Good news! Aphrodite’s Cleft has been accepted by Cauldron Anthology, a literary journal about embracing the wild feminine, for their twelfth issue with the theme:  Whore. To quote from the Cauldron Anthology website: “[A]ll about what it’s like to be a whore, a being that experiences pleasure and how those things are good. Whore has a gendered meaning but we want to include any definition of this word in our issue. We want this issue to be gender-positive and sex positive. And so without further ado the three mythological characters we’re working with this issue are: The Whore of Babylon, Salome and Aphrodite.”

As you probably guessed from the title, my story pertains to the last of the three female archetypes and recounts another adventure of McCrae Spenser, a young Scottish gentleman  on his Grand Tour of Europe in the early 19th Century with a curious history of mishaps and falling into tight corners, all largely due to yours truly. Another Spenser story, An Etruscan Tomb, appeared last year in issue no. 24 of Tigershark, a UK magazine. In this new story, acting on a dare from a Orthodox priest, Spenser spends the night on the deserted beach of a small island where Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, is rumored to manifest herself as a towering column of sea spray. You can learn the juicy details when the new anthology’s out, which I’ll announce as soon as it happens.

A big shout out and much thanks to the staff of Cauldron Anthology for seeing the merit in this story. It’s a real treat to get published in a venue like this.

http://cauldronanthology.weebly.com/

Coffin Bell Journal, the quarterly online journal of dark literature that recently featured my crime/horror short story, Trick Roller, has posted an interview with me online in which I discuss my writing career, my views on how to go about writing,  suggestions for novices, and writers that I admire among other topics. My sincere thanks to Editor-in-Chief Tamara Burross Grisanti and Associate Editor Sarah Saint for taking an interest and providing me with this opportunity. If you’re interested in reading the interview, please click the link below:

https://coffinbell.com/interview-with-mark-mellon/

As promised, my short story about plutocrats run amuck, The Yacht As Big As Manhattan, is now up at Tall Tale TV, both in podcast and print format. A big kudos to Chris Herron for a high quality, very professional presentation and reading. This got my Monday off to a terrific start.  It’s available on YouTube, Facebook, in MP3 podcast, and directly from the TTV website. Please give the yarn a listen or read, whatever is most convenient. Learn of the mysterious Arkadin family’s dysfunctional adventures aboard a ship the size of old Peter Von Stuyvesant’s island!

Website

http://talltaletv.com/the-yacht-as-big-as-manhattan/

YouTube

https://youtu.be/nKRA7m6IsQY

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/TallTaleTV/posts/1955894294534500

MP3

https://pinecast.com/listen/ffc12c55-d04a-43e7-9207-0172712817b8.mp3

This is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in years, a true screwball comedy for the early 21st century about two slackers who break into vacation homes in the Catskills and ransack them. Doomsdays plays like a Hope & Crosby Road picture only with sociopathic criminals as the rascally ne’er-do-wells who charm their way into your heart. To carry the Road analogy further, the straight Crosby role is  played by Dirty Fred (Justin Rice), a wisecracking, booze guzzling pickup artist with the manner and appearance of an extremely scruffy grad student, and the Hope role by Bruho (Leo Fitzpatrick) who looks and acts like an escapee from an asylum for the criminally insane, a deeply antisocial personality with a penchant for slashing tires and trashing cars (all for a very altruistic reason) and a hidden kink that plays an important part in the plot.

The dynamic between these two alone provokes steady entertainment as they drift from one empty resort home to another. They break in, get caught yet talk their way out of it, and trash every place they visit, making sure to drink all the decent alcohol and carry off any good drugs they find. The action kicks up further when an acolyte joins, Jaidon, a kid they find passed out after a riotous party who follows them, intrigued by their footloose, glamorous lifestyle. Brian Charles Johnson gets big yuks from the role, consummately playing a chubby putz with a burning desire for a life of action and danger.

The group is completed by Reyna (Laura Campbell), a bright, lively young woman who Dirty Fred chats up at a party (that he crashed, natch). Reyna throws over her conventional lifestyle and joins the wild and groovy housebreaking scene. She quickly proves more adept than the men, effortlessly talking their way out of being caught. This character adds sexual tension to the plot with shifting relationships between Reyna, Dirty Fred, and the initially hostile Bruho. The film did drag a bit during the last half hour as the  relationships played themselves out, yet this did lead to a satisfying conclusion I won’t give away. The lull in the last third is easily forgiven, given the frantic pace of the first two thirds as the gags fly hot and heavy.

There is a lot of really funny dialogue, most voiced by Dirty Fred, with his perpetually sardonic, unflappable, been there, done that manner. There are so many jokes, the film warrants a second viewing to catch stuff you missed the first time. I found this film amusing for personal reasons since I’ve vacationed in upstate New York a lot (a really beautiful part of the country), but Doomsdays should appeal to just about anyone, so long as they like their humor black.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395146/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

https://www.amazon.com/Doomsdays-Leo-Fitzpatrick/dp/B011MN94CS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=doomsdays&qid=1597897530&sr=8-1