The answer to the title is, yes, a villain could be a good guy. But in what sense? Good people can become evil. And villains can have good sides, even beautiful sides, especially at first. But how? Here is what fiction-writing expert Rayne Hall says about the making of a villain: Villains transcend boundaries. We… Read more »
Eunice Newton Foote was born in Goshen, Connecticut on July 17, 1819, and died September 30, 1888. Eunice was studying Global Warming and its effects in the mid 1800’s, the first person ever known to have done so. Foote became known for “theorizing that changing the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would change… Read more »
Dear Barb: Hi, I have been in isolation for the last seven weeks, except for picking up groceries and prescriptions. Now that things are easing a bit and I am going out more, I find my anxiety level rising. I have always had anxiety, but it has basically been under control. I talked to another… Read more »
Do you have a hobby, a passion, a skill, a brimming curiosity about something? If so, you could have a business ready to go by the time you finish reading this article. I kid you not. “Dang, I’ve lost my job due to COVID!” So, what do you do? Do what you’ve already been doing:… Read more »
I teased this recipe on my Facebook page a few weeks ago while I was cooking it. A few years ago, my wife bought me a stand-up smoker for Christmas. I have used this smoker so many times over the years and smoked a handful of different items in it. Some have been great; some… Read more »
Explanatory prowess often begins with a metaphor. Take bubbles, for instance. They can be blown, popped, or inhabited. Social distancing is inseparable from the metaphor of a bubble and distance education runs with the notion that each of our identities contains an inland empire of meaning and activity. Likewise, the sky’s the limit in our… Read more »
A priest, a weed dealer, an AU student, and a grocery clerk walk out of a bar, go home, board up their windows and doors, and have drinks over Zoom. Sounds like a bad joke but for better or for worse, it’s our new reality—and it’s here to stay. For a while, anyway. Every time… Read more »
The first thought that crosses most people’s minds when the word ramen is mentioned is college students, especially students who have moved out and are living independently in a college dorm. However, another time that ramen might become a household favorite is during a time such as the global pandemic. Since the early weeks of… Read more »
When reading stories, we can feel the heartache, the joy, the love, and the suffering of an imaginative hero. But the best books offer up so much empathy that we cry over the character’s plight. So, how do we craft a character so richly that our readers’ hearts break? “A reader who feels moved by… Read more »
Album: Metamorphosis Artist: Hilary Duff Milica Markovic Hilary Duff’s Metamorphosis was the first album I asked my mother to purchase for me when I was a child, so it holds a special place in my heart. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I was an avid Disney Channel viewer; Lizzie Maguire, in which Duff… Read more »