Category Archives: Writing

March 20, 2017 · 1:00 am

10 Pictures That Are Begging to be Turned into Stories

I come across the most beautiful, scary, haunting, and fascinating images when I’m searching for stock photos for this blog. It always makes me a little sad when I realize that nothing I’ve written so far fits them in any way.

They’re the kind of images that demand an audience, so today I’m sharing a few of these unusual pictures with you in the hope that you’ll be inspired by them. If anyone uses one of these images as a writing prompt, I’d love to know how you interpreted it! Send me a message about it on Twitter.

 

An Unbroken Doll

The fact that this doll’s face was broken at one point doesn’t surprise me. Toys break all of the time.

Who painstakingly glued her back together, though?

That isn’t the kind of chore that can be finished in a few minutes. It probably took days of carefully sifting through the sharp porcelain pieces of her head to figure out how every piece fit together and what kind of glue works best for this sort of delicate project.

It would take a lot of determination to see this project through to the end. I imagine only someone who had a strong emotional urge to do it would succeed.

 

The Pretty Poison

None of the household poisons I’ve ever seen look anything like this.

The purple liquid sure seems like it would smell nice. I’m imagining a light, floral scent that almost disappears once air hits it. You’d have to be quite close to it to catch a whiff of anything.

That wouldn’t make it any less dangerous, of course. Every apothecarist knows that.

Leg Day

Look closely at the picture above. It may take you a moment to notice the strange twist in it.

My first thought when I saw it was that it was some kind of genetic engineering gone weird. The horses legs look almost human at first glance. Is a horse still a horse if some part of its DNA somehow came from a human?

I’d love to read that book and find out.

Happily Ever After

The bright colours and whimsical scenery in it caught my eye. immediately. They’re exactly what I’d expect to find in a fantasy romance novel.

This is the kind of cover that would make me pick up a book to find out more about its plot. If nothing else, I’d want to know if there was an entire forest of heart-shaped trees for the characters to skip through or if this tree was unique in that way.

Knock, knock!

This is another one of those photographs that seems perfectly ordinary when you first glance at it. I was actually planning to save it for a future post about something cheerful and ordinary like going on vacation until one strange little detail in it popped out at me.

That detail catapulted this post from it’s original purpose into possible story territory. The explanation for it could be completely logical and scientific, but there’s also room for science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, or even horror elements to it if you prefer. Stop reading now if you want to figure out on your own what I noticed.

For anyone who needs or wants a hint about, pay attention to the body language of the woman in the centre of the photograph. How has she positioned herself? Do you notice anything unexpected about it?

The Insincere Smile

The stock photo site that I use most often has dozens of pictures that are similar to this one. The models are always nicely dressed  but have completely insincere expressions on their faces.

There are many explanations for why that might be so. Sometimes I like to come up with some reasons for the fun of it. Were the models worn out from a day of posing? Are they trying to secretly warn their audiences about who or what might be lurking behind the camera? The possibilities are endless, and the sci-fi writer in me prefers the unexplainable ones.

All that Glitters…

What I like the most about this picture is how versatile it is. Off the top of my head, it could be interpreted to be part of the erotic romance, regular romance, science fiction, fantasy, or even the older end of the young adult genre. You could probably even find a way to turn it into a mystery or a thriller if you massaged the possibilities enough.

That ambiguity makes me smile. I like it when stories leave room for more than one genre to flourish in them. When its done correctly, this can be a wonderful way to introduce people to types of storytelling that they might not otherwise be open to trying.

Deep in Thought

I both love and hate seeing gorillas and other apes at the zoo for the same reason: they remind me so much of human beings.

Everything from their mannerisms to their facial expressions can be eerily close to the way that people behave at times. When I look at them, I feel like we are this close to having a conversation about the weather or which kind of fruit is in season now.

While I’m glad that they have a safe place to live, it also feels wrong to cage them up. They feel too intelligent for that fate to me.

