Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Mind control. From the brain slugs infesting humans in K.A. Applegate’s Animorph’s series, to Professor X’s psychic ability to control minds, to the brainwashing and imprinting of Joss Whedon’s Doll House series, mind control is scary stuff.

The truth is, no matter what the cosmetics companies say, it isn’t our body or our face that defines us. It’s our mind. How we think, wh...

Research. It isn’t a four letter word, but it might as well be in certain circles. Some authors take fiction to an entirely new, and not entirely desirable, level by omitting the research step entirely. At best, they appear to have done a quick skim of the Wikipedia article relating to their topic and called it good enough.

I’m honestly not sure why, though.

Struggle is an inevitable part of life. I may not enjoy it, but I do believe it makes your successes all the sweeter. Anyone that has ever wanted to be a writer knows about struggle. Getting those first words on paper are a fight, then you’ll be battling your insecurities that scream that every syllable is garbage and you should just throw it all out and be done with it. Once you overcome that hurdle, you really do have to throw a lot of it out in t...

The scars war leaves behind are many, and deep. Individuals fighting in these words give life, limb, and mental health in service to whatever cause they believed in. It’s a terrible business, and the aftermath can be even worse, especially for those attempting to survive in a place ravaged by war.

Not only does war destroy the infrastructure of their country and throw their economy into the proverbial toil...

I love words. Practically every room in my house has books in it somewhere. They line my walls, frequently litter my coffee table, and teeter in unread stacks on nightstands, the kitchen table, and even the bathroom counter. I almost always have a book stashed in my car, and never leave home without a couple stashed in my overnight bag.

I have to admit, though, words can be just plain bizarre. Take for example t...

When I was in Biology class umptamillion years ago, we had to define life. To be perfectly honest, I thought it was the stupidest assignment I’d ever been given. Life is obvious, right? A bison is alive, a stone isn’t, and generally we know at first glance whether a thing is alive or not. Defining life turned out to be a bit trickier, and the more we learn, the harder it seems to get.

Living things g...

The battle over whether people change, or whether their basic nature is set in stone has been going on in society for about as long as there has been a society of any kind. The basic belief that people “are” something unchanging underpins the caste system in India, the concept of nobility in European countries, and still haunts our modern schools and prisons. The relatively new idea that people could “become” better tha...

Despite being caught with my car windows down on multiple occasions, storms do not generally appear out of nowhere. There are warning signs, from the frozen curved tails of high-flying cirrus clouds to the sudden ominous drop in atmospheric pressure that let an observant soul know what is coming. If you spend any time outside, especially if you live in a region prone to storms, you become sensitive to smaller changes, too. Shifts in the direction of the w...

I know what you’re thinking. Ducks are cute, cuddly stars of children’s books and hardly worth reading about, especially for those of us interested in science fiction, horror or fantasy. Honestly, I never really thought that much about ducks until I owned some. We fed ducks at the local parks when my kids were little, owned any number of floating rubber duck bath toys, and spent hours looking for the hidden duck in Usborne books.

One hundred and fifty years ago, one of the most iconic pieces in literature came into being. An odd piece of work that breaks the rules of character, plot, and basically every other rule about writing that I’ve ever heard, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is still one of the best loved tales, spawning multiple movies, reinterpretations, plus at least one television special, and Broadway musical.

Why...