Stop At The Tavern #4
Listen (3 min) | Announcements, featured notes, recent posts, and this month's reading
Welcome, fellow travelers.
For many, this has been a busy month. April is packed with holidays, spring cleaning, planting, home repairs, and everything that comes with wrapping up the school semester.
In my corner of the world, it also brings a hunger for the outdoors. Some writers live for this time of year when every plant and animal wakes and commands attention.
It’s the perfect time to observe with fresh eyes the trees, streams, and fauna that we take for granted by inviting them into our chosen medium.
Whether you write stories or poetry, whether you paint, draw, sew, photograph, dye, or garden, I hope you’ll make time this season to record the wild in all her fecund terror and her beauty.
Announcements
Starting today, I’m enacting my Substack office hours.
My comments, messages, responses, and Notes (i.e. my interaction with Substack’s social media element) will be limited to an hour a day, Monday-Saturday with a complete break on Sundays.
The exact time will vary daily depending on my schedule, but I’ll usually be on in the evening.
If I don’t respond to you right away, I’ll be sure to do so during my next hour.
Featured Notes
Recent Posts
Spring
Listen (14 min) | Short Story | Magical Realism
Toiling over his homework, Robin grinned, spying the blossoming trees outside tapping hello on his window. Spring burst pink from every branch.
Hello, is this thing on?
You made something, and no one cares. Now what? | Listen (6 min)
When I was a kid, I loved the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown. It’s a 1964 musical that tells the story of the real-life Margaret Brown, a wealthy Colorado woman who survived as a passenger aboard the Titanic.
It Wanders
Listen (2 min) | Short story | Creative Nonfiction/Horror
Shade of evening, darker than night. Snow White’s hag projected on the wall—hunching, hooded, sliding out of corner shadows.
This Month’s Reading – One Sentence Book Reviews
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo, the J.R.R. Tolkien translation
Gawain’s greatest battle isn’t with the Green Knight at the chapel but with all the temptations that lie between Camelot and his destination.
Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well
Bertram is the most unlikable male lead I’ve met in a Shakespearean comedy, but he’s still adored by protagonist Helena who, like most young women, doesn’t know her full worth.
If you’d like to see what I’m reading in real time or you’d like to share what you’re reading, you can follow me on Story Graph under username jjamesreading.
If you’re not on Story Graph, I’d love to hear what you’re reading in the comments section below.
Thank you all for joining me on this stop at the tavern. See you next time.
Painting is Interior of a Tavern with a Blind Fiddler by Hendrik Leys (1815–1869)
I like this idea of having hours. Perhaps I’ll do something like that.