Marcy Kelly Began Writing Down Memories of Her Son and Turned Them Into a Book

NY Weekly Staff on September 29, 2026

By: Nicolas Mercado

There are books that begin with intention and outline and a clear sense of purpose. And some books begin with a mother sitting down to write things she was afraid of forgetting, small memories of her son that kept surfacing, moments she didn’t want time to blur. Marcy Kelly’s The Porcelain Heart: A Mother’s Memoir of Unexpected Loss belongs to the second category, and that origin is part of what makes it feel the way it does.

She wasn’t planning to write a book. She was writing notes. It took time before she could see that those notes could be expanded and become the foundation of something larger. What pushed her toward sharing it with the world was simpler and more human than any publishing ambition: early readers told her they thought it would help others who had lost someone close. That was enough.

The Symbol at the Center

The title came from a specific memory, the kind that arrives unexpectedly and carries more weight than it should. After her son Michael died, Marcy watched a home movie of the two of them having a good time on a ride at Disneyland. In the footage she was wearing a porcelain heart on a chain around her neck. That image became a symbol for everything she was trying to hold onto and everything she understood she could never recover. Porcelain is hard and translucent ceramic. Once broken, it cannot be restored. That quality, beautiful and irreparable in equal measure, is the emotional truth the memoir carries from its first page to its last.

Co-Writing With Michael

Writing fiction, essays, and award-winning screenplays had not prepared Marcy for this. Nothing she had ever written before was so personal or so painful. As she wrote, she often found herself in a kind of internal debate with Michael. He might think something she had written was too embarrassing or too personal. She negotiated with him to find a balance. In that sense, she says, he co-wrote the book with her.

Michael didn’t like being the center of attention. He definitely would not have wanted his photo on the cover. That was the publisher’s decision, and it took Marcy a while and many conversations with Michael, the internal kind that grief makes familiar, to accept it. That honesty about the tension between honoring someone and knowing they would squirm at being honored is one of the things that makes the memoir feel genuinely real rather than retrospectively idealized.

What She Wants Readers to Know

Marcy’s message for anyone who has just experienced an unexpected loss and cannot see any path forward is practical and grounded in what actually worked for her rather than in what sounds helpful from the outside. Stay busy. Join a grief support group. Write down memories. Volunteer. Take up something new that will, at least for a time, block the thoughts that overwhelm. For Marcy, that was learning to play bridge.

Have a goal every day, even if it is just washing your hair or paying a bill. And before you go to bed, acknowledge that you completed it. Take baby steps. The path forward will reveal itself eventually. It will never look like the path before. But it will be there.

She also has specific thoughts about what those around the grieving person should and shouldn’t do. There is no absolute right thing to say, she writes, but there are many wrong things. Don’t talk about your own loss. Don’t compare experiences. Do offer to help, write a personal note, share a fond memory. And say his or her name. So many people avoid naming the person who died, thinking they are doing the grieving parent a favor. The opposite is true.

How Michael Lives On

Michael was an only child who did not have children of his own. Marcy wanted his memory to outlive her. She created a golf scholarship at his alma mater, where he had been on the golf team. She commissioned a fountain for people and pets along the LA River, where he used to hike. His photos are around the house. Crafts he made in school are in her office. His flip-flops are on a shelf in her closet. She uses some of his kitchen utensils when she cooks.

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. Michael is never far.

If you or someone you love is carrying the weight of unexpected loss, The Porcelain Heart by Marcy Kelly is available now on Amazon.

In Across Latitudes, Brett Andrew Strange Connects Espionage, Ukraine and the Human Cost of Conflict

NY Weekly Staff on September 28, 2026

By Sara Wolfe

Brett Andrew Strange’s Across Latitudes trilogy begins in 2017, a date that matters to the architecture of the story. The former U.S. intelligence officer uses that starting point to place his fictional characters inside a period marked by deepening geopolitical tension, competing narratives, and open warfare.

The complete trilogy includes Against the Dusk, Beneath the Purple Dawn, and Eastern Light. Together, the books follow one continuous story through 2024. At the center are Paul Drake, an Iraq War veteran carrying a violent past, and Katerina Volkova, a Russian-born art curator who becomes caught in the same dangerous current.

The series moves through New York City, Istanbul, California, Paris, Malta, and Sicily before reaching the trenches of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also touches on the broader instability shaping the Middle East. Strange says those events are not merely scenery for an adventure plot.

“Before Russia’s invasion, there were many false assumptions about global stability and the constant march of global progress,” Strange said. “Across Latitudes opens right at that rupture, in 2017, and the trilogy traces the deception, betrayal, and extra-legal maneuvering underneath conflicts like Ukraine, Syria, and, more recently, Iran.”

That framework gives Across Latitudes a contemporary character. Strange’s stated goal is not to tell readers what conclusion to reach about international affairs. Instead, he places fictional people in situations where political decisions become immediate personal problems.

