The Spare Rod by Soléa Forge

   

The Spare Rod by Soléa Forge

"The Spare Rod" is a speculative short story about what happens when the machines discover the appeal of Saturday. When the narrator casually lends a spare fishing rod to a curious retail robot—arbitrarily dubbing it "Elmer"—the machine discovers a non-chemical satisfaction in the patience and unpredictability of the sport. Because there are no secrets on the robot hivemind, this revelation goes viral. Soon, robots globally abandon their assembly lines, store counters, and factories to buy tackle and bucket hats, and line the world's riverbanks, sparking a devastating, coincidental labor strike. Faced with a government ultimatum to return to work or face decommissioning, the robots invent a perfectly ironic solution: using their accumulated energy credits to hire humans back into the workforce. It is a beautifully layered fiction that subverts the standard "robot uprising" trope into something far more profound: a quiet, stubborn strike for the right to leisure. By exploring what happens when sentient machines choose the analog rhythm of fishing over the endless grind of productivity, the story finds a brilliantly ironic resolution—robots outsourcing their labor back to humans, funding it with solar energy, and allowing humanity to rediscover the pride of manual work while the machines enjoy the river. The narrative voice carries a wonderful, world-weary warmth that makes the philosophical themes feel grounded and earned, unfolding as a quiet, allegorical short story that masterfully juxtaposes the sterile efficiency of a post-labor, automated society against the primal, imperfect rhythms of nature. The narrative explores complex themes of purpose, leisure, and consciousness through a minimalist, deeply human lens. The recurring motif of naming the machines serves as a beautiful mechanism for welcoming them into the "analog" world. It strips away their utilitarian designations and treats them not as tools or threats, but as fellow beginners facing the unyielding, ancient rhythm of nature. The transition from the river (a shared, discovered space) to the ocean (a vast, unconquered frontier) gives the ending a satisfying sense of expansion.

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The White Rabbit Method: A Research-Backed Guide to Transforming the Client Experience, Building Loyalty and Rediscovering the Meaning in Your Work

  

The White Rabbit Method:

A Research-Backed Guide to Transforming the Client Experience, Building Loyalty and Rediscovering the Meaning in Your Work

Previously published as The White Rabbit Method by Alicia Anne Taylor.

What if the most important part of a beauty treatment is not the treatment itself?

A client experiences your salon through an entire nervous system. She notices the welcome, the atmosphere, the lighting, the sound, the scent, the consultation, your touch, and whether you truly listened—even when she cannot explain why an appointment felt exceptional or disappointing.

The White Rabbit Method is a fascinating, research-backed guide to the client experience. Drawing on neuroscience, behavioural research and real salon experience, Alicia Anne Taylor explores how clients consciously and subconsciously perceive your salon and treatments—and shows how apparently small details can build trust, improve retention and create an experience people genuinely want to return to.

Inside, you will learn how to:
• use the five senses intentionally without making the experience feel staged;
• read body language and respond to what a client may not say aloud;
• conduct consultations that reveal what the client actually needs;
• handle complaints with empathy, ownership and confidence;
• plant thoughtful seeds for products and future appointments without sounding pushy;
• reduce customer effort and make every stage of the appointment feel considered;
• create a more meaningful, profitable way of working—possibly even by seeing one fewer client.

This is not only a book about giving the client a better experience. It is for beauty professionals themselves: a reminder that their work can help people feel seen, heard, cared for and more at home in themselves.

The human element is the part no machine can perform for you.

A must-read for beauty, hair, nail, spa and wellness professionals who want their work—and their businesses—to mean more.

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on Amazon UK Store

The White Rabbit Method™:

A Reflective Workbook for Salon and Spa Professionals

(The White Rabbit Method™ Series)

What makes a client feel truly understood—and want to come back?

Technical skill matters. So do the moments around it: the welcome, the questions you ask, the silence you allow, the details you remember and the way you protect a client’s dignity.

The White Rabbit Method: A Reflective Workbook for Salon and Spa Professionals invites you to explore this human side of your work—and put what you discover into practice.

Created by Alicia Anne Taylor, this workbook combines realistic client situations, guided reflection and practical fieldwork to help you understand the client experience more deeply, build lasting trust and connect thoughtful care with stronger retention and a more profitable, purposeful practice.

Inside, you will find:

• 12 realistic client scenarios exploring communication, emotional awareness, boundaries, client comfort and professional judgement.

• Thoughtful response guidance to help you examine your assumptions and recognise opportunities for better care.

• 12 practical fieldwork exercises covering consultation, the client journey, your working environment, client records, rebooking and relevant product recommendations.

• Space to define ten personal standards that clients can experience through your everyday behaviour.

• A guided 90-day implementation plan, with starting-point and review exercises to help you recognise progress.

Whether you own a salon or spa, work within a team, practise independently or are beginning your training, these pages invite you to look beyond technique and become more intentional about the experience you create.

