Supporting Friends Friday: Mariella Hunt’s Serialized Novella

25 March 202223 March 2022 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Readers my recall an edition of Supporting Friends Friday dedicated to Mariella Hunt, an Idaho-based author who also dabbles in cute water colors of birds.

Before she started painting birds, Mariella was a writer—a prolific one, at that. I discovered her first through her paintings, through Andrea the Ilustrator’s blog, but have come to appreciate and enjoy her writing as well.

Mariella is a talented non-fiction writer, but her real passion is fiction. She tells me that she is hoping to make a living as a freelance writer, and is currently publishing her novella The Sea Rose via Amazon’s Kindle Vella service.

Kindle Vella allows authors to release stories serially, in short little doses or chapters, much the way much of Charles Dickens’s work was published.

I’ve read the first chapter of The Sea Rose, and it’s good—really good. I am eagerly awaiting the second chapter (which should be available by the time you read this post!).

Supporting Friends Friday: Michael Fahey

18 March 202216 March 2022 The Portly Politico18 Comments

The subject of this week’s Supporting Friends Friday is long overdue for some recognition: writer and mental health carer Michael Fahey.

Regular readers will recognize Michael by one or two different names: either 39 Pontiac Dream or Always a Kid for Today. He’s a frequent commenter on this blog, and an increasingly frequent contributor.

Michael also writes extensively at the British conservative blog The Conservative Woman (TCW for short). That blog is a bit more focused on politics, with an overwhelming focus, at least in recent years, on The Virus. His writing there is quite good, and it’s not all politics and highway codes that he writes about: he wrote a great piece about the appeal of what in America would think of as Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.

Supporting Friends Friday: Son of Sonnet’s Poetry Community

11 March 202210 March 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet has some exciting news: this Monday, 14 March 2022, he is launching his new Locals page at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/.

Locals is a bit like SubscribeStar, but it’s more robust in terms of features, and the focus is on building up a sense of community between subscribers and the content creator. SubscribeStar allows comments, for example, but Locals has built-in incentives to encourage more engagement, such as certain users gaining additional posting privileges and the like.

Son is going full-in with Locals, hoping to build up a community of supporters who appreciate good poetry and the culture-renewing possibilities it offers (you can read all about his mission on his “About” page; appropriately, it’s presented in the form of a poem!).

Son is setting his sights high, as he should: he’s kicking off his foray into Locals with a special promotion he’s dubbed Race to 1000K.

Supporting Friends Friday: The Sandwhich Press

25 February 202226 February 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

As I’m working on Péchés d’âge moyen, my collection of short piano miniatures, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize the influence of Telegram user Goth Kilts. She has been a huge source of encouragement as I begin dabbling in composing again, and a friendly sounding board for some of my musical ideas.

Kilts is herself quite a prolific commentator through her excellent Telegram page, The Sandwhich Press (and, yes, it’s spelled with the extra “h,” although the URL for her page spells “sandwich” the normal way). It boasts over 500 subscribers, all of them richly deserved.

As such, I wanted to dedicate today’s edition of Supporting Friends Friday to The Sandwhich Press, and the insightful, humorous, and Goth-inflected TradCath [she’s actually Coptic Christian—oops!] commentary of Goth Kilts.

Supporting Friends Friday: Liptak’s Latest Story

18 February 202216 February 2022 The Portly Politico10 Comments

My good friend and former colleague H.L. Liptak has another published story out, this one at Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine. The story is called “That Rains May Come,” and is a moving fairy tale about a young woman, Elizabeta, struggling to sustain her mother, her farm, and her pigs during a brutal, unrelenting drought.

Supporting Friends Friday: The Birds of Mariella Hunt

11 February 20229 February 2022 The Portly Politico4 Comments

As I’ve noted many times before, one of the joys of blogging is discovering other writers’ work. As I’ve steered this blog in an increasingly arts-and-culture-focused direction, I’ve stumbled upon some excellent creators of all stripes—writers, musicians, illustrators, poets, etc. What I’m beginning to realize is that we’re all part of a wider network (I mean, besides the Internet), and the connections were just there waiting to be made.

At least, it feels like that sometime. That’s certainly how it feels with the subject of this week’s Support Friends Friday, the talented artist Mariella Hunt.

Supporting Friends Friday: Frederick Ingram’s “Yesterday’s Weather”

28 January 202227 January 2022 The Portly Politico18 Comments

My good friend and fellow musician Frederick Ingram released a hot new LP (really a “double EP”), Initial Exposure, back in December. It’s a great album, and I’m going to review it soon(ish).

But today, I wanted to look back at one of his older songs, from Frederick’s Elements. This single/EP has always held a warm place in my heart. I remember playing some Christmastime gigs with Frederick when he released this little recording, and I still find it enjoyable.

It’s not just nostalgia for younger, slimmer days and more musically ambitious times. It’s a good recording. The lead-off single, “Carolina Sands,” is a highly listenable song about the beauty of South Carolina. But for all of its radio-friendly qualities, I find it is now my least favorite track on the release (which, to be clear, does not mean it is a bad song—it’s very good!).

That distinction likely goes to “Yesterday’s Weather.” The track features Frederick’s characteristically enigmatic songwriting and ability to craft hypnotic grooves against naturalistic metaphors.

It’s a song about lost love, all framed in terms of hot (or cold?) fronts and currents:

I highly recommend listening with good headphones; it really captures the sonic subtleties of the piece, as well as the droning, persistent bass line.

Supporting Friends Friday: Andrea the Illustrator

21 January 202217 January 2022 The Portly Politico18 Comments

As I’ve surely mentioned elsewhere, one of the joys of blogging is the opportunity to discover the work of other bloggers. There are a lot of blogs out there, and in the few years I’ve been writing daily, I’ve been fortunate to stumble upon some real gems.

One particularly adorable gem is children’s book illustrator and writer Andrea Benko‘s blog, Andrea, Children’s Book Illustrator. She very smartly obtained the URL “edoodless.wordpress.com” (yes, there is a second “S” in the URL; some scoundrel took “edoodles.wordpress.com” and is doing nothing with it), and that’s what she does: doodles.

Supporting Friends Friday: H.L. Liptak’s “Just Another Slow Day at the Diner”

14 January 202212 January 2022 The Portly Politico30 Comments

Regular readers know I love short stories, and dedicate an entire week in April to reviewing them. I love them even more when my friends write them—and receive rewards for doing so!

My former colleague and current friend Helen Liptak has done just that, taking runner-up in a recent short story contest for Funny Pearls, a British humo(u)r website dedicated to publishing women writers. She won the prize (and, as she told me, some pounds) for her story “Just Another Slow Day at the Diner.”

TBT: Supporting Friends Friday: Audre Myers

6 January 20225 January 2022 The Portly Politico45 Comments

A little Welsh birdie told me that today our dear Audre Myers is turning twenty-nine for the forty-first time. Therefore, in lieu of my originally planned TBT—which will appear next Thursday—I’ve done what any decent blogger would do and hastily and have revived this classic post about Audre, one of the most popular posts of 2021.

As far as I can tell, this will be the first edition of Supporting Friends Friday to enjoy the TBT treatment. Who more fitting to receive such a dubious honor than Audre? Audre’s been a constant source of encouragement, amusement, and inspiration, and is one of those folks who keeps me writing.

So, before I get overly mushy, here is 27 August 2021’s “Supporting Friends Friday: Audre Myers“:

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