-
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s Bookworm Sez: Books for a Pre-Pride Celebration by various authors
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm SezBooks for a Pre-Pride Celebration by various authors
c.2026, various publishers
$19.99 – $39.95 various page countsYou’re all geared up.
You’ve got your best parade-walking shoes, your coolest tee, your most-comfortable shorts, and a rainbow flag to carry. You’re set for Pride, but before you go, try one of these great new books about LGBTQ life and history…
After the parade, where will you end up? A place to talk your experience over, to re-hash things for the next parade? Then you may need “The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces” by Rachel Karp (Beacon Press, $29.95).
Lesbian bars, says Karp, are more than just places to drink. They’re also places to find community, and to organize. For many, she says, they are “sanctuaries,” as they have been for at least a century, and this book introduces you to some of the people who run the establishments, the things they do to support their patrons, and the hundred-year-plus bravery that it took to own, run, and enter a lesbian bar.
If you had to name a gay icon, there are probably quite a few who come to mind. So read “Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge” by Harvey Brownstone (ECW Press, $21.95) and add another name to your list.
This memoir, written by Canada’s first openly gay judge, takes readers from Brownstone’s childhood to his life as a lawyer, then to his work within the justice system in Ontario, and beyond, to his current career. This is a surprising, informative book that gives you an idea what gay life is like, north of our uppermost borders, then and now.
-
True Crime Tuesdays – A Fearsome Fiction Podcast Feature: The Strange Death of Rey Rivera
On the evening of May 16, 2006, aspiring screenwriter Rey Rivera received a brief phone call, said “oh,” and ran out of his Baltimore home. He was 32 years old, newly married, and by every account a happy man on the verge of the life he’d always wanted. Eight days later, his body was found inside a locked, abandoned conference room at the historic Belvedere Hotel — beneath a hole in the ceiling that should have been impossible to make from above.
The physics didn’t add up. The injuries didn’t match. The detective assigned to the case said the scene looked staged and was pulled off it three weeks later. And taped to the back of Rey’s computer at home was a note — typed in tiny font, folded into a strange shape, addressed to “brothers and sisters” — that opened with a Masonic phrase, referenced volcanoes and secret societies and Stanley Kubrick, and was never satisfactorily explained by anyone.
This week on True Crime Tuesdays, we go to Baltimore, to a fourteen-story hotel, and to one of the genuinely strangest unsolved deaths of the past twenty years. No resolution. No clean answers. Just a hole in a roof, a note that reads like a riddle, and a case the medical examiner still considers open.
-
Brenda Williams Empowers Girls with ‘Worthy and Wonderful: A Celebration of Girls Who Matter’
What a breath of fresh air! And a blast from the past.
I met Brenda Williams at the Flemington Book Festival on Memorial Day and it turns out we both worked at Sesame Street (Children’s Television Workshop at the time) in the early-mid 1990s. Wow! what a great energy, and so very needed in these times of conformity, diminishment and, yes, mediocrity. Girls need to be reminded now more than ever that they matter, they’re beautiful, and they can accomplish their dreams.
A children’s book that celebrates confidence, self love, and the bright potential inside every girl.
This uplifting book follows four young friends who remind each other of their worth and inspire children to speak kindly to themselves, explore their dreams, and grow with courage. Filled with heart and intention, Worthy and Wonderful invites families to create moments of connection and confidence building that last far beyond the final page.
Brenda Williams is a writer, speaker, and advocate devoted to empowering young girls to see their beauty, believe in their dreams, and know they matter. Through her Worthy & Wonderful series, she celebrates the brilliance, strength, and limitless potential of Black and brown girls everywhere. Worthy & Wonderful: A Celebration of Girls Who Matter is the first book in this inspiring series.
Brenda is also the President & CEO of BW Empowerment LLC, a leadership and empowerment company that partners with executives and emerging leaders to unlock new possibilities, lead with purpose, and create lasting impact. Her work reflects the same mission as her books, helping people rise with courage, clarity, and confidence.
Inspired by her four granddaughters, Kaehla, Demi, Dala, and Dior, Brenda writes to spark confidence, kindness, and pride in every reader. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with family, listening to music, and spreading light, love, and hope wherever she goes.
-
A Dose of Positive News with Cora Berke: Harvey Milk Day
Cora Berke Cora Berke contributes positive vibes weekly to help us keep our perspective. – Mark
News on the Positive Side- by Cora Berke
Harvey Milk Day“Hope will never be silent.”- Harvey Milk
In 1977, 47-year-old Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was the first openly gay person to win a public election in the State of California.
Born and raised in New York, Milk moved to the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco with his partner in 1972. The neighborhood was one of the first recognized gay neighborhoods in the country at that time.
