The blood on your silk ball gown looked like part of the design. Jessica, heart of my heart, soul of my soul. We were supposed to go down into death together but were denied even that union. Your brother grabbed my wrist, delicate bones snapping under his grip even as…

Seeking the Cause of the Family Fault Lines — It’s 1965 or thereabouts. I’m seven years old, sitting at the kitchen table watching mum peeling potatoes. There’s a knock at the door. She wipes her hands on a tea towel and goes to answer it with me, her faithful shadow, trailing behind. On the doorstep are two women and…

or Icarus redux — All her life she has watched the birds fly over and wondered about her brother. Mother will never speak of him. But Sophia, her nurse, told her his story. Black Feathers floating on a cobalt sea. That is what she thinks of when she thinks of her brother. On her…

the who as well as the what of writing — All writers want readers. Good writing alone doesn’t always guarantee them. Medium followers in the high hundreds do not either. Nothing does. But making your reader part of your writing process can help. So how do we actually bring the reader into the business of writing a story? Not when…

Books that Helped me Get Out of My Own Way. — I’ve written elsewhere on Medium about how I first wanted to be a writer when I was seven. But wanting to be a writer is one thing, writing is quite another. …

It all started with a transistor radio — How did you get into music? Was it the records your dad played? Or maybe you had an older sibling, the one mum was always yelling at to ‘turn that music down.’ We all discover music in different ways. Growing up, the only music I heard at home was when…

Celluloid Heroines Never Really Die — Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino. Great stars of the silent movies, still remembered today. But their leading ladies are largely forgotten. So, let’s meet some of these queens of the silent screen. Mildred Davis.

Sometimes the English language is no joke — I have a confession to make. I’m a complete language nerd. I still look up words in dictionaries, yeah the actual printed kind, the size of a brick or three with yellowing pages. …

Three other Margret Atwood novels to consider Margaret Atwood is becoming like a singer who is best known for one song, despite having a considerable body of other work. …