Left Coast Writers® Live: Jonathan Taylor on LIlycat on Stuff 🗓

Lilycat

On Sunday, April 28th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guests on Sunday will be Jonathan Taylor.

Jamie Goldberg suspects his homosexuality at an early age and manages to hide it from his homophobic ’70s Detroit Community; his Jewish political activist parents; and even from himself until his rape, at the hands of a male prostitute, at the age of 15. Profoundly ashamed, he hides in two worlds one is a beautiful cocoon spun from music, art, theater and literature, another is shadowed with his sado-masochistic desire to obliterate his sexuality. His elaborate fantasies are no match for real life or his true affections, which blossom in spite of his constant attempts to thwart them. When his carefully constructed imaginary world begins to crumble, Jamie must face his demons, both real and invented, finding in the end that personal discovery comes at a very high price. Jamie learns too that even the most challenged, when they dare to cast away labels, deserve a moment or two of grace.

Six-time Emmy award-winning writer Patrick Mulcahey said: “The Rites of Passage … is like encountering a gay Portnoy’s Complaint, in its distinctive blend of Jewishness, sex, moral panic and maternal (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Wandering in Cuba on LIlycat on Stuff 🗓

Lilycat

On Sunday, November 18th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers®  Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guests on Sunday will be Wanderland Writers anthology contributors Cyndi Goddard, Linda Jue and Anne Sigmon talking about the newest title in the collection:  Wandering in Cuba: Revolution and Beyond.

Cyndi Goddard grew up under the pale sky of Florida’s west coast. She studied creative writing at Tulane University in New Orleans, and Spanish art and literature in Madrid. After college, Cyndi spent six months exploring Paris and writing her first novel. After alighting briefly in Austin, then Los Angeles, Cyndi made her home in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she composed lyrics for a punk band, and poetry and short fiction for small literary magazines such as Sail, Cruising World, Sailing, Latitude 38 and regional sailing publications. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Left Coast Writers. Her current writing projects are a mystery novel that takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area and the first volume of a near-future science fiction series.

Linda Jue was inspired by Watergate to become an investigative reporter more than forty years ago. Since then, she has uncovered international political intrigue behind a local murder, exposed the politics of homelessness in San Francisco, documented the trends of Asian organized crime, tracked down the fates of fleeing dissidents after Tiananmen Square. Currently, Linda is an editor-at-large for 100Reporters, a national investigative reporting news site based in Washington, D.C. She is past president of the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and a former associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting and a former editor at San Francisco Focus magazine/KQED. Her work has appeared in San Francisco Focus, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, GEO, Consumer Health Interactive, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Toronto Globe and Mail, the former MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, PBS’ Frontline, and other outlets.

Anne Sigmon flunked jump rope in seventh grade and washed out of college P.E. After college, she headed for San Francisco and a career in public relations. Exotic travel was the stuff of dreams until, at thirty-eight, she married Jack, took tea with erstwhile headhunters in Borneo and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro at forty-three. Five years later, she was zapped by a career-ending stroke caused by an obscure autoimmune disease called Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS). Anne’s personal essays and travel stories have appeared in local and national publications including Good Housekeeping and Stroke Connection magazines and the anthologies Wandering in Costa Rica, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Find Your Happiness, and Travel Stories from Around the Globe.

The ongoing spot on Lilycat on Stuff is scheduled for the third Sunday of every month. Left Coast Writers® are (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Susanna Solomon 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, August 26th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Susanna Solomon. 

Susanna Solomon, a writer and electrical engineer, lives in Marin County, where she has run her own engineering consulting firm for more than twenty years. Her books include two short story collections, Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls and More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, and her stories have appeared in Foliate Oak Magazine, Meat for Tea – The Valley Review, and online in the Mill Valley Literary Review and Harlot’s Sauce Radio. An avid outdoor enthusiast, Susanna has backpacked in Yosemite, Glacier National Park, Point Reyes, the Bernese Oberland, and the Gasternal in Switzerland. She’s walked across England on the Coast to Coast Trail, and has canoed extensively on the Missouri River in Montana, the Jacks Fork and Eleven Point Rivers in Missouri, and the Russian and Eel Rivers in California. She now spends her free time studying Tai Chi and Tai Chi sword and swimming in Tomales Bay, which is ten minutes from her home.

