I will meet my husband tonight. I’m not yet sure what he looks like. But, like the perfect pair of shoes, I’ll know him when I see him. I’ve met him in my mind, in these daydreams I call ‘flash forwards’: a hazy, pale face with brownish hair. Well, that narrows it down. Tonight is…
Is it possible to become an ethical psychopath? Charlie wrestles with her urges to create havoc by puppeteering her peers.
“Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat” is a misogynist short story by British author Roald Dahl, and an excellent example of Hate Your Wife humour. You’ll find it in Dahl’s 1959 collection Kiss, Kiss. I call this story “Mean-spirited Gift of the Magi”. WHERE TO LISTEN You may be able to unearth the BBC dramatization…
A fairytale re-visioning and reclamation of the old tale Little Red Riding Hood, which the Grimm Brothers repurposed to keep women and girls in their place.
How many drafts do fiction authors really write. Also: what counts as a draft?
Did the 2020 efforts towards diversity and inclusion in the wake of George Floyd impact the systemic racial bias in publishing and reviewing?
Here’s an example of the floating camera technique opening a novel by Marian Keyes: June the first, a bright summer’s evening, a Monday. I’ve been flying over the streets and houses of Dublin and now, finally, I’m here. I enter through the roof. Via a skylight I slide into a living room and right away…
Well, that’s Mondays for you. I haven’t been at my workstation five minutes when I get the curly finger come-on. Oh Mary, Mary. You do things to me with that red-polished index finger of yours. I always know I’m *In Trouble* when you summon me into the boardroom for another of our private meetings. I…
A man stops to pick up a teenage girl hitch-hiker on a foggy New Zealand highway one night. Why does he do these things when he’s shown no gratitude?
“The Wind Blows” is a short story by New Zealand Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield. Below I share my re-visioned version which uses similar structure, plot points and Mansfield-esque language techniques but I have set my version in contemporary New Zealand.
Allegra Joy lives in regional Australia, where suitably Goth boyfriend material is sorely lacking. One day she meets a mysterious stranger.
Mathematical knots are closed loops. Unlike a usual knot, there are no loose ends. One female Backpacker, slim build, finds her hostel by accident. Maps in guidebooks are always printed upside down and any destination lurks deep in the page binding. Murphy’s Law. Is she in Ireland now, or Scotland? It’s easy to forget these…
ANNE Once upon a time, three billy goats lived on a hillside. They were very gruff. That’s why Anne separated the billies into their own pens, where they could not butt heads. She built the fences with no help from her two older brothers. But the smallest and gruffest of the billies had this morning…
Sure, I’ve never been the target audience for Finding Nemo. I was already an adult when the film came out in 2003. But even my own offspring didn’t enjoy it. Could Finding Nemo be the most boring and unimaginative of all the Disney Pixar feature-length animations? I won’t do a complete film study, because for…
A fantasy cafe website showcasing AI generated images of cute fantasy food and some unusual staffing choices.