As many movie fans I also watched Hamnet, and I was sad to see it did not have the emotional effect I thought, hoped, it would. And I am a person that gets teary eyed from shows to soaps when the topic of family comes up. I even cried at adds.

So, knowing this, I was surprised the movie did not move me more, and I tried to understand it. Why?

I honestly think that it is because it was too artsy, it tried too much. Don’t get me wrong, it is worth the watch, but it does not feel like a believable story.

What I did find enjoyable was the fact that the movie reminded me just how much the English language owes to Shakespeare and his work, so many of the day to day expressions we use come from him, and that is outstanding.

The movie made me want to pull out of my library the huge complete works and read through them. I haven’t read him for years and I want to refresh my memory of his work.

To get back to my catchy title, do I think Shakespeare would have liked Hamnet the movie? I think maybe a bit more than the book.

Shakespeare wrote plays with his mind to the public, on how to keep them focused and engaged, and coming back for more, so a movie would be much more up his alley than a book. And his public was brutal, so he really need to be on top of his game.

I love language and like to find out the source of certain sayings, and I am pretty sure you did not know that these saying we have from Shakespeare, so some 400 years ago.

We owe William Shakespeare half of our emotional vocabulary, many of our dramatic exits and some of our really good insults.

Hamnet contains moments of visual beauty, the period tools, the houses, the carefully reconstructed world, but even these are pulled into the same atmosphere of artificiality that surrounds the characters.

While writing this I wonder if that was not on purpose? Maybe they wanted ti to be more like a play and that is why it is like that? Not sure to be fair.

I am happy I saw the movie because now I can have my own opinion of it. It is a bonus that it brought Shakespeare back to my mind and made me want to refresh his works in my mind.

In the end, Shakespeare might have admired Hamnet’s intentions, but he might have bristled at its certainty. His work thrived on ambiguity, contradiction, and restraint, qualities the film replaces with insistence. And Shakespeare, above all, seemed to distrust insistence.

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I might be a bit late to the party, but well, better late than never!

I am a very picky viewer when it comes to movies and series. I can watch any brain numbing game show, or antiques related show, but for movies and series I lose my patience very quickly, sadly.

So this means that, often I would see five minutes of something, then move to something else and so on, even when I watch TV I flick through the channels consistently. It can be quite challenging to watch TV with me, or so I have been told.

I don’t know, I quite enjoy it!

One evening this week, when I had nothing to watch, I said I must make the most of the Netflix subscription I started to pay for last month. So I went looking through stuff there.

I don’t know how much time I spent opening and closing things, or just watching trailers, some of them are so well (bad?!) made that they reveal the entire content of the series, so no point in watching them really.

Now, you know well I like myself a witch, or quite a few. Ever since I was little I was fascinated by them, and this continues even now when I have gotten in the habit of creating my own witches. My lovelies!

So when I saw the title Mayfair Witches and Anne Rice I was intrigued. I have to say I did see the title at some point when I was looking for the Interview with a Vampire book, but that is where my knowledge ended.

I saw a bit of the trailer and it looked good. I started it and then was hooked. I loved it, I watched it in a few days, 8 episodes.

Only now, when looking it up for this post, I found out that actually there is a second season, and a third will start to be aired in January 2026. Sadly Netflix only has the first season, and on Prime you need to buy the second season. And that annoys me a bit as I am already paying for Prime, so it would be paying twice. Grrr!

Anywho! That is a problem for another day!

I watched the first series and I loved it so! A bit of fantasy, of thriller, horror and even a bit of romance, all packed in an amazing visual setting of New Orleans.

After watching it I of course started reading the book. ASAP!

So far very different than the series, they do seem different works of art, but that is not necessarily bad, and it does not take at all from my enjoyment of reading the book. How I have grown!

Anne Rice is an extremely talented story teller and I love the world she describes. I am quite curious to see if she will be able to keep my attention for all of the 1216 pages of The Witching Hour, the first book in the trilogy.

Looking up information online it seems there are quite a lot of people passionate about these books and the world Anne Rice has created. I so hope I will be one of them!

I love loving things!

And, as usual, if I quite like something I really get into it, reading a lot of and about it.

I also want to read some of the Vampire books, and by looking online it seems a lot of people like the second book in the Vampire Chronicles better than the interview one. The second is The Vampire Lestat, and I think I actually have it, I just need to find it.

I’ll stick to the witches for now, God knows there is plenty of them to keep me busy!

Did you read any of these books? Do you like them? Not? But why?

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I watched some episodes of Monk the series, so I was familiar with the character when this revival from 2023 popped up on one of my movie lists.