Together with his partner Scott Smith, Milk opened a camera store which served as a gathering for his activism in gay rights. Before winning the election in 1977, he campaigned for equal LGBTQ+ rights in jobs, housing and healthcare and became a known activist. After being sworn in as a member of the Board of Supervisors, Milk sponsored an ordinance to prevent discrimination in employment and housing for the community and voted against a proposition banning gay teachers in the public schools.
Tragically, his career ended only eleven months later, when he was assassinated in his office along with then San Francisco mayor, George Moscone. Milk had a premonition he would be killed one day and left a taped message saying, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
-
Weekly Fun Fact: Your Garden Is Listening
Did you know …
Earthworms are gardening gold. A single acre of healthy soil can contain more than a million earthworms, each one aerating the ground and turning organic matter into nutrients as it moves.
Plants can hear themselves being eaten. Research has shown that plants respond to the sound of caterpillars chewing on their leaves by producing more defensive chemicals — even when the chewing sound is just a recording.
The oldest potted plant in the world is over 240 years old. A Eastern Cape cycad has been living in a pot at Kew Gardens in London since 1775.
Talking to your plants actually helps. The Royal Horticultural Society ran a study and found that plants grow faster when spoken to — and that women’s voices produced slightly better results than men’s. No one is entirely sure why.
Carrots were originally purple. The orange carrot we know today was developed by Dutch growers in the 17th century, reportedly as a tribute to the Dutch Royal House of Orange. Before that, carrots came in purple, white, and yellow.
-
Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Night Flight to Murder Town – A Marshall James Thriller (Chapters 31 – 33)
Night Flight to Murder Town — Chapters 31, 32 & 33
Marshall is in full survival mode. With a murdered man and a ransacked apartment behind him, he recruits his unlikely new ally Colin for a reconnaissance mission to Trent Stoffer’s Upper East Side building. What they find — or rather, don’t find — turns everything upside down. The apartment is spotless, the bedroom pristine, and Trent, according to a very helpful man named Dennis, is alive and well in Hong Kong. The body is gone, the evidence is gone, and Marshall is left looking like a man who has lost his grip on reality.
Meanwhile, in a complete change of pace, Marshall and Boo enjoy a sun-drenched afternoon in New Hope, Pennsylvania — ice cream, Main Street, and the Bucks County Playhouse — before Boo reveals the dark history of Passion House, the B&B where they’re staying. A housekeeper. A famous writer. A canal. And a locked storage room upstairs that no one talks about.
Back in 1992 New York, the mystery deepens. Dennis’s too-smooth performance and the suspiciously immaculate crime scene tell Marshall exactly one thing: everyone is in on it. The doorman, the super, and whoever cleaned up that bedroom with professional efficiency. The only lead left is a computer disk Trent slipped him — and finding a computer to read it on.
-
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
Narration provided by WondervoxShe killed her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule — then wrote a children’s book about grief. On May 13, 2026, the same day that would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday, a Utah judge sentenced Kouri Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In this episode of True Crime Tuesdays, Mark McNease walks you through one of the most chilling cases in recent memory — a tale of debt, deception, a secret affair, and a calculated murder hiding in plain sight behind the cover of a children’s book. From the first failed attempt on Valentine’s Day to the fatal Moscow Mule, from the internet searches about lethal doses to the jury that deliberated less than three hours — this is a story that is almost too dark to be believed.
True Crime Tuesdays is a Fearsome Fiction feature. New episodes every Tuesday.
-
New Your Write Path Promotional Video
-
The Twist Podcast 328: Lincoln Memorial Kiddie Pool, Praise for Penzeys, and What Bugs Us This Week
On further reflection, this week Mark and Rick do cannonballs into Trump’s giant kiddie pool, sing the praises of Penzeys super-progressive spice empire, and sound off on what bugs us this week.
-
New Workshop Scheduled: A Thematic Journaling Workshop for Gay Men 60+ (June 24)
A Thematic Journaling Workshop for Gay Men 60+
Here’s something people don’t often mention about getting older: the more life we’ve lived, the more interesting we become.
The places we’ve lived, the people we’ve loved, the versions of yourselves we’ve tried on and kept or discarded. It’s all there in the tapestry of our lives.
This journaling workshop is a place for rediscovery through journaling. No experience required, no literary ambitions necessary. Just a willingness to follow some simple good prompt, and see what comes out when we explore ourselves.
We’ll write together, share if we feel like it, and leave with more pages than we arrived with.
What to expect: A warm, low-pressure Zoom session with short writing exercises, optional sharing, and a take-home prompt to keep the momentum going.
Who it’s for: Gay men 60 and older — whether you’ve never kept a journal or you used to and stopped.
Led by Mark McNease, certified Guided Autobiography Instructor and author of fifteen novels, who believes everyone in the room has a story worth writing.