In Susanna’s new book, Montana Rhapsody, Laura Fisher, pole dancer extraordinaire, has just moved to Great Falls, Montana to start over. When she takes to the stage for the very first time, she has no idea that her evening will end with her fighting off three men intent on taking her virtue, taking a leap out of a second story window, and a wild ride in a convertible to the small town of Fort Benton. The next day, with the thugs still chasing her, Laura embarks on a three-day canoe camping trip with E.B., a man she’s just met—despite the fact that she doesn’t even know how to swim. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: TC Currie and MJ Pramik 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, July 8th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guests on Sunday will be TC Currie and MJ Pramik. 

As a girl of five, TC Currie was delighted to discover that books allow her to escape into other worlds. She has been armchair traveling and writing ever since. After parlaying her degree in Asian Religions into a career as a software developer, TC gained a reputation for being able to translate between software users and techie geeks. After years of technical writing, she found her bliss in non-technical writing. She’s won everything from the Silver Medal from the Solas Travel Awards for her personal essay “Checkers and Humanity” (2014) to NaNoWriMo (2012), and her poetry has been included in the Gift of Love and Speak Out poetry anthologies (2008 &1993). She is currently writing and reading voraciously in her Victorian home near San Francisco with her delightful boyfriend and fluffy cat. A member of Left Coast Writers, TC is author of a self-help book on surviving surgery, a mystery novel and a poetry collection.

Mary Jean Pramik, a coalminer’s daughter and a great, great-granddaughter of the Mongolian pain, has hitch-hiked across the United States, tracked May apples in Ohio, chased children through wet mountains of California, fended off bill collectors in tropical San Francisco, and counted sharp-taloned bird carcasses along the Pacific’s Point Reyes sands. Communicating with screeching penguin hoards in Antarctica remains a high point of her sojourn on this planet. MJ earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in biological sciences, and completed an MFA in writing. She moonlights as a medical writer, penning such scientific thrillers as Norenthindrone, The First Three Decades, the fast-paced history of the first birth control pill extracted from a Mexican yam. Winner of the coveted Mary Women Medal and a Travelers’ Tales Solas Award, MJ’s articles and essays have appeared in Nature Biotechnology, Drug Topics, and Cosmetic Surgery News, and mainstream publications such as Good Housekeeping, Odyssey, and the National Enquirer. She has contributed to the “Venturing in” travel series on the Canal du Midi, Southern Greece, Southern Ireland, and Puglia, Italy, and the “Wandering in” series for Costa Rica, Bali, and Cornwall. MJ teaches graduate writing skills in the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State University.
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Left Coast Writers® Live: Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli and Craig D. McLaughlin 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, June 17th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guests on Sunday will be Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli and Craig D. McLaughlin. 

Craig McLaughlin is a journalist, essayist, and storyteller. He appears frequently at storytelling venues throughout the country, and particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area where he resides. A former editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he has won numerous awards as an investigative reporter, news editor, and memoirist. His performance schedule can found at www.cdmclaughlin.com.

Sharon Ruth Skolnick-Bagnoli is a visual and word artist who works as a magazine art director, graphic designer, and editor.
She grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, and earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from New York City’s Pratt Institute and a master’s degree in educational technology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
She has written fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, authoring three published books: a novel, Colored Edges (2014), a collection of poetry and art, Shiny Objects (2009), and a nonfiction regional history, Dreams of Tamalpais (1989).
Sharon married project manager and videographer Bruce Bagnoli in 2004. Their studio, Visigraf Communications
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Left Coast Writers® Live: Todd Crawshaw 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, May 20th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Todd Crawshaw. 

