated to be “the transitory figurehead whom the true philosophers of fascism, hidden in the wings, need in these times. After the war, he will be replaced.” The same could be said of a certain “leader” in America as I write this.

1943 gives us a tale of Treblinka told to Allen Dulles, OSS Chief of European Operations. Van Laerhoven artfully navigates the complicated geopolitics of who knew what, who participated, the Catholic Church’s lack of intervention, and the gamesmanship involved in deciding when to make the existence of Treblinka and other concentration camps public. An extended section describing the inner workings of Treblinka is a highlight of the book, and sure to stir even the most jaded of hearts and souls. The corruption of science, psychology, and language (“processing,” “the treatment,” “units”) to increase the efficiency of what amounts to a foul, relentless Death Machine, from which the camp administrators also benefitted in material ways, should give every reader pause. Never before or since in history was efficiency such a sinister synonym for Evil.

In 1944, Hermann meets Carl Jung at a party. They go on to engage in several spontaneous therapy sessions, one of which occurs while they fish on Lake Lucerne. I could easily double the length of this review by exploring the myriad Jungian philosophy covered during their encounters. I’ll leave the discovery to you.

The novelist-philosopher Hermann Hesse was also at the party where Hermann met Jung. Synchronistically, I’d just finished rereading Steppenwolf, on which Van Laerhoven shares Hermann’s thoughts, including several quotes. The protagonist’s conversations with women are reminiscent of those of the Steppenwolf himself, Harry Haller.

The novel concludes in 1945, in the midst of mounting threats from Stalin (anticipating postwar postering and the fact that allies and enemies change, while global politico-economic gamesmanship goes on in different forms) and examination of the motivations behind the February bombing of Dresden—which, as a fitting conclusion to this review, are as contradictory and fluid as every theme and event with which this novel so nobly engages.

“Happy 100th Birthday to the Mother Road!”: A Review of Route 66: 100 Years, by Jim Hinckley (Ed.)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:51:00 +0000

(Beverly, MA: Motorbooks, an imprint of The Quarto Group, 2025). ISBN: 978-0-7603-9148-8

This beautifully designed coffee table book, edited by Jim Hinckley (a statue of whom is a popular Route 66 tourist destination in his hometown of Kingman, Arizona), helps to further the case that the myriad books about the Mother Road that continue to be published are very much like the businesses and attractions on the route itself. Each offers a unique view of the landscape and menu. Although I have read more than twenty books and many articles about Route 66 in the past four years—including titles by Hinckley and some of his coauthors here—I found an impressive amount of new information, which I attribute to not only the authors’ varied experiences, but how those experiences shape their individual approaches to their chapters. More on that to come. No matter how educated you are on the subject matter, chances are excellent you’ll learn something new.

The photography in Route 66: 100 Years is worth the purchase price in and of itself. Drawn from a wide array of sources, including some of the authors’ own collections, the vibrant photos bring the text to life. The book also features plenty of sidebars for those who want to dive deeper into a particular location (be it a building, city, or region), historical event, or the larger personality of Route 66—including its very large individual personalities.

The book begins with a Preface and Introduction by Hinckley, paying homage to the people, like Cyrus Avery, John Steinbeck, and Michael Wallis, who created, promoted, and revived the route, respectively (an oversimplification, but sufficient for this review). The Introduction also provides a stage for Hinckley to do what he does best—contextualize the birth of the Mother Road by taking us back to the trails, rail lines, and birth of the bicycle and motor car crazes that led to the Good Roads movement, which provided the organization and, pardon the pun, drive for a national system of highways focused on paving, grading, safety, and signage.

After the introduction, the chapters unfold across the eight states comprising the Main Street of America, in the traditional east to west direction. Two author–historians who know their Route 66 home states better than anyone—Cheryl Eichar Jett and Joe Sonderman, respectively—pen the first two chapters, on Illinois and Missouri. These two chapters take as their focus the multiple realignments the route has undergone since its commissioning in 1926. I found this fascinating reading. Keeping the latest (and autographed) edition of Jerry McClanahan’s EZ 66 Guide for Travelers beside me as I read these chapters, some of the mystery of all those spiral-bound maps was solved, and just in time. I was preparing to experience Route 66 from Illinois to Oklahoma on my way to and from a two-week, 22-performance engagement portraying the Father of Route 66, Cyrus Avery.

Hickley returns as the author for a brisk but memorable drive through the 13.2 (mighty!) miles boasted by Kansas. We get a mix of state (including its bloody record in the US Civil War) and zinc and lead mining history, and a tour through the three towns on Route 66—Baxter Springs, Riverton, and Galena. There is also information on the 1923 Brush Creek “Rainbow” Bridge—a must-see as you travel through (crossing it was a highlight of my trip). From inspiration for Pixar’s cars to quaint country stores, historic service stations, and vibrant murals, there is plenty to see (and photograph) in Kansas.

Travel writer, photographer, and president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association Rhys Martin authored the chapter on Oklahoma, which begins, as it must, with Tulsa and Cyrus Avery, “The Father of the Mother Road.” Oklahoma boasts of other celebrities as well, such as Mickey Mantle (Commerce) and Will Rogers (Claremore). Martin also pays tribute to the US Highway 66 Association and the birth of the slogan “Main Street of America,” which did so much to promote the route. There’s also an extended section on a 1933 celebration in Quapaw for completion of paving in Ottawa County that includes the translated text of a speech by Victor Griffin, the last elected chief of the Quapaw Tribe. Cyrus was there, making it was a must-stop for me. From there, Martin engages in a celebration of iconic Route 66 attractions, motels, and eateries in such memorable towns as Miami (pronounced Mia-mah), Afton, Vinita, Foyil (home of the winner of the 1928 Bunion Derby, Andy Payne), Catoosa (home of the famed Blue Whale), and more. Martin also calls attention to the Negro Motorist Green Book and the Threatt family in Luther, who owned a filling station at a time few African Americans did. There’s a nice balance of past and present in a sidebar about Arcadia, with the former represented by the Round Barn and the latter by the 66-foot-tall neon pop bottle at Pop’s, just across the street.

Gregory R.C. Hasman covers Texas and New Mexico, taking the reader on the 178-mile Texas journey from Shamrock to Glenrio with a full tank of interesting facts. From quaint small towns like Groom, Conway, and Landergin to the major city of Amarillo and the ghost town of Jericho, Hasman provides a fast-paced overview of major historical events. He also references Jack Rittenhouse’s A Guide Book to Highway 66. Color photos highlight such iconic attractions as Tower Station and U-Drop Inn, the Midpoint Café in Adrian, and the Longhorn Café and Motel in Glenrio. Crossing the border into New Mexico, Hasman provides a detailed tour of one of my favorite towns on Route 66, Tucumcari. He also focuses on the ancient landscapes of “The Land of Enchantment” and, of course, Albuquerque, Santa Rosa, Santa Fe, and smaller towns along the route, ending with Grants. Some of the photos in this chapter are spectacular.

Hailing from Kingman, Arizona, Hinckley writes with fondness and detail of his hometown, and plenty else. There’s the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest (if you haven’t driven through them at sunrise, I highly recommend it). There are Harvey houses, trading posts, and the tribute to the Eagles’ “Take it Easy” in Winslow. Speaking of songs, according to the Bobby Troup anthem, “don’t forget Winona!” Hinckley doesn’t.

Hinckley finishes out the eight-state journey with a chapter on California. Starting with Needles, which, like so many of the towns on the Mother Road, started as a railroad camp (others started as a station) in the 1880s, Hinckley touches on the National Old Trails Road, the Mojave Desert and Cajon Pass, and notable towns like Chambless, Essex, Goffs, Newberry Springs, Barstow, and Bagdad. Being that it’s California, there are numerous mentions of films, such as The Grapes of Wrath, The Jazz Singer, Citizen Kane, and those filmed at Murray’s Dude Ranch. Hinckley also mentions the challenges of driving the route from San Bernardino to Santa Monica. Along the way, there are lots of highlighted motels, restaurants, theatres, and nature and other attractions.

What truly sets this book apart from other Route 66 Centennial coffee table books is the final chapter, “The Route 66 Renaissance,” by Dries Bessels, who is Dutch. Dries is a prime example of the European (as well as Japanese and truly international) fascination with the Mother Road. International travelers continue to be a driving force in keeping the route an essential ingredient of American culture. While I was in Tulsa a few weeks ago, I was approached by a trio of twenty-something female travelers who spoke with the beautiful, hypnotic lilt of Ireland. They asked me to take their picture in front of one of the 20-foot giants in the Meadow Gold District (a photo of which Bessels also includes).

Bessels gives us a survey of the route and some of his favorite stops. A highlight is the section on “Rehabilitation Projects.” If you want to learn more about the international community’s involvement with Route 66, there is a sidebar with excellent information.

A summation of what’s next is given by Jim Hinckley in the Epilogue. This has been a key aspect of the messaging I’ve heard at conferences, events, on the route, and in meetings for the past 18 months—just as important as the Centennial is the next One Hundred Years.

I have every faith that the authors of this book, and their editor, will work hard to make sure the next century for Route 66 is off to a memorable, forward-thinking start.

