Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 34

Strange River Folklore: Dark Spirits and Dead Bodies

One of the things I love about running this blog is taking requests for posts. I got one a few weeks back about the folklore of water. The more I delved into it, the more I realised there was too much for a single post. So we’re splitting things into categories. We’ll look at river […]

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[Guest Post] 3 Types of Advice for Writers You Can Ignore

I’m a big fan of self-education for writers. And the internet is stuffed with advice for writers – often from those with courses to sell. But how do you know what is good advice? What can you safely ignore? Having read her latest book, Indie With Ease (read the review here), I invited Pauline Wiles to talk […]

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[Review] England’s Witchcraft Trials by Willow Winsham

The subject of witch panics and witchcraft trials remains a hotly contested one, even in these more enlightened times. Recently, I posted an article about northern witchcraft trials that surprisingly didn’t end in execution. One accusation occurred as late as 1867, and the accuser ended up paying damages to the accused. Yet an indignant tweeter […]

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[Review] Indie with Ease by Pauline Wiles

Mindset is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing indie authors. Never mind marketing, with all of its changing tactics and strategies. Your mindset has the potential to sink you before you ever get anywhere near an advertising platform. A myriad of productivity books already exist. And the indie author is spoiled for choice among […]

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She (A Super Short Story)

She stands beyond the doorway and watches through windows. Her breath fogs the pane at night. Her feet make the floorboards creak in the hall when you think you’re the only one home. She’s the smudge in the reflection, observing from the other side of the glass. And she’s the shadow that moves at the […]

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[Review] Past Mortems: Life and death behind mortuary doors

I’m one of those weird people who wanted to be a pathologist at the age of 8. I’m not sure why. I think it was prompted by a fascination with the ancient Egyptians at school, and a desire to understand how the human machine worked. The fascination with the ancient Egyptians would later manifest itself […]

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What is the Day of the Dead and how is it celebrated?

For the past few years, colourful skulls have joined the more traditional skeletons as Halloween decorations. More people outside of the Americas are adopting Day of the Dead celebrations. The 2015 James Bond outing, Spectre, even opened with a huge Day of the Dead parade. But what is the Day of the Dead? How does it differ from […]

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Halloween spells for Protection, Romance & Loved Ones

Plastic pumpkins and foam headstones fill the shops. Youtube groans under the weight of Halloween makeup tutorials. And the television stations pump their channels full of creaky old horror films. But for those in the know, this is the time for Halloween spells, honouring the dead, and preparing for winter. Don’t panic at the mention […]

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Witches’ Familiars: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird

We’ve all seen the images of witches with their loyal cat or toad by their side. These witches’ familiars help them cast spells, or in the case of Harry Potter, deliver the mail. But what are familiars and why are they so important to ideas around witchcraft? And what unusual familiars can we find in […]

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5 Ways to Use Where You Live to Generate Ideas

It was the 148th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens this year. While much has been written about his life and work, we can still learn a lot from his methods! His depiction of a supposedly-fictional London was so realistic because he drew from how people lived and worked in Victorian society. Some of this he would […]

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