Bound through Blood is available for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Through-Blood-Alexis-Kennedy/dp/0615942202/

Amazon description: When Devin lost his true love to the 18th century witch trials, he thought he’d lost his only chance at ever having love and a mortal life again forever. But then the vampire tastes his true love’s blood in another—her tenth generation great-granddaughter. Now, suddenly, that life is possible again, but only if he can convince Salena Saunders of their destiny. Fighting against the forces who want to protect her and the men who want to have her— including his own long-lost vampire brother, Gabriel— Devin struggles to get close enough to prove his love and intentions to Salena while protecting her from Gabriel and her own superstitions. Salena Saunders works as a tour guide in a New Orleans historical home—unraveling the past for tourists—when her own past begins to haunt her and mythical stories actually come to life right before her eyes. For the first time ever, she seeks guidance from fortunetellers and voodoo priestesses for answers—ones that both promise to shock her and guide her to true love and her destiny. Beyond the realm of mythical creatures and superstitions, as well as her very own cultural surroundings, Salena must come to terms with being Bound Through Blood.

Excerpt: Devin kept pace with the women; he’d been watching and following Salena all day. It had taken some time to locate her, but he’d finally found her scent when he flew, as a black hawk, over the French Quarter. She had been walking out of a voodoo shop, with a look of deep concern on her beautiful face, when he caught her scent. It was her unmistakable alluring fragrance of honeysuckle and lavender.

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Witnessed:

Mission and A St.

Yes, the light had turned green,

And Yes, the white-haired passenger

Was looking at something,

Pointing it out to

Her husband,

The driver,

Who tried to see

Where she was indicating

Instead of

Burning rubber

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A Portrait of Captured Wind

The brightly-hued sails of boats leaving

the harbor overlap inside my vision.  They merge

into mobile art, each curve an elaborate ribbon

of road to an undiscovered location.  Direction

changes, they collapse inside themselves

for a moment,

a breath.

I hold

mine, waiting

for the inevitable expansion, the replosion

of fabric straining against mast, attempting

to control a natural force in order to share its flight.

Hearing Sanity

The silent cacophony of the beach

at sunrise is my center

of solace.  Erupture

of waves slowly erodes

the pressures of the previous

day.  Crunch of sand and shell

echo the progression, my mind

moving towards semblance of peace.

I face the golden orb as it breaks

through cover of midnight

cloud, open my mouth

to praise.  Lone seagull

interrupts.  I allow it to speak

for me as I exit, prepared, once again

to face reality’s blight.

I Lie at the Water’s Edge

in order to touch two worlds I do not understand.

One whispers in waves of destruction, pushes

me back while devouring the ground beneath me.

The other rages in electric bursts of sound

that have shaken me numb, erased my ability

to decipher junk from gems, bombarded me

with banality until I can no longer see any

line of propriety.  I am manifestation of point,

a crossing plane they battle against.  I have no favored

victor.  I fully understand I am a pawn being moved

along overlapping boards of despair.  I am simply

sacrifice, waiting to be slain.

A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her eighth solo chapbook, Drippings from a Painted Mind, won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Cleft Heart, Chasing Normal

by Karl Schonborn

review by Bruce Roberts

Cleft Heart, by Karl Schonborn, is a multifaceted memoir, covering his life in great detail, from birth to adulthood. In the process, several different themes interweave to create the whole of Schonborn’s experience growing up in the 1960s.

The main theme, which underlies all the others, is that he was born with a severe cleft palate. The resulting heroism of his parents—especially his mom—in dealing with doctors and hospitals and operations for decades to fix this problem, is amazing. And since memoirs are written in first person, readers also learn of the mental stress all this put on him, and how well he coped, how well he made decisions—even as a kid—to deal with the bullying from others, and the intense frustration from knowing he looked different.

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