The nice thing about this picture is that it could be used for non-fiction just as easily as it could for fiction. You don’t have to invent anything about the intelligence of other primates in order to write about them. We already know that while they might not be exactly like us, they’re also not exactly like other animals either.

When Justice Is Blind

Is it just me, or does that water look uncomfortably cold?

The first thing I thought when I saw this scene was that it looked like a test of some sorts. Is he expected to swim in that chilly water or simply stand in it blindfolded for a predetermined amount of time?

The One Who’s Watching You

Obviously I had to save the best picture for last today. This is the creepiest thing I’ve stumbled across in a long time.

Not seeing a character’s face always scares me.

The fact that we can see his or her hands doesn’t help the situation, though. Their nails look sharp and rough. Their skin looks leathery, and I’m not entirely sure it would still be warm to the touch if they brushed against you.

What does he or she want?

I’m afraid to ask, but I’m even more afraid to turn away before they do.

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March 16, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why It’s Okay to Eavesdrop for Creative Purposes

 I have a confession to make today. Listening in on other people’s conversations is one of my favourite things to do, and I don’t think any artistic person should feel the least bit guilty about it.

In fact, we should be doing it regularly.

Why is that, you might be wondering? I have several different reasons for feeling this way.

This Isn’t About Spreading or Listening to Gossip. I would be equally interested in overhearing people passionately debate their favourite fishing techniques as I would a happy story about someone they know who just got engaged. If someone really loves a certain topic, their enthusiasm for it can be contagious.

There’s also something fascinating about conversations that aren’t rehearsed or expected to be remembered in any way. I like the little pauses people add to what they say before they share big news and the different sounds they make when they hear something sad, thrilling, troubling, or wonderful.

The way that words slip off of a real person’s tongue isn’t always the same as the way that characters speak. It’s interesting to find these small cracks between the two and try to fill them in the next time I read or write something that didn’t quite hit the mark.

Your Intentions Are Good. On a related note, another big reason why I don’t have a problem with eavesdropping for creative purposes is because artists and writers generally have good intentions when they do it. We listen in on other people’s conversations to find inspiration, not stir up trouble or poke our noses into other people’s business.

There have been times when I suddenly stopped eavesdropping on people because of how personal or sensitive their exchange was becoming. It’s one thing to overhear someone talk about what kind of fruit to pick up at the grocery store and quite another to listen to them plan a funeral or publicly break up with their partner.

These aren’t things that I have any interest in overhearing. They really should have happened in a private place anyway, so I pretend like I never heard them if they accidentally spill out into the public sphere. Someone who was eavesdropping for an unsavoury purpose wouldn’t have this kind of discretion.

Some Moments Were Made for Each Other. Have you ever thought of the perfect comeback minutes, hours, or days after a discussion ended? Time travel isn’t possible, of course, but you can always go back and rewrite how things should or could have gone if that’s something you want to.

There’s also something to be said for snipping moments out of real life that never could have happened next to each other and then figuring out how to lay them down gently on a fresh sheet of paper, tuck them into song lyrics, or flick them onto a clean canvas.  The best things I’ve ever written were a curious mixture of wishful thinking, stolen tidbits of time from true events, and characters I’ve already created that demand to keep that particular idea for their own uses.

Other People’s Stories Are Fodder for the Imagination. I have never used an entire conversation that I’ve heard in anything that I’ve written. The details always get changed, and they usually are altered in such profound ways that no no one would recognize their source.

Most of the time these exchanges make me think of questions that lead me to entirely new places in my mind. For example, I might hear someone mispronounce a fairly common word and wonder why they did that. Is English their second language? Did they used to have a severe stutter when they were a child that now only comes through when they try to say certain sounds? Have they only ever read that word in print and so have no idea that they’re mispronouncing it?

There are so many logical explanations for something like this. If you’re writing science fiction or fantasy, there could be plenty of supernatural or otherworldly explanations to play around with as well. Has this person been possessed by a ghost who lived in a time when that word was pronounced differently? Is she an alien who is desperately trying to blend into human society while she observes how our society functions and decides whether or not to officially make first contact?

