Happy Monday and welcome to the last month of the year. One of my hobbies is geography, and I like to find out the origins of place names. Sometimes it is obvious, such as places named after a famous person (e.g. Lincoln, Nebraska) or from geographical features (e.g. Grand Rapids, Michigan). But then there are…
Tag: muse
Muse on Monday – November 27, 2023
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but of course, that is the whole point of the cover. Every day, artists in publishing companies try to design covers that will help you judge the book inside positively. As someone who occasionally self-publishes books and makes my own cover art, it is interesting…
Muse on Monday – November 20, 2023
Stories are all about conflict and microcosm of conflict is in games. Usually games are just for fun but sometimes, like the Hunger Games (or Squid Game), they have life or death stakes. This week, the challenge is to write a story about a game. It could silly or serious; epic or very small. Whatever…
Muse on Monday – November 13, 2023
Sometimes when I need inspiration, I look at stock images. There are various random image generators online where you can see random stock photos. The trick is to find a picture with a story. There are a lot of nice pictures online but a picture of a flower, for example, doesn’t have much of a…
Muse on Monday – November 6, 2023
Happy Monday and welcome to a new month. November is a month of transitions: between fall and winter and between the dark Halloween season and the brighter, more festive Christmas/New Year season. It is also the penultimate month of the year. Penultimate is a great word, meaning second last. We tend to give a lot…
Muse on Monday – October 30, 2023
Have you ever seen The Blair Witch Project? It was a very low budget movie about people trying to find a witch living in the forest. Since it was so low budget, you never saw the witch or really any action. There were no special effects or any violence on the screen. However, what it…
Muse on Monday – October 23, 2023
It might seem strange, but horror stories don’t have to be scary, at least not as some as others. They can even be funny. If you do a search for horror comedy movies, you’ll find quite a few. In these cases, horror comedies are stories that deal with scary things but do it in an…
Muse on Monday – October 16, 2023
A lot of horror stories or thrillers are set in a particularly scary location, such as an old house or an abandoned mental institution. However, anywhere can be scary. Here are some things that make a place scary. A story only needs one element of danger, but often has more than one. For instance, Jurassic…
Muse on Monday – October 9, 2023
Welcome to the second Monday of October and the 2nd week of our series of prompts on scary stories. Last week we looked at technology, but today we’ll look at people. What makes a person scary? Obviously if they want to hurt you or others, but sometimes it’s just the way they think or behave….
Muse on Monday – October 2, 2023
It’s the beginning of October, which is traditionally a time when people think about scary things, due to Halloween coming at the end of the month. There are many different types of scary stories. Some examples might be: These are all types of horror stories, but there are also thrillers, which can be scary but…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 