Thanks for reading the May 2026 issue of This Awful Awesome Life. I hope you try the recipe for Overnight Amaranth Breakfast Porridge in our “Twelve Months of Grain.” Previous issues of This Awful Awesome Life are available to read on our website.
Go to www.thisawfulawesomelife.com and start scrolling or you can enter specific search criteria.
June is “Pamper Yourself Month” in This Awful Awesome Life.
I’ll have a Q&A with the talented Deborah Seewald who crunches numbers by day and spends her evenings and free time making skincare products, writing poetry and prose, and enjoying family time. How does she keep everything in balance?
Orlando Bartro, Tony Valerino, Sheila Kirk, and I will be back with more interesting poems, stories, and articles for you.
Our featured author with a June birthday will be Eric Blair who wrote under the pen name, George Orwell. Orwell is best known as the author of 1984 and Animal Farm.
We’re moving some of our regular features around to shake things up a bit and keep you on your toes. I’m also hoping to expand our Artist Page to feature more talented creatives. Some people manage to elevate their work to the level of an artform, and we want to support their efforts.
I’ll have more streaming and reading recommendations. “What’s in a Word?” will be back but we’ll be alternating some of our content. We’ll continue the monthly quizzes to exercise our brains, and we’ll continue reviewing books.
For the time being, I’m holding off on a new subscription-based Patreon account featuring short stories and chapter installments of my books as I write them. I also hoped to provide opportunities for book discussions and narrations of short stories. It’s something I want to do, but pesky life keeps getting in the way. When and if this happens, it will remain separated from our online magazine which will always be free and available to everyone. I’m considering the Patreon option because traditional and Indy publishing have changed so drastically in recent years. Now that AI has entered the equation, more changes are coming.
Stay safe. Stay well. You are important, and you are loved.
All my best,
Fran
Answers to the May 2026 “Methods of Murder” Quiz:
1. Wife kills husband with a frozen leg of lamb, cooks it, and serves it to the detectives investigating his death. Roald Dahl – Lamb to the Slaughter
2. A woman suffocates after her body is painted with gold paint. Ian Fleming – Goldfinger
3. Locked room/house mystery. The killer sets a booby trap using a weighted potted plant on a chain. The trap is activated when the victim opens a radio cabinet after locking up for the night. Dorothy Sayers – Busman’s Honeymoon
4. Death by a window sash that’s pried loose then replaced and left hidden in plain sight.
Sue Grafton – B is for Burglar
5. The killer uses an icicle contaminated with mercury that melts before the body is found. Christopher Brookmyre – A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
6. Death by classic novels, an autographed copy of The Godfather and a copy of Crime and Punishment. Noreen Wald – Ghostwriter
7. Victim killed by an exploding cow. C.J. Box – Savage Run
8. Death by toothpaste laced with nicotine. Georgette Heyer – Behold, Here’s Poison
9. A beverage container is used to kill three people. Lynne Truss – Murder by Milk Bottle
10. The victim is beaten to death with a copy of The Economist Magazine. Ruth Dudley Edwards – Clubbed to Death
11. Death by Orangutan. Edgar Allan Poe – “Murders in the Rue Morgue”
12. Murder by ukelele string. Agatha Christie – “The Bird with the Broken Wing”
13. Death by ice arrow shot into the brain. Mark Cross – The Jaws of Darkness
14. Death by the rod of a card catalog drawer through the heart. Jo Dereske – Miss Zukas and the Library Murders
15. Death from a rum enema. Tim Dorsey – Florida Roadkill
16. The victim licks his fingers as he turns the pages of a scandalous book with poisoned pages. Umberto Echo – The Name of the Rose
17. Victims are killed by being injected with poisonous snake venom, an exploding clock, a Bengal tiger, and toxic makeup. Christopher Fowler – Seventy-Seven Clocks
18. Death by exploding Christmas tree. Mary Welk - A Deadly Little Christmas
19. Death by manual typewriter. Stephen King – Misery
20. Death by drowning in a motel room toilet. Frances G. Joyce – His Life’s Work
21. Death by falling chandelier. James Melville – Kimono for a Corpse