I first started reading the Harry Potter series when I was around twelve-years-old. It was around the time that Prisoner of Azkaban came out – I remember reading the first three books in close to one sitting. In the years that followed, my adoration of the characters, their story and …
Month: January 2018
Talisman
talisman noun An object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, that is thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck. — I have nightmares, sometimes, about being robbed. I dream that someone will come up to me in the street and point at the expensive headphones I’m wearing. …
Obligation and the Anxious Mind
When I was writing Mundane Magic, and the several much more terrible novels I wrote before it, my experience was very different to right now. I didn’t have to write anything. People would know I was writing, of course, but there would never be any expectation that I would both …
Silhouette
When you sleep I watch you like a silhouette; Everything I didn’t think I wanted, Laid out before me like an unexpected gift. Too old, too experienced, too taken, So unlike me in so many ways: we would never fit. Sometimes a beam of light shifts, And I see your …
When Reading is Hard Work
One of the things I have found most difficult about adulthood is the need to motivate myself to do things I will enjoy. When I was a child, I would do them without thinking. I wouldn’t need to ‘make time to read’, I would just read whenever I had a …
Remembering Robin
CW: This short story contains explicit discussion of suicide, self-harm and childhood trauma. The floor was made of stone tiles so smooth and slippery that they might as well have been glass. With each footstep she felt the soles of her boots slide just a little even as they clicked …
What Bullet Journalling Means to Me
A little over eighteen months ago, I started to hear about something called bullet journalling. If you’ve been anywhere on the internet these past couple of years, it’s likely a term you’ve also heard – at least in passing, if not in-depth. It is not an exaggeration to say that …
Panic
The first sign is when everything gets louder. It’s almost as if it all moved closer; the traffic noise is no longer peripheral, it’s right there against her eardrums along with the chatter of people talking and the pulsing of her heartbeat – which is the second sign. Thumping faster, …
Memory
I don’t forget things; I just can’t remember them. The empty spot in my mind holds my heart and squeezes it dry, as if the blood could fill it. I can look at a page I thought I’d never read and know for sure I’ve read it before. But I …