A Profound Look Back at the Week: November 23-29

The smells of winter are becoming more distinct and Big C.’s sneezing is becoming rarer. All in all, not a bad week. Or was it?

Children Know

A funny thing happened the other day. Little C had two friends over to play with in the garden while I did what I usually do in the afternoons, which is relax with a beer and, in this case, Psych. Suddenly, the boys came running into my field of vision waving the pair of evil clowns I keep on my desk. And you know what they were shouting? “Evil! Evil!”

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Why We Don’t Eat Our Young

I remember Little C’s shock when I told her spiders eat their young. I had to — there was the spider and all around it were the dead bodies of tiny little spiders. She got another of those shocks the other day when her father explained how young fish need to be separated from their parents so they don’t eat them. That’s life for you, darling, animals eat their young. The two reasons we don’t is that we have a concept of cuteness and because our young can say “Mummy, I love you.”

The Best Mom Ever

This is not a fun story and it wasn’t fun to write it but I had to get it out. Parenting is the best thing ever except when it’s the worst.

The Story Repository

It started as a dream journal. I called it that but the goal I started it with was to collect story ideas – kernels – I could use when I was in the mood for a short story. Apparently, once you finish a novel every story idea that comes to mind is a novel idea, or at least this is the case for me. Now, dreams on the other hand, dreams are short story material, I’ve no idea why. What I know is that most of the short stories I’ve written started their lives as something in a dream. It made sense to collect these story kernels.

The Horror

I watched my first horror film when I was in the second or third grade. It was “The Murders on Rue Morgue” and it had a lasting effect on me, to put it mildly.

Apocalypse Inside

There’s a saying in my part of the world for when somebody is late coming home or going somewhere they are supposed to go. It goes “Let’s hope it [what happened to him] is what his wife is thinking and not what his mother’s thinking.” It implies wives always think their husbands are cheating on them when they’re late, while mothers worry they may have had an accident. A horrible accident. Yeah, I know gender stereotypes and stuff but it’s the bit about the mother I’m interested in. Because I only recently had to unique chance to Part With the Kid for More Than a Couple of Hours For the First Time. And I remembered why I didn’t want to have any kids before.

Oil. Metals. Horror. Fantasy. Part 1

When I put these four words in the description spot below my Twitter handle, I did it in an attempt to be both honest and succinct. This is what I do: I write about oil (and gas, and everything energy) and metals, and I write fantasy and horror.