As I write this, I’m sitting on my verandah, watching a Monarch butterfly dancing around the milkweed in my front garden. Read more
Author: Andrée Levie-Warrilow
A Montréal expat, Andrée Levie-Warrilow has lived in Owen Sound since 1984. She is a perennial reader, blogger, volunteer, gardener, working artist, Master Gardener, and member of Ascribe Writers. Andrée loves books, history, Star Trek, gardening, soccer, mystery novels, science, art, music, rocks, and wolves - most of which somehow wend their way into her stories.
Her writing has also appeared in anthologies of short stories, poetry and non-fiction: poetry in Things That Used to Matter (2022), and an essay in Aging in Place (2024).
She is presently working on a collection of short stories.
Another Year in Paradise
– Ok, in the Pandemic. We’re still here. But, things are moving along. As I write this, 60% of Canadians have received at least their first Covid vaccine shot. That brings hope for our future.
Like many writers, sometimes I’ve written fiction, sometimes I’ve written non-fiction.
And sometimes I write poetry.
Spring Seeds Stories
Where Do Our Stories Spring From?
Where do the ideas for novels and short stories come from? What tiny seed of inspiration sets off a whole new direction for a story?
As I write this blog, it’s the first day of spring, something we’ve aaaaall been waiting for.
The Way Ahead is Lined with Hope
I have long been fascinated by quantum physics, poetry, and the musings of what is reality, and it shows in my writing. I go about coolly accepting the unreality of the universe, peering enthralled at the night sky, knowing I’m only seeing the light energy of stars that ceased to exist aeons ago. Read more
The Year That Was…2020
It’s late December, the clock’s ticking, and we’re almost done with 2020. A friend sent me a joke on Facebook this week. He had selected four book titles to describe the year: Great Expectations, A Series of Unfortunate Events, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Far from the Madding Crowd. Read more
Creatively Speaking…
Burning planet. Second Waves. Spiking numbers. Anti – science. Conspiracy theorists. Mental illness. Financial stresses – you get the picture. I would say we’ve got all the materials in place for one big-ass, nasty dystopia. Read more
The Year of Unmasking
Ah, 2020.
So much mis- [ and dis!]-information! And still so much truth remains unknown. So much has been conveniently hidden. Masked.
Let me give you an example. Yesterday I learned the street I lived on in Toronto was named for a ruthless slave trader. What a shocking revelation for a very exclusive Canadian neighbourhood!
So now that city officials have that knowledge, what will they do with it? Change the name entirely? Leave things as is? Put up an educational plaque to remind people of a dark and cruel part of Muddy York’s history? We’ll have to see. Meantime, for a murder mystery, what a great motive. Imagine a respectable leader of the community learning the family’s fortune has been based on slave-trading. What would that person do to keep that knowledge form being widely spread? And on the other side, how tempting it might be for someone to try and blackmail the respectable citizen! Another motive!
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Social Justice in the Time of Covid
So, where did I leave off? Ah, yes, my first jittery days in quarantine, and still in a grocery store without a mask (I wear one now). Read more