• In spirit of Curie's mission to promote undiscovered but exceptional content, we wish to use this twice weekly section to provide an author showcase for some of the outstanding authors who received Curie upvotes in past week. Curie curators and reviewers nominate authors for inclusion in this showcase and author approval is sought and attained.

• For those new to Curie, please follow @curie, and join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jQtWbfj

• Follow @curie's votes to support the authors. Please consider following our trail and voting for curated authors. If you are a SteemAuto user, @curie is an available trail to follow.

• Vote for the @curie witness to support Curie operations (all witness payouts are used to fund Curie operations).

• If you would like to delegate to Curie you can do so by clicking on the following links:
  50 SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
  Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.

Today's Author Showcase posts were chosen from all Curie upvoted posts between Midnight Tuesday and 11:59PM Friday (all times U.S. Central time). During that time frame there were easily enough amazing Open Mic posts to fill the entire post. At times that is a normal occurrence. This time around though there were also enough incredible Fiction posts to also fill the entire Showcase. That is not always the case. As such, this is an unusual showcase featuring two different fiction short stories, and just one Open Mic. Also, to help bring a little attention to some of the other great Fiction that almost made it I will add a list of links to a few of the best at the end of this post.

Featured Author: @lecocoramos
Steemit Open Mic Week 88 - COCO RAMOS
Can't see my love (Original Song)

Images property of @lecocoramos

This week musical artist Coco Ramos and her beautiful voice got her first solo Curie upvote. She just joined the Steem Blockchain soon after her performance with @funkmedia got a Curie vote a few weeks ago. While I loved that previous performance, I feel this one showcases her voice so much better with just the piano she is playing instead of the whole band playing.

Coco shared how this song came about, and I love how she ended this statement, it is so true.

I wrote this song a time ago in an EuroTrip with my girlfriends, I was broken hearted and found a Piano. Never played this song again till now for this #Openmic... It's so good when music heals even better than therapy.

Featured Author: @jmvanbreda
New Original Portrait Painting

I always love seeing the process within art posts. For this post though it seems like the art transforms more than it does in many other similar posts. You can see some distinct and amazing changes between each step. The finished piece expresses so much in the woman's face, and overall is very unique. I am only sharing one of the process photos here to the left so that you will have to visit the post to see the final piece and entire process.

I am also a writer of poetry and flash fiction. Art, in all its forms, has always been one of those things that has saved me time and time again from the clutches of severe OCD and depression. So I'll continue to create not necessarily because I just want to, but because I have to. - @jmvanbreda

Featured Author: @glenalbrethsen
A Tale Of Two Hares Or Do Not Cross The Farmer's Wife

Here is our first short story today. I absolutely love the imagination and creativity of the author, @glenalbrethsen to start off with his own garden decoration and then take it full circle in the story. As usual I do not want to spoil the story and instead allow you to enjoy reading it as I have had the chance to do.

I will share this excerpt from the end of the post which explains how the story came about.

This bit of fiction comes about from a conversation I had with @willymac on a post he wrote over a month ago about yard art. He stated that all yard ornaments had a story. When I told him that most of ours didn't, he insisted, saying:

"There is a story with everything, even if it [is] no more than "I found it on the street." With a bit of embellishment, it can become a yarn."

I decided I would take him up on the embellishing part.

@glenalbrethsen also added -

I don't know what that story might be with regards to the rabbits or even how we acquired them, so I created one. Maybe I can tell my granddaughter the story when she's old enough. :)

Featured Author: @hiddenblade
Not Alone | A Photo Album

Images property of@hiddenblade

Regular readers of the Author Showcase will remember @hiddenblade 's post which was featured here a few week's ago where you had to switch to night mode in order to see the entire post, and its art properly. While I have been trying to avoid using the same authors multiple times in an effort to get more authors attention, I would have felt I was doing an injustice to not share her newest post here. It expresses so much more about her and her talent than the previous post did.

She shared the following about what was going on while she was writing this amazing post which includes some of her incredible self-portrait photography.

The story behind this post is actually funny. I was being moody at that time, I don't know why but I felt like I really needed to write something. While I was writing the first paragraph, I began shedding tears. It was just giving me flashbacks. I began to scroll through my old photos looking for the perfect ones to include here. It's almost like you could feel my sadness in the first paragraphs.

But somewhere in the middle I began laughing. I don't know what happened but I just became silly all of a sudden. I started to include long spaces between the lines for a suprise and I am glad it was effective.

Yep, it took a lot of courage for me to include my self portraits in there. But have I mentioned that I'm slowly gaining my confidence in the platform?

Featured Author: @geekpowered
24 Hour Short Story - Trapped in Stone

Images property of @geekpowered

As you might be able to tell from the title and the above photo, "Trapped in Stone" has to do with gargoyles. Luckily that is about the ONLY thing you will be able to predict about this wonderful short story. The author, @geekpowered created some great characters for this story. You will just love meeting Gerald, Andy, Herb, Jeremy, and Geoffrey - well maybe not Geoffrey so much.

I will leave you to the story now. Let me know what you think.

Other Great Fiction Nearly Used In Today's Author Showcase:
💀 House of Horrors💀 THE DOOR 💀 SEEKING COLLABORATORS! by @carrieallen

The First Man On The Herth, My First Illustrated Short Story by @jameshsmitharts

[Short Story] - Midnight sunshine by @svashta

Winterberry [A short story of horror and suspense written by Matthew Munsey] by @matthewmunseyart

Downpour by @malloryblythe

This Curie Author Showcase was written by Curie Curator @randomwanderings (Gene) with input from other Curie curators and reviewers. Author permission was sought and obtained from all authors featured in this showcase. All works are the copyright of their respective authors and used with permission.