I almost never have a clue if my theories are actually correct, but that doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. They provide a decent jumping off point, and I’m happy to let my imagination wander after that.

Life Would be Dull Without Storytellers. I believe that poets, musicians, writers, painters, and other creative folks fulfill a vital purpose for our species. We take note of those strange, beautiful, difficult, or thought-provoking moments in life that many other people miss and reinterpret them in all kinds of wonderful ways.

Occasionally we even get to preserve those moments so that they can be savoured decades or even centuries after they originally existed. If this isn’t a kind of immortality, I don’t know what else would qualify. There is something almost magical about still having these snapshots of ordinary times that existed long ago and in faraway places.

So eavesdrop away, fellow creative people! There are beautiful moments slipping by every single day. It’s up to us to capture a few of them and make sure they’re not forgotten.

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March 13, 2017 · 1:00 am

Scifi and Fantasy Rules That Should be Broken

I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy stories for about as long as I’ve known how to read at all. There are so many things I love about these genres, but today I wanted to talk about some of the things that I wish SFF writers would do differently.

1. The Chosen One Must be Young and Uneducated

Why is the chosen one nearly always a teenager or young adult who hasn’t completed – or often even started – their training yet? Why are they the only one who can defeat the wizard, dragon, corrupt government, or werewolf army?

I dream of the day when the chosen one is actually a group of specialized, highly-trained witches who must use their complementary powers at the same exact time to defeat the dragon. Alternatively, maybe the chosen one could be a 70-year-old scientist who has spent the last 40 years studying the virus that has wiped out the last three attempts at permanent human colonies on Europa and who only now is ready to test his vaccine for it on human subjects.

At this point, I’d prefer to watch conflict build up slowly over years than see any more characters jump into the fray before they fully understand what’s going on or have had any training in what they’re about to accomplish.

2. Everyone Gets a Love Triangle

No, I am not against romantic storylines in general. There is definitely a time and place for them, and many stories would be far poorer without them.

With that being said, I’d be happy to never read about another love triangle again. This kind of stuff yanks me out of the plot every time it happens because of how confusing and strange I find it to be.

Please let characters be polyamorous, asexual, or totally uninterested in falling in love until the last zombie has been destroyed and humanity has once again begun to enjoy luxuries like healthy food, deodorant, regular baths, and not running in terror for their lives every day.

I would be thrilled to read about any of these scenarios. What I’d like to avoid, though, is anyone wringing their hands about which love interest to pick when there are far more urgent matter at hand.

For example, how terrible must all of the characters smell after running away from zombies for weeks and eating nothing but stale candy bars and potato chips out of vending machines?( I’m mostly joking here, but I think about practical matters like bad breath and body odour when a character in this sort of story suddenly starts mooning over someone who also probably hasn’t seen a toothbrush or loofah since sometime last month).

There are so many interesting things to say about outsmarting zombies, navigating a spaceship, or figuring out how to placate a fairy after you’ve unintentionally angered her and all of her relatives. These sources of conflict are a thousand times more compelling to me than wondering which love interest the main character will pick when he or she is still trying to figure out how to survive the night or which end of the sword you should be poking the bad guys with.

3. Aliens Are Always Smarter Than Us

There are only a few non-human species on Earth that can be described as intelligent: elephants, dolphins, and certain species of apes come to mind here.

We have no idea what life is really like on other planets or if it exists, but sometimes I wonder what humanity would do if we discovered something that wasn’t a little green man who could learn to speak English.

How would we treat an alien species if it was about as intelligent and willing to communicate with us as is the average cat? What if they were intelligent but it was in a way that wasn’t particularly compatible with human intelligence? Would we still be interested in a species if we couldn’t figure out their language or they couldn’t figure out ours?

These are the kinds of questions I think about every time I watch science fiction movies about humans making contact with new species from other planets.

4. Humans Are the Good Guys

Speaking of aliens, why are humans always the good guys when our species get into conflicts with each other?

