In this collection of short stories by Thomas Ryan, you will find mystery, humor, abuse, murder, and romance of a different kind. Each story shows a different side of our human emotions, and their unexpected endings make these stories memorable. “Ruth” – Ruth is a woman who has been abused by her husband. She has…
Envisage is a story about learning to deal with your own insecurities and fears. For years, I battled nightmares, but I didn’t understand how to get rid of them. We didn’t have the Internet when I was a child, so I didn’t know that what I had been dealing with had a name, several in…
I do not like bugs, but I am not phobic about them. At least I’m not now. Entomophobia, or the fear of insects, can be used in your writing to give others chills. Acarophobia is the fear of those little bugs that have the potential to make you itch. A person with this phobia would…
Hidden fears, especially when they come from the dark side of religion, cripple the human personality. Medicine women, the powerful female healers in The Unholy, know how to help a person face these fears. Religion-induced fears come during waking and sleeping time. Nightmares of a religious nature often betray horrid pasts replete with church-bound guilt,…
Have nightmares ever been an issue for this author? How completely does he develop his characters before beginning to write? Why isn’t the main character’s name ever given? What are his thoughts on self-publishing? Sway begins with the transcription of dialogue between a doctor and his patient. The patient’s name, blacked out except for two…
How can one abuse an adverb? An adverb isn’t something you can grab hold of and beat up, but you can use them so often in your writing that the person reading your book is traumatized to the point that he wants to throw it across the room. Seriously? Adverbs can traumatize? Do an experiment. …
