Red Wolf's Room

So, I ordered four sweet potatoes in my online grocery order. Ordering groceries online is full of surprises. Maybe you get all of your items, maybe you don't or maybe you get substitutions and find new brands and items you wouldn't have tried otherwise.  It was the first time I've ordered sweet potatoes. They weren't in a bag; they were like other veg at the store where you pick the ones you want.  Well, I got a surprise. All four of them are the size of grapefruits.  Now, you might be thinking that it's funny, but so what? Why are you writing a blog post about it? Well, I'm a writer and a partly Irish one at that, so I kind of see them as a sign. As something worth noticing. Maybe I'm looking for meaning where there isn't any. All of the stock at the store may have been like that. Or the grocery store worker picked whatever as they silently counted down the seconds until their shift ended.  But I'm a writer who believes in Fate, who is maybe lookin...

Image source:  https://unsplash.com/photos/3y1zF4hIPCg  I have always been drawn to tragic heroes, conflicted characters, angsty characters and characters that appear to be bad, but have the potential to be good. Some characters spring to mind: Severus Snape , Henry Bolet from the game Nancy Drew #17: Legend of the Crystal Skull ,   Hamlet ,  Dr. Jonathan Willaway from The Fantastic Journey. Even my own creative writing was more often full of angst, anger and sadness. I always thought that it meant that I liked conflict. I know conflict is what drives a story, so I thought nothing more of it.  Until now. Is it chaos I've always been drawn to or both conflict and chaos? Conflict From a story stand-point, there are internal and external conflicts. As you probably know, an internal conflict is when a character struggles with opposing thoughts and emotions. As a Libra, I identify with this and love characters who have an internal struggle. According to Dave Snowde...

Writers are like anyone else; they don’t like rejection. People seek to avoid rejection, which means they will also avoid opportunities and people that could have made a lasting impact on them. Whether we like it or not, life is a balance and, in that balance, there is pleasure as well as pain. Image source:  https://www.pexels.com/photo/focus-photo-of-yellow-paper-near-trash-can-850216/ This blog post describes my own experience of how I dealt with rejection as a writer. There is no quick and easy way to deal with it. Everyone deals with rejection differently. It could be slower or it could be faster than another person. Just remember to not compare yourself to others. I am sharing my story to hopefully provide you with some insight should you ever find yourself in a similar position. You are not alone.  I’m also sharing to entertain you. After all, people love stories. The Beginning In the middle of the night, I sat among the shadows of my room with my lamp’s light focus...

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-touching-his-head-3752834/ Some of you may recall that I wrote about the COVID-19 quarantine , lockdown, pandemic, crisis, however you call it, and reflected on it from a writerly perspective. It is now two months later, and I, an introvert, have been feeling incredibly anxious. No, it has nothing to do with writing or the quarantine. It's other things in the real world. Yes, you remember. The world that's all around you while you're deep within your beloved books? I don't exactly excel at adulting (still not sure I like that word) and Life has been getting me down. Life and my own damn fears. While I'm an introvert and I like staying inside, even on sunny days, I'm not entirely okay with being physically alone almost 24/7. Anyways... What Can Help Anxiety? ASMR! I've been exploring the ASMR community on YouTube since the quarantine was announced in March. I discovered ASMR Weekly and that le...

***Spoilers*** Detailed Summary The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle van Arsdale focuses on Alys, a seven-year-old girl who encounters a pair of soul eaters who eat the adult souls of Alys' village, Gwenith. Adult souls have fear, which is what attracts the soul eaters. A travelling merchant, Pawl, meets Alys and helps her and the rest of the children of Gwenith go to a neighboring village, called Defaid, where they begin their new lives with new families.  In hearing that Gwenith was attacked by soul eaters, the people of Defaid construct a wooden wall (referred to as "the Gate") around the village and put the Gwenith children in charge of watching for the soul eaters every night. Defaid is a religious village and believes that the soul eaters are related to the Beast, a Devil-like creature. Alys meets the Beast one day when she ventures into the fforest (no, that's not a typo) and is left wondering if she and the Beast are good or bad. The Beast tells her th...

Shane Snow I was on LinkedIn and a fellow writer reached out to me to read his new book. I was already following him on LinkedIn and had read the occasional post and article of his. Being a writer and novelist-in-training, I was aware that reaching out through social media is a marketing tactic that people use to sell their stuff and to spread awareness. However, when Shane Snow reached out to me to read Dream Teams , I was still flattered that he asked.  I read many reviews beforehand because it is a non-fiction book. I'd say that 85% of what I read is stories, so fiction with maybe 1-2% being biographies. I read fiction to escape from reality, so I need to mentally prepare myself before I dive into non-fiction. I know that non-fiction has gotten a bad reputation for being boring because, well, not everyone can make non-fiction interesting. But Shane Snow did. I have just completed my reading of Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart and I loved every minute ...