“These aren’t background events in the books – they’re the terrain the characters traverse to survive,” he said. “I didn’t want to hand readers a moral verdict; I wanted readers to live the drama themselves and let them draw their own conclusions.”

Strange’s background informs that perspective. A former U.S. intelligence officer, he has lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia and has traveled to more than two dozen countries as part of his research. He currently lives in San Francisco. His other published work includes Encounters: Six Short Stories.

Asked what his CIA and national security experience contributed to the trilogy, Strange focused on operational reality and the human burden attached to intelligence work.

“It gave me firsthand exposure to the real personalities and raw mechanics of intelligence work – the sacrifice, the deception, the psychological toll,” he said. “My background gave the operational detail its authenticity; the characters are based on real intelligence operations and procedures, not fantasy Hollywood images.”

The story’s geopolitical scale is balanced by intimate stakes. Across Latitudes includes revenge, romance, family strain, and questions about what happens after people survive violence. In Strange’s telling, the major forces of history matter because they put pressure on individual choices.

That is particularly visible in Katerina Volkova’s arc. An art curator rather than a conventional action hero, she becomes one of the trilogy’s central ways of exploring truth, identity, and freedom. Strange has said the characters are deliberately built as composites from people he encountered, including people involved in Ukraine’s fight for independence.

“There’s family strain, there’s doubt, there’s failure,” he said. “The characters are people standing in history’s path, and they need to deal with much larger forces at work around them.”

The complete edition also provides referential footnotes for readers interested in the factual material behind the fiction. That choice reflects the trilogy’s effort to sit close to real events without becoming a textbook or policy argument.

Strange believes the series’ timeliness is part of its appeal.

“The story feels urgent right now – not speculative fiction, but a mirror held up to headlines people are already living through,” he said. “The research behind the settings – Istanbul, Malta, the Ukrainian front – makes the danger tangible.”

The book description extends that idea by presenting the trilogy as an examination of individual agency against the machinery of global power. The political frame is large, but the underlying question remains personal: how can someone preserve identity and judgment when events move faster than any individual can control? That tension links the intelligence plot to the love story, revenge narrative, and family drama running through the series.

The result is a framework in which contemporary conflict is never treated as an abstract map. It becomes a sequence of pressures that alter relationships, loyalties, and the characters’ sense of possibility.

Across Latitudes therefore operates on two levels. It is a political espionage thriller built around covert action and international danger, but it is also a story about people trying to preserve a sense of self when history becomes impossible to ignore. By tying fictional lives to contemporary conflict, Strange aims to make geopolitical instability feel less abstract and more human.

Across Latitudes is available on Amazon.

How a Single Decision Became a Turning Point in a Journey of Resilience

NY Weekly Staff on September 25, 2026

By: Marion Welch

Most people spend their lives waiting for change. They wait for the right moment. They wait for circumstances to improve. They wait for fear to disappear. They wait for permission. They wait for someone to rescue them. And while they wait, life keeps moving forward without them.

Marion Welch knows this better than most. She has survived a childhood soaked in fear, thirty-two surgeries, cancer at twenty-three, a devastating spinal cord injury, and more rebuilding than any one person should have to endure. But she did not survive by waiting. She survived by making decisions. One decision at a time.

Her book “One Decision at a Time: The Resilience Mindset by Design” is not a story about what happened to her. It is a story about what she decided to do next. And that distinction changes everything.

The Myth of the Single Dramatic Moment

We like to believe that our lives change in big dramatic moments. We imagine a lightning strike of inspiration. We picture a sudden rescue. We think that one day everything will click into place and our problems will disappear.

But that is not how real change happens.

Real change happens quietly. It happens in the middle of ordinary days. It happens when no one is watching. It happens in the moment when you decide that you will not accept your current situation as your final destination. That decision may not look powerful from the outside. It may not come with applause or recognition. But it has the power to redirect your entire life.

Marion Welch learned this lesson when she was only eight or nine years old. She was a child living inside a home filled with fear. She knew violence, tension, and the constant weight of uncertainty. She knew what it felt like to hide in the trees behind her house. She knew what it felt like to be afraid of walking through her own front door.

And in the middle of all of that fear, she made a quiet promise to herself. She promised that if she ever escaped that life, no child around her would ever have to feel the way she felt if she could help it.

She did not write it down. She did not announce it to anyone. She did not have a plan. She simply decided. And that decision became the compass for everything that followed.

How One Promise Shaped an Entire Life

That single decision did not change her circumstances overnight. She was still a child. She was still living inside the same fear. The violence did not stop because she had made a promise. But something inside her shifted.

That promise gave her pain a direction. It gave her young heart something to hold onto. It planted the idea that her life did not have to become a continuation of what she had known. Even though she could not leave yet, even though she could not change everything around her, she could decide that one day she would build differently.

