A New Perspective

The story below was submitted to Writer's Digest for a short story competition (https://www.writersdigest.com/your-story-competition/your-story-97-submit-now) based on the picture attached to this post. Let me know what you think: Dev had never seen one up close before. Sure, his parents had told him about the magnificent creatures, but it was different to actually spy one cavalierly …

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Ignoring the Elephants in the Room: A Review of Avengers Endgame

You might be aware that I am a huge MCU fan, and I wrote a rather scathing review of Infinity War which can be found here: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/peruseandmuse.blog/657. I ended that review by saying the writers had a chance to redeem many of their issues with the introduction of time travel in Endgame, but that I …

Why I Write

Have you ever felt defined by one characteristic? The world sees just one facet of your personality and latches onto it with zero compunction. Maybe people only see the dark side of your persona, or maybe they assume something about yourself based on a quick first impression and never take the time to truly get …

How to Write

Step One: She stares at a blank screen, the unnatural white of the word program flickering like an incandescent bulb about to blow. She adjusts the brightness. The screen plummets into darkness. She adjusts the brightness back up, one click at a time until she is satisfied that she won't get a blistering headache. Step …

Love is Not Love Which Alters

The story unfolds in the same manner as the plethora of celebrity couple breakups before them. The couple issues a joint statement explaining how they are getting a divorce due to "irreconcilable differences," but that while the marriage is over, they still "love each other and always will." And not for the first time, I'm …

Looking in the Mirror

There was a poem or lyric that mentioned looking in the mirror and not recognizing your own face. Matthew never understood that trite saying. Even if one underwent a physical metamorphosis, there would still be some semblance of the person one was before. Regardless of whatever life-altering transformation people might experience, people were innately the …

Coffee*

He'san      acquiredtaste,    like a strong, black coffee: bold and hot, with an acerbic   aftertaste, prone to scald if taken in too quickly. The kind   of coffee that people pour in copious amounts of sugar and  creamer, in the deluded hope of masking the bitterness. Butno amount of      sweetness, usually of the mollycoddling and …

Shout Outs and Just Plain Old Shouting

This blog post is not going as I had anticipated, but sometimes you have to follow your muse where it will lead you and not force it into any creative corner. Yesterday I attempted to set up a Twitter account. I say attempted because about 64% through the set up process (according to the helpful indicator), Twitter …

Pedants and Platitudes: Christmas Edition

"It wouldn't be Christmas without snow." You heard it here first, Australia and any other place south of the Equator. You can't celebrate Christmas. You are snow-less and Christmas-less. Buh bye. "Christmas is a time to be with family and loved ones." I regret to inform all those children living in orphanages that you can't …

Music

She composes a symphony, not with the dots and lines of musical notes but with the dots and lines of letters. The plot is the melody, consistent throughout. Themes pop up at intervals like recurring motifs, reminding the reader of what is at stake... Read the rest of the poem in my anthology Ephemeral Impressions: …