Tag: fiction
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8 Ancient Greek words for love – with illustrations and famous love quotes
Does having just one word for the unimaginably huge and complex concept of LOVE limit our ability to understand and express what it is? The Ancient Greeks had eight separate nouns to identify the different types of love. In English, we have just one. In order to clarify the kind of love we mean, we […]
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Knowing Nada – a short story
The black streets of Zagreb were shiny with rain. Above the traffic, the noise, the movement, almost-frozen raindrops ricocheted off the grand building facades. Their silhouettes reared up against the dead black sky as tall as the cliffs that marked the edge of the island Ana Horvat called home. But unlike her beloved coastline, these […]
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My short story that didn’t win Vocal’s Little Black Book short story competition [Mrs Brizzi’s Fish Dinner]
![My short story that didn’t win Vocal’s Little Black Book short story competition [Mrs Brizzi’s Fish Dinner]](https://whalebeings.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/pexels-photo-3838285.jpeg?w=1024)
This week I’ve successfully not won TWO writing competitions! First the National Poetry Competition, and now the Vocal Little Black Book short story competition sponsored by Moleskine notebooks. This blog is turning into a graveyard of my failures. The first prize was a whopping $20,000 and to be quite frank, I’ve been daydreaming about that […]
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National Novel Writing Month 2019 begins today
I’ve got to be quick. Today was day 1 of National Novel Writing Month, better known as nanowrimo, a worldwide campaign/project/incentive to write a total of 50,000 words by the last day of November. That’s 1,667 words EVERY DAY. Bearing in mind I spend eight hours of the day writing for a living and I’m […]
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My imaginary dinner party guest #4: Bill Bryson
Previously on ‘My Imaginary Dinner Party’… Margaret Atwood’s arrival successfully diffuses the sexual tension broiling across the table between Leonard Cohen and Lana Del Ray. I’m feeling a little bit grumpy because the pasta bake is well and truly cold. Why did I get it out of the oven so early? We’ve talked a bit […]
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My imaginary dinner party guest #3: Margaret Atwood
Previously on ‘My Imaginary Dinner Party’… Now there’s a table, a rapidly depleting selection of wines, a tepid pasta bake, a smattering of Pringle crumbs in a bowl, Leonard Cohen, Lana Del Rey, and me. Leonard’s ramped up the story-telling and Lana is sitting with one leg crossed elegantly over the other, hand-rolled cigarette in […]
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It’s ‘spooky season’ and this is why we love horror
Humans love to be freaked out. We just love it. Does anything make us happier than a creepy long-haired girl crawling out of a well? I studied gothic fiction in my final year of university and it was the best few months of my entire education. We got to read all the classic horror stories […]
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Until Five [fiction]
![Until Five [fiction]](https://whalebeings.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/d5283-sever-3100049_1920.jpg?w=1024)
The below is a very, very short story I named ‘Until Five’. I kind of like it in a bleak sort of way and I doubt I’ll ever do anything with it, so that’s why I’m posting it here. Until Five One of my legs feels fuzzy against the other, like a kiwi. I can’t […]
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Take your work seriously, not yourself
I don’t know why I was so nervous about going to the writer’s workshop last night but I really, really was. It seems that all of life is a succession of scary things we have to make ourselves do. What I find ‘scary’ changes day-to-day and is largely dependent on what mood I’m in. Sometimes […]
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