“Offering Hope for Humanity”: A Review of The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace, by Robert Atkinson

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 17:30:00 +0000

(Fort Lauderdale, FL: Light on Light Press, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-958921-72-2

It may come as no surprise that I begin this review by lamenting the state of our world. Gaza, Ukraine, Nigeria, Venezuela, Greenland… Grappling with the ramifications and ethics of AI… The condition of the environment and the growing income gap… The nonelected in growing positions of power and policymaking… A cold-blooded murder on a Minneapolis street… Crises in education and healthcare… Living in America, I see all of these issues and more deeply affecting family, friends, and colleagues.

We cannot sit hopeless and in fear. That is crystal clear. The level of cognitive dissonance (much of it a highly coordinated, insidious attack on the masses as a means toward greater control by the half-percent) feels, in my 57 years, to be wholly unprecedented—its concentration and ubiquity a result of the wholesale adoption of social media and other carefully crafted-for-control (yes, that word again) technologies.

Given the state of our world, I welcomed with open arms and an eager heart the opportunity to read and review The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace and interview its author on my podcast. Dr. Robert Atkinson is the award-winning author or coauthor of a dozen books. With degrees in philosophy, folk culture, counseling, and cross-cultural human development, he’s taken a transdisciplinary approached to the world’s most wicked problems, the foremost being an attainable pathway to peace.

Before you stop reading because a little voice in your head is shouting about pie-in-the-sky proposals, platitudes, and prescriptions as handholding hippies sing “Kumbaya” into your brainstem, Dr. Atkinson is clear that this is long-term work, stating in the Preface that there’s no “shortcut” and the process of “elevating consciousness toward wholeness” will take decades, if not centuries.

So now you’re probably thinking, “Decades and centuries? I’m trying to get through to next month without falling deeper into debt… What in the world has this to do with me? What can I do?”

If that is what you’re thinking, you should do yourself—and humanity—a favor and read this book. Dr. Atkinson doesn’t come across at all as a pie-in-the-sky, “Kumbaya”-singing, handholding hippie. His proposed processes reflect the kind of serious, scholarly systems-level thinking being done by the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Fritjof Capra, James Dyson, and Ervin Lazlo (whose endorsement is featured on the front cover) over the past four decades.

Dr. Atkinson’s vision for world peace centers on Unity and Wholeness. As a spiritual storyteller who believes that dualities are human-manufactured concepts that we can mediate and transmogrify into something whole, new, healing, and powerful through the telling of our personal and collective stories, I very much agree.

Over the course of three parts and nearly 300 pages, Dr. Atkinson takes us through the micro and macro steps this audacious (but attainable) plan for peace requires, situating it all through religious and spiritual texts and quotes from a wide array of writers, teachers, and thinkers. After all, if we want to achieve Unity and Wholeness, the differences in various systems need to be overcome (mediated and made whole) through drawing attention to their commonalities. From the Hermetic principle of “As above, so below” and the Golden Rule to the spiritual physics of David Bohm, from the Upanishads to Indigenous wisdom, from the words of the Buddha to the teaching of Jesus and the founder of the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah, the author gives us plenty of inspirational, connective quotes to support his vision. We also hear from Deepak Chopra, Carl Jung, Desmond Tutu, Ken Wilber, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the HeartMath Institute.

A pitfall for many people and groups when talking about Unity and Wholeness is fear of homogenization (which manifests as and suppresses through White Privilege and Colonialism). To work toward overcoming this obstacle, I encourage you to read with an open heart and mind the sections on Unity-in-Diversity. This is how we can “transcend oppositional identities of ‘us’ and ‘them’” (p. 18). Continue to the chapter “A Trinity of Unitive Principles,” which are Wholeness, Evolution, and Consciousness. One cannot be reminded enough of how Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was purposely distorted by the robber-baron industrialists, eugenicists, and increasingly racist Republican Party starting in the 1890s.

Part Two really gets us into the whole-systems meat of the matter, with the seven Candles of Unity: thought, political realm, freedom, religion, nations, races, and language. There are also nine unitive principles that are the preconditions for peace: Consciousness, Education, Relationships, Justice, Economics, Global Development, Language, Narratives, and Global Governance. No matter your background, worldview, or level of cynicism and hopelessness, two or three of these Candles and unitive principles will undoubtedly resonate with you. Keep them in your heart and mind so you can contemplate how you can participate in the types of Social Action Projects described in the second half of the section.

Part Three highlights Inner Peace as a necessary pathway to our participation in this Vision. This is micro work than anyone can—and should—be doing. Awareness, power of thought, and our role as spiritual beings are at the forefront. Once we are vibrating at a higher frequency and vibration through this inner work, we’re better able to do the interpersonal work needed for peace and mediating/healing the false duality of Us and Them. Beyond communication, community, collaboration, and communion, which are central to my storytelling and social activist work, Dr. Atkinson has me thinking about a fifth C: consultation. Such a gentle, respectful, yet essential and powerful concept.

The next section is a Study Guide, which offers a summation of each chapter, a series of Questions for Consultation, and an inspirational quote. There are also 14 pages of resources, complete with URLs so you can easily find ways to connect and get involved.

I want to close with the famous quote by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” I chose this particular quote because, to dismiss admittedly audacious visions such as the one presented by Dr. Atkinson in The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace without carefully considering their soundness and sense is accepting the absence of peace and lack of unity and therefore cooperating with them.

“Inspiration Out of the Ashes”: A Review of The Victory of Greenwood, by Carlos Moreno

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:18:00 +0000

(Tulsa, OK: Jenkin Lloyd Jones Press, 2021). ISBN: 978-0-9755389-0-6

As I write this review, Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a much talked-about city. It’s the official capital of Route 66 as the Mother Road begins its Centennial celebrations. Beyond Tulsa King, with Sylvester Stallone, and Killers of the Flower Moon (the David Grann book and Martin Scorsese film), The Lowdown, a “love letter to Tulsa” starring Ethan Hawke (announced for a second season recently) has everyone talking.

I first fell in love with Tulsa (and realized its sociopolitical complexities) in the summer of 2019, when I was hired to portray Ernesto “Che” Guevara for a 3-week Chautauqua tour that started there. Protests were loud and increased as I moved west across Oklahoma, portraying this controversial physician and revolutionary. I returned 3 years later as Beat poet and activist Allen Ginsberg. The protests came from somewhat separate sectors, but were essentially the same. How fitting to have a police officer standing at the back of the stage, 10 feet behind me, as Ginsberg recited lines from “Howl” and “America.” Since then, I’ve returned several times for a number of presentations about Route 66 and for several in-process immersive and performance projects, and I’ll be “living on Tulsa time,” as Don Williams sang, several times in 2026.

When I was first in Tulsa, I visited the local historical society ahead of a presentation I was doing there. It was then that I had my introduction to the Tulsa Race Riot, as it was then being called. A year or so later, Riot was replaced with Massacre, and rightfully so. I was shocked at the events of May 30 and June 1, 1921, touched off when a 19-year-old Black man accidently made physical contact with a White female elevator operator. In an appalling act of racist-fueled savagery, 35 blocks of the Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, were looted, burned, and otherwise destroyed—including by half a dozen planes dropping turpentine balls on homes and businesses. Three hundred people were massacred, including a nationally respected surgeon shot twice in the chest with a shotgun as he stood, arms raised high in surrender, in his own front yard.

In the ensuing 5 years, I’ve been committed to learning about these events and including them in my Route 66–themed historical-education and immersive experience projects. I’ve talked with a plethora of locals and authors, and no one tells quite the exact same story. This is not surprising. Given the obfuscations of the mayor, police leadership, and the nefarious aims of wealthy individuals who were looking for a pretext to seize this prosperous section of Tulsa for industrialization, the true story is bound to be difficult to uncover.

I first connected with the author of this well-researched and beautifully written book, activist and journalist Carlos Moreno, through social media several years ago, and we met in person in the summer of 2025—fittingly, in Greenwood, less than a week after a tragic shooting there during a Juneteenth celebration. As part of my research for an immersive experience I’ve been contracted to cocreate, I read The Victory of Greenwood alongside books on sundown towns, the Green Book, and the experiences of Black travelers from the early 1900s through the time of the Civil Rights movement and subsequent legislation.

Not that racism, segregation, and dangers to Black travelers magically disappeared in the 1960s. And, when it comes to who was complicit, the matter of reparations concerning Greenwood, and the status of race relations in Tulsa, the debates continue to rage.

The Victory of Greenwood is about so much more than the Massacre itself—although it is well covered. The book is, in the end, a celebration of Black Joy. Of Mother Wit. Of fighting for the right to not only Survive but to Thrive. Through a series of biographies, Moreno introduces us to teachers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and everyday folk who are indelibly interwoven with the rise, fall, and rise again of Greenwood. If you’ve seen films such as The Green Book, Sinners, and Jazzman’s Blues, and/or the HBO series Lovecraft Country, you’ll have a sense of how immense spirit, abiding faith, family, music, and community saw African Americans through frightening, violent, and nightmarish times.

The Victory of Greenwood will magnify and personalize these works as you read it. You’ll also find great inspiration and motivation in these Troubled Times from the biographies and the chapters on institutions such as the Vernon AME Church and Booker T. Washington High School. You’ll also see how those who lived and worked in Greenwood have made considerable contributions throughout America.