Humanity honestly doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to treating new cultures and societies fairly. While I hope that would change if we ever met intelligent and communicative beings from another planet, I think there’s a fairly decent chance that at least some humans would try to take advantage of them for personal or political gain.

No, I’m not saying that eery single human needs to be fighting for the dark side. Wouldn’t it be interesting to read a book or watch a movie about someone who noticed this happening and who tried to warn the aliens before one of our governments passed a law saying it was okay to mistreat visitors from other planets, though? The conflict between your duty to your species and your duty to protect innocent visitors who are going to be horribly abused for potentially many generations to come if you don’t speak out and fight for them right now would keep me glued to my seat.

It would also help the scifi genre return to the kinds of social messages that used to be much more common in it. Science fiction isn’t just about coming up with flashy ideas for new technology or imagining what life could be like in a few hundred years. It can also be about getting people to think critically about the decisions they make in their real life that can help or hurt the most vulnerable members of our society.

5. Nobody Spills the Beans

I shake my head every time a vast conspiracy is revealed that has existed for decades and required thousands or even millions of people to play along with it.

It’s hard enough to get five people to agree on what kind of pizza to order or to keep excited relatives from sharing the news when you tell them that you’re pregnant, have finally finished writing your book, or recently got a promotion!

Secrets only work if they’re kept by a small number of highly motivated people. Even then, it is very easy for one of them to spring a leak with someone they deeply trust.

Unless the character exist in a universe where the Powers That Be purposefully limit the intelligence of most people while they’re still in the womb, these things should either somewhat common knowledge or only known by a handful of characters in the entire universe.

I would love it if more books understood all of these rules. If you have any recommendations for stories that do, let me know on Twitter!

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February 20, 2017 · 1:00 am

How to Survive a Post-Apocalyptic Storyline

Congratulations!

You’ve just been selected to be one of the secondary characters in an upcoming post-apocalyptic novel.

If you wish to die nobly in order to spur the main character on at a critical moment in the plot, please disregard the rest of this message. There is always a need for volunteers for this position, and so your sacrifice in this manner will be greatly appreciated by everyone who expects this kind of tearjerking moment in a world without any modern conveniences.

If you want to live, memorize these rules and be sure to follow them religiously once the first scene has begun. They won’t guarantee your survival, but they will greatly increase the odds of it.

  1. Ignore the news and the government. There has never been one single instance of a government body or a news organization having any clue what is really going on in an apocalypse. Do not listen to any advice they give, and avoid traveling to any safe area they recommend in the first few scenes. It will be a trap.
  2. If the protagonist travels east, head west. While this isn’t always something that’s possible to accomplish, staying out of the way as much as possible is the safest thing you can do until or unless you are promoted to a main character role. Every big battle will take place wherever the main character roams, so you will reduce your chances of getting caught up in one if you travel anywhere other than those locations. This rule can be broken during the climax if other secondary characters have already been killed off and if you are willing to take the risk that the author still has some tricks up his or her sleeve.
  3. Do not endear yourself to the audience. You will feel tempted at times to play up the best parts of your personality in order to lure some of the audience’s attention from the main characters, but encouraging them to love you will only increase the odds of you succumbing to whoever or whatever it is in the storyline that has killed off so many other people before you. This is especially true if you are young, vulnerable, or happen to remind the protagonist of a loved one that he or she left behind in the beginning of the story.
  4. Avoid playing the hero. If you know your safe house is surrounded by monsters, avoid any foolhardy attempts to sneak past them regardless of who in your party might be in dire need of medicine, food, or water in that scene. There is only one hero in this story, and any attempts to steal that spotlight will be interpreted by the writer as foreshadowing for your eventual death. Stay in the shadows and away from the dangers of sudden plot twists as much as possible while the keyboard is still clicking away.
  5. Remain slightly hopeful. Characters who lose all of their hope for the future are in just as much danger as characters who are still obnoxiously cheerful and upbeat after days of hiking through the mud and shivering the night away without a single blanket to keep them warm. Stay neutral when the dialogue is not focused on you and slightly hopeful but still realistic about the odds if you happen to get accidentally caught in the same scene with the main character after the opening act.
  6. Memorize the most common kinds of creatures found in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Elves and faeries are almost always trustworthy. Unicorns are harmless to non-virgin humans. Ghosts may be frightening, but they are rarely a genuine threat to anyone. Orcs, zombies, vampires, and goblins are always dangerous unless you happen to wind up in a rare post-apocalyptic romance novel where a member of their species happens to be the main character’s love interest. Once you know who or what you’re dealing with, you’ll know whether to stick with, tolerate, or avoid any non-human characters that may be lurking in the book.
  7. Listen to your elders. While not every post-apocalyptic story will include an older, wiser character who knows exactly what is going on, be sure to listen to them if they appear at any point in the storyline. The chances of that individual guiding you safely to the final scene are much higher than you might think.  People like this usually appear in the plot for a good reason and should be trusted unless you have an even stronger reason to ignore their sensible advice. In some cases, this can even shorten a full-length novel into a tidy short story with only a small reduction in the overall suspense and excitement of the tale.

