Warning: the following chapter contains adult content. This is the third and final part of Elle and Chris’ story. Click here to read Part One Click here to read Part Two “So darling, was he salivating all over you? I mean, he’s divine, you’re divine. It’s too bad you can’t have more children.” Susie’s nasal … Continued
4 Fast Rules for Mastering Dialogue Punctuation Punctuation rules, like all literary devices, are there to help the writer get a succinct, accurate meaning across. To discard the finer points of punctuation (in this case, the proper use of quotation marks) is like a sculptor wielding a sledgehammer. Messy, messy, messy. Use the following rules … Continued
How to find your theme, and make your story sing. Many writers shiver at the T word. After all, finding a novel’s theme sounds so intellectual, like a boring week of high school English you’d rather forget. But throw out your book’s theme at your own risk, because it’s the secret ingredient that will make … Continued
So everyone hates adverbs. But why? An adverb is a descriptor such as: She rubbed her eyes and said tiredly, “These adverbs are so redundant.” Consider that sentence. The word “tiredly” didn’t need to be there, because we already indicated she was tired by saying she “rubbed her eyes”. Recognizable by their ‘ly’ ending, adverbs … Continued
The first thing I noticed about my partner was his smile, easy in its own outrageousness. Naturally I was dubious, but after weeks of him acting like it was totally insane for us to not be together, I started to agree. The rest as they say, is history. Extroverts can be annoyingly magnetic, and by … Continued
At seventeen, I was an XS blonde wrapped in an XXL ego… I’d read things like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and pity women without a two-finger gap between their thighs. I didn’t even have to diet; my teenage metabolism took care of that. Most of my friends still lived at home, but … Continued
I stared at my boyfriend in disgust… We were lining up to enter a nightclub, and the cretin behind us had made an obscene comment about my dress, or more specifically, lack of said garment. The whole nightclub queue heard it, but my errant knight was more concerned with his friend’s critique of Apple versus … Continued
As a story developer, I help craft perfectly imperfect heroes and relatable heroines… …the realities of war, corsets, and chauvinism cast in the delicious glow of fiction. Why stare at the dirt, when you can look up at the sky, in wonder? Of course, my eyes have to return to the ground when I trip … Continued
Courtly love, or corrupted lust? In 1936 C.S Lewis described courtly love as, “love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love.“ But wait a second Sir Lancelot…Adultery? I’d always imagined that the knight in shining armour swept the lady off her feet and … Continued
Look at this picture; what do you see? It is a familiar subject; two lovers in a warm embrace, the man’s faint smile met by the woman’s earnest entreat. There is however, a fatal twist. Note the white sash she holds at his arm, as it is in this small detail that their … Continued