Those interested in how the stories reported on and otherwise disseminated by often-opposing parties and interests are purposely warped and used for manipulation and control like a game of sinister Telephone will find much that’s instructive here.

Like Greenwood itself, Moreno’s The Victory of Greenwood will endure for its fearless reporting of macro racism in America (by focusing on the micro) and its celebration of how those who have suffered at racism’s gnarled and bloodied hands strive to this day to not only Survive but to Thrive in the face of its relentless, ongoing injustices and cruelties.

A Review of Asa James by Jodi Lew-Smith

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 11:55:00 +0000

(Virginia Beach, VA: köehlerbooks, 2025). ISBN: 979-8-88824-930-7

Asa James is a beautifully written, poetic novel rendered in the tone of the time of which it talks. It’s cinematic and evocative, like the great English classics that have endured through time.

Supporting and enhancing the text are illustrations of flora and fauna in the part and chapter titles.

As we’d expect, the Prologue begins on a proverbial dark and windy New England night in late autumn 1851. Sister Ruth, who co-runs the local poor farm (which services unwed mothers and orphans), finds a baby in a shack in the woods beneath its dead mother. Rats have gotten at the baby’s face…

Chapter 1 jumps 24 years, and the baby, our titular character, is now grown into a restless young man with dreams of being a naturalist like Darwin. Asa’s stumbling onto a secret is the novel’s inciting incident; the hero’s call to adventure.

Now a stranger in a strange land—economically and socially rather than geographically—Asa navigates

life among the equally secretive wealthy after a literal climb up a steep mountain to the mysterious, nonordinary world represented by a centuries-old granite castle called Mansfield Hall.

Replete with rambunctious boys, their solitary aunt and mistress of Mansfield Hall, an iron-fisted spinster, and the typical flotsam and jetsam of a country estate and its surrounding village (all of whom offer pieces of the puzzle), Asa mentally wends his way through this complex world while engaging with the natural delights of the mountain in pursuit of his dreams.

Over time, as friendships form, increasing information is revealed. Flashbacks serve this purpose as well, as the novel’s myriad sociocultural themes take hold and begin to fuel the perfectly paced narrative.

Halfway through, the story takes a supernatural turn, in the tradition of James, Machen,

Doyle, Stoker, Blackwood, Collins, and Kipling. Not quite magical realism, it nevertheless

acknowledges the Fortean maxim that things beyond our ken are a natural condition of the

planet—even more so on the sprawling estates of the wealthy in England and New England. When the

nested truths of this “haunting” are revealed at the two-thirds mark, Lew-Smith stands stronger with

these beloved Victorian/Edwardian wordsmiths.

The last quarter of the novel turns again, as Asa undertakes a widening of his world and studies that

evokes the nautical tales of Melville, London, Conrad, Golding, and Melville.

I wasn’t surprised to learn from the author’s bio that Asa James is an expression of their literary

and scientific education and farm experience in Vermont.

In the end, Asa James offers dizzy spirals and secret circuits of story defining its arcs and

enhancing its themes.

With winter approaching, it’s a perfect literary companion for a cup of tea by the fire on a calm and snowy night.

“Ask and be Answered”: A Review of The Akashic Way: Living Through the Lens of the Akashic Records, by Mary Madeiras

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:57:00 +0000

(Los Angeles, CA: Precocity Press, 2025). ISBN: 979-8-9931150-9-2

Over the past twenty years, I’ve reviewed more than a dozen books written by channelers of one kind or another. Some of these books have been written in conjunction with those same Masters, Teachers, Councils, Ascended Beings, angels, and others providing the answers to the channelers’ questions, asked on their own behalf or those of their clients. In addition, I’ve read the books and listened to and watched the presentations of well-known channelers, such as Esther Hicks and Darryl Anka, who channel Abraham and Bashar, respectively. I’ve also read the Seth and Emmanuel transmissions and the lengthy and complicated Urantria Book.

Living for nearly three decades with a respected psychic who receives automatic writing transmissions, spontaneous visitations by myriad nonhuman entities, and who has helped dozens of clients connect with loved ones over the years (and assisted with two murder investigations), I can say with conviction that information is available to us from numerous sources, through numerous means. Whether you prefer to consult runes or tarot cards, attempt contact through a channeler or psychic, or undertake direct questioning through meditation, the information received can be of use in navigating the complexities of human existence or coming into alignment with the higher meaning and purpose of tragedies, personal and professional disappointments, or death and what comes after.

I also believe time is not linear, or even circular, and that there’s information about our lives, past and present (and future), available to us in what are termed the Akashic Records.

Having obtained two certifications from the Center for Akashic Studies under the tutelage of Linda Howe, Madeiras helps clients access their Akashic Records. With the exception of a session in partnership with her wife, however, all of the chapters/sessions shared in this book are the author in solo communication with Masters, Teachers, and Loved Ones. The subjects are far ranging, timely, applicable to everyone on some level, and often times deeply personal and profound. I applaud the author for not editing the content, even when some of the answers were frank and focused on aspects of her life that many people would just as soon hide.

Madeiras tells us in the Introduction that the book’s chapters need not be read in order. I agree, although I chose to do so. She also suggests using the book as a means for getting the messages most meant for you at any given time by randomly opening it and reading the text. I tried this method a few times and the insights were consistently valuable.

Following the Introduction, which provides a general overview of the Akashic Records, including a mention of the “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce, Madeiras provides a Question and Answer section that should prove helpful to potential readers and engagers who may be unsure if the Akashic Records are something they are wanting to access. The thirteen Q and As should also clear up any pervasive misconceptions.

The remainder of the book consists of 42 sessions on a wide variety of topics, from insights into ego, shame, worry, and fear to issues of trauma, letting go, and discomfort. What we might categorize as the concerns of daily living are well represented, with entire sessions devoted to career and relationship guidance, eating healthy, ambition, communication, collaboration, wholeness, healing, and that often thorny topic, death. These are challenges to which all of us can relate, and the advice and explications dispensed—although at times incredibly personal to and aimed at the author—make the book well worth the read.

As the sessions progress, the topics get less micro, as Madeiras inquires about the Sixth Mass Extinction, the Coronavirus (some very powerful and unsettling truths were confirmed for me here), the Middle East, the end of Earth, and the nature of gravity. This last one was also affirming for me, as I am acquainted with a physicist doing groundbreaking work on the nature of gravity, and the Akashic insights solidly aligned with his theories and experiments. In one session, the Sun spoke to the author directly, which was both surprising and intriguing.

The session entitled “ETs/UFOs—Are They Helpers?” will be useful to those who are part of the contactee/abductee community, as are the author, myself, my wife, and many of our friends, clients, and colleagues. This was all very affirming and a reason for hope as Atlas 3i traverses the sky, Disclosure is played out like a game of 3D chess, and many of us are wondering what the future holds for those who advocate for justice, equity, and harmony.

Taken as a whole, the sessions give us plenty of reason to be hopeful. Be warned, however—like many communications from Higher Beings, there is a great deal of “everything is as it should be,” “all is well,” “illness is an illusion,” and so on. I’ve come to take these as positive challenges and prima materia for thought experiments for my ever-evolving world- and Universal views. I was not alone—Madeiras at times responded incredulously to certain statements. After all, if we had it all figured out and were perfectly at peace with the state of the world and ourselves, we would not be in need of such communications in the first place.

As with many channelers, psychics, and the like, Madeiras asks, “Why Me?” On some level, everyone who has answered the call is bound to ask this question. The answers in that session provide much in the way of clarity and strength on our collective and individual journeys.

For those who are interested in booking an Akashic Records reading with the author, there is information provided for you to do so.

A Review of Lost in Time: Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, by Jack R. Bialik

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:27:00 +0000

(Maitland, FL: Mill City Press, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-8685-0229-3

I’m going to start this review with a question. How secure is humankind’s accumulated knowledge?

Take a moment to think about it—the oldest known cuneiform tablets are approximately 5400 years old. The cave paintings in Lascaux might be as old as 22,000 years old. Yet, for all of our supposed technological sophistication, VHS tapes and audio cassettes degrade after 30 years, a DVD may last a century (we won’t know until we know), and floppy disks only last 15 years (although they are useless unless you collect and have the expertise to maintain older computers and disk drives).

Consider as well that digital files are susceptible to corruption, being accidentally deleted, or being made obsolete by new software. In the case of a massive solar flare, a great deal could be lost in the blink of an eye.

These sobering facts and more are the core subjects of Jack Bialik’s impressively and expansively researched book on “knowledge we’ve forgotten and destroyed.” According to the acknowledgments, it was a ten-year process to write and publish this 249-page book, although it’s clear that this was only possible because of a lifetime of research. Lost in Time also uncovers the truth of supposedly “modern” inventions that actually have their roots hundreds and thousands of years ago.

Although I usually end my reviews with some comments on the amount of research that goes into a book like this, here they must be front and center. The bibliography is nearly 30 pages long and there are 421 footnotes. Bialik draws on a wide array of sources, from books to documentaries to magazine articles and websites. His four-decade career in science and technology includes some impressive credentials: F15 aircraft simulation for the USAF, and telecommunications and IT infrastructure for the Department of Homeland Security, as well as work as a program reviewer for the White House.