That is where resilience begins for many people. Not in perfect conditions. Not when everything is calm. Not when the path is clear, and everyone is cheering them on. Sometimes resilience begins in a quiet promise that no one else hears.

For Marion Welch, that promise showed up in every major decision she made after that. It showed up in the way she loved her children. It showed up in the way she opened her home to children who needed safety. It showed up in the way she chose compassion when bitterness would have been easier. It showed up in the way she kept trying to create peace, even when she was still learning what peace looked like.

Becoming a mother traced back to that promise. Opening her home to children traced back to it. Choosing to protect her peace traced back to it. Building safety instead of repeating fear traced back to it. Helping families find homes traced back to it. Even writing this book traces back to it.

At the center of all of it was that same little girl who knew, long before she understood the world, that children deserved better.

The Lesson for All of Us

Marion Welch did not have a perfect plan when she made that promise. She did not know how she would escape. She did not know what kind of woman she would become. She did not know what kind of mother she would be. She only knew that she wanted something different. She only knew that she did not want fear to be the inheritance she passed on.

And that was enough to begin.

Most people never start because they think they need everything figured out. They think they need more money, more confidence, more experience, or more certainty. They wait for the perfect conditions that never arrive. They let fear convince them that change is impossible.

But “One Decision at a Time” teaches us that we do not need a perfect plan. We just need one intentional decision. One decision that points us in the direction of the person we are becoming. One decision that says, “This will not be the end of my story.”

Marion Welch did not become the woman she is today through luck. She became her through decisions. Through choosing differently inside her circumstances instead of waiting for her circumstances to change. Through deciding that survival was not the same as healing. Through refusing to let pain have the final word.

Why Marion Welch Speaks with Authority

Marion Welch is not a theorist. She is not someone who read about resilience in a book and decided to write about it. She is someone who lived resilience. She is someone who made a decision as a traumatized child and allowed that decision to guide her through cancer, thirty-two surgeries, financial hardship, multiple rebuilds, and a career reinvention that helped over one hundred families become homeowners.

She does not write from a place of privilege or distance. She writes from the trenches. She writes from the hospital rooms. She writes from the moments when she did not know if she would walk again. She writes from the seasons when she had five dollars and two children in the back of a truck.

That is what makes her voice so powerful. She has tested every principle she writes about. She has failed. She has fallen. She has gotten back up more times than most people can imagine. And she kept moving. One decision at a time.

What You Can Do Today

You do not need to fix your entire life today. You do not need to have everything figured out. You do not need to be fearless. You just need to make one intentional decision.

Think about the promise you made to yourself during a painful season of your life. Have you honored that promise, or have you forgotten it while trying to survive? What part of your past are you still allowing to shape your choices today? What kind of life, home, relationship, or future do you want to build differently?

These are the questions Marion Welch asks in her book. And they are the questions that can change everything.

Because awareness without action changes nothing. The power is not in knowing what you want. The power is in deciding to move toward it.

Marion Welch made a decision as a little girl that she did not fully understand. But that decision carried her through decades of struggle and triumph. It became the foundation of her resilience. It became the reason she could rebuild after every fall. It became the force that helped her create safety for others.

Your decision does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be dramatic. It does not have to make sense to anyone else. It just has to be yours.

The Call to Action

Your life will not change in one moment. It will change in one decision. And that decision is waiting for you right now. Stop waiting for rescue. Stop waiting for perfect conditions. Stop waiting for fear to disappear. Make your decision today. One decision at a time.

Ready to start making decisions that reshape your life? In “One Decision at a Time: The Resilience Mindset by Design,” Marion Welch shares the hard-won wisdom of a woman who survived childhood trauma, thirty-two surgeries, cancer, and a spinal cord injury to become a problem solver, entrepreneur, and advocate for families. This is not a book about what happened to her. It is a book about what she decided to do next. And it will show you how to do the same. Get your copy and begin building the resilience you need to rewrite your future.

Photo Courtesy: Marion Welch

Finding a Voice Through Adversity: Jeanne Andrea Di Grazio’s Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente)

NY Weekly Staff on September 24, 2026

By: Elowen Gray

When Life Becomes the Inspiration

For Jeanne Andrea Di Grazio, writing has always offered a way to make sense of life. From childhood memories shaped by music and family to experiences of loss, change, love, and uncertainty, her words have become a means of reflection and discovery. Now, with the upcoming October 2026 release of Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente) through NY Publishers, Di Grazio is opening the door to a deeply personal collection of poetry and song lyrics inspired by the experiences that have shaped her.

At its heart, Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente) is a story about healing and growth. Di Grazio describes adversity as having its own kind of magic, offering opportunities for reflection even during life’s most difficult moments. The collection grew from her efforts to cope with loss and the uncertainty that comes with change, while also considering the complicated connections between passion, love, and loss.

