“What?” seyde Sir Launcelot, “is he a theff and a knyght and a ravyssher of women? He doth shame unto the order of knyghthode, and contrary unto his oth. Hit is pyté that he lyvyth.” — Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur A while back, a certain mystery writer caused a minor furor online with […]
It started, I suppose, nearly two years ago when I went into the local BMV bookstore with my friend Victoria, and we browsed through the Writing section and found a book called The Indie Author Guide. I think it was the cover picture that really drew me in: it shows a laptop on a sidewalk […]
I find it easy to fall into the trap of thinking that I’ll never be able to change the set patterns and habits of my life, even if I want to. It’s just not true, and a cursory review of events from my life proves it. I used to be single, for a long time, […]
This is a long overdue stab at distilling my thoughts from Maundy Thursday, when my lace handiwork was put to use. The picture above shows the Altar of Repose before the service, when I was able to surreptitiously bring my phone into the church to photograph it. You have to imagine the candlelight! Somewhere toward […]
The bundle of finished knitting (wrong side showing). It’s been off the needles for a couple of weeks while I considered exactly what to do with it next. Maundy Thursday is fast approaching… This gives you some idea of the size (unblocked) and of how excited I am at this point. It took me a […]
The other day I listened to a podcast in which several writers discuss death in fiction—or, more specifically, “killing” their characters. This reminded me of something I have thought about in the past, and it’s this: Writers introduce all kinds of evil into their stories. They do this because they are imitating the real world, […]
Pride wants it to be perfect, because you should be producing brilliance, and you should be ashamed not to be producing brilliance. So you don’t work on it, because so far it is neither perfect nor brilliant. Envy is too busy worrying about whether other people have already done it better, and how you can […]
Since childhood I have had a collection of angel Christmas ornaments, and I think that’s part of the reason why I have always had a minor fascination with different depictions of angels. And I have written before about my fondness for lace knitting. So you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I saw […]
I love practical how-to posts, so I thought I would share how I made something useful recently. I want to emphasize that word, “useful,” because Martha Stewart this ain’t. Last year I found a really interesting calendar at Hanji, my favourite paper shop. It showed the entire year printed on a single large page, with […]
Geoffrey de Vinsauf was a fan of plotting. He begins his Poetria Nova with a famous analogy between architecture and poetry: Just as the architect envisions the whole building before the first foundation stone is laid, he says, so the poet must spend time contemplating the shape of the finished poem before writing its first […]