Unless you’re waking up in a rotting coffin, it’s safe to assume that you took your DeLorean back to the 18th century to bed down with life-long bachelor Horace Walpole for a night. It probably wasn’t satisfying for you: his family has a history of being first and he’s famous for fakery. At least he has a sweet pad. Continue reading
Category Archives: ~Other
Sunday Morning Stranger in Your Bed: My Evil Ex
That’s right. You wake up and lying next to you—hogging your pillow—is none other than My Evil Ex! Not your evil ex. My Evil Ex. What is she doing there!? Continue reading
Writing about Travelling
As you may have noticed, I am posting things again on Write with Lightning after the successful conclusion of yet another journey overseas. I’ve travelled a lot, and I am always tempted immediately after a trip to write about it. I had less inclination to write a narrative of my time in Ireland because I already wrote it in my Wanderlust Ireland blog, but I still wanted to write about travel in general and my experiences as a world traveller—that is, the customs I absorb and the people whose lives I visited. I don’t have anything more profound to tell you about the famous sights I’ve seen than anyone else who has also seen them. The Eiffel Tower is brown. The Circus Maximus is a beer bottle littered field. Oscar Wilde’s grave is covered in lipstick kisses. Angkor Wat is old. Bethlehem is a slum. Continue reading
Robot Hearts
Yay! Finally, Robot Hearts is available on amazon.com. I have a piece of creative non-fiction (called “Offline Jeckyll and Online Hyde”) published in this anthology of “True and Twisted Tales of Seeking Love in the Digital Age”. I have been half-hearted at best about sending things out to be published, so this is actually the first time my name will appear in print. Please buy a copy to own my first published work; it might be worth a dollar or two someday at a used bookstore!
This is the blurb from Amazon about the book:
“Love and technology have tied the proverbial knot, for better and for worse. Human interaction has gone hi-tech-it’s now both more immediate and global. Does courtship even still exist in the world of instant-everything? Can a real connection ever be made from afar? Robot Hearts is a collection of true stories from writers navigating the relationship maze of new media. Strange, diverse, heartbreaking and hilarious – each story, at its core, is 100 percent human.”
Buy it here. The cover art of the adorable robot alone is worth the price.
Bound
I sit in the Cathedral centred beneath the skull at the feet of Christ’s crucifix while importance echoes from the 2000 pipes of the organ beneath the stained-glass flowered star. Oh to belong to the strength of the arches—to not be another camera toting tourist—to be here to pray—to passing kneel as daily service to something larger than the self. The chords try to draw me into the fold to pin me down—preserve me between the pages like a four-leaf clover, a trinity shamrock, a squashed spider smeared and gnarled branches of legs turned web between the window frame of stained-blood stained-glass a phallic flaming sword arousing the wrong emotions. But I am not bound to a word I do not believe exists. Angelic arms are open but they’re not looking at me—with the eyes the arms are diverted always away always to another seat. Free Hugs signs with a footnote: not for you. In the pews I look like I belong, but I don’t and I never will. The chords and arches try to shut out the world—to keep my mind within—but I am not in this Cathedral centred beneath the skull at the feet of Christ’s crucifix while importance echoes from the 2000 pipes of the organ beneath the stained-glass flowered star. I can see through them. I can fold them flat between these pages like a four-leaf clover, a trinity shamrock, a squashed spider. I can bind them without their word.
May 28, 2010 in the pews of the Galway Cathedral.
write with lightning 