With any luck, following all of these rules will help you survive until the final battle. Every character is more or less on their own at that point, so be sure to continue practicing your swordsmanship, long distance running, emergency medical drills, and spell casting until you know exactly what kind of book you will be assigned to and therefore what skills you will need to survive whatever disease, monster, battle, natural disaster, or other source of conflict may be coming your way.

Newer posts in this series:

How to Survive a Paranormal Storyline.

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February 9, 2017 · 1:00 am

Writing Influences: Barbara Helen Berger

This is the second part in my series about the authors and books who have inspired my writing. J.R.R. Tolkien was the subject of the first post in this series.

Gwinna by Barbara Helen Berger was one of the first books I discovered in my elementary school library after my parents stopped homeschooling us. I was just beginning the fourth grade that year.

The library was a beautiful introduction to public school as well as to contemporary fantasy stories that reminded me so much of the traditional fairy tales I already loved at that age.

This book started off with a childless couple begging the Mother of Owls to help them have a child. The Mother of Owls agreed to grant their wish on the condition that they return their daughter to her when the baby turned twelve. They agreed, and so little Gwinna joined their lives.

As Gwinna grew, her mother noticed that the girl was beginning to develop wings. She bound her daughter’s wings tightly so that no one would notice her child was different from other children. Gwinna’s parents also refused to tell her about where she came from or allow her to go back to the Mother of Owls when she turned twelve.

Eventually the Mother of Owls had to intervene, and that is when when the plot really became interesting for me. Gwinna wandered into the forest to find out what had caused all of the strange things that were happening in her adoptive parents’ home. She found the Mother of Owls and finally discovered what had been hiding underneath all of the bindings her adoptive mother had wrapped around her. If you want to find out what happened after that, you’ll have to read this story for yourself!

With that being said, these are the things that I deeply appreciate about Ms. Berger’s writing style.

Her Stories Are Highly Imaginative 

The main character lived in a world where magical and wonderfully unexpected things happen every single day. There are certain rules that everyone in this story must follow, though, and there are creative punishments for anyone who doesn’t obey them.

People who did the right thing were rewarded in equally creative ways. I loved the fact that the author spent so much time constructing such a complex and fascinating world for a children’s book. This could have easily been expanded into a whole series about Mother Owl and all of the people and creatures under her care.

I’m frankly a little surprised that Ms. Berger hasn’t written a sequel or two yet. There is definitely plenty of room here to show what happened to Gwinna next and if her adoptive parents ever spent time with Mother of Owls after their daughter grew up.

She Included Thought-Provoking Undertones for Older Readers

I didn’t pick up on the adoption undertones in this book the first time I read it, but I’ve always loved reading the passages where the author described what happened to Gwinna once she learned the truth about her origins. Her shock and surprise was so genuine.