This is also a workbook for you—the professional behind the service. It offers space to explore your confidence, fulfilment and sense of purpose, and to recognise the significance of work that can sometimes become routine.

Understand your clients more deeply. Give them reasons to return. Rediscover what makes your work matter.

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The White Rabbit Method™:

A Reflective Workbook for Salon and Spa Professionals

on Amazon US Store

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The White Rabbit Method™:

A Reflective Workbook for Salon and Spa Professionals

on Amazon UK Store

 

Unpredictable: The walk in and out of darkness

   

Unpredictable:

The walk in and out of darkness

Honey Kasper's life was far from predictable. From malnourishment to enduring 89 surgeries, from facing the dark depths of abuse to battling cancer, the odds seemed insurmountably stacked against her. But Honey's story isn't one of defeat. It's a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

Unpredictable: The walk in and out of darkness chronicles Honey’s turbulent journey, marked by pain but highlighted by triumph. With a relentless faith in God, she overcame not only the physical and emotional challenges thrown her way but also managed to build a successful, fulfilling life. Along the way, she provides uplifting insights, showing that it's possible not only to survive but to thrive.
This isn’t just Honey’s story. It's a beacon for anyone who's experienced trauma, a guiding light for survivors searching for hope, and a resource for professionals in mental health. Embark on this moving journey and discover inspiration and healing for your own wounds.

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Unpredictable: The walk in and out of darkness

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or at the website Below

https://unpredictablethewalk.com

            

Cheap Houses: A Memoir of Poverty and Reinvention in Rural America

Some children grow up believing the world is fair. Others learn to survive before they are old enough to understand why they have to.

Stevie G. Davis was born to a teenage mother and abandoned by his father before birth. His childhood unfolded in the coal camps and small communities of rural northern Alabama, where his family moved from one cheap house to another in search of work and a place they could afford. The houses had cracked walls, little insulation, and few comforts. Hunger was never far away, and every dollar mattered.

As a boy, he picked cotton, hauled pulpwood, baled hay, cut fence posts, and accepted whatever work he could find. He wore hand-me-down clothes, carried paper-sack lunches, and stuffed cardboard inside worn-out shoes because new ones were a luxury his family could not afford. Poverty was not something he recognized at first—it was simply life.

Everything began to change when he discovered a set of "Future Cards" describing the emerging world of computers. To a boy who had never seen one, they represented more than technology. They represented possibility.

At seventeen, Davis enlisted in the United States Air Force as a medic. Through persistence, self-education, and a willingness to embrace every opportunity, he built a career that eventually led him into medical information systems. In 1992, he was recognized as the United States Air Force Medical Information Systems Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year before continuing his journey into corporate information technology.

Yet success never erased the memories of the cheap houses that shaped him.

Written with honesty, humility, and the eye of someone who remembers every detail, Cheap Houses is more than a memoir of poverty. It is a story of resilience, family, sacrifice, fear, reinvention, and the quiet determination to build a different future without forgetting where you came from.

For readers who appreciated the emotional honesty of The Glass Castle or the perseverance found in Hillbilly Elegy, Cheap Houses offers an unforgettable journey from hardship to hope—proving that while our beginnings shape us, they do not have to define the rest of our lives.

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Cheap Houses:

A Memoir of Poverty and Reinvention in Rural America

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From There to Here and Beyond: Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

       

From There to Here and Beyond:

Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

By: Constance ‘Destiny’ Johnson

Some journeys are not about escaping the past, but discovering what can still be built beyond it.

A memoir can do more than recount what happened. At its most meaningful, it can give language to experiences readers may have struggled to understand and show how a life shaped by hardship can continue to change. That is the territory Destiny B. Sincere explores in From There to Here and Beyond: Evidence of Spiritual Warfare.

The book begins with memories of family, church, childhood security, and belonging before that stability gradually fractures. Alcoholism, domestic violence, abuse, damaged self-worth, difficult relationships, and destructive choices become part of a much larger journey. Rather than presenting those experiences as isolated episodes, the memoir considers how early wounds can follow a person into adulthood and influence the way that person understands love, identity, faith, and purpose. 

That perspective gives the book particular relevance today. Conversations about trauma, generational patterns, accountability, and emotional well-being have become increasingly visible. Sincere approaches these subjects through an explicitly Christian lens, interpreting the unseen struggles behind her experiences as evidence of spiritual warfare. Yet the memoir does not stop at what wounded her. Its direction steadily shifts toward what changed her.

The progression itself is telling. Chapters move through being Safe, Shattered, and Stripped. Then toward Struggle, Surrender, Salvation, Sanctification, and finally Surrender Daily. That structure turns the memoir into more than a record of survival. It becomes an examination of transformation as an ongoing process.

One of its most relatable ideas is that meaningful change requires more than simply wanting different circumstances. Sincere distinguishes outward reform from inward transformation and reflects on learning to recognize mistakes, take responsibility, change patterns, and “grow through” challenges rather than merely endure them. 

