https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-u3i7h-111b129
Episode 9 Season 5 – Review Weird But True Halloween
YouTube: Andrea Menzies https://youtu.be/PrfN-0_RnSI
Facebook link: A. E. Menzies Fiction Author
Premium Content Links: //www.patreon.com/FH7publishingBookReviews
Sales: http://www.fh7publishing.com/
Discord App ID is Poedaughter7 #9644
Looks like my trip to Texas in July to promote books is going to be on delay. Texas just re-closed due to the pandemic, and many of my friends that normally let me stay on the sofa on the way to Texas are afraid to have guests due to coronavirus. I will try again in August when I can save up more hotel cash. Oh well absence makes the heart grow fonder!
More on NOLA… I am on another visit to New Orleans December 2019. Here are highlights from the last voyage. I was at a ski ball game where I was on a ski ball team. There was a ski ball Christmas party. There was a robot dancing donkey, and it looked JUST like a real person! The Gumbo was the BEST gumbo.
No visit to New Orleans at Halloween is complete without a quick graveyard tour. The graves are amazing because the swamp makes it hard to put coffins underground, and so bodies are placed in above ground tombs covered in famous statues. This year I went to Lafayette No. 1 by Commanders Palace restaurant for my end of visit tour. For more art prints for sale see my page at the following: https://www.deviantart.com/fh7publishing
My bank account got hacked, and I had to leave early this trip to solve the account issues. However I had an amazing time! It was completely everything I wanted the journey to be! Better dating, great photos, and AMAZING food from HEAVEN. I realized that something my life is badly missing is MORE trips to New Orleans! It helps me feel less depressed and trapped in Virginia to know that I can LEAVE it some days. Since I have been working my last couple of jobs for over a year I have been able to improve my car access so I am going to carpool to the area more often in the next few years. A famous Armstrong song is titled “Do you know what it means to Miss New Orleans” and I fully understand the song now. Nothing and no-other-thing is a New Orleans Halloween, and I am sorry I have skipped it for a while. For more art prints for sale see my page at the following: https://www.deviantart.com/fh7publishing
I got pins! This was an upswing moment in my last travel adventures. Travel will always have ups, and downs good moments and bad. I travel to towns I used to live in a therapeutic way. It is not just to have a “good” time, but to see the reality of the towns. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and sometimes all you remember is the good times in a Utopia town. If you are watching TV shows about a town, and then all you see is rich-pretty people having rich-pretty problems you think your town is a nightmare. Then you actually go to New Orleans and see empty wallets and suitcases from robberies everywhere, and massive 3 hour traffic jams in Austin. Then you remember the reality of the towns that made you move away. When you live in other towns you have different problems, and do not have “nothing” for problems at all. The “good old days were not always good, and tomorrow is not as bad as it seems” as the old song says is a comfort.
Unfortunately there was one dark spot on the trip, and I do feel it needs to be addressed online. When a music venue is run by con-artists as many people as possible need to know when con-artists are destroying a music venue so they are not the next victims.
I am a live music fan who has traveled the world to see shows. Most of my experience has been good. Unfortunately at my last time at House of Blues I was NOT let into a show due to having a half consumed soda at the bottom of my purse in a screw top bottle. I tossed out a bit of trash from the bottom of my purse when they were searching bags, and the door man would not let me in at all. I was going to see bands at a show called Endless Night. I had been on a road trip for two days, and of course I had a tiny bit of trash in my purse. I tossed it out in the can by the door. The door man then said I could not come in, and that I was acting “wild” in my indignation at being denied entry. I would like to see them take money out of the door man’s wallet, and flush it down the toilet in front of him he would be acting outraged as well. At some moments outrage is the normal and appropriate response. They were not acting so picky when they took the full price of the ticket off my credit card. I was holding the printout of the receipt with my name, and purchase confirmation numbers on it. House of Blues would give me no refund for their VERY expensive ticket I was given as a gift. I did not see any of the music show. Sorry to see House of Blues has become so pathetic over the years, and no longer serves its fans. It is likely they oversold a sold-out venue, and could not let more people in due to fire-code violations, yet were acting like con-artists to pocket the money instead of giving refunds.
I quickly met up with other friends like Damien and John, and had a great night dancing until dawn at other locations. I told this story to dozens of people, and wrote copies of this review on Yelp, Travelocity, Foursquare, and all over blogs with hashtags #HouseofBlues and #EndlessNight. In some ways I dodged a bullet, and people acting that bad to customers at the door were sure to have destroyed the better parts of my Halloween travel weekend. Yet the dark side of travel is some people live to run scams on people from out of town. #HouseofBluesCheatsCustomers
Home again Home again jiggity jig… As the quote from Bladerunner goes. Abscence makes the heart grow fonder, and I was sure fond of the sexy guys in New Orleans and Austin. I made it home from promoting my new book The Halloween Mystery of the Black Camera and Ruby Stone. The promotion tour went well, and I got to talk with many writers about the craft. Now I can have Cafe du Monde coffee I brought back.
Videos are here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OZciPNxGDg&feature=youtu.be
Binge watching The Originals CW show to get into that New Orleans magic sort of a mood. Normally it makes me sad to watch this show when I am so far from New Orleans on Halloween, but not this year! Meanwhile, I try on outfits for packing. You have to wear it to know if it is worth packing.
Frozen History 7 Publishing Book Review Podcast 