![]() ![]() Then wrote another, and another, each time getting steadily better. ![]() Yet that wasn’t half as much fun as I’d hoped but did light the bulb. Then I had a go at script-writing and attended a few courses. I’d dabbled in a few alternatives, I love cartooning so first idea was to draw for comics but, frankly, I could never quite reach the standard needed, I’m kinda rubbish at drawing scenery. I was an engineer and had been for about fifteen years. I think it was about 2004 when I thought about a career change. You could tell if they got confused or their attention was wandering, or if they were on the edge of their seats, listening to every word. You had direct contact with your audience, i.e. ![]() The role-playing helped me immensely as a storyteller. Everything I’ve done on SHADOW MAGIC ultimately feed sources back to the gaming. However, as it goes by the stories become more and more elaborate, like weekly soaps, and the world-building kicks in. Traditionally it’s a dungeon populated by monsters that the characters must explore. If you haven’t played it sounds a bit strange, but each person creates a character and the games-master creates the setting and the adventure. Roleplaying games are one of the VERY BEST ways to learn story-telling, I’d recommend it to everyone. Like a lot of fantasy writers nowadays, I was totally into Dungeons and Dragons back in the day (being the 1980’s). ![]()
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![]() Ordinarily placid elephants grew foul-tempered and violent in the summer heat. Sneaky hyenas stole blankets and cook pots. A honey badger they nursed back to health rampaged affectionately through the house. It was the perfect introduction to the wonders and terrors that awaited her.Īs the Krügers settled in, they became accustomed to living in the midst of ravishing splendor and daily surprises. Kobie felt she had found heaven on earth-until she awoke that first night to find a python slithering silently across her bedroom floor. Golden sunshine glowed in the lush garden where fruit bats hung in the sausage trees hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River storks and herons perched along the shore. Kobie and her husband Kobus were overwhelmed by the beauty of the Mahlangeni ranger station when they arrived with their little girls in the autumn of 1980. ![]() Now, in The Wilderness Family, Kobie recounts the enchanting adventures and extraordinary encounters they experienced in this vast reserve where wildlife has right of way. Yet for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years at South Africa's Kruger National Park were the most magical of their lives. The heat was unbearable, malaria would be a constant danger, her husband would have to be away for long stretches, there were no schools or nearby doctors for their three daughters, and of course the area teemed with wild animals. ![]() ![]() Everyone warned Kobie Krüger that being the wife of a game warden at a remote ranger station in South Africa's largest national park would be an arduous move. ![]() ![]() As horror goes, its some of the best I’ve read in a while. Much of our experiences of Hill House are through Eleanor’s perceptions and thought, and this is one of the things that makes this book so frightening. She’s not as confident as Theodora, nor as brave as Luke. The book is told from Eleanor’s perspective, a timid and careful young girl who seems utterly out of place in the midst of a gang of ghost hunters. The show is of course based on this book and if you’ve seen it, you’ll be very familiar with the plot (though some of the names and characters are different and they have different relationships). This is the first and only thing I’ve read of Shirley Jackson, and in fact (even though I’m supposedly a fan of horror) I hadn’t heard the name until I saw the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix a few years ago. All with their own reasons to get away from everything for a while, they take the good doctor up on his offer. ![]() With him is Luke, the heir to the family and owner of the building, and Theodora and Eleanor. ![]() Montague, interested in the paranormal, invites himself and a few guests to a supposedly haunted house, to stay for a while and investigate. And one of the best horror stories I’ve read in a while. ![]() ![]() ![]() When I sat down to sign books, they were the first in line. The Trail Buddies She Never Expected to See AgainĪt the first reading I ever gave for the book, an elderly couple showed up. ![]() So I took it out, which was so, so, so painful.Ģ. But I couldn't get the scene to work within the trajectory of the story. The two of us were like those kittens, lost in the innards of the building. We saved them, but just finding them was symbolic in a lot of ways, about who we were and what was happening in our marriage at the time. They'd obviously been lost in the innards of the building for weeks. Sitting inside the walls were these two emaciated kittens completely covered in soot and grease. So we took a hammer and clawed away until we'd removed all the plaster and Sheetrock. It was New Year's Day, and we heard this strange yowling coming from the ceiling of our bedroom closet. One of my favorite scenes was about my ex-husband and I living in Brooklyn. The Scene from the Book That She Hated to Cut but Had To So we sat down with Cheryl Strayed to talk about all the juicy bits that aren't in the book, from the joyful and the surprising to the bittersweet.