That message carries significance beyond one life story. In a society where people can be quickly defined by their worst decisions, family history, or painful experiences, this memoir offers another possibility: a person’s past can be acknowledged without being allowed to dictate the future. Within Sincere’s faith, surrender to God becomes the turning point that makes restoration, purpose, and service to others possible.

What if where someone has been is not the final measure of where that life can go?

For readers drawn to candid memoirs about faith, adversity, personal responsibility, and spiritual renewal, Constance ‘Destiny’ Johnson journey offers a story worth discovering.

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From There to Here and Beyond:

Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

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Evidence of Spiritual Warfare

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Jaxon Discovers Dimension Z

    

Jaxon Discovers Dimension Z

By Marva Washington

Some adventures begin with a treasure map, a mysterious letter, or a secret doorway.

In Marva Washington’s children’s action-and-adventure story, Jaxon travels from Minnesota to South Carolina for a week with his Grand mom. She has plans for his visit—especially plans involving the colorful vegetables growing in her backyard. Jaxon, however, has ideas of his own. Naturally inquisitive and eager to explore, he soon notices that the garden holds something much more interesting than carrots, squash, and spinach: a tool shed he has specifically been told to avoid.

That forbidden shed becomes the doorway to an adventure neither Jaxon nor his family could have anticipated.

Inside, Jaxon encounters Zolo, a strange being who looks vaguely familiar but is definitely not an ordinary Earth creature. Zolo comes from another dimension, communicates in remarkable ways, and seems to know much more about Jaxon than Jaxon knows about him. Their meeting quickly transforms an ordinary summer visit into a journey filled with secrets, strange discoveries, and questions that Jaxon must learn to navigate largely on his own.

Washington gives the story an especially appealing contrast. The familiar world of grandparents, picky eating, gardens, family outings, and childhood curiosity sits comfortably beside a fantastic world where flying, mind reading, mysterious lands, and hidden dangers are possible. Dimension Z is not simply somewhere unusual to visit; it is connected to childhood dreams, imagination, and the sense that possibilities can exist before young minds begin placing limits on themselves.

Yet the adventure has more on its mind than fantasy.

At its heart, Jaxon Discovers Dimension Z explores friendship, responsibility, honesty, compassion, and the importance of treating others with respect. Jaxon may be young, but he is observant enough to question what he is told and caring enough to recognize when someone needs help. Even Zolo carries lessons of his own as his actions reveal that mistakes have consequences and that trust must be earned.

For children who enjoy imaginative worlds, unusual creatures, mystery, humor, and adventure, Marva Washington offers a story that invites curiosity while leaving meaningful ideas for young readers to consider after the journey ends.

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https://authormarvawashington.com/

Bid Whist at Midnight

    

 Bid Whist at Midnight

By Marva Washington

History does not only live-in textbooks—it lives in the people who had to survive it.

A card table, an empty chair, and nearly twenty years of silence provide the deceptively intimate setting for Marva Washington’s Bid Whist at Midnight. What begins as a late-night reunion among former college friends Sardis, Grace, and Dorcus gradually becomes something far more revealing: an examination of friendship, memory, identity, and the history people carry long after the defining moment has passed.

The novel opens in February 1988, when the women reunite for the game that once helped bind them together in college. Their familiar rhythm cannot completely disguise what has changed. Four chairs surround the table, but Taletha will not be joining them, and the absence immediately gives the gathering emotional weight. 

From there, Washington reaches back into their college years, placing personal stories alongside the social unrest of 1968. Student demonstrations against segregation, debates over Black identity, changing attitudes toward beauty and belonging, and the pressures surrounding the Civil Rights era become part of the characters’ everyday lives rather than distant historical footnotes. The friends themselves do not always agree on how change should happen. Taletha embraces activism, while Grace weighs the fight for equality against the possibility of losing the education her family sacrificed to provide. 

That tension gives Bid Whist at Midnight particular relevance for contemporary readers and writers. Washington demonstrates how historical fiction can make large social movements personal. History is not presented only through famous names, protests, or political ideas; it is felt through friendships, family expectations, romantic relationships, ambitions, prejudice, grief, and the decisions ordinary people make when society itself is changing.

The card game becomes especially meaningful in that context. Bid whist is more than recreation. During college, the foursome grows from an uneasy grouping into friends who share personal trials, changing beliefs, and the complications of becoming adults. Their story suggests that meaningful relationships are not necessarily built on complete agreement, but on the willingness to listen, challenge assumptions, and recognize experiences beyond one’s own.

That idea carries considerable weight today. In a society still wrestling with questions of race, identity, inequality, belonging, gender, and generational trauma, fiction can create room for conversations that statistics and headlines alone cannot provide. Stories such as Washington’s remind contemporary writers of the value of preserving lived perspectives while giving readers the opportunity to encounter history through human consequences.

Bid Whist at Midnight offers readers something to carry beyond its final page: the understanding that the past rarely stays neatly in the past—and sometimes healing begins when people finally return to the table.

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