A month after I started sheltering in place, I hear a lot of people advocating for life to get back to normal. Leaders talk about reopening the economy, about getting kids back into school. People want to “get back to normal.” No. Normal just isn’t good enough. We have to put health ahead of money. […]
It’s a tough time to get through, but we have gotten through tough times before. And a sense of humour never hurts. So in the spirit of the day, here’s an excerpt from Under the Nazi Heel, Book 2 of the Eastern Front Trilogy. In this, Maurice shows how his sense of humour was irrepressible. […]
Covid-19 is far from the first pandemic the world has faced. The bubonic plague first emerged in history during the sixth century CE. Called the Plague of Justinian, it spread rapidly around the Mediterranean, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire, killing off an estimated one-third of the population. Some estimates put the death […]
The covid-19 pandemic is changing everything. Staying indoors, staying two metres from other people, cancelling events … on one hand, I don’t really mind more opportunity to sit in front of my computer. On the other hand, I am missing some friends and colleagues. And I understand how boring it can be to hear only […]
This is one of those times that clarifies the word surreal. To qualify: I’m neither in quarantine nor isolation. I have no symptoms. I have not been near anyone with symptoms. I have not travelled in over a month. The whole family is healthy and safe. But life is certainly different. Driving to the grocery […]
From Part 3 of The Bones of the Earth As I mentioned in a few earlier posts, I am reposting samples from my original blog (way back on Blogger), with six-sentence samples posted on Sundays. These come from my first-published novel, The Bones of the Earth. The dragon opened its mouth, revealing terrible, long, pointy […]
Characters are what stories are about. Plot is essential—we had to have a story to tell. Something has to happen, something that matters to you, the readers. But it has to happen to someone we care about, or identify with, or connect to in some way. That connection has to happen on an emotional […]
As I’ve posted before, I used to participate in a Web round called Six Sentence Sunday. Each week, we participants would post six consecutive sentences from a writing project on our blogs. We’d include a link to the Six Sentence Sunday page and then post the link to our post on the central Six Sentence […]
Last post, I wrote about how I cut down on some of the stressors in my life. One of them was a particular freelance client for which I wrote blogs and social media content. Letting that one go was necessary for my health. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I felt wrong about […]
A lot of time has passed since my last blog post—four months. A third of a year! To tell you the truth, often during the first two months of that time, I wondered myself what was standing between me and updating my blog. I put it down to having too much other (paying) work to […]