Real Phoenix Rises 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Congratulations!🎊🎉🍾

A Yellow Sea creature somewhat resembling a cross between a crab and a lobster. It has a yellow carapace with a cream underbelly, large claws on raised upper appendages, and smaller, fingered hands with opposable thumbs on crossed inner arms. Eyes are on the ends of four stalks that extend from the top of a rounded head

The latest piece of character art completed by @danyriverarts.bsky.social for The Crystal Island, which comes out on Friday! Isn’t this guy adorable!

Miranda’s Garden A magical, moon-soaked novel of grief, growth, and the gardens we carry inside us

A friend of mine is trying to get her first book published as an indie author. See link below.
Miranda’s Garden
www.kickstarter.com/projects/mir...

💕love it, thank you!

On the left, a white teen boy with center parted hair and a cheerful smile. He’s looking up happily at his partner. He’s wearing a gray button up shirt with the collar loose and unbuttoned. A light blue vest is overtop. The sleeves are filled up to expose his forearms. He has a green sash around his pants. On the right is a Black teen boy, taller than the white boy. He has his right arm around the first boy’s shoulders and is smiling a smaller, yet still affectionate smile. He’s wearing a red sleeveless shirt than closes at an angle with a leather sash across his torso. There’s a knife in a sheath in the front he has a brown sash around his waist. They appear intimately comfortable with each other.

Leopold and Jarel, the M/M romantic couple from book two of the Talent Continuum: The Crystal Island, coming May 9, 2025!
I’m so excited for this second book of the trilogy to release!

Look at this gorgeous cover! @danyriverarts.bsky.social has done it again. Book two The Talent Continuum will be out May 9 and I will be giving out ARCs soon!

This calls to me ins place where I was not long ago.

A best sellers rank listing from Amazon for the book A Discovery of Talents. The ranking for Teen and Young Adult Fiction on Disabilities is listed at #106 and is circled toward the bottom. Below that is Customer Reviews and there are 2 Reviews that are 5 out of 5 stars.

So that happened.

I have added the availability to purchase signed copies of my book on my website therealphoenixrises.com . Book 2 of TheTalentContinuum, The Crystal Island, will be released May 9! Cover Reveal coming soon.

Nicholas Hoult is surprisingly underrated. He’s been in several films where people didn’t even recognize him. Incredible talent.

This happened recently. Book one is doing well.
Book two of The Talent Continuum, The Crystal Island, is scheduled for release on May 9, 2025.
Cover reveal coming soon!

Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Greg Casar on stage in Tucson in front a crowd of 23,000 people.

Tucson, Arizona today.

Original projected attendance was 3,000 people.

23,000 showed up.

Someone please give me the best movies to watch and books to read to understand what New York City was like during the 80s and 90s. I’m talking both high and low society.

Please reskeet. This is ✨important✨

Who are some of the writers that made you?
Madeleine L’Engle
Anne McCaffrey
E.B. White
Kenneth Grahame
Stephen King
Peter Straub
JRR Tolkien
Maya Angelou
James Baldwin
Maggie Stiefvater
Suzanne Collins
Cassandra Clare
Amanda Gorman
Tracy Deonn

Book 2 went off for final edits this morning! Planned release is mid May, 2025.

This sounds a lot of fun and fantasy!

I’m buying this today!

Thank you!

Centered is a hardcover copy of A Discovery of Talents, against a backdrop of a lavender wall with painted flowers. There is a small potted spider plant to the book’s left and a cluster of pink roses below and to the right of the book.

Two brown chairs are set to the left and right of a mural on the lavender wall of the St John’s bridge in Portland, with flowers painted on the wall. Seated on the left is Johnnie Mazzacco, event speaker. Seated on the right is Phoenix McDonald, author of A Discovery of Talents. A coffee table is centered in front of them with pink roses in a glass vase.

Had a blast at my first ever author event! Sold almost all the books!

I'm so excited to deliver my workshop, "Liberating the Weird", here!! If you want to write WEIRD FICTION that makes people say WAIT WHAT and OH NO (but also OH YES) but you're not sure how or what to do, this is absolutely the place for you.
Come, join us... forever and ever and ever...

It’s a sale! a.co/d/74XgDDQ

A white keyboard in the foreground, slightly further back the scene is dimmer and a gold/brown cat with black leopard spots is curled up sleeping at the end of the couch. In the background is a row of cups on an end table. Each holds a different type of succulent plant. The right end has puffy leaves, then in one to the left is upright rounded stems. Next to the left has many spikes, mostly vertical. Then a slender stem in a light green with a few light-to-dark-green leaves. The last has much thicker spikes. Just in front of it is a succulent in a larger post with light pink leaves edged in green that grows in a larger green pot. On the wall to the upper left is a wooden tribal style giraffe face. On the far right in the left edge of a television.

Work partners. Emotional support going on here.

Disabled Marcus thinks life is challenging, but it’s about to take a jump beyond what he ever expected. He learns he can travel in his sleep to another world, and it’s a family trait. When he tries to return, he takes his best friend and the girl next door with him.

a.co/d/73Zu0NX

Stand up and do something more than just make statements. Represent the people!

Remember the phrase “the real McCoy?” It’s based on a real live person, a Black man whose invention revolutionized the train industry. Others tried to copy his invention, but they couldn’t hold up, so buyers wanted to ensure they were getting THE REAL MCCOY.

A solid red cover with a Black Roman in the lower left corner. She wears a white and yellow sleeveless vest and chunky earrings. Her face is still and expressionless. The title, skin & bones, no capitals, is on the lower right corner in white. . The author’s name, Renee Watson, is across the top in white.

A teal book cover with a lightening yellow right upper corner to yellow. A yung Black gurl with her hair styled back in fancy braids and interwoven gold material. Her dress is yellow with straps. She’s wearingstylized jewelry and has gold paint on her face. The title, “The Gilded Ones”, is across the cover and the girl’s body, and the author’s name,Namina Forba, just below.

Maya Angelou’s I Kniw Why The Cafed Burd Sings. A Black bird superimposed on an orange cover with the impression of a sunrise in the left lower corner (concentric yellow circles). Also has the words @foreeord by Iprah Winfrey” in the lower right corner.

More Black History Month book recs:

A bright blue cover hat appears torn. The author’s name, Amanda Gorman, is in gold at the top, the word “Poems” appears to shoe through a tear. The title, “Call Us What We Carry” also in gold, fill the rest of the cover.

The cover is a startling red with the dark outline of a bearded Black person with white framed glasses taking up about 3/4 of the space. The title is the same red color across the person “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker”. The phrase “A Memoir in Essays” sits in the space beneath the title and the author’s name, Damon Young, which is at the bottom in all white lettering.

The cover is multiple shades of earth tones, each layer the outline of a person’s face. The title, “The Prophets,” in capitalized in all black bear the bottom, and the author’s name, Robert Jones, Jr, is also capitalized in all black just below the title. A gold circular sticker near the top right edge says “signed copy”.

Book cover with a teenaged Back woman wearing glasses with her hair in curls styled above and around her head. She wearing a dark t-shirt. Her skin appears pink as if being seen from a different viewpoint. The title “the sound of Stars” is in Whit Kettering above her and the author’s name, Alechia Dow is across the bottom of the cover.

Black History Month Book recs:

Just remember in Germany the Nazis were doing what was legally right.
The people who hid Anne Frank in their attic were doing what was morally right.

Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, Juneteenth, and pretty much any month or holiday not celebrating a white man will no longer be recognized or celebrated by the administration. Is this the United States anymore?