Author of the suspenseful, paranormal romances in my Stranger Creatures series. Also writing poetry, science fiction, and fiction. Sharing info about new book releases by different authors, poems, contests, and more
could help save the world which was gasping for air
and grasping for another chance
The animals that survived
all hid in the shadows and pulled knives
when we tried to outsmart them
And not many things grow in the soil
where our hatred exploded
Factories followed the lead scientist’s careful specifications
to produce quiet, profit-sized, edible squares
that don’t sleep or eat or bleed
Manufactured meat slabs would never dream
of breaking free
They were infused with extra proteins
and something else, it seemed
The manufactured meat
had secret teeth that sank venom
into our veins
and drained away the people
they were meant to feed
Save the world
Save the animals
And the perfect meat
infused with secret teeth
found new houses
and ate and slept and dreamed
but they never once
made the earth bleed
Image description – photograph is of the skeletal frame and empty inside of a burned-down house
I wrote this poem after reading that scientists have found a way to grow meat in a lab from stem cells of animals. This meat production method sounds like it could be a good idea. Maybe it’s a good idea. Maybe nothing will go wrong, but so many things could. What if the manufactured meat wasn’t soulless cubes that would just willingly allow themselves to be consumed?
Are you suffering from the winter doldrums? I’ve discovered the cure at N. N. Light’s Book Heaven Shake Off Winter Doldrums Book Festival. 35 books featured plus a chance to win a $35 Amazon gift card. The book festival runs from March 1st through March 31st, 2024.
(image description – picture is of a bird on a snowy branch. Text in picture says Shake off Winter Doldrums. Winter got you down? We’ve got a cure for that!)
I’m thrilled to be a part of this event. My spicy paranormal romance novel, Coyote’s Vow, will be featured on March 13, 2024. Wait until you read my cure for winter doldrums. You won’t want to miss it.
Bookmark this bookish get-together and tell your friends:
(Image description – photo has text written at the top that says A Shake Off the Winter Doldrums Pick. Beneath that text is a bird in the snow. Further down is an image of the book cover for my spicy paranormal romance novel, Coyote’s Vow. The cover is a smoky cerulean blue colored forest. A coyote stands on the forest floor and a couple is embracing against a backdrop of the moon and trees.)
Eyes on the screen or the algorithmic bitch will catch me
Slacking
Blinking
Questioning the meaning
Snow is falling outside
Can’t dream inside the plastic terrarium
Not until the fifteen-minute break I never get to take
Sticky film of recycled office air
clings to my skin
until everything tastes like microwavable dinners
Occasional vacations
let the hemorrhage of my discontent
bleed
When my time is up
I pack the wounds with fiberglass and return
to my capsule of misery
dreading and hoping for the day
my blood and fire are fully replaced
by autopilot strings
that type my reports and guide me from meeting to meeting
And the heartbeat of the world outside
becomes a minor inconvenience
Image description – image is a photo of a snow-covered pine tree. The branches are low due to the weight of the snow and hang down in such a way that they create a pathway between the hanging branches and the other trees standing at the edge of the forested area.
About the poem (a small rant):
I looked outside the other day and saw snow falling. My first instinct was to ignore it. Before becoming a writer, I worked at different office jobs as well as in sales and retail. The way companies and managers treated their employees as resources to be used up and discarded motivated me to seek a master’s degree in business management. I wanted to know how to explain to people creating the rules that there was a better way. In my naivete, I hadn’t yet realized that the system is the way it is because laws have favored corporations instead of people. Even now, years later, although I create my own schedule, the muscle memory of being unable to rest for a moment, to take a break, to breathe, to step back and think, has my first instinct being to keep working, keep going, keep moving even when it’s not productive or when the world outside has moments to offer more important than whatever project I’m working on.
And if the requirement of long working hours without enough staff isn’t bad enough, software designers have created some dystopian as hell products to further micromanage employees. Productivity software and worker surveillance equipment are tools meant to be used to force already exhausted employees to push themselves to the brink of burnout, maybe even past, in order to achieve the unrealistic expectations set by company shareholders and managers who will never be expected to work under such heinous conditions. Legislators in the US have been funded heavily by corporations and as a result, tend to pass laws that favors corporate entities rather than forcing employers to pay employees a living wage or make employee health, safety, and well-being a priority. Companies are allowed to overwork and underpay their staff in the guise of at-will employment laws. Workers are breaking under the weight of laws that don’t benefit them and those in power push the myth that success will come to those who grind harder, and that magical bootstraps of determination will pull us all up the corporate ladder into a lifestyle of solvency and comfort, if we just put in more effort and give our jobs everything we have and then some.
