Travelogue: Germany
In high school, I got to visit Germany on a summer class trip. It was an amazing experience my parents provided me with, and I was one of the lucky few who got to go. It was a whirlwind tour…
mattlarkin
The Hero’s Journey Has Ended
Comparative mythology allows us to see certain recurring patterns within different mythologies. This tends to be most useful in reconstructing the stories and beliefs of the past. For example, by analyzing common themes and linguistics in Indo-European stories, mythologists have…
Travelogue: France
Colmar From Bern in Switzerland, we took a train north to Colmar, France. This town in the Alsace region has a reputation for fairytale-like aesthetics and beautiful architecture, so naturally it made my list of priority research destinations. That reputation was…
Travelogue: Switzerland
After almost a year’s stopover in the US, we were at last able to return to our digital nomad adventure. Having found a good flight to Zürich, we decided to start with Switzerland, and make a circuit by train around…
Travelogue: St Augustine, FL
While I did not grow up there, I spent many years living in Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. With a series planned (now dropped, sadly) focusing on the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and pirates, I decided to use a temporary return…
Prana, The Vital Force
The term “mana” has become popular in fantasy gaming as a kind of “magic points” systems, deriving from Larry Niven’s use of the Polynesian word in his classic fantasy. While not entirely inaccurate, this belies the sophistication of the term.…
The God of War and Death
Wotan. Woden. Odin. He’s got twelve names. Except it’s more like a hundred. Or several hundred. The most enigmatic god in Norse and Germanic mythology became the primary protagonist of my Gods of the Ragnarok Era series for good reason.…
The All-Giving Pandora
Pandora (“all-gifted” or “all-giving”), famous in pop culture for opening the “box” of troubles she can never close, has long captured imagination. The conception of Pandora’s jar as Pandora’s box dates to the Renaissance, and has since become the iconic…
A Song for the Void by Andrew C. Piazza
I think I first heard about this SPFBO finalist via the Grimdark Readers and Writers Facebook page, the premise catching my eye. A cosmic horror story set in the midst of the Opium Wars. Yes, please, don’t mind if I…
An Introduction to Shamanism by Thomas A. Dubois
The term “shaman” comes from the Tungusic and most appropriately applies to mediums and healers within the Evenki culture (found in modern Russia). Nevertheless, lacking a more generalized term for such practitioners of animistic worldviews, anthropologists use the term as…