Todd Crawshaw is the author of Heretofore and Exploits of the Satyr, both novels, and Light-Years in the Dark: StoryPoems. A member of Left Coast Writers, he is the founder of Crawshaw Design, a graphic design firm based in San Francisco that provides integrated brand marketing for print and the web. He considers creative writing to be a visual art: “Like atoms begetting atoms that beget molecules, when uniquely linked, words form a DNA of indelible visions.” He is a graduate of the University of Oregon with a degree in psychology. He lives in Northern California with his wife and is the father of two daughters.

His latest novel is God, Sex & Psychosis. Don’t miss his upcoming event with Left Coast Writers at the Corte Madera Book Passage on Saturday, June 9th! (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Chris Cornell 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, March 18th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Chris Cornell. 

Chris Cornell’s short fiction has appeared in Penumbra magazine, The City of the Future, Another 100 Horrors and other anthologies. He is a co-host of the Unreliable Narrators podcast and the writer and producer of the audio drama, E’ville.

In Abandoned Places, twenty-one writers embark on a tour of the lonely, the rejected and the uninhabited. This anthology of short genre fiction co-edited by Chris Cornell features stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror by rising new authors and classic tales by Ray Bradbury, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Allen Poe and M. R. James. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Jay Humphrey 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, February 18th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Jay Humphrey. 

After graduating with a degree in English from Stanford, Jay Humphrey pursued a varied career in theater and television, law, writing and teaching. The Day You Love Me is his first collection of short stories. This book is fiction, but as Albert Camus noted, fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. Jay lives with his wife in Northern California.

Sensuous, subtle, and thought-provoking, The Day You Love Me explores the common beginnings of the universal love story—and some uncommon endings.

In The Day You Love Me, you’ll travel to six places around the globe and experience six encounters, each fueled by hope and desire, each clouded by uncertainty. Whether in a Japanese village near Mt. Fuji, a small northern California town, an L.A. high school cafeteria, an art gallery in Tahiti, a bar in southern Spain, or in a Paris cafe, the meetings seem similar. The consequences are wildly different. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Matthew Felix 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, January 21st from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Matthew Felix. 

Matthew Felix’s Amazon.com best-selling collection of short stories, With Open Arms: Short Stories of Misadventures in Morocco, was born of his love of travel. The stories recount some of Matthew’s humorous and harrowing experiences on the road, and garnered him a comparison to Bill Bryson.

Matthew’s debut novel, A Voice Beyond Reason, draws on his nearly lifelong relationship with Spain and his interest in spirituality. An Amazon Canada bestseller in four categories, A Voice Beyond Reason is the story of how a young Spaniard’s awakening to his intuition gets him out of his head, so he can follow his heart. One reviewer “was reminded of Coelho’s Alchemist…”, while another remarked that it was “beautifully written, full of important truths.”

When not working on writing projects or on the road, Matthew is likely to be found exploring the streets of San Francisco or hiking the trails of Northern California. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers® Live: Barbara McVeigh 🗓

Melinda Adams AKA LilyCat

On Sunday, December 17th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Barbara McVeigh. 

Barbara McVeigh is a writer, producer, film maker, activist, educator, mother and sailor and learned the universe loves to laugh. She lives in Northern California and calls on all Musicians, Mortals, Mariners, Angels, Gods and Goddesses to join her for one mission, “let’s advocate respect for our natural world and ensure a healthy, happy future for all our children.”

“My father is a federal criminal, my father is my hero,” Barbara McVeigh writes in her memoir Redemption, How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life. Reagan fired her father for a union strike in 1981 leading him and 11,500 other families into years of strife. She lost her dream to be an oceanographer and her guitar lessons as her family struggled emotionally and financially. She blamed her father for not placing family first. Years later she takes up sailing, her late great uncle’s passion, who had been her best friend. Then bitter truths emerge about the ocean’s health and her fourteen year marriage. Against all odds, Barbara takes the helm of her life and makes a passionate project reclaiming her childhood dreams resulting in two first time films that go international with the most important oceanographer and Brazilian guitarist of our time. Then she confronts the dark shadows of Reagan’s energy and environmental policies revealing horrific truths about America’s “Hero of the Republican Party. Her father is not the federal criminal. Her father is her hero. Barbara has a new dream now and the spirits are guiding her, as they had been all along. (more…)

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