Yes, the main character hated the fact that her parents had lied to her, and she was also eager to get to know her first mother. This didn’t change how she felt about any of her parents, though. There was plenty of room in her heart to care about all three of them.

There were other messages tucked into the plot about perseverance, friendship, and remaining true to your genuine self regardless of whether or not the people closest to you approve. My childhood self didn’t pick up on all of them, but I sure did when I read this book again years later.

She Gave Exactly the Right Amount of Detail

I don’t know about you, but I’ve read more than a few stories in my lifetime that were either bogged down by too many descriptions or barely showed the reader what the settings and characters looked like at all.

One of my favourite things about Ms. Berger’s writing style is that she always toed the line between showing her audience what a scene looked like and allowing us to imagine a few special things for ourselves. The illustrations were an incredibly gorgeous addition to this tale. They fleshed out parts of the storyline that needed it, but they were just rare enough that I still had plenty of chances to come up with my own ideas about what Gwinna’s adventures looked like.

My most vivid memory of this tale was of wondering what it felt like when Gwinna flew through the air. Did her wings get cold when she flew so far up into the sky? What was it like to feel all of that wind running past your feathers? How easy was it to maneuver between one gust of wind and the next?

Some of my questions about flying were answered, but the author left many more to my imagination. Thinking about what that experience would be like kicked off a lifelong fascination I’ve had with human flight. I occasionally still have dreams where I realize that I have wings and I start flying around wherever I am at that point in the dreamscape.

In every one of these dreams, my wings have been brown and soft like Gwinna’s wings were. (My wings are darker than hers, though. Picture something about the same shade of brown as my hair).

Gwinna hasn’t joined me in one of my joyful flights yet…but maybe someday she will!

I’ll be talking about dreams, favourite children’s books, wings, and more on Twitter today. I hope to see you over there if you liked this post and would like to discuss it in more detail.

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January 30, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why Automated Direct Messages Are a Terrible Idea

monday-blogs-1This is a repost from my old blog. I will be back on Thursday with new material. 

An automated DM (direct message) is a private message that an account sends to you as soon as you follow it. I’ve been seeing far too many of them on Twitter lately.

They are usually used to promote something the account holder is selling like a book or an album. While some DMs don’t follow this rule, all of them are impersonal spam.

Here’s the thing: Twitter is a social media site. People use it to make new friends, share their thoughts, and stay up-to-date on current events. Trying to exploit this to market your product is an excellent way to annoy or even alienate 98% of the people you meet.

As an author, I understand the urge to reach out to potential new readers. I’ve found new readers on Twitter. I’ve also bought multiple books that I first heard about from other tweeps, but it was never due to the author telling me to buy their stuff.

In fact, an automatic DM is one of a handful of things that will prompt me to immediately unfollow someone. It leaves a horrible first impression that is hard to shake off.

Why have I purchased all of those books, then?

Because their authors didn’t make their Twitter streams or their private messages into nonstop commercials. Yes, they shared links when their newest book came out and occasionally mentioned older projects as well.

Most of the time, though, they talked about all of the other things that were going on in their lives. Some of them shared hilarious stories about the  naughty things their pets did, while others talked about more serious subject matters like grief or recovering from child abuse.

They retweeted other people’s links regularly. I can’t count the number of times that I discovered a new author, blog, or Twitter handle to follow because someone chose to share something that they enjoyed.

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Just as importantly, they kept tabs on their followers lives as well. They regularly responded to people who asked them questions or said something they found interesting.

I often saw them cheer for friends who had finally reached a big goal and support others who were going through a hard time.

In short, they were genuine and generous.

So please don’t send out an automatic DM when you gain a new follower any more than you would use pop-ups on your website.

Get to know people as individuals instead.

Build your following one person and one friendly interaction at a time.

Don’t rush it.

Twitter isn’t a race.

It’s more like a party. Slow down, relax, and enjoy the festivities. Nobody is going home anytime soon.

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January 23, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why Everyone Should Stop Using Pop-Ups

StopThis is a repost from my old blog. I will be back next week with new material. 

