Ragtag Giggagon

Larysia Woropay is a Canadian writer, currently seeking an agent for her fantasy novel Lucidity . You can check out her blog here . 1. Firstly, your poetry is super. I was struck by how much thought must go into your word choice. Thank you kindly!   For the compliment and the interview. I’m honoured to be featured on your blog. The thought that goes into my word choice varies. Sometimes I spend days trying to go about my verses cerebrally, researching and exploring ideas, word play, and rhymes.   Then there are other times when a verse pops into my mind and inspiration puts me under literary trance. When that happens, I can finish a poem in next to no time. Either way, I aim to write from an evocative place within me. And I think if a poet writes with sincerity, the diction evokes the same response within the reader as it does the writer. 2. I think too reader interpretation plays a part, and reader reactions will differ. Some readers might see stuff and others will see other ...

Flint of Dreams (available on Amazon ) by Charles Peterson Sheppard is about a former car thief of Native American heritage, his friends, and his foes. Part ensemble novel, with a strong sense of community in the upstate New York locale where much of the action takes place, the novel is also an introduction to the flawed Flint Spencer, a Seneca Indian whose pugilistic approach to life has constantly got him into trouble. Did we mention the car stealing?   The storyline is exceptionally imaginative while adhering to a reasonably conventional form; unique in too many ways to count, it's got a horrific psychotic villain who haunts people's dreams alongside their realities, and in the background, more than one cabal of criminals in support. With this many baddies (and that doesn't even include the US intelligence agencies who, as per usual, don't seem to care about who gets hurt), the novel certainly merits a sequel.   There are a brace of Yoda-like elderly mentors here to...

Here are facts from Star Wars you won't have heard before: Children reared as Jedi are called "younglings", but what are turtles reared as Jedi called? That's right: Force-sensitive Terrapodlets *  After the loss of his hand, Luke Skywalker got a settlement from his Jedi health insurance. He used some of it to buy the parts for his new green lightsaber, and some of it on a better artificial hand, and he invested some o f it on a nice holiday home off the coast of Ireland. * Actor Harrison Ford was killed during The Empire Strikes Back. However, he was revived in the Return of full function of his heart and central nervous system. The initial reason for his death - in Episode V - was so that George Lucas had his most successful actor "on-hold" for the sequel. Carbon-frozen in a technique borrowed from Walt Disney's head, Mr Ford was thawed out on a live set for the final movie in the original trilogy. In the deal with Disney's cryogenically-frozen hea...

Kelley McElreath is an ICF-certified life coach as well a certified Mindset Coach. Called the Survivor Coach, she was herself a child of divorce, and has since suffered through bereavement, divorce, personal tragedy and cancer to come out the far side.She shares tips and discusses life from a Manic Mondays segment on her youtube account . Subscribe to it today! She answered some questions related to various topics that I put to her. Current Affairs In the developed world, we've had lots of mental health advocacy in recent years in the media, sometimes due to recession-inspired cutbacks in the healthcare systems, but just as often because we seem to becoming more aware of mental health. If you were in charge of funding in the US or in your home state, where would you like to see resources devoted?  I believe I would start with more money going into finding a solution for sex addiction to be honest. I think it is a struggle that is one of the hardest for men to break and it chang...

The other day, I saw a middle-aged woman bending over at the bus stop, fetching something out of her bag. She was wearing light-blue lycra pants. Her rear end was vast. I was tempted to take a photo and post to social media with the caption: Here in Dublin, you can park your bike at your local stop, before hopping on the bus into town! But thank God I saw that picture the disgusting former Playboy tramp posted before I uploaded the photo!!! What a vile ****! She took a pic of a woman in the shower section of the changing room and posted the caption "I can't unsee this! And now neither can you!" or something.  But t he gym changing-room is not for that kind of thing! I HATE THAT BITCH! I! HATE! HER! What a stupid pr**k bra*ns!!! And if anyone ELSE steals my ideas, I will HATE THEM TOO!

"Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The onl y preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battleground of character." A United States Republican senator, Dan Coats, said that apparently. Good point!  But isn't this beautiful study of character similar to what they say about practicing good science? Science, similarly, has a testing ground that is often buried deep in the mundane.  Experiment after dull experiment to verify limits and tolerances, case studies and clinical trials involving control groups and placebos. Then what happens? Some fool leaves his lunch in the hermetically-sealed cold room with the bacterial strain everyone's been working on for five...

