Blogs

Here is a new short story for this website, although it was written a while ago. 'The Vow' is a love story, plain and simple. It's based on a Greek myth called 'Cupid and Psyche' (also known as 'Eros and Psyche'). Cupid is not the little cherub we see on Valentines day. He's the winged god of passion and beauty. He makes the mistake of falling in love with a mortal who's name is Psyche. The myth is quite complicated involving pain, trials, and of course passion.

Thanks to all who have visited this site! It's actually meant to contain stories in a series called "Legends of the Half Light:The 600 Year War", which is a group of three trilogies all of which relate a longer story. The name of the first trilogy is "Daughters of the Teardrop Sea" . That trilogy deals mostly with Diana, who is just a newborn at the end of the first book. In the second book, "Invisible Children" Diana is an adolescent, and in the third book she is in her early twenties.

This is a new short story for the web site, called “Argument by Design”. Although the characters are Jewish I hope that the themes are broader than that. In a philosophical context, the argument by design refers to the incredible unity of the world which is so complex that it suggests a creator.
Hope you enjoy it!

The history of “Daughters of the Teardrop Sea” is possibly quite telling about the way writing books and publishing them is going at this particular point in time. Initially, when the first part of it was written, I sent the manuscript naively to Doubleday under the original title, “Cold Fire”. Characteristically, I didn’t hear back for a number of months, so I phoned them. An editor told me that they didn’t read unsolicited manuscripts and a few weeks after that the text was returned to me in the mail.

When I began writing short stories publishing was not an issue, but having something to write about was. Like almost anyone, I needed to write about what I knew; is it actually posible to write about something you don't know? In the period of my life before this I had been an actor at a time when it was more possible in Canada to do this than it had ever been before. Young theatre directors who had been trained elsewhere had arrived back to their homeland to try to create something that did not, at first, seem likely; a Canadian culture. It was, for some, a virtual mission.

“The eyes of age”:
(from the song 'Mr. Bojangles'
It’s an exciting thing to find a place to post writing. It makes me think there’s a reason for it. When I’m alone and writing, not knowing who it may be for, it becomes very easy to lose focus and, in fact, to lose your way. Digital Novelists is a great place to potentially be part of a community, possibly a diverse community, that can make the stories so much better.