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Writing About Animals
Regular readers of these posts will find that I make regular recourse to the works of Bruce Handy, the author of a wonderful book about children’s literature called Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017). Bruce Handy is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Read more
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A World of Animals
My godparents, Joan and James Lindsay, lived in the County of Sutherland, the most northerly part of Scotland (save for the Orkney and Shetland Islands), in a little village on the North Sea named Golspie (pop. 1350 today). Every Christmas they would send me books of some sort, all highly anticipated and happily received. For Read more
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The Fantasy Writer (Part 2)
The Fellowship, The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015) provides a detailed account of the famous quartet of mid-20th century Oxford-based authors (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams), in particular how they expressed their longing for tradition and re-enchant through Read more
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The Fantasy Writer (Part 1)
H.G. Wells has generally been credited with originating the science fiction/fantasy genre. In the space of six years between 1895 and 1901, he wrote The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The First Men in the Moon. A prodigious accomplishment, to be sure (I wish I Read more
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Blogging – The Answer
Last time I published a blog post on: a. whether or not to blog, and b. the generally proffered advice from the experts on how best to create and sustain that arduous process. Since I’m here again, it’s probably evident I’ve decided I can’t live without them. Or, rather, perhaps my book sales demand it. Read more
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To Blog or Not to Blog, That Is the Question
Whether or not to blog is a question for every writer these days, when social media dominate communications and the connection with readers is usually at a great distance. Is it worth the effort? When considering whether to create a series of blogs to accompany The Ravenstones series, I went back to the source of Read more
