In many stories, nature is little more than scenery. A forest gives the characters somewhere to walk. A river adds beauty to the landscape. A storm creates atmosphere. A mountain range sits impressively in the distance while the real story unfolds somewhere else. There is nothing wrong with scenery. Stories need Read more
Alien invasion stories often begin with a dramatic spectacle: light splits the sky, a fleet of horrifying ships appears above the city, emergency response teams speed through the streets, governments panic, crowds run, buildings fall, and so on. There is power in that kind of story. It gives us the Read more
Sometimes an image gives you a world before you know the plot. You may not know who lives there yet, what has gone wrong, or whose life is about to be disrupted, but you can feel the tension of change about to happen. The clue might be a certain kind Read more
Creativity is often treated as something that belongs to artists, writers, musicians, and makers. But many of the processes involved in creativity are also familiar territory for therapists, coaches and wellbeing practitioners who help people reflect, grow, build confidence, explore identity, and move through periods of feeling stuck. Questions such as Read more
The strange world of The Lumenkin: A Story of Alien Arrival and Ecological Awakening contains luminous forests, hidden fae realms and an alien encounter unlike any you have read before. The Story & Art Bundle contains the complete eBook, the original artworks that inspired it, and the newly expanded Illustrated Read more
Old myths keep calling me back because they never feel finished. We inherit them as though they are fixed objects: Persephone was abducted. Medusa was a monster. Gaia was Mother Earth. Erebus belonged to darkness and Hemera to daylight. The stories arrive already interpreted for us, their characters assigned their Read more
A free illustrated reader’s guide to my strange fiction I have never been very good at staying inside one fictional box. Sometimes I write about ancient gods and forgotten women. Sometimes about magical forests, sentient rivers or visitors from somewhere beyond Earth. At other times I find myself wondering what artificial Read more
Creativity can be one of the most rewarding parts of our lives, but it does not always arrive easily. Sometimes we have plenty of ideas but struggle to act on them. Sometimes confidence gets in the way. At other times, creativity becomes squeezed between work, responsibilities, expectations, and the endless Read more
Microscopic spores made from crystalline structures and photons drift silently into the atmosphere. They fall with the Northern Lights, enter the forests, and bond with the vast mycelial networks beneath the surface of the Earth. The forest begins to change. Trees glow softly in the darkness. Mycelial networks carry strange new Read more
I wrote Captive as a dare. As a long-time author of nonfiction, a colleague dared me to write a short story, in the genre of science fiction, and enter it into a competition. I had some time on my hands, so I thought ‘yeah, okay’. I figured I had watched Read more