On this day in 1999 I gave birth to Julian Luke. There’s a story behind Julian that is far, far too big for this blog so I’ll just write about his name. Jules was named after my best friend Julie. On the 12th of September, 1997 – Julie died. Julie committed suicide. Call it irony [...]

It probably comes as no huge surprise that the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword” first came from a writer. I don’t know the guy, but I’m guessing when he wrote it he couldn’t feel the cold of forged steel against his throat. We writers are known for having grandiose egos, rivaled only [...]

When I was a kid, I loved the poem Triantiwontigongolope by C. J. Dennis. If you’ve never heard of it, look it up online. Basically it’s a nonsense poem, but to me it was about breaking things down into easily manageable pieces and persisting until you got it right. And to this day when something [...]

I was recently awarded the honour of making Kidspot’s 50 Top Bloggers. I’m honoured because I’m there with some of my favourite bloggers, primarily Al Tait and Bern Morley who are both brilliant writers and who I envy for their ability to blog “fluff” at will. I don’t think either will hate me for this [...]

I think most of us like to think that all things in our lives happen for a reason. Even the worst of it. It might not be apparent at the time, but eventually if you wait long enough, you’d like to think that it would be revealed. On Thursday afternoon my youngest son, Charlie was [...]