As I did not find anything else on offer I went for it and I must say it got me hooked from the beginning. I was afraid it might be a pale remembrance of the series, but it actually left a very vivid mark on me.

Monk, his old, OCD self, is the same and commands the screen in a very endearing, unassuming way.

As it is a post-pandemic movie it does make a point of showing how now, people are more like Monk, with the sanitizers and cleaning wipes. Which is interesting to observe, we have truly changed as a society.

Of course Monk needs to solve a murder, but I will not dwell on it, it is a heart breaking story which also tugs at the heart strings.

What I do want to mention though, is the parallel story of Monk’s wish to end it all and his active plans towards it.

It has been a long time since I have seen a story so well and thoughtfully delve into the heart and mind of somebody contemplating the end.

It has to be a bit funny as otherwise it is just too dark and we get lost in the sadness and pain of it all, but I have to say, this movie just looks at it so gently that we can bear looking at it.

Monk is riddled with obsessions, he is alone, he feels his work has been useless as the world is more violent than ever, he feels he does not matter and has not made any difference to anyone.

He navigates his crumbling inner world, while trying to untangle the mystery of the outside world murder that has taken place. He does all this in his funny, awkward manner, bringing a lot of smiles in the process.

A scene that I found extremely entertaining and endearing was the one with the twin funeral directors played by Richard Kind. Such a funny, and sad at the same time, scene showing what it would be like if you went to choose your own casket while on a budget. And Richard Kind is just outstanding.

Such a joy to watch!

I am happy to say that Monk does get the killer providing closure to his step daughter and also in the end he understands how he does and did matter.

It brought tears to my eyes and I felt so, so much for Monk, I am overjoyed he made it through the darkness inside.

I totally recommend the movie, it is a story that is worth seeing.

I enjoyed it very much! And for sure I will watch it again.

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I must say, I had no idea what I was in for when my better informed half announced one evening that we will watch Silo. I was like, mheah, fine, whatever!

He was concerned, as usually sci-fi is not the genre I go for, although I love fantastic fiction and at times they overlap. Anyway, we sit down to watch it and episode after episode I am entranced by the world, the objects, the ideas, to construct.

Oh my! What an amazing work of art! Of course I start looking up information about it and I find out about the books. Uuuuuu! Likey!

And then I look up the author Hugh Howey. A must read for aspiring writers is a series on his website called Writing Insights, in which he generously shares of his experience as a writer and some of the lessons learnt along the way.

I really recommend this section, it is written in an engaging way and it truly provides insightful info. Also, it is nice to find out bits and pieces about the author’s own writing journey.

But I do not want to give out too much, if you read it you will see how interesting and useful it is.

The TV series has 2 seasons one released in 2023 and one in 2024. I must confess that I liked the first season better than the second, but even so, because I liked the world so much, I enjoyed watching the second also.

Even now, more than a week after we finished watching it, I find myself thinking about the silo. I liked a lot how it was represented in the series, the building, the little studios where the people lived. The kitchens that had something of the 1950s and steam punk in them. The way the people dressed.

The world they created in the series is extremely appealing to me, and now that I have started reading the books it is nice to imagine the characters there, in the same silo as the TV series.

It is one of those rare moments when the TV adaptation in a way works with the written work. Usually I do not like them, the TV or movie adaptations, I feel so much is lost (although I do understand they are different mediums and they need to tell the story differently for it to work), but this time, in a way, I like that I saw the series first as now, from the first page of the book, I had the characters placed and ready to go, instead of building the silo in my head slowly.

This is something that I felt I missed in the book, a bit more descriptions of the environment and the characters. I am not complaining though, I am truly enjoying the book so far, and the writing is very interesting in its details and I look forward to discover some of the things that did not make it in the series.

For example, one fun fact, in the book Bernard (IT Manager and later Mayor and overall villain, or maybe not?) is described as a short, a bit overweight man. In the TV series he is played by a towering Tim Robbins. Just an interesting bit, I do not mind it at all, I have accepted that they represent different visions and are created by different people.

I like how Hugh Howie writes and I like the way he transports us into a totally new and fascinating world of his making. Job well done!

I am truly grateful to have come across his writing and creation, not only from an entertainment perspective, but also from a learning perspective, as I did gain some new info and ideas about my own writing (and how to go about it) from his insights mentioned above.

If you give them a read let me know how you liked them. And if you see - or saw - the series, let me know about that also.

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The episode started slow.

They are starting to get on my nerves, so much moaning and self-involvement. I liked it better when they were solving strange cases and investigating interesting stuffs.

