Link to a beautiful short story--Road of Souls--by PJ Curtis

I read a beautiful short story last night by the Irish writer and broadcaster PJ Curtis, called Road of Souls. It was printed in the latest book I'm reading, entitled Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day by Phil Cousineau (https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Midnight-Oil-Illuminating-Journey/dp/1936740737). In this book, the short story is entitled The Last Prince of Thomond (not Road of Souls); it was apparently first printed in a book entitled The Music of Ghosts. I went online to try to find the short story printed for itself alone so I could share it with  you here, and found it at the Clare County Library in Ireland. Unfortunately I cannot print the entire story here because it would be copyright infringement. But I can include a link to the webpage with the story on the Clare County Library website:

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/literature/ncww/road_of_souls.htm

My third short story posted on WriteOn by Kindle

I just published my third short story on WriteOn by Kindle, entitled Before My Eyes. This is a short description of what it is about:

Mike and Miriam have been married for forty years. Miriam, who has resigned herself to the reality that her marriage is mediocre at best, has resolved to live her life in a positive way and to carry on with the things she enjoys. Mike for his part has never really had the time to reflect on his life together with Miriam. One autumn day, he finds that he has the time, and he promises himself that he will spend the rest of his days making his wife happy. But life is unpredictable at best.

You can find Before My Eyes here: https://writeon.amazon.com/search?headerQuery=paula%20mary%20de%20angelis&ref_=ign_h_tn_sr_ac

Please feel free to provide constructive feedback--that's how we writers improve and progress. 

My second short story--An Unusual Offer--posted on WriteOn by Kindle

My second short story, just posted to WriteOn by Kindle. You may be getting the idea that I'm putting together a collection of short stories. You'd be right. I'm doing just that--a collection that I'm planning to entitle Survivable Losses. I'm on my way..........

http://tinyurl.com/o5sgnav

My first short story--The Kiss--posted on WriteOn by Kindle

I mentioned in my last post that I would be sharing some short stories that I have written, with you. I have chosen to start publishing them on WriteOn by Kindle, since I am both a Kindle fan and a Kindle author (and a fan of Amazon that makes this all possible). You can find the first short story I've posted, entitled The Kiss, here at this link:

http://tinyurl.com/o33sv5b

Enjoy, and if any of you would like to comment, please do so!

Updates on my writing

Those of you who follow this blog know that I am constantly trying to find time to write, whilst employed full-time as a scientist, and after that, busy with running a home. Like most people, I try to find free time in the midst of all the other things that just have to get done. There’s always been something more important than my writing through the years, especially when I was younger, so that I often ended up pushing it aside in order to do something else that seemed more important at the time. During the past four years I’ve written blog posts about prioritizing your soul’s dreams, visions, inner goals, secret goals. I had to carve out time in the evenings, several times a week, to write. Time for my blog, or to create a poem or short story. I’m happy to say that finally, after several years of working and writing in this way, I’ve put together a new collection of poems, called Remnants of the Spirit World, that I sent off today to my colleague and friend Paloma who will work on formatting the book and designing the cover. When her creative work is done, I will be sending it off for publication. I am nearly finished with my collection of short stories, called Survivable Losses; these stories have been tough for me to write, because I’ve had to face up to some of the pain involved in writing them. They are not autobiographical, but some of the themes are, in the sense that I’ve experienced, like many others, betrayal and loss of love, as well as resignation to the things that just happen in life that we are unable to change. Writing about them rips the scabs off the wounds again; but I am glad for the experience of being able to feel pain in order to write about it. And finally, I am nearly finished with my novella, called In the Halls of the Kings, a mini-thriller about a female academic scientist who teams up with another female academic to expose the dealings of a ruthless and potentially fraudulent scientist. This too will hopefully find its way to publication before the end of the year.

I’ve been an avid observer for most of my life, starting when I was about ten years old, when I began to pay attention to what went on in my home and in the homes of relatives and family friends. I became keenly aware of all that was not said, of body language, of what people’s eyes said, and of superficial conversations that masked what was really going on inside. I observed the nice and not-so-nice characters that peopled my life and the life of my family. Recently, I read a quote that appealed to me ‘Be nice to those around you; they may write about you’. Strangely enough, there’s a lot of truth in this one. I don’t write directly about specific people in my life; my works are fiction, but my characters can be modeled on the traits or characteristics of some people I’ve met. I have fewer qualms about using the traits and personalities of the not-so-nice people I know, because their motives and desires are often so crystal clear—power, domination of others, prestige, and greed—often all in one unsavory package.

Here are some quotes to help you when you get stuck on the path of reaching your own goals. Maybe being stuck takes the form of a creative mental block, or procrastination, or lack of self confidence/belief in oneself. I know these quotes have helped me. They’re hanging as magnets on my refrigerator—a gift from Sonja, the niece of one of my closest friends, who visited us in Oslo five years ago. I met Sonja for the first time then, and was immediately taken with her spirit, energy and exuberant personality. She is a go-getter, an adventurer, a life-tackler, and has already achieved much in her thirty odd years here on this earth. In short, she is an inspiration.

• ‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing’. –Georgia O’Keefe
• ‘Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress’. –Paul Gauguin
• ‘The artist goes through states of fullness and emptiness, and that is all there is to the mystery of art’. –Pablo Picasso

An excerpt from Fading Away, a short story I'm writing

........The marriage of her parents Frank and Anna had been marred by the sense of mission that her father felt in regard to keeping his siblings close and in frequent communication. Her father’s siblings had also grown apart like in Rob’s family, but theirs was a bitter and endless drama that eventually became a cold war. It had become his life’s purpose to reunite them, but he never really understood or accepted that he could not achieve this on his own. It would have required enormous good will from the six of them--three brothers: Frank, Eugene, and John, and three sisters: Colette, Maria, and Loretta--to accomplish that. They argued with each other from the early days in her parents’ marriage and prior to their marriage. The pattern was always the same-- argue over trivial things (to others but not to them), then slam the doors shut and close their hearts indefinitely to the very people with whom they had grown up, open up a bit again, perhaps on a whim, and then slam doors shut again for even longer. Eventually the doors slammed shut for good.......

 ........Perhaps they had cared about each other when they were children, or when they were adults and she wasn’t looking or paying so close attention. She remembered them as the creators of so much drama and sorrow in her youth. It colored her memories of growing up, the domestic family dramas, the melodramas, her aunt Colette and her husband Tom arguing at family get-togethers and her aunt locking herself in the bathroom and crying hysterically, or her other uncle, John, who was an alcoholic, who came home from his drinking bouts to his sister Helen, with whom he lived, and immediately started an argument with her to alleviate his fury over the misery that had become his life. He had been jilted at the altar, and Helen always offered up that little tidbit as the explanation for his behavior each time he went on the attack, but in truth, even when Lara was a teenager, she knew that he was sick and that he had trapped himself in alcohol and doomed his life to his dependency. She did not feel sorry for him, although his behavior never really stopped her from wanting to visit her uncle and his sister, until the end, when he lay in bed dying of his disease. She saw him as a person who ruined the few happy times when family had gathered together, and as a person who ruined lives. But hearts are large when you are young, she thought, and you think they will stay large and expand forever, and that they will continue to love and to forgive and to feel and to want, and then one day they don’t do any of those things anymore.........