Our favorite pastimes are full of tropes and cliches. It’s inevitable. Stories fall into predicable patterns. Not all tropes are bad, but it takes skill to make them feel original. And since I’m a romantic sap at heart, there are plenty of tropes I’ll willingly follow. But there are a few that aren’t just eye-rolling, …
The villagers returned every year to spread flowers across the bog. A riot of pinks and blues, purples and yellows, even shocks of pristine white sprinkled like snow for one glorious afternoon before they were left to wilt in the mud. Then they returned to their festivals and dances, their stories and feasts, hoping against …
If you’ve ever wanted Doctor Who to seep into your every day life, Cardiff is the place to go. Probably because the show is filmed there, so it’s a huge part of the city’s culture. No where else in the UK did we find as many references and memorabilia for the show (just that one …
They came to her in dreams. Names and voices, images and events. Without context, they flooded the quiet hours of the night, leaving her to sort through them in the morning. To find meaning and act upon it. Just last night, a young man with hazy features attending her court spoke the title ‘mother’ in …
The week has finally arrived! This weekend, we’ll be rocking to the sweet sounds of Iron Maiden LIVE! Oh yeah, and you can now purchase the final book in the Mythical Island Trilogy! Holy cow! Though I always intended to see the trilogy through to its end, I don’t think I ever believed I’d reach …
I sometimes play an MMO (I won’t say which one, but it isn’t WoW). Lately, I’ve lost my love for it. I stopped playing for several months and have only recently restarted, though I know it’s only going to break my heart again. There are a lot of things I love about this game; the …
Most men lost sleep the night before a significant business transaction. They worked themselves into a frenzy over everything that could possibly go wrong, planning for each contingency in turn in order to mitigate the impact should the worst happen. And when they’d finished planning, they sweated over how to get the most desirable results …
I recently spoke at my husband’s school about being a writer as part of their program to promote reading. They wanted me to address the grade five and six classes about ways that writers can generate ideas. I was thrilled. In all our conversations about how, when, where and what to write, we tend to …
“Our ancestors used to believe that the Sun disappeared forever on the night of the Winter Solstice, never to return.” Rather than watch her mother’s animated face as she told the familiar tale, Morulin focused on her twin brothers. It would be their first time participating in the Yule ritual and they had been squirming …
On April 10th, my husband and I will be attending an Iron Maiden concert. (What!) It’s the first time we’ve bought big tickets for ourselves. Technically it’s to make up for all the anniversaries we’ve missed while moving (even though it’s nowhere near our anniversary), but for me it feels like the reward for something …