Category: about writing
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What lurks in the fog?
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Fog: “a weather condition in which very small drops of water come together to form a thick cloud close to the land or sea, making it difficult to see” Cambridge Dictionary Not long after I graduated from university, I worked on a funded project at a horticultural research station that…
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Creating cursed places – inspiration from Dark Shadows
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“If I could speak the language of rabbits, they would be amazed, and I would be their king. I would be kind to my rabbit subjects. At first.” Rajesh Koothrappali, Big Bang Theory Have you ever played a Simulator game? One where you create a community, placing homes, stores, a…
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The Lovecraft Legacy
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“…he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror.” The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft We’re going to begin April/Halfoween with a creeping whisper rather than a bang. There are authors who’ve created…
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March Madness in Bookland
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‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’ Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll Do you also feel as if we’ve all tumbled down a rabbit-hole into a strange world where nothing makes sense? When I…
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Irish travel: inspired by books
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When I turned the final page of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wanted to crawl back inside. While the books are overly-descriptive for some people, I found the details of Middle Earth so fascinating that I couldn’t get enough of them. I wanted to visit Middle Earth, follow…
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Being a bold woman today
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“And I may say, once for all, carefully weighing my words, that in no part of the world have I seen stones cut with such mathematical precision and admirable skill as in Peru, and in no part of Peru are there any to surpass those which are scattered over the…
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Characters from books to screen: good, bad, misguided
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About 30 minutes into the first Lord of the Rings movie, I was ticked off, and spent the next three hours fuming. Now, for that movie my problem wasn’t with the casting – except for the ridiculous choice of actress to play Lady Arwen – but with the many, many…
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Inspired by Ancient Mythology
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Along with the eerie literature and movies that were big influences for me as a child and early story-teller (Edgar Allan Poe, The Twilight Zone, etc.), I also grew up on what I loosely call ‘sword-and-sandal’ movies. Officially, the term ‘sword-and-sandal’ refers to a popular genre of Italian knock-off movies…
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Plotting a novel old-school – Excel spreadsheets are still alive!
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“It’s alive! It’s alive!” cries Dr. Frankenstein cries in the classic 1931 movie. I was starting to feel like his creation, plodding away with my Excel spreadsheets to plot out my novels, when I came across something that made my little old-fashioned heart beat again. Excel, the clunky, cumbersome software…
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Dark, Crumbling and Intense
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“Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave…” Victor Frankenstein Another year gone – it’s hard to believe that we’re now twenty-six years past the qualms of New Year’s Eve 1999. After what I hope was a lovely holiday…