“Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”
— Oren Arnold
May these be gifts we give all year round.
Filed under Quotes
I don’t know about the rest of you, but Christmas has snuck up on me this year! Between publishing two books in November and all of the work involved in that process and the aftermath (promotion, etc.), I came up for breath last weekend, as I wrote about last week. I took a short break, and now I’m beginning work on the next project (diving into research and scene layout). But with Christmas coming up, it’s time to shift down a gear or two, and enjoy the season. If you are a writer like me, writing can be addictive; it’s a good habit to write something every day. But who says it needs to be a book manuscript, or whatever your next project or usual format is? If you write poetry, try your hand at calligrams; if you write short stories, try writing an ambigram. If you write constantly, take a break and read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with research or preparation for your next project!
Here are a few different styles to choose from, just to shake things up a bit:
One of my first calligrams; not very neat, but cathartic!
Filed under Images, Lists, Nuts & Bolts, Writing Exercise
Last week I took a much-needed break from the computer after launching my latest novel, The Cardinal (Parts One & Two)! It is such a complex story with rich landscapes that it deserved the room to breathe and unfold, and so it became two novels, though that decision didn’t come until well into the second draft. When it was all said and done, I had formatted two books, twice each (one format for Kindle, one for paperback), designed four covers, written countless versions of blurbs, etc., and gone through the publication process four times. Trust me, I’d seen enough of my computer at that point to have a love-hate relationship with it for a while. During that break I managed to read five books in a week, not a single one of them research-related for the next project! I’ve since made peace with my computer, and I’m beginning work on the next novel – this time, back to the 18th century to complete the Northing Trilogy. I’m looking forward to exploring this new aspect of characters I already know well from the previous two novels; it will take me through the grime of workhouse orphanages and the salty brine of the British navy in the mid-18th century, and already the research questions accumulating portend at least one trip to London, which is one of my favourite cities anyway, and I’m sure you’ll hear more about that in the months to come.
The Three Culprits: Gandria, Caprino and Allegra (top to bottom)
With all of the push and shove of getting the books ready to publish, Christmas has snuck up on me! It hit home this weekend, literally, when we put up the Christmas decorations: Here in Switzerland it’s usual to put the Christmas tree and decorations up on Christmas Eve, so we’ve struck a compromise between our varying cultures and aim for the first Advent; it’s also a pragmatic compromise as, if we’re going to go to all that effort, we might as well enjoy it a bit. We went to the first Christmas market of the season, complete with hot wine punch, roasted chestnuts, and Christmas shopping. If any of you have cats, you’ll empathize with me on one point: As we walked through the market, again and again we saw things that we liked, “But…” A nice wind chime made of drift wood, stones and feathers in perfect balance? Cat toy. Ditto for the man-sized candle holder made of stones & driftwood. Scratching post. Now mind you, our cats are well-behaved, and they only scratch on their scratching post; but there’s probably too little of a difference to their perspective between the allowed version and the decorative, expensive version… Any cloth craft item is like catnip to our calico, Gandria – she carries off anything cloth she can get into her mouth (she’s even learned how to unzip my husband’s backpack; her favourite thing to steal is his tissue packs).
All of that just to say this: I have now re-entered the land of the living after having been sequestered with my book manuscripts in the final polish and publish phases. I’m more than ready for holidays, and blogging, writing, researching, plotting… in short, starting the next manuscript.
Filed under Articles, Humor, Publications
Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce the release of my latest books: The Cardinal, Parts One and Two! The Cardinal is an epic fantasy, spanning from the pre-Viking Age of Scotland and Norway to modern-day Scotland.
In the far northern reaches of the Highlands of Scotland a Pictish tribe, with their language of peat and stone, ally together with a strange kingdom of mist and whispers. As a foe descends upon them in longships from the north with axe and smoke and they are scattered in defeat, will those left behind ever find those wrenched from their arms? Will those slaves taken by the Vikings ever find their way to freedom and home or not? Either way life will never be the same again.
More than a thousand years later their lives, deaths and fates are brought to light by an archaeological team who uncovers the find of a lifetime… of a thousand lifetimes. The more they discover the more perplexing it becomes; their finds challenge our very understanding of what it means to be human, and the assumption that myths are groundless and history is fact. That we are not alone in the universe is one thing; that we are not alone on this earth is another thing entirely.
“Legends come about when truth is considered too implausible.”—G.K. Chesterton
For further information, images and characters, please check out the page here.
If you enjoy the novels, please do leave feedback! Both here and on Amazon would be excellent! Every feedback is greatly appreciated, and the more the better!
Filed under Publications
Once in a while, we need to get our creative juices flowing; here are some ideas to spark your imagination! Pick one, get a pen and paper, and start writing! See where it leads!
1. What is it that you are absolutely sure you will never forget?
2. doorbell rings
3. perfect family
4. zombie packing list
5. flight vs. invisibility
6. two animals into one hybrid
7. Describe each day of the week as if it was a person.
8. you fly but you lose a minute every time
9. design and describe the perfect bedroom
10. library, museum, zoo
11. which friend will become the most famous?
12. you give a personal concert
13. complain about kids these days
14. glow in the dark tattoo
15. magical mailbox
16. I deserve a day off school
17. average of five people
18. celebrity, famous person, character as sibling
19. describe daily life in 2045
20. honesty room
Filed under Lists, Writing Exercise
Use your imagination for creating exciting new possibilities! And just to get you started, here’s a writing prompt:
Have you ever wondered about the old-fashioned “ye” in shop signs? It was a lazy printer’s solution to saving space for “th”, and should be pronounced as “the”, not “yee”! The Old English character “y” was a graphic alteration of the Germanic rune “Þ” (which came over with the Viking raiders and the Norman King Canute and his rabble, but that’s another story). When English printing typefaces couldn’t supply the right kind of “P” they substituted the “Y” (close enough, right?). That practice continued into the 18th century, when it dropped out of use. By the 19th century it was revived as a deliberate antiquarianism – to give a shop a pedigree, so to speak (read “marketing scam”), and soon came to be mocked because of it. And now we think of it as the quaint way they used to write…
For a short, fun video on the topic, click on Ye Olde Web link, below.
Filed under History, Humor, Mistranslations, Nuts & Bolts, Translations
The following sentences are taken verbatim from comments on unwitting websites; I’ve collected them as I’ve come across them since Autumn of 2013. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself and put my comments in parentheses; other comments there are simply reference to the context. I have dozens more, but certain things in life are better in small doses… 
Filed under Humor, Lists, Nuts & Bolts, Quotes
“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be defeated.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Filed under Quotes
Stephanie Huesler 