As the book unfolds, Bialik takes us on a journey of myth-busting, archaeological uncovering, and invention illumination, all while posing a series of serious questions regarding the nature of knowledge, the wisdom and technical efficiency of the ancients, and the fragility of data—what we might lose and have already irrevocably lost.

There are chapters on ancient inventions, lost libraries, vanished cultures, disappearing data, and time capsules. Bialik then applies all of his experience and his keen mind to questions of the future, which he categorizes as “bright.”

What follows are some of the highlights.

The book opens with a look at the core elements of Modern Humanity’s identity (as I term them): industry, technology, and science. Intricately related, and the epicenter/nexus of almost all of the planet’s wealth (along with their chief funding mechanism, the banks), this trio tends to claim that ALL knowledge is THEIR knowledge. Through a series of examples, Bialik debunks them. The ancients accomplished plenty, and how so much of it was lost or suppressed makes for fascinating reading in the chapters that follow, starting with “Ancient Triumph,” covering the use of zero in mathematics, fountain pens, celestial globes (a truly stunning feat of design and engineering), and more.

A sobering chapter is “Lost Libraries.” Most of us know about the burning of the Royal Library of Alexandria in 391 AD, accounting for at least some of the loss of ancient knowledge—the library was built in 200 BC; some of its scrolls were probably even older. Bialik introduces us to fifteen more lost libraries, including the destruction of Mayan codices by agents of the Roman Catholic Church and the loss of millions of volumes during the wars in Bosnia and Iraq.

Connected to the destruction and loss of libraries is the destruction of entire cultures. Bialik begins with the mysteries of Göbekli Tepe, located in modern Türkiye. Those who follow the work of Graham Hancock are well familiar with this elaborate ceremonial site, which dates to around 9,000 BC, predating the pyramids of Egypt by some 2,000 years (although their age is in a constant state of debate). Who built it and exactly why is rife with speculation, but we do know it was deliberately buried. Bialik also discusses nine other civilizations, including the Mayans and Minoans and, in North America, the Clovis people, about whom there have been myriad misunderstandings.

The remainder of the book is devoted to subjects related to a possible (some say probable after Cloudflare recently went down) “Digital Dark Age,” which provided the source material for some of the data with which I opened this review. The chapter about time capsules is fascinating reading, from time and expense to elaborate facilities and a list of time capsules that have been stolen, lost, or inadvertently buried in a way that makes them all but inaccessible. A bit of a teaser—not all time capsules are underground. As part of this chapter, Bialik offers a sobering list of dangers to the planet’s stored digital knowledge. There is also a section on extinction prevention banks. Like time capsules (and, in a way, they are more similar than different), these repositories represent a staggering amount of effort, time, and expense.

As I mentioned earlier, despite the cautionary tales and dire warnings, the book ends on a positive note with the chapter “Our Bright Future.” Bialik again applies four decades of expertise and it is well worth listening to what he has to say.

“A Fascinating Story without the Lies”: A Review of Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend, by Michael Wallis

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:42:00 +0000

(New York: Liveright Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-63149-477-2

Ever since her adventurous life and tragic murder by an unknown assailant on February 3, 1889, Myra Shirley (aka Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen”) has occupied a central position in the pantheon of Wild West Outlaws—bloodthirsty, larger than life; hero to some, villain to others.

The problem in Myra’s case is that most of what we have been told by the press, the entertainment industry, and a slew of biographers is somewhere between exaggeration and lies.

Michael Wallis made it his mission to remedy this injustice as only this celebrated historian and author can. Belle Starr is several books in one… part biography, part multifamily genealogy, and part exploration of the sociopolitical landscape of America in the mid- to late 1800s, with impressive explications of the early history of Missouri, the US Civil War, the free and slave state border feuds, and the mythologies and realities of other Old West luminaries, such as the members of the James and Younger gang. Rather than romanticizing the violence of this integral period in American history, Wallis gives us insights into how it destroyed families and changed the trajectory of lives like Myra’s.

The political complexities of the formation of territories and states as America expanded, especially concerning Indigenous tribes, are also unpacked. The fortunes of Myra’s family were intimately tied to the development of Missouri, the Oklahoma Territory, and Texas and the fever-pitch precepts of Manifest Destiny. As a matter of fact, Myra was born within three days of the signing of the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War, which was a major victory for President Polk’s vision for (and execution of) Westward Expansion.

As you will read, these were barbarous, bloody times, full of grisly murders and equally grisly episodes of vigilante “justice.” It was the time of the Kansas–Missouri border wars, which blossomed in ever-greater bloodshed and atrocities during the Civil War with the rise of the Jayhawkers, Red Legs, and Bushwhackers and butchers like William Clarke Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson. One of the lesser known men who rode with Quantrill and Anderson, Simian Whitsett, is my wife’s ancestor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wallis had cited some of my father-in-law’s genealogy research.

Despite relentless atrocities, there was a growing sense of the value of education and the importance of proper manners, and Myra was one of the first students enrolled in the Carthage Female Academy. She then attended a school in Texas—promising developments for a peaceful, prosperous life. Unfortunately, the cessation of the South and the start of the U.S. Civil War proved highly disruptive to Myra’s plans, primarily because of her brother Bud’s taking up of the Southern cause. I’ll leave the details to the author, as Wallis’s writing is at its most evocative when it comes to their very close relationship and what it ultimately meant for the arc of her life.

It was in the tumultuous years following the end of the Civil War that the misunderstandings and myths about Myra’s life began to form and grow. Wallis does a masterful job of extracting fact from fiction through exhaustive research and the presentation of official records whenever possible to lay to rest a plethora of incorrect statements about whom Myra married (starting with her tempestuous seven-year marriage to outlaw Jim Reed), when, and with whom she was more generally associated. The saying “you will be judged by the company you keep” is wholly instructive here, and Myra was far from innocent. It is ultimately a matter of degrees. She certainly could ride and shoot, and Myra had plenty of run-ins with the law, including a few indictments for horse theft, disorderly conduct, and arson. She both won and lost in court and spent some time in prison.

Those interested in how wild the West truly was will find the ensuing chapters to be highly engaging. Wallis shines a light on a cast of ornery horse thieves, bandits, and drunkards—including Cherokee outlaw Tom Starr and the James–Younger gang—to which no false facts need to be appended to make them larger than life and worthy of the Westerns that keep their names alive. These stories of deviance and derring-do are a master class in frontier justice, featuring Black US Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves and the “Hanging Judge” himself, Isaac Parker, out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. My wife’s maternal side of the family hails from there and I’ve visited the gallows. They are an extremely sobering sight, especially at twilight.

Those who believe that disinformation, fake news, yellow journalism, and sensationalism on the part of the news media are recent inventions should pay attention to the way the newspapers fabricated letters and interviews (and a woodcut and a photo, each worth a thousand suspect words) to build the myth of Belle Starr. Wallis offers us plenty of compelling educational material on how these deliberate, devious distortions worked—and, sadly, continue to.

As Myra’s marriages/intimate relationships and legal troubles mounted, her family life—including her relationship with her two children, Pearl and Eddie—suffered. Vicious accusations, prolonged estrangements, and outsized, unreasonable maternal pronouncements all contributed to the carnage. This, to me, is the tragedy of Myra’s life—a very human truth to counterbalance the “Wild Western Amazon,” as pushed by the papers.

Along with the maxim “you will be judged by the company you keep” is the equally applicable “live by the sword, die by the sword.” On February 3, 1889, Myra/Belle was murdered in the road. The chapter “Who Killed Belle Starr” pushes biography into open-ended murder mystery through Wallis’s storytelling largesse. I’ll leave the details to him.

The book’s epilogue takes its title, “Print the Legend,” from one of my favorite Westerns, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It consists of snapshots of what happened to some of the secondary characters in the story. Take my advice: this isn’t incidental reading. Each of these people had a considerable effect on the trajectory of Myra’s life.

I mentioned exhaustive research. There are 85 pages of notes and bibliography. I also want to mention that I attended the book launch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in early summer 2025. Several of Myra’s descendants were there and the amount of respect they showed for Michael Wallis and his mission to set the record straight was palpable and well deserved.

Although perhaps best known for his 2001 bestseller Route 66: The Mother Road, credited with reviving interest in this legendary highway, and voicing the Sheriff in Pixar’s Cars, Wallis is an accomplished and respected historian. Belle Starr is his twentieth book and arguably his best.

“The Mysterious Pyramids”: A Review of Pyramid Tech: The Physics, Chemistry, & Agro-Economics of the Ancients, by Ken Goudsward

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:06:00 +0000

(Prince George, BC, Canada: Dimensionfold Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-998395-21-7

In my back cover blurb for this book, I stated, “Ken Goudsward, who is steadily earning a place among the most respected researchers offering heavily researched, technology-based reinterpretations of ancient history, offers a salient, sensible set of explanations for the who, when, why, and how of one of Earth’s most enduring mysteries—the pyramids. From the wrongly mundane, to the genuinely compelling, to the recently ridiculous, Goudsward takes on prior theories and offers us solid, scholarly insights and eye-opening new hypotheses.”

Having read this book a second time, I stand by this statement all the more. In 107 succinct, easy to understand pages, while providing abundant photos, diagrams of the interiors of several pyramids, and technical charts, Goudsward takes us through myriad mistaken information concerning pyramids around the world and offers his assessment of a handful of more viable theories.