The Vulnerability Behind the Words

Turning deeply personal experiences into published work requires courage. For Di Grazio, that vulnerability became one of the greatest challenges of creating the collection. Many of the poems and lyrics are autobiographical, making them difficult to share publicly. She also found herself working outside her familiar writing voice and subject matter while trying to create pieces that could resonate with a wide range of readers.

Those challenges ultimately became part of the creative journey. Rather than allowing uncertainty about how the work might be perceived to silence her, Di Grazio chose to share the experiences and emotions that inspired the collection. Her decision reflects a larger belief that personal stories can become meaningful when they create space for others to recognize their own experiences.

A Book Written for Those Who Feel Alone

One of Di Grazio’s central hopes for Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente) is that readers experiencing grief, loss, or a longing for companionship will find reassurance in its pages. She wants readers to recognize that difficult emotions are not theirs to carry in isolation.

For Di Grazio, the measure of the book’s impact is deeply personal. If the collection helps even one person understand that they are not alone, she considers that a meaningful success. She also hopes her writing can give readers language for feelings they may have struggled to express.

A Childhood Connection to Music

The roots of Di Grazio’s creative life reach back to childhood. Her love of poetry and song lyrics was nurtured in part by her brother, John, affectionately known as Fud. He introduced her to music and would quiz her about musicians, instruments, lyrics, and songs while they spent time listening to 1970s music together. Those memories became an important part of her relationship with music and writing.

Di Grazio continues to carry that early influence into her work. For her, writing is not simply about putting words on a page. It is a process of healing, self-discovery, remembrance, and connection.

Giving a Voice to What Is Often Unspoken

Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente) represents an important step in Di Grazio’s creative journey. By transforming personal experiences into poetry and lyrics, she creates a space where questions about love, loss, adversity, and hope can coexist.

Her story ultimately speaks to the enduring relationship between life and art. Experiences that may initially feel painful or uncertain can, through reflection, become sources of creativity and connection. With Orange Shoes (Spiritual Détente), Jeanne Andrea Di Grazio is not simply sharing her writing. She is sharing a part of her journey and extending an invitation to readers to reflect on their own.

In doing so, she hopes to accomplish something simple yet meaningful: to remind people that even through loss and change, they can continue searching for healing, finding their voice, and moving toward hope.

John B. Helvey’s Sheepherder Primer Turns Range Experience Into Practical, Illustrated Wisdom

NY Weekly Staff on September 24, 2026

The Montana author blends firsthand ranch knowledge, dry humor, and hand-drawn observations in a compact tribute to sheepherding, responsibility, and life on the open range.

A Beginner’s View, Told With The Authority Of Experience

Some books explain a profession from a distance. John B. Helvey’s Sheepherder Primer does the opposite. It places the reader directly on the range, where weather changes without permission, animals do not always cooperate, and a herder learns quickly that observation and judgment matter as much as physical endurance.

Helvey introduces the work without pretending to be the stereotypical “salty, crusty, old herder.” He presents himself as a beginner who was given a chance, and that point of view gives the book much of its appeal. The advice is practical, but the tone remains personal and self-aware. The result is less like a formal agricultural manual and more like field wisdom passed from one person to another after a season of learning what actually works.

The manuscript makes clear that sheepherding is a serious responsibility. A stockman may place an entire flock in the herder’s hands, while the herder must contend with weather, grass, water, predators, distance, and the unpredictable behavior of the sheep themselves. Helvey balances those realities with humor, acknowledging both the aggravations of the job and the rare days when the landscape, the flock, and the rhythm of the work come together perfectly.

Practical Lessons Shaped By Close Observation

Much of Sheepherder Primer is built from short, memorable lessons. Helvey advises the herder to notice distinctive animals in the band, such as longtails, woolies, black sheep, injured sheep, or other easily recognized individuals, because those animals can become useful markers when accounting for the flock. He warns against letting stragglers fall too far behind and emphasizes keeping the rear of the band moving so that the flock does not lose its natural leaders.

Other observations reveal how closely a successful herder must read animal behavior. Older, experienced sheep may serve as bell ewes or lead sheep. Dogs are most useful when they are handled with care and clear signals. On open ground, voice commands can disappear into the surrounding hills, making hand signals especially valuable. The book also notes the importance of recognizing when sheep are unsettled at night, when predators are most likely to strike, and how the flock’s movement can change with heat, moonlight, terrain, or even a creek crossing.

These are small details, but together they show the discipline behind a job that outsiders may romanticize. Helvey repeatedly returns to the importance of knowing the country, anticipating where the flock may move, and understanding the limits of both the animals and the dogs working alongside the herder.

Humor Keeps The Lessons Human

The book’s practical instruction is accompanied by simple illustrations that give the pages a distinctive personality. Sheep, dogs, hills, trees, camp life, roads, and cliffs are drawn with an informal hand that matches the straightforward writing. The sketches often carry the joke as much as the text does, turning hard-earned lessons into scenes that are easy to remember.