ġ. This story of adventure, loss and personal growth is one of those books that readers can't get enough of-literally. ![]() ![]() Wu climbs the long, stuttering ladder of TV bit-part ascendancy, falls in love, and learns about what it means to be Asian in America from his parents, his peers, and the coming generation. Wu lives above The Golden Palace, an Asian restaurant/crime den/casino/laundromat/et cetera that provides the backdrop for whenever the detectives of Black and White need to dip their proverbial toes into superficial Asian culture. ![]() It is the story of Willis Wu, a young Asian actor stuck playing two-dimensional caricatures like "Oriental Guy Making a Weird Face" and "Silent Henchman." Wu aspires to become "Kung Fu Guy," the best role available for Asian actors on Black and White, the police procedural TV show in which the world of the novel is set. ![]() ![]() Interior Chinatown (2020) is the second novel by American writer Charles Yu. ![]() ![]() GMOs are mainly used to produce crops that are herbicide-resistant or produce pesticides. The major criticisms of GMOs are related to the overuse of specific herbicides. What is CRISPR, the gene editing technology that won the Chemistry Nobel prize? These technologies are being applied to provide a range of benefits, from improved nutrition in food, to reduced food waste and increased crop tolerance against climate stresses. Unlike with GMOs, this introduces only minor modifications, which are indistinguishable from natural mutations.Īlthough GMOs and gene-edited foods have been in circulation for almost three decades, research in this space continues to deliver breakthroughs. ![]() Using techniques such as CRISPR/Cas, scientists make precise “cuts” in the DNA to create new genetic variation. Gene editing involves making precise changes to an organism’s genome without the integration of foreign DNA elements. ![]() ![]() The exploration of Flares as an out of control phenomenon was of great interest and also had some interesting parallels to adolescent addictions, if the reader looks closely enough. ![]() With the foreknowledge that the series would come to end in the next novel, I was interested to see where the two Reichses might take this story. Can Tory keep the gang together and solve the case before the kidnapper strikes again? How will the authorities take to being beaten to the punch? Reichs and Reichs keep fans on the edge of their seats, with epilogue no one saw coming. As the kidnapping case heats up, the Flares get more out of control, possibly endangering the gang and their secret. The Flares seem to have taken a life all their own, forcing the Virals to struggle to keep things under wraps. All the while, details surrounding the experiments that eventually infected Tory, Ben, Hi, and Shelton (as well as canine Coop) fall into their laps, but there's a secret set of additional documents with far more devastating information. ![]() What they find will create more questions than answers. When twins go missing from Tory's school, the Virals take it upon themselves to do some of their own sleuthing. ![]() As the Virals return for another adventure, Tory and the gang find themselves in the middle of the trial to put away the infamous Gamemaster (from Book 3). ![]() ![]() The largest single creditor is Los Angeles billionaire Don Hankey, who lent $106 million to the dream project of developer Nile Niami. That means many creditors will take losses - even though most of the auction house’s 12% fee will be returned to the bankrupt estate, which is not a typical arrangement. The amount of debt attached to the property originally totaled about $180 million but has since grown to $256 million as more creditors have made claims, according to a March 2 court filing. “The buyer pool for this is very small, and with everything happening in Russia, all of a sudden those Russian billionaires who may have been your best bet to buy it are pulling out,” he said. He also wondered if the timing was off given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Agent Brent Chang of Compass said the results were a cautionary tale and might prompt builders to think smaller, given that multiple huge mansions have gone into bankruptcy in the last few years. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was my kind of stuff – gory, gritty and concentrated. I absolutely BURNED through these as a young adult. ![]() They brought forth such blood-soaked imagery like no other author I’d ever read before. These novels filled my imagination when I was younger. With this being Rat Week, I would like to fittingly focus on his books The Rats, Lair and Domain, known tentatively as The Rat Trilogy. When I was in my teens, sometimes two or three books would go by between visits without me knowing the wiser. Whenever my family or I go to the UK, I always make sure a trip to the bookstore is in order. James Herbert isn’t well known on this side of the pond because his works are seldom released here. Herbert’s penchant for graphic mayhem grabbed me right from the first book of his I ever read called The Fog. His fictional England has endured innumerable disasters under his hand and no one fucks up London better than he does. British author James Herbert has always been one of my favourite writers. ![]() ![]() ![]() Now you should understand that my desire to be a priest was a pontifical secret. JoAnn Mahoney and celibacy! Still, in the spring of my senior year of high school I sat at my parents' dining room table and wrote the rector of Cleveland's Saint Mary Seminary seeking admission. While there was never a serious doubt about seminary studies, I nevertheless felt the ripples of tension and unease rooted in mandatory celibacy. I wanted to be a priest and I was in love with JoAnn Mahoney. In fact, these two certitudes were crystal clear to me as a first-grader at Holy Name Elementary School. I was 17 and knew two things for certain. Dianne Bergant and Michael Daley say, "can inspire, affirm, challenge, change, even disturb." Good books, as blog co-editors Congregation of St. ![]() Editor's note: "Take and Read" is a weekly blog that features a different contributor's reflections on a specific book that changed their lives. ![]() |