Liffey Rivers Essay Contest

Aspiring young authors:

Irish Dancing and Culture Magazine is having an "I love Liffey Rivers because..." essay contest.

Win a free In the Shadow of the Serpent signed book and......write a published review for IDM.

Details.

Feiseanna In Wisconsin Are Multiplying Like Rabbits

When my daughter started Irish dance lessons in 1999 in Milwaukee, there were approximately five feiseanna within easy driving range: The Chicago Feis, the Maryville Feis (the day after the Chicago Feis-now extinct), the Milwaukee Feis in August, the Winter Feis in Milwaukee in January and the Iowa Feis in Dubuque which I think started up in 2001. We went to other feiseanna as well (Minnesota, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Indianapolis) but the driving and hotel costs made these events few and far between.

Now there are so many feiseanna held in the Milwaukee area (I think approximately 10) that a dancer could eventually make it all the way to Open Championship without ever having to leave Southern Wisconsin.

If Wisconsinites include the 'within driving range' feiseanna in the Chicago area, they would spend a LOT of time at feiseanna all year long. A lot of time.

Brenna Briggs is the author of the Liffey Rivers Irish Dancer Mysteries.

www.liffeyrivers.com

THE COUNTDOWN AT LAST

Waiting for In the Shadow of the Serpent to be published has been a very long ordeal. It does seem, however, that the end, or rather the beginning, is finally in sight. The book cover has been the most recent glitch. The others were due to my malfunctioning brain. The book will be available in a week or so.

I am hoping that the book is as exciting to read as it was to write. I became so fixated on black mambas researching and writing this 4th Liffey Rivers mystery that I have to admit that I look for mambas around the house. Even though they live in Africa. One never knows. You can sneak around and buy these lethal snakes and there are many crazy wannabe herpetologists who would be thrilled to face 'The Shadow of Death' (nickname)regularly when they clean their mamba cages. I have Google alert me every day about black mambas so I know if someone has been bitten somewhere and if any new videos about 'Slender Death' (another nickname) are out there. I like to keep ahead of these snakes!

The creepiest mamba story I read told the story of a woman who knew a black mamba was in her small house in Africa. She could smell it. Mamba scat apparently smells like curry powder. So she found someone to investigate for her when she failed to find the creature.

IT WAS LIVING IN THE HEADBOARD OF HER BED!!!!!! The stuff of a complete nervous breakdown for anyone!! Imagine looking for this snake day after day and then discovering it was living six inches from your face!!!!! Every night for weeks!!! Making your own bed its lair.

Anyway, along with bog butter, I may be able to state that I am now an un-degreed black mamba expert.

In this 4th book, Liffey Rivers uses a difficult, but common Irish dance step to literally save her life when she is racing through the tall savanna grasses in South Africa (on safari enroute to an Irish dance competition (feis) in Johannesburg). You can probably guess what she is fleeing from!

Next short story for Irish Dance and Culture Magazine concerns LiffeyRivers' concern that a champion Irish dancer she meets might be a werewolf. A member of a clan in Kilkenny cursed by Abbot St. Natalis long ago...

In case you might be concerned about my mental health, ponder no more. I don't have any left!

Read more about the Black Mamba on my serpent page at http://www.liffeyrivers.com/.