on writing - some thoughts on adjectives

The adjective is the enemy of the noun.   - Voltaire

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
– Clifton Fadiman 

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but
kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable. They weaken
when close together. They give strength when they are wide apart.
- Mark Twain

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and
adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew
how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.
- Dick Schaap   

By Francois

photo stories - thomas krauss

Halloween's-a-coming.  Perfect time to post these polaroids by
Thomas Krauss featuring potentially creepy children, and a man
kissing a nun to boot.  Love the delicate strangeness in these.

the well written - patrick suskind

He was delighted only by moonlight.  Moonlight knew no colors and
traced the contours of the terrain only very softly.  It covered the
land with a dirty grey, strangling life all night long.  This world
molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes
like a shadow over the grey forests, and where nothing lived but the
scent of the naked earth, was the only world that he accepted, for it
was much like the world of his soul.

- Perfume, Patrick Suskind

illustration - johanna ost

Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple
reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond
the reach of time.   - Walt Disney Company

The same is true of these illustrations...

View Johanna's gallery here.

on books and stories - italo calvino

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

By Stefany Alves

a dreamer's wisdom - terence mckenna

You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest
good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is
endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis
because of the absence of consciousness.

- Terence McKenna

illustration - yoskay yamamoto

These works by Yamamoto seem to be a study in the magnificence
of melancholia, scenes perfect for storytellers to grab and expand
upon because they're ideal representations of middle-moments -
moments ready for the questions what happened before and what 
happens after?  Of the countless characters up for stories, these
are some of them.

my work - a concerto and fugue

My short story, "A Concerto and Fugue", is now up on Mirror Dance
Fantasy.  Go on over and have a look!

And here's a teaser image..

by James Jean