Anyhow. We watched so may episodes so far, we cannot give up now, when we are so close to finishing series 3.

Uncertain if we will watch series 4 though as it has gotten so uninteresting.

In this episode they need to find urgently a way of bringing back Olivia’s consciousness as when Bell took over her brain/body it disappeared and there is a possibility it will disappear for ever.

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They decide to go inside Olivia’s mind and look for her consciousness.

Walter, Peter and Bell all take LSD and connected to some magnets/electrodes they go into Olivia’s mind.

I liked the fact that apparently her mind is populated by people wearing the same type of clothes as her. That is a nice idea, to have a world full of people dressed like you. They would have a field day in my wardrobe!

They do some stuffs there and following Peter’s hunches and knowledge of Olivia they find where she is.

She is not actually disappearing she is hiding. She is hiding from all the people in her mind that are trying to get her. Nice concept.

Peter and Bell find her in her childhood house in the form of her little girl self. When they want to leave the people in her world start chasing them and they run. Peter dies and she is left with Bell.

When the mean people are about to get her she stops and facing them asserts herself, refusing to be afraid in a way. This is when she turns into the grown up Olivia.

She has set herself free by no longer allowing the ghosts of the past to control her.

That rung so true to me, and I found myself in her at that moment.

I also need to take back power from the ghosts in my mind.

It was worth to watch all that episode just for this realization.

Broyles on LSD was funny too.

I assume when we are ready to hear a message it can come from the unlikeliest of sources, even a fading tv series.

Maybe it is time to overcome my fears … just maybe.

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Do you remember it? Oh my! One of my all time favorites!

Released in 1984 I saw it maybe when I was 15-16, so about 13 years after it was released. You have to understand though, I was in post communist Romania so we were still way behind other developed countries. Everything I saw in the movie was sparkling and wonderful, although it was over a decade old.

I remember even now the way I felt when I saw it and how my wanna be inner writer fell in love with Joan Wilder, her books and her story. Even now, all this time later I enjoy watching it although I must have seen it way too many times.

I enjoy the story, the characters, the world that the writer, actors and producers have created. Even now I chuckle at Joan’s first bus ride in Columbia. Or my heart skips a beat when Joan and Jack meet.

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The magic of stories and their ability to transform us.

When I saw the movie as a teenager I hoped and dreamed and wished I would become her, or something similar when I grow up.

I am all grown up now. I am older than Joan was in the movie and sadly I still am not a best selling author. Am I sad about it? Yes I am, I will not lie. At the same time though, I can only be grateful for what I was able to accomplish so far and not give up on my dream.

I was able to build a decent life for myself, and, although I am getting longer in the teeth, there is still time and there will be time until there is no more time.

While writing this post I looked up the actual writer of the screenplay, the writer that created the writer that I fell in love with, and I found out her heart breaking story.

To my shame, all these years I was only concerned with the creation and never with the creator. Isn’t that something? The power of the story.

As it turns out, sadly, Diane Thomas, the creator that wrote Romancing the Stone died just one year later after the film was released (1984), in October 1985.

I find that so sad and I am so sorry for her and for all the work that we now do not have. So maybe this is a cautionary tale, to stop postponing, to stop procrastinating because we are so frail that you just never know.

I do not want to finish this post on a sad note. I want to celebrate Diane Thomas and her work. She left us something wonderful, and together with the other people that worked on the movie and brought her story to life, they have touched and moved the hearts of millions.

If you did not see the movie, I wholeheartedly encourage you to look it up, it is available on some of the streaming platforms. It will transport you into a world that, hopefully, will bring you as much joy as it brought, and still brings, me.

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Sometimes when I get an idea to write about my thoughts and struggles about writing, something in my head tells me Whining again?

This goes to show a lot about me and about how I approach myself and my life. I am pretty mean to myself. For sure it has a lot to do with how I was brought up and the years that I was in the process of forming myself as a person.

I did hear recently though that there is an expiration date on blaming your elders, so I might just have to move on from that. I need to teach myself a bit of kindness before.

Other notions that have heavily impacted my development as a writer, were the fact that growing up the really good books, the ones recommended by everybody were books written by men. From Charles Dickens to Balzac, from Karl May to Jules Verne, or Thomas Mann to Dostoevsky.

There weren’t any women writers. Agatha Christie broke the ranks at some point, but she felt more like the exception than the rule. So, in my mind, writers were just men.

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Please don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming them for anything, they are amazing, I am just stating a fact about how my reality appeared then. Must be said that we were not that English literature oriented, so I only heard about Jane Austen, the Brontes later on.

