A bit of a departure for today’s Skwib. I’m currently engaging in a lively discussion of The Fridgularity over on Goodreads with The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC), and I thought I’d pull out some of my answers and repost … Continue reading →
Continue readingTag: writing
mark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Rappin’ with Atwood and Moore
My Twitter feed has been fun the last few days, including an exchange with one of my favorite authors, and a literary legend. I was also surprised to discover that Margaret Atwood hasn’t seen the movie 300: And Christopher Moore … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Enter Christopher Marlowe – Again
Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. The challenge to his authorship isn’t new: for the last … Continue reading →
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: 9 old words for the modern age
vocabulation The use or choice of words. This post is a meditation on vocabulation, particularly, old words that we may want to revivify for our current age of the Internet and excess. octothorpe The # symbol. I learned this one … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Consolation of Literature
For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And read about literature. Sometimes literature is made more meaningful, brought … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: To sleep, perchance to dream
Aye, there’s the rub. To sleep in, one weekend morning, when there are no pressures for meetings, work, deadlines. To roll away from the soft light that filters through the blinds and enjoy that delicious moment of closing your eyes … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: 10,000 words too many
Been working the last two-and-a-half months on my latest book for Municipal World. A bit of a challenge, actually – trying to combine marketing, branding, advertising, public relations and communications topics into one coherent yet succinct package has been difficult. … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Scaramouche
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. That has to rank among the best opening lines in a novel, up there with Dickens’ “It was the best of times…” opening in … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Perfect Sense
I have always liked sandbox stories; tales in which the author could stretch his of her imagination, place ordinary characters into a seemingly normal situation, then see what happened when the conditions were changed.* Sandbox environments are virtual places were … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Propaganda, PR and Spin
What is propaganda? The word gets thrown around easily by people who obviously mean “anything we dislike or don’t agree with.” It’s a pejorative often used by a small group to describe anything official that any level of government puts … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Forgery!
Forgery. It’s something that one normally associates with criminals; passing counterfeit bills, scammers, online pirates, people selling fake relics or fake ID. It’s something I would not normally associate with religion. But it’s a significant problem in the book millions … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Another day on the job in Paradise… chapter one
Mayor Ralph “Bosco” Hearne, whistling softly “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City” under his breath, gazed at the wood-and-polished-brass, 19th-century front doors of town hall and nodded slightly in approval. He stopped whistling, paused, and breathed out a gentle … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Not the expected blog post, I’m afraid
Sorry to disappoint those readers who expected this to be a blog post on ukuleles, tequila or our beautiful Mexican Sister City, Zihuatanejo (“Zee-hwa” for those in the know). I refer, of course, to comments in the recent parody video, in … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Foolish words that still resonate
Foolosopher. What a wonderful word. Not much in use these days, but it ought to be. It is a portmanteau word, first used in English way back in 1549*, according to my copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. It … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: A Council Christmas Carol – part 1
STAVE ONE. It was one of those long winter days. I was back in town late, that Thursday, well after dark, driving down the main street watching the heavy snow cover the road and sidewalks. I’d been out of town almost the whole … Continue reading →
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Selected Media Fads Through the Ages
24,000-22,000 BC: chunky fertility goddess statues (pictured at right: notice the prominent and large brains.) 10,000 BC: cave painting 4,000 BC: ziggurat construction 3,000-1,250 BC: pyramid raising (later revived by Mesoamericans and I.M. Pei) 1480-1700: Witch burning 1500s: homoerotic sonnet … Continue reading →
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: How Landon, Ontario got its name
Here’s a little snippet that didn’t make it into The Fridgularity. I cut the description of Landon, Ontario’s founding because it doesn’t really add much to the story, though it’s fun for anyone who lives in the real place…
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Fonts of The Fridgularity
TYPOGRAPHY One of the ideas that I play with in The Fridgularity is that the entity Zathir — you know, the one that takes over the Internet and promptly locks all humans out of it — is actually a conglomeration … Continue reading U…
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Excerpt from The Fridgularity: a ski in the storm
Given the arrival of Winter here in Souwesto, I thought I’d put up an excerpt from the second half of The Fridgularity (A Cold Reboot), in which the lead character goes for a little cross-country ski, and things go awry. … Continue reading …
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Excerpt: Internet addicts, looking for a fix in The Fridgularity
The Fridgularity begins with the Big Crash — the Internet goes down, as an entity takes over all the horsepower available through all the devices connected to it. This has certain deleterious effects on the folks who NEED the Internet … Con…
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