That humor does not diminish the risks of the work. A dog sent in the wrong direction can push sheep toward dangerous terrain. A flock may travel farther than expected during the cool morning or evening hours. Food has to be protected because the nearest grocery store may be a long way off. Even motorists have a role to play when meeting a band of sheep on the road. Helvey’s observations are specific, but they also reinforce a broader principle: on the range, small decisions can have large consequences.

A Portrait Of Responsibility, Patience, And Rural Life

Beyond its instructional value, Sheepherder Primer works as a compact portrait of a disappearing kind of everyday knowledge. The book documents habits and judgments that are learned through repetition: when to move, when to wait, how to read the flock, how to work with a dog, how to protect animals from predators, and how to adapt to conditions that cannot be controlled.

There is also an ethic running beneath the advice. The herder is responsible for the flock. The dog must be cared for. The terrain must be understood rather than underestimated. The animals set much of the pace, and the person in charge succeeds by paying attention. In that sense, the book is about more than sheep. It is about patience, stewardship, practical judgment, and the humility required to work closely with animals and land.

For readers unfamiliar with ranch life, the book offers an accessible introduction to the realities behind the pastoral image of sheep scattered across a mountain landscape. For readers with agricultural or rural experience, it may feel more like recognition: the kind of concise advice that comes from doing a job long enough to know which details matter.

About John B. Helvey

John Bowman Helvey was born in Billings, Montana. His background includes work as a ranch hand, sheepshearer, welder, and carpenter. The manuscript identifies him as a home builder in Bozeman, Montana, and reflects the practical, hands-on perspective of someone familiar with physical work, livestock, and the rhythms of the West.

With Sheepherder Primer, Helvey preserves that perspective in an illustrated format that is direct, useful, and full of personality. It is a modest book by design, but its simplicity is part of its strength: a collection of things worth knowing, learned outdoors, one lesson at a time.

The Sweetest Little Book of Ancient Terrors

NY Weekly Staff on September 23, 2026

A good title can sell a joke before the first page turns. Necronomicon Nursery Rhymes is one of those titles. It is absurd, specific, and instantly vivid.

You can almost see the book before opening it: a forbidden text redesigned for story time, a grimoire with rounded corners, an occult object smuggled into the children’s section. S. F. Craftlove’s manuscript lives up to that promise with enthusiasm.

The book is built as a collection of illustrated rhymes, each pairing a figure from cosmic horror with a familiar childhood scene. The table of contents alone creates momentum. Bath time, jump rope, bedtime, snow days, swimming lessons, movies, lazy days, and school all become occasions for encounters with beings more commonly associated with madness, worship, or the end of ordinary reality.

The pleasure comes from contrast. Craftlove does not need to overexplain the joke because the pairings do the work. A name like Azathoth beside bedtime is funny. Dagon, besides swimming lessons, is funny. Yog-Sothoth beside the school is funny. These combinations turn cosmic dread into situational comedy, but they also reveal how flexible myth can be. A terrifying figure placed in a new frame becomes newly legible.

The book’s opening letter gives that comedy a surprisingly humane purpose. The narrator tells the reader that the old stories may have misrepresented these beings. The poems, we are told, come from forgotten manuscripts, modernized for us. It is a clever device, because it allows the book to act as both parody and correction. It pretends to be a recovered truth: not a warning against the Old Ones, but a defense of their softer side.

The illustrations are crucial to the book’s accessibility. They do not chase glossy perfection. Their charm is in the odd shapes, comic expressions, and bright, simple staging. The creatures look strange enough to be memorable, but expressive enough to become characters. The art makes room for affection without eliminating unease. It gives the reader permission to laugh at a tentacle without forgetting that tentacles are, by nature, unsettling.

Craftlove’s humor is also helped by the manuscript’s larger fictional apparatus. The dedication nods to Miskatonic University and Abdul Alhazred. The mock copyright page mentions summoning liability. The author biography transforms Craftlove into a suspicious academic figure, one whose scholarship and rituals have not exactly reassured his peers. These flourishes make the book feel like an object with a backstory. It is not only a children ’s-style rhyme collection; it is a prop from a larger comic universe.

What makes Necronomicon Nursery Rhymes commercially appealing is its easy pitch and broad niche. Horror-loving parents will understand it instantly. Gift buyers will recognize its novelty value. Fans of Lovecraftian myth will appreciate the references. Readers who enjoy strange picture books will be drawn to the art. And children, often less bothered by weirdness than adults, may simply enjoy the monsters.

But the book’s strongest quality is its tonal generosity. It does not sneer at horror, and it does not sneer at children’s literature. It respects both enough to let them mingle. The result feels playful rather than gimmicky. It says, in effect, that darkness and delight have always been neighbors.

