The Mythical Menagerie series was envisioned right from the start as a short story series that I would release in a serialised fashion. Many short installments would make one large coherent whole in the end that you could binge read the way you would binge watch your favourite TV show on Netflix. As it turns…
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The Women of Disney’s “Moana”: A Feminist Viewpoint
I recently watched Moana for the first time. It’s not my favourite Disney movie by far, but there are some aspects of it that I can really appreciate. The animation is gorgeous, of course, but what really set me thinking is the way women are represented in this film. Other reviewers have called Moana a…
The Magical Negro Trope: How Best Intentions Can Sometimes Go Wrong
What happens when you find out you may have inadvertently written a stereotyped character?
#amwriting #urbanfantasy
Change of Plans
I’ve had a bit of an epiphany a few days ago. This is a special birthday year for me, one with a 0 at the end, and I thought to myself if I want to get a novel published before that birthday, I’d better get a move on. I looked at the planned instalments I…
What I’m Currently Working On: Mythical Menagerie Part 3.5
I finished the first draft of Part 3.5 of my Mythical Menagerie series on 30 November 2018. I planned to take a week off and then dive into edits, but then December happened and I found myself consumed by a reading frenzy. Apart from my monthly flash fiction piece and the odd blog post or…
Looking Ahead to 2019
It’s that time of the year again when most people invoke Janus, the god of doorways, of beginnings and endings, and reflect on the year past and plan for the year ahead. My feed reader is inundated with end-of-the-year round-up posts, and while some might think this tedious, I find it fascinating to see what…
Why I Didn’t Do NaNoWriMo In 2018
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is the biggest social writing event of the calendar year. I’ve attempted it four times, won once, and generally encourage every writer (and even a few non-writers) I know to try it for themselves. Even if you don’t make the expected 50k word count, it remains a lot of…
Uncharted Waters
I’m sailing in uncharted waters, covering territory that is completely new to me. And here be dragons. Not the good kind, the warm and fuzzy Falkors of the world, no. The Smaug that threatens to devour you should you so much as set one foot wrong or show a peek of your vulnerable and squishy…
My Five Favourite Dragons in Literature
When someone asks me what my favourite genre is, I always reply with: “As long as it has a dragon in it, I’ll read it.” I don’t know what it is about these scaly reptilians that I love so much, but they fascinate me. Winged, wise and sometimes wicked, I can’t resist a good dragon…
Recommend a Book
All writers started out with a love for reading and I’m no exception. Some of the best writing advice I’ve been given is to read widely and so I do try to read quite broadly (good chick-lit is one of my guilty pleasures and my Bachelors degree in English has forever instilled an appreciation of the…