HorrorAddicts.net Press Presents: Dark Divinations edited by Naching T. Kassa. Book Trailer:
https://youtu.be/ilQ-BfW6BRs It’s the height of Queen Victoria’s rule. Fog swirls in the gas-lit streets, while in the parlor, hands are linked. Pale and expectant faces gaze upon a woman, her eyes closed and shoulders slumped. The medium speaks, her tone hollow and inhuman. The seance has begun. Join us as we explore fourteen frightening tales of Victorian horror, each centered around a method of divination. Can the reading of tea leaves influence the future? Can dreams keep a soldier from death in the Crimea? Can a pocket watch foretell a deadly family curse? From entrail reading and fortune-telling machines to prophetic spiders and voodoo spells, sometimes the future is better left unknown. Choose your fate. Choose your DARK DIVINATION. What follows below is an excerpt from my story “The Bell.”
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In a post last year explaining music publishing, I weighed the pros and cons of having a publishing administrator collect your mechanical and performance royalties. Music distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore offer this feature, but there are also dedicated publishing administrators such as SongTrust. I decided I would conduct a limited experiment to determine if it was worth it. Now I have the results of that experiment. Continue reading →
The home Prince once owned in Toronto still bears the imprint of his personality. This partly reflects Prince’s decorating tastes, but undoubtedly the house attracted him in the first place because of its design. Thematically suffused with circles and curves, the building gives the impression that Prince had the house built specifically for him. But, in fact, the house was built long before Prince even dreamed of owning property in Toronto. Half-moon bay windows jut out from the facade. A circular transom window perches above the entry door, where the ceiling arches over a rose compass that decorates the marble floor. A staircase spirals down to the lower level. Curved walls grace the master bedroom, entered through an arched doorway. A musical flow permeates the structure, like notes cascading down a waterfall. 
Sitcoms do not often use musical humor. “I Love Lucy,” by contrast, represents a high watermark of such humor. The reason? The show’s premise involves a bandleader and his bumbling wife who strives to get into show business. The combination of Lucille Ball’s comedic timing, the writing, and the chemistry between the four primary actors delivered iconic episodes that remain widely watched over half a century after they first aired. Often, the comedy originates in the contrast between what is going on musically and what is going on visually. Here is an overview of the episodes that used musical humor. While there are more episodes than this in which humor occurs during musical numbers (such as the episode where Ricky learns Lucy is pregnant while serenading the audience), I’ve focused on those episodes where music is used specifically for humorous effect.