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Storyteller As Shaman
The idea of storyteller as shaman has sat with me for a decade. One of the world’s oldest stories is the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. There are a whole host of psychological and spiritual insights you can draw out of the story, but I’m going to go with Eve’s discovery of nakedness.…
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Out Today! New Release: Bound Magic
Bound Magic is out today! This is book 2 in my Faerene Apocalypse series and was fantastic fun to write. I hope you enjoy it! (If you missed the release of book 1 in the series, it’s Stray Magic). Six billion people are dead. More are dying. The Faerene Apocalypse isn’t over, but the seeds…
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Villains – Writing Them. Recognising Their Value.
Without wanting to get into current affairs and politics, let’s just say there are a lot of evil people out there; people who are willing (or who actively enjoy) to hurt others in pursuit of their own goals. With the real world so full of bad people, how does a writer craft a villain? You…
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Hope
Hope is not ease. Hope is heart open— eyes, ears, body and dreams— to violence. Hope is pain, beating at you. It is children screaming. It is blood and despair. It is futility, endured. Hope refuses to turn away, to sleep, to be distracted, to close doors, to apportion suffering elsewhere. Hope is the agony…
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Let’s Build an Ark!
With the release of Stray Magic this week (woohoo! Welcome to the Faerene Apocalypse!) I’ve been thinking about post-apocalyptic fiction and how ancient it is. The story of Noah’s Ark is even older than the Bible, being recounted in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. The enduring power of the story is due to it getting…