Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

by Michael Brein and Rosemary Ellen Guiley (New Milford, CT: Visionary Living, Inc., 2018). ISBN: 9781942157250 Disclaimer: I have two entries in this collection. Also, a book that I am co-authoring with my wife about our two-year investigation of a haunted library in North Carolina (subject of one of the two entries in this book) will be published by Visionary Living in the summer of 2018. Followers of my blogs and my work know that I have long been an advocate for Telling our Stories. I have seen the power of story on stage in social justice theatre productions, in legislative lobbying for equal rights, and in swaying public opinion. In the news as of late are the powerful stories of teenagers demanding changes to gun laws. Although the field of paranormal investigation may seem worlds (and dimensions) apart from my three decades of work as a content creator and storyteller, I have found the parallels to be considerable. As I begin to establish myself as a paranormal investi...

(Published by the author, 2016). ISBN: 9781535511193 by Joey Madia Why are we so satisfied with trilogies? I think of books like the Lord of the Rings cycle, the Blake Crouch Pines series, and the Oedipus cycle of Sophocles, and film series like The Matrix and the original Star Wars and I can think of little more satisfying than a triadic installment of a well-told tale.   In my book on storytelling I talk about trilogies and triads; about 3-Act structure and the Rule of 3s; and about Aristotle being the first to point out to us not only that good stories have a beginning, middle, and end, but what each of them should accomplish, a launching point I have built on for years in my “Three 3s of Good Storytelling” worksheets and workshops. There is no doubt that there is something fundamental in our DNA as storytellers and story absorbers that makes a trilogy one of the perfect delivery mechanisms for a tale worth sharing—sharing being a two-way feedback loop of writer–reader ...

(Thomas-Jacob Publishing, 2015), ISBN: 978-0989572989 Frequent readers of my book reviews and creative writing are well aware of my belief that mythology, folktales, and multicultural tales, and storytelling in general, are an all-too-often missing and yet vitally important element of a healthy mind and well-functioning society (I am in the process of writing a new book about it), so when I got the opportunity to read and review this book, I jumped at the chance.             I was not disappointed.             Smoky Zeidel is not a Native American, as she tells us in the book’s Afterword. And yet she captures the syntax, symbolism, and simple beauty of the Native American expression of human experience with an artistry that makes for almost hypnotic reading.             The Storyteller’s Bracelet is the story of ...