Category Archives: Writing

Author Melanie Hooyenga Answers 25 Questions

By Richard | Published December 9, 2012

As I grow older, I find myself seeking out kindness. That’s how I first met Melanie Hooyenga. In the funny way that social media works, our paths had crossed for years, but we never really connected. It’s like we had been to a few parties at the houses of friends we had in common, but [...]

Also posted in 25 Questions, Author, Author, Books | 5 Comments

Bittersweet

By Richard | Published September 5, 2012

Circumstances being what they were, I didn’t see my baby sister in person until Canada Day. Almost seven months after we’d last held hands and cried together. I knew immediately that her life was measured in weeks and days and hours and minutes. And I was pissed at the cancer clinic in Arizona that took [...]

Also posted in Life | 3 Comments

Prince Charming

By Richard | Published October 25, 2011

She called me Prince Charming. Who really understands why kids think the way they do? Kristina had just landed a job as a governess for a precocious two-and-a-half year old, and she had locked herself out of the family’s home. She needed to borrow my car but, since it held no car seat, her new [...]

Also posted in Life | 12 Comments

Steve Jobs – A Legacy of Storytelling

By Richard | Published October 6, 2011

Artists are our storytellers. Since our ancestors’ earliest days, we’ve told stories about our dreams, our heroes and villains, our struggles. About how we live and how we die. If we are to find peace and understand our commonalities, we must have stories. Over the last 25 years, creation has been reborn and democratized by [...]

Also posted in Apple, Life, Publishing Industry | 2 Comments

Conflict and Storytelling

By Richard | Published September 5, 2011

The characters in the Secrets of the Hotel Maisonneuve were a sweet gift. I woke from the long nightmare that was 14 years of daily migraines, and found an idea for a late-middle reader swimming around in my recently-unaddled brain. Interestingly, the story swirled around characters created by Kristina for a picture book that she [...]

Also posted in Author, Author | 4 Comments

Breathing Space

By Richard | Published August 7, 2011

The hardest thing about this year hasn’t been learning that I was misdiagnosed, and that I lost a more than a decade of my life to a lazy medical mistake. It’s been the financial pressures forced on us by being chronically underemployed. As with many illnesses, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Last November, Kristina [...]

Also posted in Life, Wall-E—The Neuroendocrine Tumor | 12 Comments

Dragons, Queries, and the Shards of Narsil

By Richard | Published July 31, 2011

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. None of my plans for this year have come to fruition, yet I still feel as if I’ve handled a difficult illness with a modicum of grace and good humor. And that, and a double-loonie, will get you a cup of coffee at [...]

Also posted in Author, Author, Books, Life, Wall-E—The Neuroendocrine Tumor | 4 Comments

Bait

By Richard | Published July 19, 2011

I don’t often enter writing contests. But I took an hour on Monday morning to work on an idea that seemed to fit, and then entered Jason Evans’s Clarity of the Night contest. Several writing friends have already done so. In a nutshell, writers create 250 words of prose or poetry based on a prompt [...]

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I Would Like Some Cheese With My Whine

By Richard | Published July 10, 2011

Funny what excites some men. A few weeks ago, when Kristina noticed that I have a modest two-pack, I felt flush with potential. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to become what I might have been. I’ve always been one of the fittest people I know. I was training for my sandan (third-degree black belt) in [...]

Also posted in Life, Pity Party, Wall-E—The Neuroendocrine Tumor | 4 Comments

Words to Live By

By Richard | Published June 20, 2011

Words matter. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I love our language — the way words sound, the nuances and shades of meaning, the incredible choices available to all of us. The English language is mellifluous and beautiful, with so many virtues that I could scarcely name them all. It’s flexible and adaptable, but [...]

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