Killing Characters – A Quick Thought

Well, I hope it is quick at least! Quite some time ago I posted a series on killing off characters in one’s fiction. You can find those posts here, here, and here, and they all generated a fair bit of discussion. To sum them up, however, they boil down to “respect your characters if you …

Contagious Laughter

Just watch the video yourself to find out how contagious! 😀 VIDEO: Adorable Toddler’s Uncontrollable Laugh Is So Infectious That His Barber Can’t Go On With Haircut By Deborah George 3/11/2024 Updated: 3/11/2024 For adults, seeing life through the eyes of a child can often be quite amusing as little ones tend to find joy in …

Nomads or Micro-schools?

There could very well be some overlap, particularly if you homeschool! In Tennessee, the Microschooling Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down A visit to five microschools across the state reveals lively classrooms, booming enrollment and growing waitlists that point to spiking demand. By Kerry McDonald  March 17, 2024 I recently heard someone dismiss microschools as …

An Ugly Read…

…but an important one. It is dense, readers, but please do yourself a favor and peruse it. It will make a variety of things quite clear. The Sickness of Life: On the Problems with Anti-Natalism Ben Ware Considers the Emptiness of Opting Out In Margaret Atwood’s 1981 novel Bodily Harm, the protagonist, Rennie, recalls a piece …

Reposted: How To Depict Characters Living In Sin Without Endorsing Their Choices

Good thoughts here, readers. Check it out! HOW TO DEPICT CHARACTERS LIVING IN SIN WITHOUT ENDORSING THEIR CHOICES Has your work-in-progress ever taken a dark turn? You thought you were writing about teenagers falling in love for the first time, but instead you ended up with scenes where the characters crossed physical boundaries. Or maybe your …

Thoughts on Visual Theology

This is an interesting piece by Makoto Fujimura, a Calvinist artist. He is not saying anything new to a Catholic in the strict sense: Catholics may not call it Visual Theology, but we have a vested interest in artwork. Always have, always will. None of this means that I found his article either uninteresting or …

A Few Religious Videos for Worldbuilding Tips

Okay, so not only do you want to write religious characters, you want to write Catholic characters. Great! All you need is a few stereotypes and you’re good to go. Right? Not so fast – and that goes for the Catholics in the back in particular. I have seen all the backlash about Cabrini and …

Over the Rainbow – In Virginia?!

Check it out, readers! Stunningly Beautiful ‘Rainbow Pools’ in Virginia Are Totally Natural—Here’s How They Are Created By Michael Wing A vast untamed swampland once dominated from what is Virginia Beach today extending far inland, and history tells of emancipated slaves, free blacks, and outsider Europeans building free settlements on isolated islands deep in the dismal …

Lost Arts or Needed Items Not Being Taught?

A funny thing I noticed, reading books set in Captain James T. Kirk’s era of Star Trek,* is that certain “old” or outdated items or practices were considered important enough within the series and franchise that the characters took it for granted they would be taught and/or be used even in the far future. In …

Revolutionary Thoughts

Worth the read. Check it out! A Revolution Not Made, but Prevented An essay published in the collection Rights and Duties (Spence Publishing Company, 1997) For rightly apprehending the purpose and the character of the written Constitution of the United States, one needs knowledge of that Revolution, or War of Independence, which had parted the original thirteen …