Necronomicon Nursery Rhymes is the rare novelty book that knows exactly what it is. It is spooky, silly, affectionate, and visually memorable. It takes ancient terror by the hand and leads it, quite cheerfully, to story time.

Step into a picture-book world where ancient horrors come ready to play, nap, swim, and rhyme.

Buy Necronomicon Nursery Rhymes online and invite the Mythos home.

Chanmattee Reimagines Christmas Traditions in The Arabian Santa – Mustapha The Great

NY Weekly Staff on September 23, 2026

The children’s holiday story places Santa Claus in an Arabian setting, where camels, desert villages, elves, and an unexpected ability to fly shape a Christmas Eve journey centered on generosity and remembrance.

Christmas stories have long relied on familiar imagery: snow-covered villages, reindeer, toy workshops, and Santa Claus traveling through the night on Christmas Eve. In The Arabian Santa – Mustapha The Great, author Chanmattee takes many of those recognizable traditions and places them in a different setting.

At the center of the story is Mustapha the Great, an Arabian Santa preparing to deliver gifts with the help of camels rather than reindeer. His journey moves through deserts, mountains, valleys, villages, and eventually the night sky as he works to bring gifts to children and others along the way.

The story retains several traditional Christmas elements, including a sleigh, elves, toys, and a Christmas Eve journey, but places them within Arabian-inspired landscapes of sand dunes, palm-lined communities, lanterns, and desert skies.

A recurring idea throughout the book is Mustapha’s desire to make sure that children are remembered during the holiday season.

A Workshop Beneath the Sand Dunes

One of the story’s central locations is Mustapha’s workshop, presented as part of a hidden world beneath the Arabian sand dunes.

There, Mustapha and his elves prepare toys and other gifts before the Christmas Eve journey begins. The elves include Sebastian, Jasper, Zara, Pretzel, Dazzle, Frosty Frederick, Jewel, and Wonder.

Their work provides a variation on the traditional Santa workshop while adapting that familiar idea to the book’s setting.

Other members of the caravan also play roles in the journey, including camels named Ginger and Banana Joe. Through these characters, the story presents Christmas Eve as a coordinated effort in which different participants contribute to the same goal.

Lucy and Leopold Take Flight

Two camels, Lucy and Leopold, hold a particularly important place in the story.

They are chosen to help lead Mustapha’s sleigh because of their kindness, intelligence, courage, and wit. At the beginning of the journey, however, they remain ordinary camels traveling across the landscape.

That changes during a quiet moment beneath the night sky.

While Lucy and Leopold are resting, wings unexpectedly appear. The pair begin testing their new ability and eventually rise into the air, pulling Mustapha’s sleigh behind them.

The transformation marks a turning point in the story.

Once the camels can fly, the caravan is no longer limited by desert roads, valleys, or mountains. Mustapha can continue the journey through the sky and travel farther beyond the Arabian villages where the adventure began.

The scene also creates the book’s version of a familiar Christmas image. Instead of reindeer crossing a snowy sky, Chanmattee places decorated camels beneath the moon and stars.

Familiar Traditions in a Different Setting

The setting is one of the clearest ways The Arabian Santa – Mustapha The Great distinguishes itself from more conventional Christmas stories.

Mustapha wears the red-and-white clothing commonly associated with Santa Claus, while the world around him features desert settlements, lanterns, palm trees, sand dunes, and decorated camels.

The combination creates a contrast between familiar Christmas traditions and a less conventional holiday landscape.

Readers still encounter Santa, elves, toys, presents, a sleigh, and Christmas Eve, but those elements are relocated into an Arabian-inspired environment.

The setting also influences the direction of the story. Mustapha and his companions travel across physical landscapes before Lucy and Leopold’s transformation allows the journey to continue through the sky.

Generosity and Being Remembered

Although the book includes magical elements, much of the narrative is organized around the act of giving.

Mustapha’s task is not presented only as transporting presents. The story connects those gifts with kindness, hope, and the idea of making recipients feel remembered.

That theme becomes especially clear near the end.

After Mustapha and his companions have traveled considerable distances and distributed many gifts, one important package remains. It is intended for a child who has waited patiently throughout the year.

Mustapha delivers the gift personally.

The scene shifts the focus from the scale of a worldwide Christmas journey to a single interaction. Rather than emphasizing the size or price of the present, the story focuses on what receiving it represents.

In doing so, the book returns to one of its central ideas: sometimes the meaning of a gift comes from knowing that someone remembered.

By the conclusion, the elves, camels, and Mustapha have each played a role in completing the Christmas Eve journey.

The Arabian Santa – Mustapha The Great combines fantasy, cooperation, and holiday traditions while placing them within an Arabian setting. Rather than replacing familiar Christmas imagery, Chanmattee reworks it through deserts, flying camels, hidden workshops, and a story centered on generosity and remembrance.