So, as a woman, I was destined to be a reader not a writer. By my judgement then of course.

Then, another notion I found very interesting was that most of the writers were struggling with their genius. The were badly adapted human beings fighting demons and hurting those around them for the sake of their art.

For a very long time I truly believed that to be a good writer you had to be a tormented soul. You could not be a well adjusted person, you had to fight and struggle and live in pain so you have access to those wonderful stories that you wrote.

Thus I had to be an unhappy man if I wanted to be a writer, as I was neither my fate seemed to be sealed.

Writing never gave up on me though. It nagged and nagged and it worked hard to have itself manifested in me, and over the years, no matter how much I tried to give up on it, it did not let itself be chased away. My own personal inner conflict.

Then time passed, as it does, and I got older, and happily, also wiser. But this wisdom came from reading, growing and paying attention to the world around me.

I now have many, and I mean many, women writers whom I thoroughly admire and enjoy their work tremendously. Some of them are alive and they give me the strength to believe in myself and think that:

… yeah, living women, with actual lives (dishes to wash, homes to clean, jobs etc.) can be great writers and actually are!

They embody a notion that I thought did not exist or was out of place in my world, and I am so grateful to them not only for their work which brings me so much joy, but for helping me build myself up and complete my life through writing.

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Midsomer Murders is a British TV series started 26 years ago, initially based on the novels by Caroline Graham.

The series has been an astounding success, as were the books. The TV series has had, till now, including the most recent series, 140 episodes, the series of books written by Caroline Graham is comprised of 7 novels. Say whaaaat?! Yup!

As many other people, I first watched the TV series and fell in love with it, with the characters, with the images they so beautifully present, the quirky village people and the interesting stories. I love the TV series and I sometimes watch them again just for the joy of it, although I have seen them repeatedly.

At some point I got curious about the books.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if I actually read the books my beloved TV series was based on?

Yes, it would!

So I started looking for them. I never found them in charity shops, some books never seem to make their way there, so the only option was to buy them new, which I did.

Oh the joy when I had them all! I sorted them carefully in the order of publication, gave them their own little shelf and started reading them.

For the writers that have a limited number of books, I do not go and read all they have written all at once. I like to pace myself, so I have books from them for a longer period of time. So I read Caroline’s Graham books spaced out, when the longing gets too much.

The books are astounding, I love them and I enjoy them tremendously. Caroline Graham has a smart, funny way of writing that easily transports you to the world she has created.

Now comes the conflict!

After reading some of the books, I watched again the episodes in the first series that were meant to be based on the books themselves. To my surprise they were hugely different. You had the names of the characters, the general idea of the plot, but so many things were different, and new characters doing new things that I was like But this is not in the book! and my loyalty to the book filled me with outrage. But then, as before, I started to enjoy the story on the screen and that got me thinking.

They are different and both are great, so where does that leave me?

The only way I could accept this was to say to myself that they are separate, great works of art. They might have originated from the same idea, but then they grew and became different things, both worthy of admiration.

I had a similar experience with Cecelia Ahern’s PS I love you. The book and the movie are so different that at times they feel world’s apart, but still they both stem from the same idea and at their core you can identify the similarities.

Sometimes I think that series or movies after books are an interpretation of the written stories and not necessarily the written story.

What is certain is that I will continue reading the Midsomer books and watching the series, now set free by my acceptance of their differences and able to enjoy them in all their forms.

Sometimes knowledge comes from the most unexpected sources.

Whenever I run into a rough patch I tell myself ‘Ride the wave!’

You might think I am an accomplished surfer.

Nope, not by far! Never surfed in my life, might not even ever, but I digress!

Do you remember Dexter? The series, not to book. I have the book, never read it, might give it a go soon. Anyway, Dexter says this at some point to himself ‘Ride the wave!’ with the meaning of ‘go with it where ever it takes you, see it out and don’t give up/ stop.’

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It made so much sense to me this pep talk, it resonated with my way of being, and sometimes when the world spins too fast and I feel I might have had just enough, I tell myself ‘Ride it out! See where it gets you, see where it goes!’ and I do, and most often patience, resilience and perseverance pay.

Pretty sure that this is not the case for all life’s events, there are some that we should put a stop of and move on, but others, it is worth sticking with to see what lies at the end of the rainbow. Pretty fitting, as we are in Eire.

Dexter. Interesting series, did not think of it in ages, but sometimes knowledge comes from the most unexpected sources and it is proof of the transformational effect art, in all of its forms, can have on us.

