How to avoid looking back?

I never used to look back, to wonder or care about how I could have done things differently. Maybe it's part of getting older, but I've started having those thoughts more often. I started listening to a new book recently, 'Replay', about a man who dies, and wakes up 25 years in the past, in …

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Once again Butler has given me an unexpected ending to what I thought was going to be an 'another one of those' story. As I've mention in previous posts, the story is about two immortal and powerful characters with opposing desires. With this format in most writers hands you'd expect that one character would be …

Take the ‘tell’ out of storytelling

I've been off and on watching the Netflix original 'A Series of Unfortunate Events', and although it is lovely to look at with great production value and an all-star cast, it is really quite infuriating at times. My irritation is due to the narrator. The story is framed as research done by a man named …

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

This is the first experience I can remember of being really impacted by a short story. I read it in high-school, at 15 or 16 years old, and have remembered it ever since. The story tells of a man about to be executed by hanging, from the aforementioned bridge. When he is pushed off, however, …

Immortality

I wonder if Shakespeare ever suspected his writings would be the subject of entire classes, hundreds of years later. Did Van Gogh ever imagine even in his most optimistic dreams that replicas of his works would be hanging in dorm rooms across the world in the 21st century? I doubt it. They are still influencing …