‘She understood me and I her’ my mum texted me after her oldest pal passed away recently and that line really hit me. I brace myself for losing old friends because it would be less like losing a limb and more an entire wing of your mental library. All those jokes and memories and references […]
Read more "Friends. To The End."Currently owned by Edward Norton, the Stevens House (1968) began as an impossible demand: a five bedroom luxury house on a 90’ by 30’ plot with no solid walls on two sides so that the ocean and mountains could be viewed. Six architects turned it down and then John Lautner- to whom crazy challenges were […]
Read more "The Stevens Residence"A thought came to me just earlier (see photo above). There’s paths and trails in forests right? Made by people wandering through but also by animals. So before people were around there must have been forest paths created by animals. So how old are some forest trails on planet Earth? Were they first trodden out […]
Read more "Boy that’s an olde path!"Oh, it’s all worthless, really. Life is committing fully to things and to people that you know will not repay you with any of the passion or respect you hope to receive. This is what I call Zen Nihilism, and you go right on doing it. There is no other way. You continue to work […]
Read more "Guest Post: ‘Art And Worthlessness’ by Marlon Brando"I find this image terrifying. I spotted it on Twitter and immediately recognised it as an Assyrian relief then almost as immediately realised that I would have seen it before now, given I’m an ancient history nerd. It’s an AI generated image. But I only spotted that because I’m of the last few generations who […]
Read more "A Suffocating Feeling"There’s a lot of memes nowadays about the blithe serenity and sanity of the 90s/early 2000s and I get it, totally. The world before the social media demon burst forth was, looking back, a more certain place. A place we wished we’d saved as a checkpoint so we could have a crack at things again […]
Read more "Of Then vs Now"Cripes, there’s an image to appear in my FB memories. Sat in Room 3 of Premier Inn Leicester North West during lockdown and editing a manuscript of Pennyblade to the tune of both my editor and agent. A weird time, a crossroads, full of fear and excitement: disease stalked the land and I was caretaker […]
Read more "A Photo From Four Years Past"(Slight spoilers for Furiosa). An underrated henchperson of the Mad Max universe is Mr Norton from the latest and hopefully not last film, Furiosa. Played by Elsa Pataky, we first see Norton in the chopper fight, where she is wearing a dress and is very much coded as backseat-of-the-chopper gal. But when they’re inducted into […]
Read more "Why Aren’t People Talking About This Gender Expression Arc In Furiosa?"So I snooped about the Freemason’s Hall my job-hunting course is taking place in during lunch break. Photos of His Majesty everywhere and lots of homemade heraldry; it’s basically Dungeons & Dragons for businessmen desperate to be part of the Establishment. I got discovered by one of the staff who told me I couldn’t venture […]
Read more "My Freemasonry Spree!"This was an article I wrote for Risingshadow.com back in ’22 when Pennyblade debuted. I think it still holds true today given the average fantasy reader, much as I love them, can be surprisingly conservative in an unexamined sort of way. Including the progressive ones. My upcoming novel, Pennyblade, has been getting mixed reviews in that […]
Read more "Fantasy And Vulgarity"
J.L. Worrad 