Cracking the mystery of ancient pyramids has been a fascination for archaeologists, scientists, geologists, ancient alien theorists, sacred geometry researchers, and others for centuries. Were they tombs? Power plants? UFO landing stations? How old are they? This question of age is one that raises the hackles on the gatekeepers and guardians of a narrative where Homo sapiens and advanced civilizations are much younger than what folks like Graham Hancock and Ken Goudsward have been discovering.

With gatekeeping academics on one end and ancient astronaut kooks on the other, the lies, speculations, entertainment fabrications, and simple misunderstanding are legion. Recent AI images of underground networks and strange pillars have further skewed perceptions. As we move toward the center of the spectrum from either end, we encounter genuine efforts that often make sense upon first glance. Burial places, for instance. Most of us grew up on this explanation. But this assumption has more than a few pitfalls and problems, all of which are systematically illuminated by the author.

After an orientation tour of the major pyramid sites and complexes in Egypt, Africa, Mexico, Peru, and China, and the difficult to categorize Gunung Padang in Indonesia, Goudsward offers a page and quarter on the question of how, which is not the primary subject of the book.

As made clear by the title, Pyramid Tech: The Physics, Chemistry, & Agro-Economics of the Ancients is primarily concerned with the why.

Use as tombs is initially considered, with ancient pyramids grouped under four categories (was a tomb, never was a tomb, later use as a tomb, could not be used as a tomb). Examples are given as each of the categories are unpacked in separate sections. Goudsward then moves on to the idea that pyramids and pyramid sites are aligned to astrological configurations (Teotihuacan and Giza aligning with Orion’s belt being the most popular of these theories). Goudsward also mentions Sirius and Cygnus.

The meat of the matter for the why, however, is technology, beginning with hydraulic pumps (the desert was not always a desert, and the Nile flowed within proximity to the Giza pyramids). This is a theory that is roughly sixty years old.

A very popular theory in more recent decades is that of the pyramids serving as electrical power plants (there is a section in the book devoted to lightning). The text begins to increase in technical complexity at this point, although we are in capable, educative hands (the author is a “solutions architect, systems analyst, with expertise in industrial robotics, software engineering, and data design”). From piezoelectric effects to acoustic resonance (he’s also a musician), there’s an international survey of sites presented that might be candidates for this theory of why.

The most robust section, and perhaps the most intriguing, is the one concerning fertilizer factories. There are several researchers whose work Goudsward unpacks while offering his assessment and further considerations. According to one researcher, Geoffrey Drumm, three pyramids (the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, and the Bent Pyramid) might have been a “chemical production chain.” Having a father who managed a chemical plant that processed additives and preservatives for cosmetics, I could easily picture the necessity for dedicated sites requiring different technological configurations for each step in the process.

As with his advanced technology explorations of Sumerian texts, such as the Enuma Elish and Atrahasis Epic, Goudsward offers clear explanations and visuals to guide the reader who lacks a background in chemistry as to where these theories succeed and come up short. Along the way, there are some disturbing facts of archaeologists tagging these ancient structures with graffiti and other gestures of disrespect. We also meet the leading (although ultimately discarded) German chemical warfare specialist from World War I and inventor of chlorine gas, Fritz Haber (who also won a Nobel Prize for his invention of his self-named process for producing ammonia).

A fascinating set of sections goes into the details of pressurization and how the shape, weight, and interior architectural features of select pyramids, including the shafts that have given theorists fits given that they are too small and/or have angles that would disallow sarcophagi being carried through them into the open chambers within, were essential for fertilizer production.

Threaded throughout the text and examined in some detail later in the book is the theory that some of the pyramids in Egypt, being much older than the gatekeepers and guardians claim, were constructed by an unknown civilization that predates the pharaonic dynasties and ancient Egyptian civilization as we have come to accept it. A point in favor of this theory is that there are no hieroglyphics in the pyramids and no mention of pyramids in any hieroglyphics—this from a civilization that otherwise kept very meticulous records. This question of who may never be answered, and Goudsward does not choose to tread that path in this text.

The final section of Pyramid Tech: The Physics, Chemistry, & Agro-Economics of the Ancients further elaborates the question of when the pyramids were built. Goudsward says that the traditional estimates of their being 6,000 years old or so is “fundamentally flawed,” based in part on the mistaken notion that they were built as tombs. Respected researchers such as Graham Hancock estimate the Giza pyramids to be more than 12,000 years old.

Once again, Ken Goudsward should be applauded (and supported by the purchase of his books) for applying his polymath expertise to ancient mysteries, giving us serious scientific theories to ponder instead of click-bait, unsupported statements, sexy conjecture, and outright lies.

“Bonds in Blood and Oil”: A Review of Beneath Beauford Grove, by E. Denise Billups

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:34:00 +0000

(New York: Shivering Pond Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9781088146774

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed E. Denise Billups’s Civil War/modern era ghost story Tainted Harvest. Since that time, the author has written two more books in the series and fourteen overall.

I’m delighted to have the opportunity to read and review her latest.

Similar to Tainted Harvest, this book, Beneath Beauford Grove, is also a ghost story, although with significant additional paranormal and horror elements. It takes place in multiple timelines in three locations—Haiti (not long after the slave rebellion that gave Saint-Domingue its independence from France and a new name), the fictional Beauford Grove in Alabama (in the 1800s and forward to the present), and modern-day Boston. It’s in Boston that the book opens, where the protagonist, Evangeline (Eva), is a hematologist struggling with a desperate pediatric case that calls for equally desperate decisions.

The story unfolds primarily in third-person present. Some readers find this disconcerting, although it’s a choice that suits this particular work quite well, given that the novel moves through timelines and multiple character perspectives through the use of first-person present through diaries, letters, and an assortment of documents. The traditional third-person past would have made the transitions less smooth, and the fluidity of the frequent shifts in the timeline is one of the novel’s major strengths.

The book itself is visually appealing, with enriching graphics in red and black used for chapter titles.

Eva’s chosen profession is anything but arbitrary. Themes of blood and land (blood and olives) gird and drive the narrative, related to generations of Haitian and Creole women versed in the dangerous arts of blood magic and crossroads contracts. The Haitian rebellion and Southern plantation make physical, emotional, and psychological slavery and servitude ever-present spectres. Keys and ciphers are another prevalent theme—maps, chemical compositions, landscape layouts, architecture, and even birthmarks and other bodily patterns reinforce and broaden the central theme.

I was not far into the novel when I realized it is very much in the tradition of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches trilogy and the further Mayfair books that merged with the world of the (in)famous vampire Lestat. If you loved those books and lament that there will be no more with Rice’s passing, you’ll welcome the evocative and sensual descriptive/immersive prose of Beneath Beauford Grove. While, like its predecessors, it melds spirituality/ancient ritual and science (“and certainty” as Billups writes), an entity attached to many generations of women in a Gulf state, and a driven scientist protagonist, there is one major difference—Eva is infinitely more likable than Rowan Fielding/Mayfair. As for the entity, it is every bit as deceitful, ruthless, and evil as the Taltos. The price this family has paid for keeping the olive grove thriving is truly horrific in its accounting of sacrifice, manipulation, and blood.

A great strength of this Southern gothic novel is the intertwining of time, place, and character to amplify the spiritual/science nexus, manifest in the images of Celtic-like olive roots that match platelet aggregation patterns. The core themes of the novel, mirroring those of the central characters, are consistently expressed. Even the local bank traffics in blood debts and digital currency.

The inciting incident, a letter tied to an impending death (which is compelling, classical, and clean) conjures questions of the futility of attempting to escape one’s destiny. The deep blood bonds and inheritance of a cursed/infested place are similar to those in Stephen King’s short story “Jerusalem’s Lot” and the television adaptation with Adrian Brody, Chapelwaite (New England Gothic).

These are potent narrative formulas and Billups makes the very most of them.

Supporting the themes and locations are an interesting array of characters, the vast majority of which are drawn inexorably up and into the fate of the olive groves and the women who sacrifice to keep them, and the town, thriving. There is layer upon layer (like rich, loamy soil) of metaphor and meaning at work here. Like in the stories of Master Poe, many of the characters are delightfully untrustworthy. One in particular, who is constantly offering a variety of beverages to Eva, called to mind the conniving neighbor played so beautifully by Ruth Gordon in Rosemary’s Baby (Manhattan Gothic). Throughout, Billups brings these characters to life with dialect and healthy sprinklings of Creole, expertly contextualized or organically translated. She’s also versed in Vodou (and although unstated, the related practice of Obeah), including legbas, the nature of crossroads, the mixing of potions with plants and herbs, and grimoires.

With multiple timelines and character voices to manage, Billups has employed a variety of techniques to deliver information. A beautifully rendered grimoire is one of several examples, which also include diaries and letters. House and grove staff speak freely of history and legend, and there are the requisite whispered conversations between conspirators.

Like the olive grove, the family home is encoded. The nursery, a forbidden wing, a root cellar, and several bedrooms offer clues to the larger story. Eva also gleans information from visits to the town cemetery (where the Beauford women have buried all of their prematurely deceased husbands) and that bastion of data in any mystery thriller, the local café.