I don’t normally rant on this blog, but I’ve been having issues with pop-ups lately. Pop-up advertisements are one of the fastest and most efficient ways to drive me away from a site. It doesn’t matter how much I loved the article I was reading, what the pop-up is saying, or how long I’ve been a fan of that blogger or website.

If the administrators interrupt my concentration with an unwanted pop-up, they’re going to lose a reader for good. If their ad includes a video that starts playing automatically, I’ll be so annoyed that I will tell friends and family members to avoid that site as well.

No, I’m not opposed to the use of advertisements on websites in general. They’re a necessary part of making money on the Internet, and I completely understand that. Banner ads are fine, as are advertisements that are inserted halfway through whatever essay or article I’m reading as long as they don’t make noise or cover up the text.

I don’t care what kinds of racy pictures an ad might include or if they use clickbait titles to grab the reader’s attention. Those are some of the things I’ve come to expect from the web. Non-intrusive online ads are like billboards: sometimes they’re silly; often they’re cheesy; rarely they might even be helpful or interesting.

When a website decides to interrupt me when I’m reading one of their articles by launching a pop-up that I never wanted, though, they’re sending a very clear message about how little they value my time and attention.

It would be like a server interrupting you in the middle of a meal in order to take your half-finished plate away and ask if you wanted to order another entree. I can count the number of times that is acceptable on one hand, and every single one of them would begin with you asking for help due to something like undercooked meat, a fly in your soup, or food allergy issues.

You don’t just randomly start taking things away from people if you want them to keep coming back.

So, please. For the love of pete, stop using pop-up ads.

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December 29, 2016 · 1:00 am

The Cupboard Mice: A Parable

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A family of mice once lived in a drafty old farmhouse.

“They’re going to set a trap and we’re all going to die!” the oldest mouse squeaked every time someone forgot the rules: no squeaking, don’t leave droppings on the dishes, and never capture the cat’s attention. No one remembered what a trap was any longer, only that it was something terrible people did when they noticed mice.

As the family grew it became more difficult to follow the rules.

“We’ll be safe in this house if we teach the young mice that cheese is forbidden,” the oldest mouse insisted every time the humans shuffled into the kitchen. They’d lived in this farmhouse for decades and had begun to have trouble moving around.

A young mouse asked, “What makes you think there’s any danger? The humans don’t even seem to know we exists.”

“Not yet,” said the oldest mouse. “But the cat can smell us. Why do you think we avoid his territory?”

The young mouse wasn’t sure she believed it was that dangerous and decided to explore the rest of the house. The cat in question was old and docile.

“You’re all going to die!” insisted the oldest mouse as the rest of her nestlings slowly moved out of the kitchen and closer to the radiators. The humans had grown accustomed to leaving dirty plates on the floor and so the wanderers had food and a warm place to sleep during the long winter. Soon she was the only mouse left in the kitchen.

Every week or two the younger mice came to visit. She always made sure they knew how dangerous their lives had become since moving away. Some of her visitors smiled politely and nibbled the stale crackers she provided, others tried to gently reason with her. No one could change her mind, though, and she died at the first flush of spring without any of her warnings coming to pass.

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December 26, 2016 · 1:00 am

Why You Should Read Books Outside of Your Favourite Genres

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My first literary love is the science fiction and fantasy genre, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing I ever read.

Today I wanted to talk about why it’s such a good idea to read books from a wide range of genres.

It Introduces You to New Ideas

Non-fiction is a wonderful example of this. One of the reasons why I read so much of it is that it spends a lot of time exploring why and how people can change the way a society operates.

For example, a history of a specific war may talk about difficult decisions government officials made that either helped or hurt their cause. Smart, rational people make terrible and wonderful choices for all kinds of complex reasons that can’t be boiled down to a pithy paragraph or two.

I’ve often thought about the dilemmas those historical figures while I’m working on my own stories or when I’m trying to figure out a problem in my personal life. You can learn a lot about life and how humans behave by paying attention to how people solved problems in the past.

