In late 2017, just before dawn, I had a dream, one of those story-dreams where I am in a movie and I am inhabiting the identity of a person in the movie and living their life, feeling their emotions, doing what they do, all as if it were real. I won’t tell you the dream. …
SWC: first of a disorganized series of posts about writing a series of books Read More »
The ancient healing Sanctuary of Asklepios on the Greek island of Kos is an oasis of beauty and tranquility. NOTE: As you read this, I’ll be recovering from another neurosurgery to finally give me relief from severe cervical stenosis. So a repeat of the healing sanctuary of Kos seems appropriate. This was part of a 2018 …
A Rambling Writer Memory of the Greek Islands: The Asklepion Healing Sanctuary of Kos Read More »
Treasures in the Iraklion Museum of Archaeology illustrate the story of the ancient goddess of nature and fertility. NOTE: This is a rerun due to technical difficulties…. Of course, Thor and I had to make another trip to Greece, as he’s fallen as much in love with the islands as I am. This time, in …
The Rambling Writer Returns to Crete, part 20: The Minoan Earth Goddess Read More »
One of the most engaging and romance-novel-like yet true stories of the 19th century has to be that of a lady named Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith, whose long and busy life took her from Spain to England and on to India and South Africa, all because she fell in love. Ready …
This article features my answers to several questions from the Catholic Writers’ Conference Online that I participated in for several years. They deal with the pitfalls of using religion in fantasy, how I deal with diverse points of view and schism in my work. Q: What are the pitfalls of religion in fantasy and how …
WORLD-BUILDING & RELIGION: Pitfalls, Religious Diversity, Schism & Pluralism Read More »
I found this question from an attendee of the Catholic Writers Conference I spoke at for several years an interesting one with a number of possible answers. Q: When should you check your work with a religious authority? If I were presenting a piece I expected to be read as representative of my Faith, or …
WORLD-BUILDING & RELIGION: Checking with Religious Authority Read More »
One of the joys of leafing through the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is running across slang expressions and figures of speech still in use today that you would never guess were particularly old…but as it turns out, are. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve run across, along with their definitions as listed …
This question from the Catholic Writers Conference dealt with how I handled the complicated subject of heresy. Q: Have you ever had a story dictate you portray heresy or sin sympathetically? How did you handle it? The protagonists of The Mer Cycle trilogy were considered heretics by the religious institutions they challenged. Both the orthodox …
We’re all surrounded by a cloud of vocabulary. The words you know well, that you use daily, float nearby, coming easily to the hand. This is the great barrier to learning a foreign language. Vocabulary is why I’ll never be fluent in Chinese or French; my cloud of French or Chinese nouns and verbs is …
If anyone in the 19th century was going to celebrate Christmas in a truly outstanding fashion, you know that person had to be Queen Victoria, who more than anyone helped popularize the holiday and set its traditions in stone (or fruitcake). But how, exactly, did she celebrate December 25? To answer that question, I did …
Q: Do you agree that religion influences culture? Does culture influence religion? If so, how much do or should you take that into consideration while preparing your book? I think religion is at the heart of what we call culture. Our world culture is so steeped in religious principle that there’s no way to separate it …
Greetings, World-builders! Here is another question from a group of Catholic writers at an online conference I spoke at several times as a non-Catholic guest. Today’s question deals with common elements in religion. Q: What are the common elements of all religions, and how do you decide what to keep and what to discard when …
Originally published 2018 First, a word about semantics. And modifiers. My initial title for this blog modified ‘Inventors’ with ‘Female’. Then as I thought more about the necessity of having to add ‘female’ as a modifier to certain nouns generally biased toward males, i.e., female doctors, female pilots, female engineers, I decided against it. Aren’t …
