Patricia Leslie

I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck as a teenager. Connected as it was to high school study, I liked it well enough, but coming to it within the boundaries and strictures of a classroom tarnished it somewhat. A decade later, laying on the beach, relaxed and enjoying the sun, I read it again. And cried. I didn’t remember coming close to such a visceral reaction as that in school. I’ve since read it a few more times and the rest of Steinbeck’s stories, discovering along th

Review: Songbird – GriffinSong Trilogy | vol 1 Author: J Victoria Michael Publisher: Odyssey Books A twentieth century woman is lost in a fantasy world with nothing but the clothes on her back and her innate humanity. This is the story of her compelling need to redefine herself. When Irenya O’Neil suffers a panic attack and falls into the realm of Dar Orien, a world with a failed MageGate system, she finds herself unable to return home to her infant son – she is trapped in a

I’ve always had a love for sounds different from the mainstream and over the last year or so I’ve been exploring music from Mongolia to Norway. It started, or restarted, when I read and listened to How YouTube resurrected Hiroshi Yoshimura's 'environment music' — and made me an accidental fan ABC Radio National | Cheyne Anderson for Earshot(August 2019) In the article, Anderson says, ‘I first stumbled upon Yoshimura's music when I was studying. The hours were long, the dead

Writing historical fantasy fiction involves diving into myth and magic, and the occasional monster story. But reading isn’t all that informs ideas, characters, and themes. So, five things I’d like to share with you this week are; 1. It was Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday last week. On 30th March, he would have been 168 (if he were immortal). He made it to 37 before taking his own life. His art, that we love so much today, was a product of his deteriorating mental health. If only