🦉 Submissions next open from June 1 to August 31 2024
March 6, 2024

Keep Your Voice Healthy: A Review for Singers, Actors, Podcasters, and Others Who Use Their Voices Regularly

Take the advice for protecting your voice during illness seriously. Use the suggestions as you perform with your instrument as if they were gospel. Welcome the sometimes-gross descriptions of your inner workings so you can better know how to use, protect, and save those vocal cords.
March 4, 2024

Pinkies Up for Some “Red Velvet” Pleasure, a Tea Review

By the name of the tea, I would have expected Pinky Up Red Velvet Cake Tea to contain cocoa or cocoa-like flavorings. Instead, as I opened the tin and smelled, I realized the product may well be misnamed. I double-checked the website and nope. It’s the correct label for the tea.
March 2, 2024

Writing Prompts in Images: Music Story Prompts

This year, we thought we'd try a series of content for writers in visual format: writing prompts in images. Being a huge music nerd who's reviving her love of performance, I thought I'd start with music story prompts. It may be a bit niche but you never know what these images could spark for your writing exercises or even those novels you've been puttering your way through. Enjoy!
February 26, 2024

Like Father, Like Son

The social worker in the office asked me how long I’d been homeless. I told him for two or three days. That was how long it had taken me to feel destitute on the street and seek help. His next question: Any relation to the man of the same name already in residence at the shelter? Can it be? I wondered.
February 21, 2024

At the Red Door

He’d pretty much decided he was going to enlist, thinking the navy would be better than just getting drafted and sent to who knows where in Vietnam. Will knew how to act in a bar because he’d gone with his older brother John to St. Jean’s Social Club many times; he knew you just keep to yourself or shout “yeah right” in reply to a joke or to deflect an insult.
February 18, 2024

Worldbuilding 101: Story Setting, Your World’s Framework

Story setting is more than just the physical stuff. It’s the mood and culture, period and genre, and many other things all wrapped into one. But it’s worth parsing out to find the sticky spots in your work that need more detail.
February 3, 2024

There Isn’t Language for This

I had these weird few days where I thought if I could make my room beautiful it might fix me, you know? Like, sure, I still wouldn’t be able to leave the house but maybe if I opened my curtains and let some light in, that would be practically the same thing, right? And now I am bathed in green from the window clings and the sun shining through, and I don’t feel better.
February 1, 2024

The Twelve Suspects of Christmas: A Book Review

Why, it’s The Twelve Suspects of Christmas by Ana T. Drew. It’s the Die Hard of cozy Christmas mysteries - an engaging mystery full of intrigue and spies that happens to take place at Christmas rather than a Christmas book that happens to have a mystery. Well, minus all the shooting. There’s really only a couple of knives and a jar of cinnamon.