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Death and Life
It’s here at last: the fifth volume in The Ravenstones series. Death and Life will be released on Amazon next week. Death and Life picks up the story of our two principal heroes, Eirwen and Fridis, exactly where they left off in Book 4, Gains and Losses. After early successes, significant reversals have occurred. The… Read more
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10,000 Hours Makes Perfect
Malcolm Gladwell is well-known for his ability to sift through the chaff of daily life and subtleties of economics to find the grains of wisdom lying hidden inside. Amongst the many subjects he’s written about is the notion of developing an expertise in something through hard work and discipline – 10,000 hours of practice to… Read more
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Feeling Alienated and Crushed by Blind Authority
Not me, I hasten to add. I’m talking about the works of the renowned Franz Kafka, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. To have your name turned into an adjective – now that’s an achievement! (Of course, if you’re a bad actor, it can also work the opposite way.) I’ve been re-reading a book… Read more
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Happy Easter
Hager Books window display (2176 West 41st Ave., Kerrisdale, Vancouver, Canada) To all my readers and fans, have a wonderful Easter celebration! Read more
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Story Ideas I Didn’t Pursue to the Bitter End
I’ve long been a fan of the great 20th century English novelist/playwright/essayist, Somerset Maugham, especially his short stories, most of which I’ve managed to read thanks to a Penguin edition of his collected works (one of the few that’s not managed to survive our many moves). For my first public-speaking effort in junior high school,… Read more
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Portal Fantasy 2 – Alice vs. Jules
In my last post I wrote about portal fantasy, specifically the two famous works of Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I concluded that Carroll was likely the first author to employ the use of portal fantasy in modern literature (a period I consider to be post-1800). Many came afterwards, of… Read more
