Arable Parables and Common Ground

Arable Parables and Common Ground

In writing you most often try to communicate a message or a feeling. You want your words to be absorbed by the reader, and hope that you’ve been clever enough with the words to create the exact reaction in the reader’s mind that you had hoped for. Of course, such reactions can never be predicted […]


You Are What You Don’t Read

You Are What You Don't Read

Aspiring writers have always been told to write what they know, and to read the classics. If everyone would have stuck to writing what they knew first hand, the written word would never have gone very far. The advice about the classics, however, hasn’t been brushed off as easily. Although you expect writers to be […]


Why to Overcome Writer’s Block

Why to Overcome Writer's Block

There is much said and written by writers on how to overcome writer’s block, but I’m considering a more basic question. Why should you overcome writer’s block? The answer seems obvious, so that you can write. Why do you want to write? Because you’re a writer. Why are you a writer? Because you must write.


My Friend Sherlock Holmes

My Friend Sherlock Holmes

I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Sherlock Holmes. There has to have been a first time. Maybe someone mentioned it, or perhaps I picked it up in a movie or a comic book. The details of our first encounter remain shrouded in the mists of my early childhood memory. But, however […]



Moral Stories for Children Are Vital

Moral Stories for Children Are Vital

I didn’t read any baby books when I was growing up, by that I mean books specifically written for infants and pre-schoolers. I got thrown straight into the deep end with fairly serious comics, books of folk tales, and some other strange things that most wouldn’t consider appropriate childhood reading. It was only natural after […]


Starswarm by Brian Aldiss – book review

Starswarm by Brian Aldiss - book review

10,000 BRAVE NEW WORLDS One million years have passed since ancient man first launched his frail metal crafts into the great darkness named “outer space”. Now distant galactic clusters are home to the myriad descendants of the inhabitants of Earth. Now, each world, light years separate from the others, forms part of an island universe […]