By Shelley Munro On Jun 19 2013, 8:00 am

Hundreds of years ago men went out hunting in order to feed their families. It was a dangerous business. The women were gatherers, collecting berries and edible plants to round out their diets.

Fast forward to modern times.

These days we do our hunting and gathering at the supermarket. While we don’t have to worry about our prey turning on us or coming across violence while collecting our greens, modern living brings a different set of problems.

Ask most people, and they’ll say they hate shopping for groceries. It’s a chore. Trying to juggle children plus a shopping trolley can be murder. Tantrums. Kids running amok with child-size trolleys. *shudder* And the supermarket keeps shifting items. Sometimes trying to find your canned goods is like scaling a mountain. Read more…

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By Christa Soule On Jun 10 2013, 9:00 am

So I’m about to leave for my first real offline summer vacation in over two years. Yes, that’s how dedicated I am to Samhain and all my duckies.

And of course, before I go off on this journey of seven-hour plane rides and endless museum explorations, I need to fill my e-reader up with all the fun travel stories. I love when books take me to places I’ve never gone before and do it so beautifully that I feel like I’m living there with them. This can be as simple as dropping me deep in the heart of Texas (Amie Louellen’s Ten Reasons Not To Date A Cop) or as elaborate as transporting me to a completely new world (Maria Zanini’s Mistress of the Stone). Or maybe a mixture of both (Heather Long’s paramormal take on Las Vegas in Into the Spotlight or Mary Hughes’s adorable vampire-infested small town Illinois in Biting Oz).

So today I shall tell you of a few upcoming books that transport you to worlds of travel destination fun: Read more…

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By Jenna Bayley-Burke On Jun 10 2013, 7:32 am

It’s a week until Father’s Day…have you bought the obligatory card and gift yet?

Da, Dad, Daddy, Abba, Pa, Papa, Chad-dad… no matter what your child calls your husband, odds are you’re the one handing over the VISA for the gift this Saturday.

Which got me thinking…what would my characters be opening this Saturday?

• Curtis Frye (Her Cinderella Complex) – Matching pocket square and monogrammed tie
• Ben Cannon (Par For The Course) – Pink golf balls
• David Strong (Compromising Positions) – Moonstruck chocolates (a favorite truffle from each of the six kids)
• Jake Tolliver (Pride & Passion) – Universal remote (so he can pretend he controls everything)
• Brandon Knight (Private Scandal) – Bow tie, and matching dog bowwow ties
• Logan Chandler (For Kicks) – Surprise! hot pink infant sneakers
• Xavier Moreau (Drive Me Crazy) – Steel and leather camera flask
• Johannes Prinsen (Caribbean Christmas) – 3-D ultrasound picture
• Harmannus Prinsen (Caribbean Casanova) – baby footprint tattoo

Feel free to use any of these ideas if you’re looking for Father’s Day inspiration.

Jenna Bayley-Burke apologizes that Caribbean Crush won’t be available until November. She has no idea readers would love the Under the Caribbean Sun series quite so much. But she is happy to report the first three stories will be available as an anthology.

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By Vincent.Stoia On Jun 7 2013, 3:55 pm

I grew up in Boston, but I’ve lived in Taiwan since 2004. Why I moved here and why I’m still here isn’t a very interesting story unless you’re me. Suffice to say that my original plan was be here for a year. In May I had my nine year anniversary.

I’m not a blogger so I wasn’t sure what I should write about for this entry. I thought of talking about the horror genre in Asia but the deadline for this blog snuck up on me. I’ll do that next time around because it’s a fun and interesting topic. If you ever want to know about Chinese monsters or myths, I’m the person to ask.

For this entry, I’ll talk about something I observed back when I was teaching English as a second language to little kids. It might not seem like a horror-related topic at first…although teaching 15 screaming three year-olds(!) is plenty terrifying. Just bear with me because I think it’s interesting.

When I was a teacher I always preferred doing adult classes. Some people have a knack for teaching kids but I am not one of them. But in 2009-2010 I was doing a master’s course and I had to study in the evenings. The only choice was to teach in the mornings (which meant kindergarten) or starve. There were times when I thought that the latter option would have been better. Read more…

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By Lexxie.Couper On Jun 7 2013, 7:36 am

President Barack Obama officially proclaimed the month of June 2013 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride month. I think this is bloody brilliant and fantastic and worth making a big song and dance about. I wish the Australian PM would do something equally as significant and important.

Growing up in the country like I did, in a rural town miles and miles away from Sydney, I had little exposure to relationships beyond the traditional. The closest I got to understanding there were men and women with “different” sexual tastes to what I knew to be “normal”  was the character of Mr. Humphries on the sixties British sitcom, Are You Being Served. I am very sad to say that I spent the first fourteen years of my life thinking homosexuality was a punchline in a television show. And then a new teacher started at my high school.

My high school was a typical country one: the majority of the Mathematics teachers were men, the majority of English teachers were women. When Miss T moved to the town and started teacher Maths, my local community was stunned. Miss T was an openly gay woman. She held her partner’s hand in the supermarket. They kissed goodbye out the front of the school in the morning. I saw this every day because I would always be walking into class at this time and I worked at the supermarket where Miss T shopped on Saturdays. Read more…

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