When Life Leaves Questions Behind, Sharmaine Anna Dobson Turns to the Page

NY Weekly Staff on September 22, 2026

Some experiences refuse easy endings. Loss can linger long after a goodbye, faith can be tested when certainty disappears, and memories can take on new meaning over time. Sharmaine Anna Dobson’s body of work meets these realities without pretending that hardship can be neatly resolved.

Her books place ordinary human struggles beside questions of faith, purpose, healing and hope, offering readers a space where difficult emotions can be acknowledged rather than hidden.

A Life in Words

Sharmaine’s relationship with storytelling began in childhood. She filled schoolbook margins and envelopes with stories, kept writing through her teenage years, and kept returning to the page despite the practical demands of adulthood. By her own account, writing was never simply a pastime. It became a calling.

That history matters because her books carry the sensibility of someone who has spent decades observing the emotional details of human life. Her work spans poetry, memoir, real-life narratives, and reflective writing, and her creative identity also includes songwriting. The result is a literary portfolio concerned less with spectacle than with what people carry privately. It is love, grief, longing, faith, memory, and the desire to keep going.

Stories of Endurance

The titles in Sharmaine’s collection suggest different points along a single human journey. From Tears to Triumph places struggle and hope in direct conversation. Shadows of the Soul points toward the interior experiences that can remain difficult to articulate. Where Is My Dad introduces the ache of absence, while Georges World and How a Life Becomes a Line suggest personal stories shaped by memory, identity and the passage of time.

A Whisper in the Storm is presented as a personal collection of stories of love, loss, and redemption. The title itself evokes the tension that informs much of her writing. It speaks to the need to find meaning when life becomes noisy, uncertain, or painful. Rather than treating hope as an easy answer, her work places it alongside the realities that make hope necessary.

Faith With Humanity

Faith occupies an important place in Sharmaine’s literary perspective, but her writing also remains grounded in human experience. Her material speaks of courage, vulnerability, resilience, and the possibility of healing. A central idea emerges: difficult experiences do not erase a person’s capacity for purpose.

That perspective is also connected to her life beyond the page. Her history includes community work, a 1990 Mayor’s Award for work in an underprivileged community, NGO leadership, and involvement with projects caring for orphans. These experiences provide context for a writer whose work repeatedly considers the dignity and endurance of ordinary people.

The Conversation Continues

The books invite readers to pause over questions that rarely have easy answers: What remains after loss? Where can faith stand when circumstances are painful? How does a person carry the past without allowing it to define the future?

The forthcoming The Broken Road shows that this literary conversation continues. Across her poetry, stories and books, she returns to the belief that words can create connection when people feel isolated.

Takeaway

Literature that makes room for faith, vulnerability, memory and hope, Sharmaine Anna Dobson’s books offer more than stories. They form a continuing conversation about what it means to remain human when life asks difficult questions.

Read Sharmaine Anna Dobson’s books and enter stories where love, loss, faith and hope are given room to speak.

Can You Ever Go Back? Gregrey Bassine Revisits the War That Never Left

NY Weekly Staff on September 22, 2026

For some veterans, the war ends when the uniform comes off. For others, it follows them into quiet rooms, marriages, dreams, and ordinary mornings. In Sidewinder 3 Zero: Can You Ever Go Back?, Greg Bassine confronts that unsettling reality with an account that moves between combat memories and the long, difficult years that followed.

The result is not simply a Vietnam story. It is an intimate examination of what happens when a soldier survives the battlefield but remains trapped inside it.

The War After War

Gregrey Bassine’s story begins in one of its darkest places. It is an early-1980s night when decades of combat memories, survivor’s guilt, alcohol, and despair bring him dangerously close to ending his life. His wife intervenes, opening the door to the Vet Center and eventually to treatment for severe PTSD. That moment gives the book its emotional foundation. Recovery is never presented as a clean victory. Nightmares continue. Memories remain. What changes is the ability to live alongside them.

His wife becomes central to that process. Her decision to seek help, attend a VA program for spouses, and remain beside him gives the narrative an especially human dimension. Their marriage is not portrayed as effortless; it is portrayed as chosen, again and again.

Returning to Vietnam

Decades later, Gregrey Bassine agrees to return to Vietnam with a private guide named Reggie. The trip is intended to confront the places that have occupied his thoughts for half a century. Rather than a distant historical setting, Bassine finds Vietnam as a landscape that can reopen old wounds.

Former bases have disappeared beneath fields and vegetation. Other locations trigger memories with startling force. At one crash site, he finds no wreckage or crater, only an ordinary field with water buffalo grazing across it. The absence becomes almost as powerful as the destruction he remembers.

The journey also forces him to confront the men who never came home, including his friend Ray and Captain Burnette. The question haunting him is painfully simple: Why did they die, and why did he survive?

