Tag: featured
I am a Writer When I am Writing
“Accept being unimportant.” Lao Tsu, Tao te Ching As a musician, writer, wife and mother, it matters to me that these labels are just that—merely labels. Descriptors or definers but never confiners. If I am slapping bumper stickers on my car such as “I’d Rather Be Writing” or “Without Music Life Would Bb” I’m telling you […]
The Side Effects of Being an Author
I never planned to become an author. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. So much so, I have published two novels, Grace & The Ghost and Angel’s Rebellion. But my initial dream, was to write something and simply get one book printed so I could place it casually on the footstool and adopt a […]
Is Your Perception Of Creativity Hurting Your Writing?
I was talking to a friend of mine—who happens to be a psychotherapist and has experience working with creative professionals—about creativity. The two of us go for weekly walks amidst nature where we talk about life, challenges, and wins. Both the friendship and our weekly self-care ritual is cathartic. I confessed to her that on […]
Battle Cry
I am a woman who is queer and who enjoys sex, and who is generally positive and, perhaps naively, has faith that the world and the people in it are fundamentally ‘good’ and in their nature predisposed not to judge each other. As a writer and an academic, especially at the very start of my […]
A Teacher Encourages: A Writer is Born
I cannot remember what the story was called but I can remember its opening line. “Pooh! Not those smelly socks again.” It was a short memoir from the point of view of an old, disgruntled washing machine and I was surprised to be asked to read it aloud. I was ten years old and painfully […]
Questions No One Should Ask A Writer
The other day, someone said to me, “Hey, you’re a writer, aren’t you?” and I looked at the person suspiciously like, “Why? Do you need a poem for your grandpa’s birthday? Because I’m not good at the rhyme-y stuff.” But she responded, “No, ha-ha! I was just wondering if there are any questions that no […]
Writing Coercive Control Into Fiction (Very, Very Carefully)
This September sees the paperback publication of my first legal thriller, Degrees of Guilt, under the pen name HS Chandler. It was difficult to write for a number of reasons, but the most immediate of them was having proper consideration for the real victims of coercive control. This year has seen the overturning of a […]
Writing With Illness
My life took two distinct turns in 1998—make that three. It was the year I had to take over the management of my husband’s mortgage company, which coincided with a frenzied refinance boom. I had been plucked away from making mosaic furniture, cutting marble, granite and Murano glass on my tile saw. Tactile, creative work, […]
Why the Past Matters: the Inspiration Behind The Glass Woman
If it was Iceland’s breath-taking landscape that first inspired me to set a novel among its bleak, volcanic splendour, it was the country’s history, full of folklore, witchcraft and strange disappearances that enthralled me and helped develop the story of a young woman who marries for convenience and quickly finds herself isolated and in danger. […]
On Writing: Angela Meyer
On the plane on the way over to the UK for my book tour I watched a beautiful Scottish film called Tell it to the Bees. While it was essentially a story of both love (between two women) and friendship (between adults and children), there were gut-wrenching scenes of oppression. Women’s desires, their thoughts, their […]
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