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How to hold a Grudge vs. The Art of Forgiveness

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“We make the mistake of interpreting our emotions to be flighty, nebulous things, that spark and blaze like wildfires, waiting to be doused with validation of some kind.”

how to edit for style and economy

Creative Adrenaline for Writers: Five Tips on How to Edit Your Story for Style, Economy and Flow II

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Read aloud as you are editing. Reading your fiction or non-fiction story aloud is a powerful editing tool to find road-bumps and obstructions that you might otherwise miss. It’s effective, also, in developing a sense of flow throughout the story. Reading aloud also helps to link the intuitive mind, with the analytical mind, and your descriptions, word economy and strength of plot will all shine for it.

An adaptation of King Stork, by Howard Pyle

A Warrior’s Tale, Adapted from Howard Pyle’s “King Stork”

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Pyle’s book was literally the first book I ever signed out of the library, when I was in grade one. The memory of it has stayed with me since, and inspired my writing career. Thus, this, my homage to this timeless writer, and to Trina Schart-Hyman, for her striking illustrations.

Creative Adrenaline for Writers: Revising for Style and Economy

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Two things: always remember that less is more, even in descriptive prose. Do you write as you think? Do you write as you speak, with your own unique vernacular? Are you striving to paint the perfect descriptive word-picture, to allow your reader to form a tactile, moving imagery in their minds-eye and see what you are seeing when you envision your story? Put them there with you, so they see through your eyes.

Creativity is a doorway through which we allow ourselves to engage with the world on our terms.

The Kingdom of Young Minds – A Doorway to Other Worlds

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This forest was the kingdom of young minds, a mecca of make-believe, the like of which, the mere act of entering the trail mouth was a portal to boundless worlds of youthful imagination. Adventures were mitigated only by our limited experience, owing to our short time on this earth.

Par Lagerkvist and The Hero’s Death

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it seems Democracy and the notion of what ideals collective culture holds to be true, are eroding by a seeming inability to stop ourselves stumbling into emotional chaos, like moths careening headlong and into the flame.

A Garden of Thieves coverage in BC Booklook

Coverage of A Garden of Thieves in BC Booklook Magazine

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Dean Unger has self-published Garden of Thieves (Village Lane Press $17.99) and Blessed Be The Bones (Village Lane Press $17.99) to tell a murder mystery tale inspired by events on Texada Island and in Victoria between 1861 and 1872. He says it has taken him twenty-five years to uncover the details of a land grab that was partially orchestrated by Amor de Cosmos—the subject for the province’s first Royal Commission.

Book Review for A Garden of Thieves, in ABC Bookworld Magazine

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While advocating union with the rest of Canada, de Cosmos was a notorious bigot but not a dyed-in-the-wool British chauvinist. “I would not object to a little revolution now and again in British Columbia, after Confederation, if we were treated unfairly,” he said in 1870, “for I am one of those who believe that political hatreds attest the vitality of a State.”