INKY SQUIGGLES

The following short story was inspired by a prompt to combine a broken watch, peppermints, and a hug that went too far. Enjoy and please share any feedback! *** Kayleigh slowly unwrapped a peppermint, her own state of calm a sharp contrast to the screaming, excited children who careened around the yard in front of her, kicking about birthday balloons and chasing each other with ice-cream-sticky fingers. Placing the peppermint delicately in her mouth, Kayleigh let the taste tingle over her tongue.   Sweet, but sharp, much like unrequited love , she reflected.           “Mommy, mommy! The clown is scaring me!” A shrieking blonde-haired six-year-old, resplendent in party hat and sparkling pink tutu, threw herself into Kayleigh’s lap. The woman sighed good-naturedly and kissed her daughter’s head.            “But you insisted on having the clown, darling. Don’t be afraid; go ask him to teach you how...

The definitive fantasy antiquities bookstore, St. George's Books of Jane Jensen's adventure gaming classic,  Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers One of my dreams has always been to run my own hybridised bookstore/teashop. Antique stained-glass windows, chintz teacups suspended from the rafters, an elegant tufted armchair set before an open fireplace... and one of those bitchin' ladders on rails for swooping dramatically during spontaneous sing-songs. Like Belle. Not Nigel Thornberry. I'd actually considered this to be one of my more down-to-earth dreams, but given the proliferation of online book giants and the dwindling presence of high street indie booksellers, it now seems about as likely as my teen aspirations of edging out Mrs Bon Jovi. Nevertheless, the appeal of being paid to spend my days surrounded by books never quite left me (if the  Kingyo Used Books  series has taught me anything, it's that the life of a bookseller is a continual voy...

Thank goodness for Writer's Club, an oasis of creativity for the dry deserts of a college student's soul. Today was the first time in months that I've had chance to do any creative writing, thanks to a writing game in which characters, settings, and conflicts are written up randomly and then chosen according to the roll of a dice. My prompt required me to write about a Catholic priest whose flaws of jealousy and pride were eating his life away. Twenty minutes later, and I had written this short story. Enjoy the fruits of my burst of creativity! * "O gracious Lord, grant rest to this good man's soul," the elderly priest intoned as he stood over the bed of his dying parishioner. Father James stood quietly in a corner of the room as he watched his superior go through the last rites with the wizened old man, and he couldn't help noticing how the sorrowful family at the bedside looked on Father James's mentor with the kind of reverence one mig...

I've just excised a venomous influence from my life. And, as a dedicated yet chronically suffering writer with "little or no money in my purse", I would like to take this opportunity to post a sobering caution to all those who live by the pen. I've been writing on topics that inspire me for a long time. I've rarely had the pleasure of being paid to do so; it's simply such a vital part of my being that it would be unthinkable not to. When it comes to writing for money, however, I've had to resign myself to the reality that my options are limited; I have successfully pursued careers in both journalism and copywriting, and have personally found both to be soul-sappingly dissatisfying. Reporting the facts and representing a client's brand left little room for my own voice and creativity. When I found an advert on TotalJobs for a fully paid content producer position for a successful entertainment website, therefore, I was intrigued. WhatCulture were...

Version reviewed: PC (also available on Mac and Linux) Available from: Steam or www.GoneHomeGame.com How well do you really know the people closest to you? When Kaitlin Greenbriar returns home from a gap year in Europe to find her entire family gone, it’s up to her to uncover the secrets that didn’t make it into those long-distance letters. Picking up the threads of her family’s lives, the player must explore the colossal house they have since moved into, examining letters, newspaper clippings and, if one so chooses, the hundred thousand other details that make up a life. If it’s the people, and not the house, that make a home, then this game shows how each individual has inhabited every room with their cares, uncertainties and basic humanity. From hastily scrawled notes passed between friends during class, to adult magazines buried under work documents, Gone Home is teeming with meticulously authentic details of family life that the player is at liberty to snoop through, tu...

Manga and anime character tropes are a lot like gravity in that they can be said to follow a kind of unwritten law ; the silver-haired pretty-boy, the bespectacled brain, the plucky but naive hero. These archetypes stay in circulation because, for the most part, they work. But for fans drawn to the medium for its idiosyncrasy, these cookie cutter characters, though comforting, can get kinda tedious. Sadly, I know people who have given up on manga and anime altogether out of sheer exhaustion at these recurring clichés -- and Japanese anime fans are getting just as fed up as everyone else.

Do you ever wish that life had a soundtrack playing in the background? The soundtracks to Gladiator and Batman have gotten me through many late-night study sessions. Just today I woke up to  Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1  (guaranteed to instill the instant belief that today will be beautiful and grand), cleaned the kitchen with the excitement of  Vivaldi's Spring , and then proceeded to make scones with melancholy and foreboding thanks to part of  Dvorak's New World Symphony . Music just makes everyday moments so much more epic. I used to live waiting for epic moments. How could I possibly enjoy the day's hum-drum assignments when there would be a party at the weekend, or a wedding next month, or a vacation abroad soon? As a young teenager, the film  Inn of the Sixth Happiness  caught my imagination, and somehow I got round to believing that life would be incomplete unless I did something as similarly glorious and noteworthy as leading orphan ch...