Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

    (2021). ISBN: 978-1-985021730 Carola Schmidt, a pediatric oncology pharmacist and author of several children’s books, including others on cancer, brings hope and passion to all of her works. She has been on the front lines and has used both her expertise in the field (she also writes nonfiction for the scientific mega-publisher Springer) and her big heart to craft stories that inspire confidence and positive action. Bald is Beautiful: A Letter for a Fabulous Girl reinforces the positive feedback and support that everyone needs—most especially youth battling cancer. Since the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, power and identity have been associated with hair. And, as we know from personal experience and film/TV, cancer treatment often leads to hair loss. When the heroine of the story is faced with losing her hair, it is an opportunity, not to mourn loss, but to have a Hat and Scarf Shower to celebrate creativity and self-expression. Many of us have hat and scarf collectio

    (Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press, 2017). ISBN: 978-1-5043-8603-6 Over the past eight months, I have reviewed several books produced in conjunction with a higher energy. Celestial beings, spirit guides, aliens, the Brotherhood, God… they go by different names, depending on the channeler or medium’s worldview and belief system. You’ll notice that what the receiver calls themselves also changes. I am married to an acknowledged and publicly tested psychic medium, so I have a deep interest in this subject. I have studied Esther Hicks/Abraham, Darryl Bashar/Anka, and many others from the lens of my lifelong training in theatre. I study voice, mannerisms, vocabulary, syntax, and gesture. I mention Esther and Darryl because I believe they are true to their word. Many others are easily outed as frauds. Because I believe she has done much more harm than good, I’ll name one—JZ Knight, who professes to be channeling an entity called Ramtha. She isn’t. It’s much harder to make a judgment—to

  (2021). ISBN: 9798677725210 I will be the first to admit, I am not a fan of zombies. I do like Zombieland , got a few laughs out of Return of the Living Dead recently, and enjoyed the third through fifth seasons of The Walking Dead . I was even a lead actor in a remake of White Zombie several years ago, although the Haitian-type zombies are another thing altogether. This is my first review, out of more than 230, to engage with the subject of this unique brand of monster, and I have made a commitment to get to know this subgenre better. I have another zombie book on my to-be-read list, so expect another review on the subject before the end of the year. As to Infection , it is a quick, action-filled read, which operates squarely in the zombie subgenre of horror/adventure, offering plenty of violence, gore, and all the tropes zombie fans love. It lies somewhere between The Walking Dead and Shaun of the Dead , the latter solely because good mates with everyday lives suddenly are fac

   (Night Vision Press, 2020). ISBN: 978-0-578-63344-2 Every so often, a book comes along that requires me to assess just where I am on the healthy skeptic continuum. Being a healthy skeptic is crucial to being a good paranormal investigator and researcher. It is not to be confused with being a cynic —a person for whom no amount of evidence will change their position that we live in a predictable, mechanistic universe where one lives and dies and is forever gone. I’m a mix of Mulder and Scully. I “want to believe” and know “the truth is out there,” but I also know we’re bombarded with false flag ops and disinformation, while some people are just looking for attention, memory is stunningly unreliable when tested, and there are mostly mundane explanations for what is initially termed paranormal or supernatural. I also believe that, one day, as science catches up to experience, there will only be the normal and the natural. We are getting there, slowly but surely. About a decade a

  (2021). ISBN: 979-8723574601 It is a joy when two authors you admire for their positive messaging and high level of craft join forces—especially for a cause as worthwhile as childhood cancer. Carola Schmidt is a pediatric oncology pharmacist and author of several children’s books, two of which are about her Ukrainian grandmother and her experiences leaving Ukraine and coming to American to escape the atrocities being committed by the Russian army, and then returning to Ukraine decades later. She is also the author of Bald is Beautiful , which is a letter to a young person with cancer. When a Brave Bear Fights Cancer is filled with photographs by Mark O’Dwyer, the author of the Mawson the Bear children’s series. Mawson—sort of a Winnie the Pooh, especially when considered through the lens of books like The Tao of Pooh —is a dreamer and seeker who is a big fan of naps and working with his equally inquisitive friends to explore just what it is that drives and fulfills us. The c

 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2019). ISBN: 978-0-7643-5792-3 Legends of vampires have become so much a part of the fabric of who we are as human beings that we often give little thought to their origins, although those origins and how they manifest in popular culture are rather complex. There are true revenants—the stinking, almost mindless undead rising from the earth and their graves each night to satiate their bloodlust. There are the tuxedo’d, hypersexualized vampires that began with Bela Lugosi and culminated with Frank Langella on stage and screen in 1979. There are the teen and 20-something vampires best represented in Lost Boys and Twilight (the latter ushering in an age where the “monster” is analog for the human outsider and their bonding is their mutual salvation). Last, we must include the vampire/zombie hybrids that have derived from Matheson’s I Am Legend . In the age of COVID-19, we cannot overlook the virus as monster-maker, with too many films, TV series, and