In the end, this Southern Gothic masterwork is a love story as deep and intertwined as the soil and trees of the grove. Do we have the right to bargain away future generations’ lives and freedom of choice for our own immediate, egocentric needs? What price do we put on the lives and futures of our loved ones? How many secrets can we bear? In myriad sectors of life on this planet, from macro to micro, the outcomes of these choices have been dire.

Billups, while entertaining us, gives us much about which to think.

Beneath Beauford Grove is not the end of the story for Eva, the entity, or the engaging assortment of supporting characters that enrich and enliven this novel. If you’d like a taste of what’s to come, Billups offers interested readers several pages of the sequel.

“A Centennial Celebration”: A Review of Jim Ross and Shellee Graham’s Route 66: The First 100 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 13:17:00 +0000

(St. Louis, MO: Reedy Press, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-681065823

When considering the most well-known and impactful writers and photographers who chronicle Route 66—Jim Hinckley, Michael Wallis, Joe Sonderman, and Chery Eichar Jett, all of whom I have met and/or presented with—one must include Jim Ross and Shellee Graham.

My introduction to the work of this husband–wife super-duo, about 18 months ago, happened as I was preparing a series of presentations on what I call “Supernatural 66.” As part of my research, I read their 2017 Secret Route 66: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

Two months ago, I was privileged to do a presentation about/as Cyrus Avery, “Father of the Mother Road,” at AAA RoadFest in Tulsa, where Jim and Shellee were also presenting and debuting Route 66: The First 100 Years. I was lucky enough to have a close friend gift me the book just before their presentation, which I very much enjoyed. Afterward, they were nice enough to personalize and autograph my copy—as they did for MANY others that day, which they have continued to do on their popular book tour.

Like the other Route 66 luminaries, as I term them, mentioned above, Jim and Shellee do not have just a passing or professional interest in the Mother Road. Nor have they come to write about, travel on, and photograph it only in anticipation of the very big deal that is the route’s 100th birthday. They have been passionate about the route, living and breathing it (they live on the route in a house inspired by the service stations of a bygone, and much missed, age) for decades and are an essential reason why it has survived (and thrived).

What is essentially a love story—love of Route 66 and one another—is threaded through both of their books that I have (so far) read, enlivening the prose, adding extra color to the abundant photographs—many taken by the authors—and proving page after page why they hold an honored position among Mother Road enthusiasts.

This review is shaped in part by my having the benefit of attending their presentation at RoadFest, which was moderated by Ken Busby, executive director and CEO of the Route 66 Alliance. Ken, a longtime colleague, collaborator, and friend, is the one who so generously bought me this book.

I know, for instance, that the authors chose to de-emphasize the most-often celebrated destinations, personalities, and other aspects of Route 66 (leaving them for other books and writers) so they could focus on lesser-known people, places, and facts. This decision makes this book an essential addition to even an extensive collection of books on the Mother Road like mine. I also learned that one of the highlights of the book from a preservation and restoration standpoint enjoyed their intimate involvement.

By way of overview, the combination of the book’s gorgeous layout and typesetting, the power of its pictures, and the strength of its prose (rendered in the dulcet tones and authoritative syntax and style akin to award-winning documentary narration) guarantee that Route 66: The First 100 Years will not be placed on my bookshelf. I have prominently placed it in the Creative Cottage where everyone who visits can enjoy it.

As though we were starting in Chicago, Illinois, and making our way along the full 2,400 or so miles of Route 66 to the Santa Monica Pier, I intend to take you through the chapters. We won’t stop at every one along the way. Instead, I’ll cover what I consider to be the highlights from my perspective as a researcher, presenter, and as someone whose time on Route 66 prompted my own love story and some of the most memorable events of my life.

Before the engine was even warm, I was delighted to see the Dedication to Cyrus. The accompanying photo is of the Father of the Mother Road with his family, a credit to the authors’ understanding of whom he truly was. With the engine warm but the tranny still in Park, I read the Foreword by celebrated author Michael Wallis. The authors keep some wonderful company.

As we merge onto the route as the chapters unfold, Ross and Graham paint in words (supported by and further colorizing the stunning pictures) an America before Route 66, how it came into being and why, and what it meant for the growth of the country. We get an education (never dry, always erudite) on the coopting of national trails in forming the route and the battle, featuring our man Cyrus, for a number (which wasn’t always 66). As we motor through the cities of Illinois and Missouri and into Kansas’s 13 memorable miles on this metaphorical journey, we learn about the early days of dangerous travel, unpaved expanses, and early promotion. Fittingly, as we cross into Oklahoma, we move into the Dust Bowl and Depression and the hardships faced by those motoring the Mother Road (thank you, John Steinbeck) toward the Promised Land of California only to find that the promises were lies. As we move on into Texas, we’re into World War II and the importance of the road for military bases, POW camps, and the winning of the war.

Out of Texas and into the American Southwest, there are important chapters on experiences of African Americans and Native Americans all along the route. I say important because, if you want to understand the full scope of Route 66, and not just the neon and ice cream, these chapters are ones with which you’ll want to spend some extra time.

Pulling off to a scenic overlook, I want to mention that I’ve been voraciously reading about and intensely studying the history of Route 66 for three-plus years and there were many (many) things I learned. If you think you’ve seen and learned it all, this book will prove you wrong.

As we motor through New Mexico and into Arizona, it’s time for some refreshments. The authors offer us the visual and aural delights that contributed to making the Main Street of America the icon it continues to be. There’s a movingly nostalgic section with filled out postcards, followed by chapters on the story of the Troups’ famous song, car culture, and neon.

Continuing their focus on underrepresented populations, there’s a wonderful chapter on the “Ladies of Legend” and, my fellow travelers, there sure were a lot of them!

Interspersed through the vast expanses of the route’s western states are the subject of Chapter 8, “Trading Posts and Tourist Traps.” These iconic emporiums are the raw material of some of the route’s most enduring legends and darkest moments. From gun battles, to snake pits, from artists and artisans to alter-ego sales gimmicks and shady dealings, it’s easy to understand why there has never been another road like the Mother Road.

Picking up a switchback (keep your eyes on the road!) we move into “Bloody 66” and a few chapters later, “Villains and Victims.” If you’re a fan of Jim Hinckley’s Murder and Mayhem on the Main Street of America, these are the chapters for you.

As darkness gathers as we move into our metaphorical California, we enter the years of the bypass and the mini-death of the Main Street of America. We meet heroes, villains (aka The Slab and Homogenization), and those, like Ike, caught between Tradition and Progress. As visually stunning as the chapter on postcards is the one on bridges, “Spans of Time.”

As the shimmering Pacific enters our bittersweet vision, we reach the “Renaissance,” “Preservation,” and “Epilogue: The Next 100 Years.” Within these pages are myriad reasons to rejoice. The future of the Mother Road, our beloved Route 66, is in excellent entrepreneurial, authorial, and enthusiast hands—and Jim Ross and Shellee Graham are truly the Trifecta.

As we turn our autos around and head on back to re-experience the route from West to East and go our separate ways (for now), Shellee and Jim provide us with “Road Facts” and the “Route 66: The First 100 Years Timeline.”

Safe travels and see you on the route, my friends! Rest assured my purchased-for-me-by-a-treasured-friend, autographed copy of Route 66: The First 100 Years will be on the seat beside me.

Will you have yours as well?

“Generational and Personal Traumas”: A Review of Sharon Heath’s invisible threads

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 12:44:00 +0000

(Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-950750-58-0

For the past eight years, I have been inspired, challenged, and moved by the novels of Jungian analyst Sharon Heath. In February 2017, I was introduced to her most fascinating, provocative character, the neurodivergent, brilliant physicist Fleur Robins, who reminds me so much of my daughter, who was 18 at the time and who turned 26 today. Fleur has now appeared in four books, all of which I have read and reviewed, and I am looking forward to her further (cosmic) adventures.

I have also read and reviewed a stand-alone novel from 2019 called Chasing Eve.

In many ways, the clusters of characters (a mix of blood and chosen family) in Heath’s beautifully rendered, emotionally and socially complex novels, are akin to those in the films of Wes Anderson—Royal Tennenbaums most prevalently, especially in terms of invisible threads.

As I have mentioned in previous reviews, there is such a broad spectrum of “types” in Heath’s stories—delivering a plethora of worldviews and opinions—that it is impossible to agree with everyone, and I often find myself scribbling in the margins to discharge my emotional responses and frustrations with what they say and do. This is the work of the gifted storyteller—placing their characters on a continuum (liberal to conservative, rich to poor, moral to immoral…) and connecting each to the overarching theme(s). This essential element of good storytelling prevents the author from being didactic or using their writing as a vehicle for a narrow agenda. It also contributes to a proper scope of characters and plot.

The themes in Heath’s books, and they are notably prevalent in invisible threads, are facets of the jewel of the Human Condition, expressed in socioeconomic, medical, political, historical, and international terms—all through the primary lens of three generations of a wealthy Jewish family living and working in California.

The Kerrs comprise patriarch Michael (a screenwriter traumatized by the treatment of Jews in Europe in his youth), sisters Evvie (coping with cancer) and Miriam (a free-spirited, immature costume designer), Miriam’s high-school senior son Ben (contentious describes their relationship; Evvie raised him while Miriam was in fashion school), and Moira (Michael’s second and ex-wife, who lives in Berkeley).

