How Story-Telling Improves Your Child's Well-Being

(source)

First of all, let me start with a disclaimer: I am not a Mum blogger, I am an au pair.

Second, let me tell you how I’ve enriched (or at least I believe I did) a five-year-old’s life in the past few months. As some of you know, I moved to Rome last August, and I’ve loved my new job, my new friends, and overall my new life. The toddler boy in question has made my life richer and happier as well!

True Story: 2012 Rude Awakenings & Takeaways

(source)

Hello my lovelies! Today I present to you a guest post by Mags from The Smart Girl's Fashion Guide. Mags is a truly brave girl, who's had a tough time in 2012. I hope 2013 offers her so much more!

Don't forget to give her a virtual hug at the end! I know how hard it is to bare your soul online.

Friday Flash: Transcripts of a Broken Mind

(Image borrowed from grcwriter on Hitrecord.)

DISCLAIMER: The following text contains mild language and topics of a sensitive nature. 

The Grotesque in Art: How Dark Can You Get?!

(See this collection of horrific images for more!)

This post is one of those things I do when I procrastinate. *sigh*

But I couldn’t help myself! I had this cool (mini) conversation with a fellow writer James Tallett (@fourpartland) and we talked about darkness in art. I started off by tweeting a link to this amazingly creepy art by Gloom82 on Illustration Age...

Which One Are You: Sadist or Masochist?

Good movies always make me think of existential questions. For example, the other day I saw Secretary (2002) with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, and I started thinking about pain. A friend recommended it to me because she knows I like weird movies. 


So you’ve been warned!

What Do I Want? (Transition Sucks)

Behold! The waiting place... Are you there yet? (Noah Fleming)

This is NOT going to be a depressing post, I promise. You’ve probably been wondering where the hell I disappeared off to, right? Well, let’s just say I’m in transition. Which kinda sucks.

Of course, transition doesn’t have to be a bad place. It just has the potential to suck. Like moving off to a new place where you don’t know anyone. It’s gonna suck a while, until you find your bearings.

In any case, my transition has sucked because I let it. But no more! Let’s backtrack a bit.

My Top 5 Defense Mechanisms

Maybe it's a bit more complicated than that...

The all-knowing’s on temporary leave. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the defenses I employ in my life, because being home usually means arguing with my parents… a lot. There goes my Zen.

And even though it seems like I’m not really in control of those defenses most of the time, I do understand why they have occurred and how they have helped me so far. And why they will keep occurring unless I do something about it. Then again… how do you change something as intrinsic as this?

(F3) Vampire Story with a Twist

L.M. Stull is as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster. Even though you can see her writing everywhere, nobody knows how she manages to run (and co-run) 3 sites (L.M. Stull,  Deepwood, Inc., and Between the Lines), work on 3 books (including Memoirs of a Monkey, which will be out this summer, courtesy of Black Kettle Publishing), and blog-hop like a crazed rabbit on a deadline.

Some say she can multiply herself at will. She confirms this by mentioning her small army of clones. Others speculate that she uses little pink mice to do her chores, which tells us that she probably has a serious Disney affliction. (Who doesn’t?) If you ask her, she’d say you can find her chained to a desk in a law firm. Ha! Yet another ploy to deflect those hunters. There aren’t many sightings of this creature, but I have a sneak peek for you guys, which she specifically gave me after a lot of arm-twisting on my side. In addition, you can stalk her on: Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

(F1) Cotard's Syndrome: The Zombie Mind

(comicadze.com)

Okay, so we should probably start this off with a BANG, right? That’s what I have for you today. It’s one man’s insight into a convoluted Psychological disorder (come on, you saw this coming) called Cotard's Syndrome.

AUTHOR: Andrew Kincaid is extremely versatile online and in life. He used to have this horrific blog called Stygian Underground (A Glimpse into the Darker Side of Life), which was the place where all the cool vamps, zombos, and creepy dolls went. But since Andrew wanted to merge it with his other blog (Lucid Dreams and Saturn Skies, which is more eclectic), he came to me with this homeless puppy (a.k.a. article), which I had to adopt because I’m a bleeding heart, mostly.

How does pain relate to humor?

I’m a funny bunny. I always try to bring humor into my writing. I do it because I’m like that in life, and I have my dad to thank for it. He cracks me up and everybody else who knows him, and I appear to have inherited the ‘funny gene’, thank God. After all, humor is not only the best medicine but also one of the best ways to hook them readers.

Don’t believe me? Think Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

I also think that Harry Potter was such a raging success because it wasn’t only brilliant, convoluted, and wonderfully real. It’s also because of Jo’s fabulous sense of humor. I have laughed while reading and laughed while re-reading, and sometimes even laughed at the movies if they did them right. Same goes for Friends. Both pieces of art in my book, timeless at that.