Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  “School-Age Heroes”: A Review of Psycho Hose Beast from Outer Space (Gale Harbour Book One) by C.D. Gallant-King (Stories I Found in the Closet, 2020). ISBN: 979-8-6476872-3-4 I am going to be up front at the start: I grew up in the eighties and it is my position that there was no cooler time to be a teenager. Not for movies, music, clothes, and just plain being a kid. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, and video games were still confined mostly to arcades—which we had aplenty at the Jersey Shore—and life was just simpler and more pure. I still remember hanging out with friends and listening to new cassette releases like Def Leppard’s Pyromania and being completely blown away by the lyrics and guitars.   Although Psycho Hose Beast from Outer Space takes places in the early nineties, there were plenty of culturally cool things still going on. For instance, each chapter takes as its title that of a popular song from that time. Some of the songs are obvious in th...

  (Next Chapter, 2021). ASIN: B09HC14QML A few months ago, a publicist introduced me to the whimsical, socially conscious, quick-witted work and worlds of the novelist Pete Adams. John Broughton describes him as “the Salvador Dali of thriller writers,” a description I mention because it is so fitting. Two writers that also come to mind are James Joyce ( Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses ), and Robert Anton Wilson and his Illuminatus series, although reading his Cosmic Trigger books will also give you a sense of the lineage of which Pete Adams is a part, especially when it comes to the corruption of the international banking cabal. The front matter describes Rite Judgement as “A politically correct / incorrect, risqué, mischievous, irreverent and, ever so naughty, crime mystery thriller. A real / surreal novel where life imitates art.” Quite a mouthful, and quite correct. Following on the heels of this quote is one from André Breton: “The imaginary is what tends to become real.” T...

   (Crimson Dragon Publishing, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-944644-23-9 There is no greater expression of joy than singing. Whether it is in tune, out of tune, lip-synching, a parody, or something created on Songify, nothing brings in the YouTube or TikTok numbers like a committed singer and their commitment to a song. Pop and rock singers are the superstars of American culture. The most successful make millions for a show and live like kings and queens. Although less popular and wealthy, Broadway stars are the heroes of countless high school and college musical theatre students, most of whom will never have the opportunity to stand in the spotlight on the Great White Way and have that moment of song in the sun. Keeping this in mind, Ella English’s mission with Katy on Broadway , and I am sure with the larger Kitty in the City series, is, in a word, wonderful: “Enjoy the sound of your children singing, no matter what it sounds like.” I know from personal experience with one of my ...

 (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). ISBN: 9798416501051 Just prior to this review, I reviewed another, much different book on the misconceptions and myths surrounding the survival of consciousness after the death of the physical body. Dr. Terry Gordon’s No Beginning… No End is written from the point of view of a crisis cardiologist with a highly spiritual focus. Anthony David Vernon’s The Assumption of Death , while also highly spiritual, is written by a poet. In place of case studies, we have meditations on classic works on death. Instead of a physician’s scalpel, we have a poet’s. Together, the two books prove that, from numerous angles, death as conceived and sold by religion and the medical field is by and large a lie and, in the words of Ram Dass, “Dying is perfectly safe.” The poems in this collection vary in length from a few lines to several pages of poetic prose. These longer poems are sometimes presented as parables. The opening poem is in many ways representative both str...

   (566 Media, 2016). ISBN: 9781537543017 Comprising 13 stories written over 26 years, The Devils You Know is a fun—and at times deeply moving and enlightening—collection of a who’s who of literary monsters, human and otherwise. From vampires to werewolves, mobsters to Nazis, braggadocio writers to Old Nick himself, Miles Watson serves up a cast of memorable villains who at times don’t seem all that different than you or me. The first story, “Road Trip,” is a ready reminder that the worst of the vampires (aside from the shiny ones) are psychic vampires, which doesn’t mean they won’t also drain your blood. This particular set of fang-bangers are like a modern-era Fitzgerald cast mashing up with bloodsuckers. With names like Victor, Tasha, and Diabolique, dressed in Bohemian clothing and John Lennon sunglasses and zipping around in a convertible, these #firstworldproblems phonies say things like, "I feel the need! The need....TO FEED!" (cue the eye roll). Trust-fund Paris...

  (Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-954968-12-7 I don’t know if it is the same for all veteran book reviewers, but I have learned to either not take too much stock in the endorsements that sometimes fill up to ten pages at the front of a book (!) or to just ignore them completely. But, in the case of Dr. Terry Gordon’s No Beginning… No End , several important names caught my eye. When the likes of Don Miguel Ruiz, Bruce Lipton, Caroline Myss, John Edward, and Patch Adams are saying this is a book worth reading, one ought to pay attention. I also want to mention the expectations that I had because of the subtitle. Having studied the survival of consciousness after death for many years as an author, researcher, podcast host, and field investigator, as well as communicating with dozens who have died and still engage with the living, I expected this to be a book securely in the camp of Science versus Spirituality. So few doctors are crossing that thick, black ...

   (2013). ISBN: 9781790654253 A few months ago, I reviewed the most recent book by this articulate and passionate author. Initiation: The Spiritual Transformation of the Experiencer is a handbook for those who have had alien contact, or know someone who has. Reverend Carter’s insights into the nature of these extraterrestrial beings is refreshing, comforting, and enlightening. If the field of UFOlogy is to evolve out of split camps, ridicule, sloppy investigations, click-baiting, and a false narrative of fear (such as the one being put forth in the supposed Disclosure of the past few years), then we need to hear more from scholars and experiencers such as Reverend Carter. Written eight years before Initiation , Alien Scriptures: Extraterrestrials in the Holy Bible also takes as its basis the author’s contactee experiences, which set him on his path to combine theology, spirituality, and UFOlogy to better understand what was happening to himself and others, and how long ...