Every decade, working conditions degrade further down the rabbit hole full of spiders and jagged rocks. Politicians often like to push the narrative that we’re living the theoretical dream of a completely free-market economy and that the whole system is designed to stimulate competition and keep the prices on goods and services low. Nah, the system has been designed to keep people compliant and too tired and broke to fight.
Laws need changing so people can have time to do more than work, sleep a couple hours, rinse, and repeat. We should all be able to live, rather than hanging on for dear life to make it to the next few vacation days, or worse, hanging on for dear life just to make rent. Laws need changing so employers can’t treat people like expendable commodities. In the meantime, may we all find ways to slow the productivity and to strip the grease from the gears of the machine that eats us while it feeds us.
I have a super short horror story entitled Dinner for my Sisters in the new anthology Flash of the Dead: Requiem. My story begins as evening descends on Meadow Street in Richmond, Virginia.
If you’re looking for some chilling, super short stories, you can read Dinner for my Sisters, along with several other terrifying tales, in Wicked Shadows Press’ anthology, Flash of the Dead: Requiem.
The Magic of Us – a Moms Who Write poetry anthology, is now available!
The Magic of Us is the fourth book in the Of Us series. I am excited to have two poems, (The Highway and Steel Meets the Rushing River), in this anthology full of beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting, and magical poems.
The Moms Who Write group will be donating 100% of the book proceeds to support families impacted by the Maui fires.
“Founded in 2016 by a group of doulas, midwives, and other passionate birth advocates, The Pacific Birth Collective is an organization devoted to educating and advocating for birth and wellness choices across the Hawaiian islands. They support those in the island community through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Right now, PBC is run entirely by volunteers, though they are in the process of becoming a non-profit.” PBC has done a great deal of relief work for those impacted by the Maui fires, and Moms Who Write wants to support them in that effort. When you purchase The Magic of Us, 100% of the book proceeds go to the PBC’s Maui fire relief work. If you would like to make a larger donation, you can find the information on how to do so HERE.
who lived inside rooms/tombs of concrete and steel
He could have used weapons to gain compliance, needlessly
and society wouldn’t have blinked
Nobody would have said a word
But he kept his weapons holstered
and kept his voice kind because
marking time behind iron bars
doesn’t make a person not a person
Fast forward to what he knew already
Undeniable research compiles, burgeoning behind
politicians’ closed doors
The suppressed data shows clearly
that jails don’t always, or even overwhelmingly
house the guilty
There is justice for all who can afford it
especially for those who fit the approved majority demographic
But even when guilt is the reason,
cruelty by those with all the power
is still condoned or ignored
Just a few keep their weapons holstered
and keep their voices kind
and it’s those few I try to remember
in this world where the greed-infested part of humanity
reigns over all that they survey
There are a handful of fireflies in the void
Not enough but enough
to cut through the darkness
This poem, rant, essay, whatever it is, is about how, even though raising a hand or voice or leverage against the defenseless might not have consequences for those in power, there are those who remain a light in the darkness. It’s those fireflies in the night we need to follow and to teach our children to be and become until the sky is smokeless fire and the judges and politicians have no choice but to listen and enforce the laws that protect those who need protecting.
Image Description: a large Jack O’Lantern with slugs crawling in and out of its face.
This macabre short poem was inspired by a previous Halloween’s Jack O’Lantern that got invaded by hungry slugs. I’ve been working on some dystopian and horror short stories and flash fiction lately. The flash fiction is the hardest challenge for me. Trying to create a whole story in a thousand words or less has caused me to fill many pages of my composition notebook with beginnings that have no end because I couldn’t quite figure out how to set the world without going into so much detail. Poetry comes as easy to me as breathing. The whole poem doesn’t magically come out of my head completed, but I often have an image or a story in my mind’s eye, and I work backwards to say what I want to say without describing the message in terms that are too obvious and concrete.
Check out Kate Hill’s Halloween giveaway contest! Books featuring vampires, ghosts, shapeshifters, and other strange and exciting creatures are featured all October long on Kate Hill’s Halloween Page. Bear’s Dream (book 1 in my Haven Forest Resort series) will be featured on October 21, 2023. Check out the link below to for an excerpt of Bear’s Dream and to read about one of my fun fall traditions.
Two of my poems (Lipstick and Four Pockets) will be featured in the Not Ghosts, but Spirits volume III anthology! This beautiful anthology was edited by Emily Perkovich and published by Querencia Press.
Not Ghosts, but Spirits v. III includes work by women, queer, trans, and nonbinary folx.
Image description: Image is of the Not Ghosts, but Spirits volume III book cover which features the top of a person’s head. The individual has long magenta hair, pretty false eyelashes, and lovely rainbow eyeshadow.
Christina Lynn Lambert 