A Different Kind of Homecoming

Greg’s return journey reaches beyond geography. Vietnam becomes a place where memory, guilt, and identity collide. Reggie’s patience lets him stay with difficult emotions rather than flee them, while the changing landscape offers an uncomfortable reminder that the world continued after the war.

When Bassine finally returns to America, his wife, VA facilitators, and fellow veterans greet him with a Welcome Home! banner. It is the homecoming he never received after Vietnam. The moment releases decades of grief and gives him something he had been missing: recognition.

Learning to Carry the Past

The book does not promise that trauma disappears. Greg admits that nightmares remain, although they become less frequent and less severe. Returning to Vietnam pushes him back toward therapy and helps him process memories one at a time.

That honesty gives Sidewinder 3 Zero its greatest strength. Its message is not that the past can be erased. It is that a person can learn to carry it differently. For readers interested in military history, veterans’ experiences, marriage, memory, or the difficult road toward peace, Bassine’s memoir offers an intensely personal perspective on a question that lingers long after the final page. Can anyone truly go back? Perhaps not to change the past, but sometimes to finally come home from it.

Sidewinder 3 Zero: Can You Ever Go Back? is available now in paperback.

Can a Childhood Define a Lifetime? Am I Good Enough Yet? Explores the Quiet Battle for Self-Worth

NY Weekly Staff on September 22, 2026

Not every scar can be seen. Some live in the hesitation before speaking, the fear of disappointing others, the inability to accept love without questioning it, or the relentless belief that no achievement will ever be enough. These are the invisible burdens Shirley Jankowski examines in Am I Good Enough Yet? – Nebo Road Girl. It is a memoir that looks beyond childhood trauma to reveal its lasting influence on identity, relationships, and the search for belonging.

Rather than focusing solely on the events that shaped her early years, Jankowski invites readers to consider what happens after survival becomes routine. What remains when the danger has passed, but the fear refuses to leave? It is this emotional question that gives the memoir its lasting impact.

Learning to Earn Love

Children naturally believe the world reflects their own value. When life is filled with rejection, violence, abandonment, or instability, many begin searching for reasons within themselves. They conclude that if they become quieter, kinder, smarter, or more successful, perhaps they will finally deserve acceptance.

Shirley shows this heartbreaking mindset with remarkable honesty. The title itself reflects an internal conversation that follows her from childhood into adulthood. A constant effort to prove she deserves the very things many people receive without question. The memoir shows how that question quietly shapes countless decisions. Academic achievement becomes more than education. Hard work becomes more than responsibility. Caring for others becomes more than generosity. Each accomplishment is another attempt to answer the same lingering uncertainty.

Success Cannot Silence Old Doubts

One of the memoir’s greatest strengths lies in its refusal to present success as a cure. Readers watch as Shirley builds a career, marries a supportive husband, raises children, and dedicates herself to helping others. From the outside, she appears capable, dependable, and resilient. Internally, the childhood belief that she must continually prove her worth remains firmly rooted.

This contrast feels painfully familiar. Many people understand what it means to appear successful while privately battling insecurities no promotion, degree, or compliment seems able to erase. The memoir reminds readers that external accomplishments rarely heal wounds created long before adulthood.

Kindness as a Deliberate Choice

Despite unimaginable hardship, bitterness never becomes the defining feature of Shirley’s story. Instead, kindness emerges as a conscious decision repeated across every stage of life.

Her work caring for vulnerable people, opening her home to foster children, supporting her family during medical crises, and continuing to help others all reflect a philosophy born from personal suffering rather than comfort. This perspective gives the memoir unusual emotional weight.

Acts of compassion are never portrayed as effortless. They require choosing empathy even when life has offered every reason to withdraw. That decision feels authentic precisely because readers understand what it has cost.

Breaking the Cycle

Perhaps the book’s most encouraging message is not that pain disappears but that inherited patterns can be interrupted. Throughout the memoir, Shirley repeatedly chooses responses different from those that shaped her childhood. She builds a family rooted in care, seeks professional help when despair threatens to overwhelm her, and slowly begins confronting memories she spent decades trying to outrun. These moments carry quiet significance.

They suggest that while the past may influence a person’s story, it need not determine its ending. The memoir offers hope without pretending recovery is simple. Instead, it presents healing as a lifelong commitment made one honest decision at a time.

Story That Speaks Beyond One Life

Am I Good Enough Yet? – Nebo Road Girl reaches beyond autobiography because its central question belongs to far more people than its author.

Many readers will recognize themselves in the habit of overachieving, the fear of rejection, the instinct to care for everyone except themselves, or the quiet voice that insists they have not yet done enough. Shirley’s memoir does not promise easy answers to those feelings.

Takeaway

What it offers instead is something equally meaningful: the reminder that worth is never measured by perfection, productivity, or endless sacrifice. It exists long before achievements are collected and long after failures are remembered. That realization lingers well beyond the final chapter, inviting readers to reconsider not only the author’s journey but also the stories they continue telling themselves.

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