It Changes the Way You Look at the World

Reading a wide variety of books gives you glimpses of all kinds of things that you’ll never experience in your daily life, from what life was like ten thousand years ago to how people live on the other side of this planet.

Life is also rarely a black-and-white experience. My favourite part of jumping from one genre to the next is how it changes the way I look the exact same scene depending on which literary lens I just finished wearing.

A sunny meadow could be the site of a amorous picnic in a romance novel, the final resting place of the bad guy in a horror novel, or the setting for a groundbreaking archeological discovery in a memoir.

The more genres you read, the more possibilities you’ll be aware of the next time you happen to walk past a pretty field of flowers and wonder what’s happened there in the past.

booksIt Helps You Find Hidden Gems

There have been multiple times when I happened to pick up a book from a genre I don’t usually read and was surprised by how much I loved it.

Had I made a strict rule about never reading about X, I would have spent my whole life not knowing what I was missing.

For example,  I read Robin Mather’s “The Feast Nearby: How I Lost My Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found My Way By Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)” several years ago after a friend recommended it.

I am not the kind of person who is into farming, eating organic food, or raising livestock, but I still deeply enjoyed this author’s stories about all of the struggles she faced as she adapted to her new lifestyle. Some of her stories were seriously hilarious! I found myself rooting for her to find a happy ending even as I chuckled at the mistakes she made along the way.

It Gives Your Brain a Workout

I’ve been reading science fiction for so long now that I can usually predict where a storyline is going long before the characters have any clue what’s happening to them. There are certain plot devices that are used so regularly in this genre that it’s pretty easy to spot them once you’ve read a enough books that happen to include them.

The nice thing about dabbling in other genres is that you generally aren’t as familiar with the tropes or other plot devices that they use. When I first started reading mysteries, for example, I’d often overlook small but important clues in the first scene because I wasn’t used to needing to pay such close attention to little details like whether the butler was right or left-handed or what time of day the neighbour said she’d seen the suspect leaving the victim’s house.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to give another genre a try the next time you’re rummaging around at the bookstore or library and trying to figure out what to read next. There are so many amazing stories out there waiting to be discovered!

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December 22, 2016 · 1:00 am

Writing Influences: J.R.R. Tolkien

One RingThis is the first in a series of posts I’ll be sharing about the authors and books that have influenced my writing style in some way.

When I was a kid, my uncle gave me a copy of The Hobbit as well as copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It took a couple of years for me to grow into The Lord of the Rings, although I loved The Hobbit immediately.

Hobbits seemed like my kind of people. They were peaceful, bookish, and loved even the simplest meal as long as it was hearty and filling. They weren’t particularly interested in glory or in being the centre of attention. I often daydreamed about how much fun it would be to live among them.

What I liked the most about Tolkien’s stories, though, were the details. He’d stop in the middle of a scene to describe the long history of the building the characters were visiting or exactly what the land around them  looked like.

While I’ll admit that this strategy did slow down the pacing of the plot in some places, it also gave me extremely clear mental images of the settings . Even today I can close my eyes and see exactly what those places looked, sounded, and in some cases smelled like. It’s as though I’ve visited them myself instead of read about them in books, and that’s pretty amazing considering how long its been since I’ve read those passages.

As an author, I don’t include as many details about the setting in my stories as Tolkien did. I prefer to let my audience imagine certain details for themselves, although I do try to pick a few specific things to focus on when I’m describing where my characters are. There’s definitely something to be said for taking a moment away from the main conflict of the story to show what the main characters are sensing at that exact point in time. It can be a very powerful way to draw a reader into the conflict and help them empathize with the characters they’ve been following.

This is something I do in real life as well. Some of my strongest memories of certain events exist because I took a minute to emotionally step away from what was happening and absorb all of the sights and sounds around me.  It’s amazing to see what kinds of things you’ll notice when you take the time to pay attention to everything that’s happening around you.

Have you ever tried to drink in every sight and sound around you in a particular moment?

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