One of the most common questions I’m asked is if fairies have physicality, if they are tangible beings. This is rooted I think in the common idea perpetuated especially in new age and post-Victorian fairy belief that these beings are entirely energy or thoughtforms, creatures that can be perceived by the mind but lack physical reality in this world. So let’s dig into this shall we?Arthur…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Baobhan Sìth in Folklore vs my Fiction
I recently gave a presentation ‘Elves After Dark 2’ in which I discussed several specific types of folkloric beings known to directly and intimately interact with humans. This included the Scottish Baobhan Sìth a being that I also include in my fiction and in the Q&A after the presentation I was asked about how the folklore differed from my interpretation in my Between the Worlds series. I…
Its Time To Talk About The Anti-Irish Issues in That Popular Series
I’ve said I would write this blog for a while, after discussing the subject in bits and pieces on social media so here we are. I want to preface this by saying though that this isn’t an indictment of the author in question personally nor am I saying she did this consciously nor intentionally. This isn’t me trying to bash the series; I’m picking it as one example out of many because its popular…
Folklore in Hilda
As part of my ongoing series on folklore found in mass media I’m going to take on the popular Netflix show Hilda. This is an animated series based on an existing comic/graphic novel that pulls heavily from Icelandic and related folklore. It is aimed at children and features a main character who is a child and so we go into this understanding that the folklore within the show has been softened…
Recommended ‘Celtic’ Resources
So I am occasionally asked for good places to start studying Celtic culture or otherwise learn about the Celts. This would seem like a pretty straightforward request but actually its a really complicated topic; what I usually suggest is that people start with a specific culture rather than going to the wider, older idea of ‘Celtic’. What many people mean when they say Celtic is a single…
The Fairy Folklore in ‘A Boy Called Christmas’
This is a 2021 Netflix original movie but I chose it for the second piece in my series on fairy folklore in movies/television because of the wider theme. It is a children’s movie and a Santa origin movie (surprisingly non-Christian) but for all that it does have a good amount of older folklore and hints of fairy beliefs that are reasonably accurate. This blog will contain minor spoilers, so be…
9 Fiction Writing Tips
I’m just wrapping up my tenth novel and so I have writing and fiction on my mind which led me to deciding to write this today. The internet is glutted with writing tips, most of which are confusing and contradictory when compared to each other, so I hope that this attempt might offer aspiring writers some more practical suggestions than the usual run.This is not meant to be business writing…
2021 Recap
Hello everyone! 2021 is just about wrapping up and I wanted to offer a quick recap of what I’ve been up to work-wise this year, which has been a very tumultuous one for me (and I’m sure many others).I had three articles published in 2021:“Sexuality and Gender Among the Good Neighbours: the Intersection and Inversion of Human Norms in Fairylore”, written for Revenant Journal 2020, cut, posted on…
Believing in Santa
Every year as we approach the holidays I start to see a flurry of anti-Santa sentiment. Particularly as a parent I see people advocating no Santa for children, because they believe we should not lie to our kids. Santa, they say, is a fraud, a fiction perpetrated on kids by adults who are doing some great disservice, some lasting psychological harm, by convincing kids that he exists. These people…
The Fairy Folklore in Jim Henson’s ‘Labyrinth’
I’m going to do a small series of reviews over the next few months looking at the fairy folklore in different films and tv shows, prompted by some discussion on social media. I think this will be fun and also help people see the various threads of older beliefs that are woven into some popular shows and movies. I’m thinking of covering a variety of things including Pan’s Labyrinth, Jonathan…