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Monsters and Gardening
I love monster movies. I’ll watch just about anything if it features an alien, a magical beast, a monster or a supernatural being, creatures that both frighten and attract by virtue of their strange...
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Nature as Muse: Root and Stone
Natural landscapes are an integral part of any good tale, a multidimensional backdrop that gives life to the imagination. Like music, natural settings fall in patterns, creating moods, thoughts, and...
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The Trouble with Tansy
Tansel’s GardenGardens keep secrets…especially old gardens. Orphaned and wary of magic, a young woman knows little of her ancestral garden’s mysteries until she discovers her own power in the darkness...
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Tansel of Loralin
It is often said that characters in a story have a life of their own. This phenomenon can be startling to writers, myself included. Tansel first came to me in a fairy tale about a maiden whose love...
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Crowharrow: A Chronicles of Ealiron Review
Originally posted on Mr. Rhapsodist: Copyright © 2012 by F.T. McKinstry. My reviews of The Chronicles of Ealiron by F.T. McKinstry conclude today with the most recent installment: Book Three,...
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Fey, Cursed and Mysterious
In the wilds of Loralin Forest lives Tansel, a gardener with a healer’s hand. Fey, they call her. Her aunt, a master shapeshifter and dabbler in hedge witchery, calls her cursed. To the most powerful...
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Story Illustrations: Wizards, Woods and Gods
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight dark fantasy tales exploring the mysteries of the Otherworld through tree and animal lore, magic, cosmos, love, war and mysticism....
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The Source
Greetings on this Winter Solstice! The shortest day of the year captivates the imagination and connects us to a universal truth that’s often easy to forget in the throes of life. A seed in the earth...
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Book Post: Crowharrow
Crowharrow is the third book in the Chronicles of Ealiron, a heroic fantasy series that revolves around an assassin called Lorth of Ostarin. This tale is told from the point of view of three...
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In Praise of Long Winters
All right, it’s a controversial title. Here in northern New England, praising this endless, toothy winter is risking a scenario involving torches and pitchforks. However, I’m going to play the...
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Gardening and the Horrid Beast
Spring came early this year, a somewhat rare occurrence that I met with a happy sigh. Now high summer, the gardens and woodlands have exploded with abundance. The whole operation is a month ahead of...
View ArticlePlastic Tulips and Writing What You Know
“Cosmic Garden” by F.T. McKinstry My maternal grandmother, now in the arms of the gods, had a degree in microbiology. I don’t know that she ever did much with it; marriage, a family and the...
View ArticleThe Winged Hunter
Tansel is a gardener with a healer’s hand. Fey, they call her. Her aunt, a dabbler in hedge witchery, calls her cursed. To the most powerful wizards in the land, she is an enigma. The Winged Hunter is...
View ArticleThe Stories We Tell Ourselves
I can turn anything into a story. I wander around here muttering to myself, spinning past, present and future events into stories like an old spider in a web. I make them beautiful, awe inspiring, and...
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