Unresolved personal and familial “stuff” is a broad way to term the fuel that keeps the pistons of invisible threads moving up and down. Constellating around them is Ben’s drug-addict girlfriend (red flag territory from start to finish, echoing familial trauma for the Kerrs), Evvie’s Black best friend (a director of commercials searching for meaning), and social justice documentarians who broaden the scope of the themes to international horrors. They also serve as a counterbalance/point to the privileged, often hard-to-listen to/sympathize with Kerrs. Fittingly, these characters are the catalysts that offer the Kerrs an opportunity for change. Storytelling takes place in the gaps between where a character is and where they want to be and, most clearly in Evvie’s case (the central character in a piece that is very ensemble), these supporting characters live and breathe in the gaps.

It has been awhile since the murder of a UnitedHealthcare executive that sparked an all-too-brief and ultimately re-active rather than active dialog about the abhorrent state of the US healthcare system. One of the subplots in invisible threads brings this necessary discussion back to life through the experiences of a young girl (with whom Evvie bonds) and her overwhelmed single mother. Of all the stories in invisible threads, this one tugged at my heartstrings and provoked my anger to the greatest degree, although what we witness through the eyes and lens of those documenting international atrocities is almost equally as provoking.

Having now read half a dozen of Heath’s books, I offer this humble suggestion vis à vis your engagement with the Kerrs—be a fly on the wall: at their dinners, on their travels, during their edge-of-the-bed discussions and arguments, in their hospital rooms, and during their often awkward and contentious phone calls. Watch and listen. Absorb. This to me is the primary value of these stories. With the recent therapeutic focus on generational trauma, this is an opportunity to witness how it works. It is also an opportunity to recognize when you are guilty of the same talking at, talking over, talking beneath, and talking around that keeps relationships shallow and weak. We are in particularly capable educative hands with Jungian analyst Heath.

In the end, the arcs, with few exceptions, are subtle or nonexistent. This is as it should be and wise on the author’s part. The vast majority of the masses, ala Henry David Thoreau, are “living lives of quiet desperation” and are ultimately immovable. Don’t get me wrong—there are adjustments, resolutions, losses, and compromises in almost every sector of the characters’ lives, but they are suitably, realistically open to interpretation and, in many cases, a healthy dose of skepticism. Moments happen; will they endure? This is also to be expected. After all, the unjust Machinery of the world keeps churning, and people like the Kerrs and their friends and acquaintances (and every one of us) are the raw materials it needs to continue grinding its gears, pumping its pistons, and sending its polluted cloud of noxious gas of toxic capitalism into the atmosphere. Change is hard—and lasting change a true commitment.

In essence, and by way of summation:

The varied and abundant flowers (and weeds—an odd descriptor; who decides?) that Heath continues to cultivate for our entertainment, education, illumination, and edification in the fields and gardens of her stories grow organically from the seeds of her ability to see the world as a complex, confusing, confrontational, colorful, and often uncomfortable place. A place where family, friends, acquaintances, and even passing strangers, may not be perfect, but they are often all that we have and even more often, exactly what we need.

Come to that, what we need as well is more writers with the vision, voice, compassion, and passion of Sharon Heath.

“Ancient History Reexamined”: A Review of Journey Through the Origins of History by Tyrone Ellington

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 13:56:00 +0000

(Dimensionfold Publishing, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-998395-15-6

Over the past several years, Dimensionfold Publishing has built a solid reputation for scholarly works that analyze ancient texts, myths, cultures, and the Bible from an array of eye-opening, alternative-narrative lenses. With a stable of authors that includes Rev. Michael Carter, Wallace Wagner Jr., and Ken Goudsward, Dimensionfold gives readers plenty to think about, girded by painstaking textual and contextual analysis and well-developed theories founded on years of scholarship.

If you’re daunted by the idea of considering Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian texts and the most challenging passages of the Bible through the lens of advanced civilizations and technology (gods and magic), but are interested in ancient history, religion, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Tyrone Ellington’s Journey Through the Origins of History is an excellent place to start. The use of journey here is twofold—meaning both the survey/overview nature of the book and the author’s own journey as an independent scholar. The cover of Journey Through the Origins of History is a depiction of the author in headphones, reading research material surrounded by stacks of books, recalling the classical scholar in their study or laboratory. Like many researchers, I know that depiction well and live it every day.

Throughout the book, Ellington shares his curiosity and seeker nature as primary drivers in his life. Much of the book is taken from his blog; this at times leads to repetition, and circling back to previously covered subjects, but this is quite a good thing. As much as educators talk about scaffolding (learning incrementally from basic to complex topics and skills, where the preceding material serves as an essential foundation), the type of big-picture, transdisciplinary research Ellington is doing does not work well that way. Using what I term parallels, patterns, and pathways, a survey like Ellington’s of ancient history and the most challenging theological, cultural, anthropological, philosophical, and sociological aspects of our existence on Earth becomes essential reading for those seeking deeper understanding of the human condition.

Starting from The Beginning of Time, Ellington considers the creation of the Universe, the development of life on Earth (focusing primarily on our forebears and us), and the definitions and conditions of Civilization. Compared to some recent books I’ve read where this journey is taken solely through the lenses of traditional Hard Science, Ellington examines these meta topics, not just through science but also through the transdisciplinary topics listed in the final sentence of the previous paragraph. This approach allows him to incorporate case-building contextual analysis while not dismissing religion, spirituality, mythology, and belief in extraterrestrial life as reprehensible paganism. Like Wallace Wagner, Jr., Ellington presents us with passages from a range of ancient religious and mythological texts, placing them together so the overlaps emerge and contribute to painting a larger picture of our history.

A core focus of the book is the mysterious Annunaki and the work of Zecharia Sitchin, whose (mis)interpretations of Sumerian texts Ellington begins to unpack through his own research and that of additional scholars. As it turns out (and this is supported by the work of Ken Goudsward), one of the pieces of scholarship for which Sitchin is most well known, the existence of a planet called Nibiru from which the Annunaki originate, is the shakiest.

Again like Goudsward, Ellington considers the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, offering new and compelling insights into one of humanity’s oldest narratives. While engaging with this story, the author also enlightens us regarding the overlaps between the gods in the Epic and those that appear in the stories of other ancient civilizations, a la comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell and alternative history researcher Graham Hancock. He returns to this later when contemplating flood stories and variations on the Garden of Eden mentioned throughout a variety of ancient texts. His links between the Sumerian Enkidu and Bigfoot are intriguing, and I would add that they are also akin to the folktale of Iron John. Again, these parallels and pathways are invaluable in any search for the truth of humanity’s origins and the evidence for outside influences on early civilizations. This is essential work given that it is clear that institutionalized academia and myriad gatekeepers have obfuscated, lied about, distorted, and suppressed a great deal of crucial information in the name of governmental, theological, and economic control.

Ellington spends a fair amount of time considering the nature of and characteristics attributed to “God.” In this endeavor, he proceeds with the care and respect for which Wallace Wagner and Rev. Michael Carter are known.

The author also considers such wide-ranging topics as out of body experiences, alien encounters, visions and dreams, astral projection, giants, haplogroups and genetics, and even fasting. Chapter 10, “From Pictographic Script to the Translation of Myths,” makes for excellent reading, providing both an overview of the composition and function of myths and educating the reader on finding elements of comparison. An example of the latter is Ellington’s study of the Mesoamerican serpent god Quetzalcóatl/Kukulcán and its striking similarities to the Egyptian god Thoth and Annunaki god Ningishzidda, which again calls to mind the work of Campbell and Hancock.

Ellington closes many sections of the book with the phrase, Until next time, Knowledge is Power. He certain demonstrates his pursuit of knowledge in the Bibliography, which comprises 224 entries.

“Short Stories Are a Rifle”: A Review of Dead Objects with No Function by Nicholas Pendleton

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 09 May 2025 15:26:00 +0000

(Self-published, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-387-73383-5

A novel is a cannon, a short story is a rifle. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”

Short story writing is no easy task. I don’t want to overwhelm this review with quotes, but writing short stories is a bit like what Mark Twain famously said in a letter: “I apologize for such a long letter—I didn't have time to write a short one.” Unity of action—another contribution from Poe—is key. A singular focus, be it thematic, place-based, or on the psychology and actions of a single character, drives the narrative, giving it the power and precision of the rifle rather than the broad field of play of the cannon.

I have written 19 books, more than 20 plays, thousands of poems, and eight screenplays, yet I have only written four short stories. Those writers who made it their stock in trade—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, O Henry, Ambrose Bierce, and of course, Edgar Allan Poe—have my utter admiration. Many (many) of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century also staked their claim amongst the masters of the form.

Before I turn the attention of this review fully to Dead Objects with No Function, let me be up front, as I was several months ago when I reviewed this gifted author and artist’s reimagining of Greek mythology, More Argonauts. I am a longtime fan. His comic strip about two Moai on Easter Island, Monumental, is exclusive to my art and literary site, New Mystics. Pendleton illustrated the covers of two of my novels, as well as doing many additional illustrations for them. I am honored to have his art throughout my home.

Our long-time association does nothing to change the fact that Pendleton is a gifted short story writer, as this collection (spanning 25 years of effort) more than demonstrates. Some of the stories have been previously published and it was a joy for me to revisit them after so many years. Others appear for the first time in public.