Police investigating a series of brutal and historical alleged sexual assaults on Mr Bean star Rowan Atkinson, 61, were killed alongside the talented actor following a targeted Janjaweed ground-to-ground missile strike on a United Nations airbase in South Sudan. Janjaweed terrorists successfully strapped Mr Atkinson to a remote-controlled bomb, and launched him into the UN camp on the back of a mule after breaching the security ring surrounding the camp with a bazooka attack. UK detectives who were investigating an earlier sex-related attack on Mr Atkinson, 61, as part of the ongoing Operation Yewtree, were also killed in the incident.  It is believed that Mr Atkinson was groomed for some years in the early 1980s by "a Jimmy Savile class of figure, of North African origin, by whom he later gave birth to a baby's leg".  It has not yet been established exactly what Mr Atkinson, 61, was doing in the currently famine-ravaged region at the time of his death.

  A surrealist poet called Kevin Bateman contacted me a month ago on Twitter and asked me to perform at a spoken word event he was holding in a forest in Galway. My immediate reaction was to say "I don't do poetry and I don't really do performance stuff." He said, in effect, "Ah sure, go on." I said "I dunno." After a couple of weeks, he messaged me again: "Are you performing at the show?" I said "I dunno." On Friday night, he asked me again. The show was on at 2pm on Saturday afternoon. "I'll come to it," I said, "but I dunno." The event, held in the open air in Merlin Woods, on the eastern outskirts of Galway, took a small trek to reach. There's an environmental group, Friends of Merlin Woods , and Caroline from that organisation was good enough to lead us through the forest on a quick guided tour before we arrived at our stage, An Néad (or The Nest). Kevin kicked things off. The short poems Kevin ...

Remember that daft End Of Days (1999) movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Gabriel Byrne as the devil? What was it called?  One of the opening scenes is Arnie waking up in his messy apartment, and putting together a breakfast that includes a cup of coffee, some Chinese leftovers and slice of greasy pizza that he's just found on the floor. He sticks it all into a blender and turns the thing into a smoothie. I'd wonder if that was in the script. At what point in the production did somebody say "Okay, we're two scenes into this 90 minute movie. We need something at this point that's so farken lewdurkriss that it will make people want to walk out of the theater. Any pizza anywhere?" The first book in the Flocksdale Files series, Have you seen this girl? by Carissa Ann Lynch features a similar opening scene - the home of what appears to be a heroin-snorting couple. It's done better than Hollywood could manage in its fin-de-siecle excesses. The scene rea...

Kevin Bateman, a poet from Galway, is creating an event where words will be spoken to the woods... but will they answer back? The event shall take place in the Nest Area or An Néad If you are coming into Galway City from the old Dublin road take the Second right after the Martin Roundabout onto the entrance of Merlin Park Hospital there is a car park on the left hand side of the road as you come in. All Artists and Guests shall all meet there and be taken on a tour of Merlin Woods and the performance will take place at the Nest Area or An Néad. Contact 0858228976

Pageview numbers are frequently at odds with reality. The most popular post on this blog is this one: http://richardgibney.blogspot.ie/2012/06/chapter-one-part-1-of-early-childhood.html It is the very first chapter of an ongoing, satirical, whimsical, lewd, surreal, parodic blog novel. It is ten times more popular than the next most popular posts. Some of them are here: http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/01/10-questions-with-fantasy-author-jl.html http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2011/11/mcadams-torment-by-audrey-devereux-at.html http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/04/lynn-lamb-interview-author-of-survivor.html http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/charles-peterson-sheppards-specialist.html http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/serina-hartwell-author-of-hidden.html http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/10-questions-with-author-of-dublin.html All the other popular posts feature OTHER people - either in interview or reviews of their work. The blog novel is my own work...

Rebecca Lombardo has been through self-harming and depression for more than two decades since her diagnosis with bi-polar disorder at 19. Her book, It's Not Your Journey , discusses her struggles and how she has overcome them and might be of benefit for those with similar issues. However, as she readily stresses herself, she is a mental health advocate rather than a professional. 1. Your writing process: Do you write fiction? Poetry? Do you see yourself as a relatively "straight" memoirist and blogger, or is there more to it, artistically? Do you have a work-in-progress at the moment? Did you plot out the book before you wrote it? Do you plot out the blogposts and articles before you write them? No, up until this point, I’ve only written non-fiction. My book is a memoir, but I don’t think I would call myself a memoirist. I’m definitely still a blogger. I don’t know if I will ever write a work of fiction, I’ll have to see what the future holds. Yes, I do write poetry. I ju...