Filipino culture in my writing – a pledge

After reading a couple of speculative fiction novels that incorporate non-European mythology (Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson and Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James), and really wonderful conversations with my editor, I've renewed my commitment to incorporating Filipino folk tales and mythology in The Quiet is…

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Writing & books in movies: The Terrorizers and La Notte

I recently asked people on Instagram to recommend “pretty and fartistic” movies to me, and I got several good suggestions. I picked the first two, The Terrorizers and La Notte, at random, and was pleasantly surprised to find that books and writers featured heavily in them. These movies were also very pretty, and I took a lot of screenshots for the blog. This might surprise you, but my screenshots skewed heavily towards the writing and books. And I have to say, even though of course I hate it when writing isn’t going well, it’s so satisfying to see writers in movies who are having a bit of a shitty time. At least, until I start relating to them!

I’ll show the books-and-writing ones first, and the other ones at the end – enjoy!
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The history of fictional worlds

In 2016, I wrote the following blog post for my history blog, The Small Histories. I was thinking about it again recently and wanted to share it here as well – book lovers will appreciate it! Also, I had to actually laugh out loud when I read “I’m not a worldbuilding sort of writer” – Oh if only the me of 2016 knew that worldbuilding would be ALL she’d do just two years later!

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“Freedom is the best thing” – Reading ‘Tove Jansson: Work and Love’

I’m half-Finnish, but I didn’t know what a Moomin was until I was an adult.

Maybe that’s not entirely true; I do have a dim memory of receiving a Moominpapa piggybank as a child, but I had no idea what what the character was supposed to be. However, as an adult I did finally learn, and I began also to learn about the Moomins’ creator, Tove Jansson. And I began to like her quite a lot!

My friend Susanna is a Finnish visual artist, and together we share this Tove-admiration. I had asked her if Finland had a good Jansson biography in English, and soon enough, a book more beautiful than I could have imagined arrived at my door.
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