Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

   (Prince George, BC, Canada: Dimensionfold Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-998395-21-7 In my back cover blurb for this book, I stated, “Ken Goudsward, who is steadily earning a place among the most respected researchers offering heavily researched, technology-based reinterpretations of ancient history, offers a salient, sensible set of explanations for the who, when, why, and how of one of Earth’s most enduring mysteries—the pyramids. From the wrongly mundane, to the genuinely compelling, to the recently ridiculous, Goudsward takes on prior theories and offers us solid, scholarly insights and eye-opening new hypotheses.” Having read this book a second time, I stand by this statement all the more. In 107 succinct, easy to understand pages, while providing abundant photos, diagrams of the interiors of several pyramids, and technical charts, Goudsward takes us through myriad mistaken information concerning pyramids around the world and offers his assessment of a handful of m...

  (New York: Shivering Pond Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9781088146774 It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed E. Denise Billups’s Civil War/modern era ghost story Tainted Harvest . Since that time, the author has written two more books in the series and fourteen overall. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to read and review her latest. Similar to Tainted Harvest , this book, Beneath Beauford Grove , is also a ghost story, although with significant additional paranormal and horror elements. It takes place in multiple timelines in three locations—Haiti (not long after the slave rebellion that gave Saint-Domingue its independence from France and a new name), the fictional Beauford Grove in Alabama (in the 1800s and forward to the present), and modern-day Boston. It’s in Boston that the book opens, where the protagonist, Evangeline (Eva), is a hematologist struggling with a desperate pediatric case that calls for equally desperate decisions. The story un...

 (St. Louis, MO: Reedy Press, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-681065823 When considering the most well-known and impactful writers and photographers who chronicle Route 66—Jim Hinckley, Michael Wallis, Joe Sonderman, and Chery Eichar Jett, all of whom I have met and/or presented with—one must include Jim Ross and Shellee Graham. My introduction to the work of this husband–wife super-duo, about 18 months ago, happened as I was preparing a series of presentations on what I call “Supernatural 66.” As part of my research, I read their 2017 Secret Route 66: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure . Two months ago, I was privileged to do a presentation about/as Cyrus Avery, “Father of the Mother Road,” at AAA RoadFest in Tulsa, where Jim and Shellee were also presenting and debuting Route 66: The First 100 Years . I was lucky enough to have a close friend gift me the book just before their presentation, which I very much enjoyed. Afterward, they were nice enough to personalize and autog...

  (Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-950750-58-0 For the past eight years, I have been inspired, challenged, and moved by the novels of Jungian analyst Sharon Heath. In February 2017, I was introduced to her most fascinating, provocative character, the neurodivergent, brilliant physicist Fleur Robins, who reminds me so much of my daughter, who was 18 at the time and who turned 26 today. Fleur has now appeared in four books, all of which I have read and reviewed, and I am looking forward to her further (cosmic) adventures. I have also read and reviewed a stand-alone novel from 2019 called Chasing Eve . In many ways, the clusters of characters (a mix of blood and chosen family) in Heath’s beautifully rendered, emotionally and socially complex novels, are akin to those in the films of Wes Anderson— Royal Tennenbaums most prevalently, especially in terms of invisible threads . As I have mentioned in previous reviews, there is such a broad spectrum ...

 (Dimensionfold Publishing, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-998395-15-6 Over the past several years, Dimensionfold Publishing has built a solid reputation for scholarly works that analyze ancient texts, myths, cultures, and the Bible from an array of eye-opening, alternative-narrative lenses. With a stable of authors that includes Rev. Michael Carter, Wallace Wagner Jr., and Ken Goudsward, Dimensionfold gives readers plenty to think about, girded by painstaking textual and contextual analysis and well-developed theories founded on years of scholarship. If you’re daunted by the idea of considering Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian texts and the most challenging passages of the Bible through the lens of advanced civilizations and technology (gods and magic), but are interested in ancient history, religion, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Tyrone Ellington’s Journey Through the Origins of History is an excellent place to start. The use of journey here is twofold—meaning both...

 (Self-published, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-387-73383-5 A novel is a cannon, a short story is a rifle . —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition” Short story writing is no easy task. I don’t want to overwhelm this review with quotes, but writing short stories is a bit like what Mark Twain famously said in a letter: “I apologize for such a long letter—I didn't have time to write a short one.” Unity of action—another contribution from Poe—is key. A singular focus, be it thematic, place-based, or on the psychology and actions of a single character, drives the narrative, giving it the power and precision of the rifle rather than the broad field of play of the cannon. I have written 19 books, more than 20 plays, thousands of poems, and eight screenplays, yet I have only written four short stories. Those writers who made it their stock in trade—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, O Henry, Ambrose Bierce, and of course, Edgar Allan Poe—have my utter admiration. Many (many) of the...