What I enjoyed most about the provocatively titled Dead Objects with No Function is the wide array of styles, tones of voice, and lengths from story to story. The opening story, for instance, is a page and three quarters long. It could be characterized (no pun intended unless you want it to be) as a character study. After all, there is a character name in the title. Some are more than a dozen pages, and a few are twenty pages plus. For some of the stories, the title is simply Untitled.

Being a graphic artist, Pendleton also plays with typography to distinguish between the different types of stories in the collection. It may be the opening sentences of a paragraph all in caps and boldface, or a dozen sentences, each preceded by an em dash (—), devoid of punctuation and reminiscent of literary innovators James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy. There are also no page numbers nor a table of contents, so the collection functions almost as a portfolio rather than as a static, bound collection. Like Whitman with Leaves of Grass, Pendleton could easily remove or move stories in future editions, and only the most attuned and familiar with the collection would ever notice.

No matter the tone, style, length, or typesetting, this collection is bound together by a pair of crucial elements that are essential to consider when assessing the work of an author: Vision and Voice. The first, as I teach them, is how the author sees the world; the second is how they express that vision through their work. Pendleton’s Vision and Voice are a potent combination of deep life experience merged with hard-earned inner wisdom, a talent for the written word, and an outsized imagination.

“Rediscovered Country” is one of the stories birthed from Pendleton’s outsized imagination, wedded to his understanding of and facility with describing cutting-edge technological realities. There is also a “story” that is a catalog of imagined robots with provocative names. You can find this one by its first boldface/all caps section heading, YHWHWHY.

The mix of Meta and Micro in Dead Objects with No Function works like a multi-movement piece of music changing time signatures and keys in a series of stylistically diverse movements illuminating “the human condition.” Grouped under this heading, which is my own admittedly imprecise but workable device, some of the Micro stories’ characters just might make you cry at their tenderness, while others will make you cringe and curse at their callousness. The stories of Outsiders—and they are legion—are especially apt to take you back to the very worst of Middle School. At 27 pages, “Money Well Spent” offers an encapsulation of what I mean. For pure, unadulterated heartbreak, try “Unfinished Wedding Video”—the title alone could qualify as one of those micro-stories like (maybe, possibly) Hemingway’s “For sale, baby’s shoes, never worn.” The final story in the collection, “White Armageddon,” is perhaps the most beautiful of all.

My favorite story in the collection (which I first had the pleasure of reading more than 20 years ago) is “What Trees Have Done.” If you want to experience the totality of Pendleton’s talents, engage with this one first. It demonstrates masterful character work, coupled with a nature-based magical realism and a very strong voice from the author.

Echoing Pendleton’s revisionist Greek mythology project is “Music in the Blood, by One Grimm Brother,” which is a hip, modern, and disturbing retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians. For music lovers, this story had me thinking about the 27 Club, Dylan, Bowie, Eddie Van Halen, and even the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? There is also “Ascension: A Folktale Retold” for those who are looking for more of these types of stories.

For a Robert E. Howard–esque adventure that I described in my margin notes as “like a slice of a novel,” try “The Experiment of Doctor Horvath.”

One of the quirkiest in the collection is “Interview with a Living Room Carpet, Part I,” while the most unusual, which is an offering of sparse text intermixed with various schematics and one of Pendleton’s illustrations, is “I Am Summer.”

On the final page, Pendleton gives us three words of instruction in large, block-letter typography: “Speak Me Aloud.”

It seems to me to be a reasonable enough request. So let us do so in payment for the hours of pleasure, pain, philosophy, and opportunity for self-reflection this far-ranging collection provides.

“Write What You Know”: A Review of Righteous Allegiance by George Yuhasz

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:42:00 +0000

(Outskirts Press, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-9772-7562-2

A tried and true adage for first-time novelists is write what you know. Writing novels is a difficult endeavor (as W. Somerset Maugham famously quipped, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are”) and the seasoned author controls everything they can.

According to George Yuhasz’s back-cover bio, he is a “former US Government special agent, intelligence officer, and contractor. He has also worked in the private sector as an investigator and security consultant.” It is clear he wrote about what he knows in Righteous Allegiance, which takes far-right White Christian Nationalism, especially among former members of the military, as its central subject.

Written with the technical expertise of an insider (I mentored a novelist for many years who was a former lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence, and I recognize the signs), Righteous Allegiance is topical and frightening. Yuhasz’s extremists articulate their positions well—especially the Big Bad, a Major McArdle, whose charisma is noted by more than one of the characters with whom he interacts, including a journalist and member of law enforcement. Their reasoning for their actions is important to consider, because it is how they draw others to their cause. Understanding brings us to the Complexity of the current atmosphere in the United States, which legacy and social media are designed to reduce to overly emotional dichotomies such as Us and Them without offering any insights into why such worldviews exist.

The American novel has its basis in social commentary and change. Yuhasz sits squarely in this tradition, opening up the parameters and circles of social and cultural interaction in what could have been simply an action thriller in the tradition of Tom Clancy and by the incorporation of several Indigenous characters from a broad array of tribes. Their traditions (and the echoes of Westward Expansion, Manifest Destiny, and forced relocation, for which robber barons like Morgan and Rockefeller used the US military as their personal instruments) serve to deepen the psychological aspects of Righteous Allegiance, adding in a spiritual aspect, embodied in the pervasive presence of a fox as events escalate and unfold.

I mentioned the author’s expertise in his chosen material. While it is highly detailed, Yuhasz never strays into a central rookie mistake: the narrative-dragging Info Dump. Instead, he delivers the bulk of the necessary details of the military intelligence world through the experiences of his central character, Will, who also serves as a bridge between the Indigenous and modern worlds. Will, who reminds me of the Star Wars: A New Hope version of Luke Skywalker, struggles to reconcile these worlds amid his answer of the Call to Adventure and navigation of the dangerous worlds of terrorism and geopolitical chess playing.

Yuhasz also navigates the macro and micro with a seasoned, self-assured hand. While national stakes are set, giving the novel its insistent pace (most strongly with the upcoming reelection campaign of an incumbent US president whom Aaron Sorkin could have penned), the small town in which the central action unfolds is the kind of microcosm of economically, politically, and socially diverse characters that makes Stephen King such a master of human psychology. Like King, Yuhasz shows us the often dire consequences of the ultimately petty aims and dynamic tensions inherent in small-town interactions. We encounter farmers, journalists, teachers and school administrators, national and local law enforcement, students, medical professionals, secretaries, and homemakers, all of whom are expressions of our sociopolitical landscape.

Yuhasz does not give us false hope in these tumultuous times. Losses are merged with wins and there are no storylines tidily (and unrealistically) wrapped up in a bow. As we know from events such as the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, and the siege at Waco, terrorism is not stopped; it is merely thwarted if all the pieces fall into place, girded by luck and timing.

All indications are that this is the first book in a series. If this is so, and I hope it is, I look forward to watching the continued Hero’s Journey on which the lead character has embarked and how the poisonous residues of the core incidents of Righteous Allegiance seep into the psychological waterways of society, macro and micro, in surprising and insidious ways.

“All the Best Tropes”: A Review of The Anvil's Whisper by Jaime Rodríguez

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:32:00 +0000

(Jr Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9798992173307

I received this book as an ARC and first reviewed it for Reedsy Discovery.

The Anvil's Whisper is the story of a humble blacksmith and swordsmith named Yordan whose life is turned upside down through a serious of visions and mysterious encounters that lead him into exploration of his spiritual beliefs as mirrored and amplified by myriad religions and spiritual systems that come into conflict in the world in which he lives. The book employs all of the best fantasy tropes, from the blacksmith as metaphor to symbolic beasts, to ideas of fate and destiny and the juxtaposition of authoritarian rule and the life of the simple farmer and artisan in traditional fantasy times. There’s a spoiled prince, alluring peasant girls and warrior women, and a cast of interesting characters from a broad economic and cultural spectrum. There are scenes of violence and torture and moments of deep philosophy and contemplation and plenty of symbolism enriching and diversifying the narrative.

What I enjoyed most about The Anvil's Whisper’s is its use of the Hero’s Journey in an innovative way that is closer to the truth of Joseph Campbell’s work than is normally manifested by fiction, especially fantasy, writers. Over the course of 466 pages, Yordan takes a series of Hero’s Journeys, each more expansive in its Separation, Initiation, and Return, with broader Allies and Enemies, Magical Assistance, and the rest of the phases of moving from the Ordinary to Non-Ordinary worlds. Yordan initially refuses the Call to Adventure, being just a humble blacksmith (another beautiful trope), and each new cycle puts him in greater doubt. Yordan’s best friend, Sam, echoes Frodo’s boon companion in Tolkien’s famous trilogy, but Rodriguez adds an extra element that renders this Sam unique.

Rodríguez is a talented writer who plumbs the depths of his central character’s psychology and emerging passions. Yordan has three encounters with women who embody his Hero’s Journey cycles. The love scenes are substantial, detailed, and probably not for everyone (as some reviewers have expressed). The writing is never lurid or out of tone with the rest of the book and the expression of engagement with each woman tells us what we need to know about Yordan’s progress as he engages with Prophecy and subsequent levels of Initiation.

Readers who enjoy the fantasy genre will get plenty that is new from The Anvil's Whisper while enjoying all of the beautiful tropes that make this genre so resonant.