So ‘Ride the wave!’ never know where it might take you.

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I am on a train, early morning, watching the scenery passing by. I am commuting to work. Between towns, beautiful green fields are covered in a low fog in which cows graze breakfast.

I am loving it so much, this pure, simple beauty of the landscape true to all the Emerald Isle marketing materials you might have seen.

It is so beautiful and eerie Eire that I would not be surprised if, on the rays of the bright orange rising sun, I would see a fairy telling off a leprechaun.

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I saw a movie, sadly not sure of the title or even action this early in the morning, but it was something with writers, and from time to time they would ask each other

'How would you write this?'

This stuck with me and often, when I see something I like and I would want to keep in my memory files for future use, I wonder 'How would you write this?'

Looking at the green, fog covered, sunny fields, with sleepy cows grazing lazily, I wondered: How would I write this?

Such beauty! I can only dream of capturing it.

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Some time back I was watching TV, and saw this memorable bit, of one of those rescue shows depicting the story of a wife and husband and their miraculous survival.

They went in a remote part of the UK to do some climbing and one day the memorable event happened. I will be brief in my description not to bore with too many details.

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The essence of it is that they were both using the same climbing rope, the husband was lower on the rope and the wife higher, they were going down a huge cliff. Under them just rocks and the sea.

Because of the strong wind, the rope swayed and the wife tried to hold on to the cliff, but her foot got stuck in a crevasse and she broke it. As they were on the same rope, the husband could not climb up on it, as it would have meant to move it and injure his wife even more.

His only option was to free climb the side of the cliff so he can get to the top and call for help.

As you can imagine he was afraid, but also desperate to help his wife.

He went on telling the story of how he felt this internal urge to go as fast as possible, but he realized that if he does that, there is an increased risk of falling.

He told the story of how during the free climb he encouraged himself by repeating 'Climb slowly!'

He did make it to the top, called for help and saved his wife.

I found this so moving and impressive.

His words 'Climb slowly!' for some reason stuck with me, maybe because I always try to go fast, to rush things and get disheartened when they do not go as fast as I would like, so I have adopted this as one of my mantras:

'Climb slowly!'

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Long live Google, I found it, it is a movie from 1990 Problem Child. I don’t know how old I was when I saw it but I remember I really liked it and the song stuck with me.

Things accompany us throughout our lives and it is interesting to see how we become who we are.

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Slumdog Millionaire, I think I need to watch again, comes to mind from time to time because of the way the main character remembered events in his past that now provided the answer to his questions.

Reminds me of how, sometimes, without meaning to I collect thoughts, images and impressions, only to use them later when I write.

It is so interesting to see how when writing certain things that did not seem important when they happened, come back into consciousness and become written items. It feels a bit like magic how things are transformed.

Writing has never been easy for me, I always fight it with every word I put down. I assume that through some assiduous psychotherapy I could find out why, but honestly I have now reached an age where I do not really care anymore.

I have learnt to accept that this is how it is for me, a permanent conflict between wanting to write and feeling totally inept at it. As the deep wisdom goes, It is what it is. I know there is a type of therapy based on acceptance, maybe empirically I am just going down that route.

The thing is that, I have given up writing so many times and each time I came back, awkward and self conscious, hoping but fearful, I came back and gave it another go.

I am getting to an age now where I cannot afford to give it up anymore, I just need to go with it, do what I can and just enjoy the process.

I am no bestseller author (although I might be if I ever manage to finish something) but I can write and enjoy it, enjoy my characters and the world they live in without any pressure.

I am no tormented genius anymore, I am a middle aged person wishing to finally do what they have never managed to do. To get over themselves and do what makes them happy!

I wish this to all of you and fingers crossed it works!

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I usually do not adhere to motivational quotes. I feel they are overused and become annoyingly devoid of meaning. If you repeat them too much, they are just words lacking any power.

Now, with the beginning of the new year looming motivational stuff abounds all over the place. This morning on TV there was a guy doing just that, repeating annoying things like 'aim for the new year to be the greatest year ever, nobody aims to have a mediocre year so make sure to aim high bla-bla-bla'.

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The presenters asked him about settings goals and if we should set them out for the entire year or start small. The guy of course said set the biggest goals, and plan for the greatest things etc. And he said that dreams without plans are just wishes.

I remembered hearing that sometime and that I kind of thought that sounds sound, I should do that with my writing, plan it not just think about it.

I googled the phrase to see who said it first, I did not suspect the overly positive guru of having conceived it. Soooory! Not!

I found out it was a really great man that said, and I am not kidding, I really like him. It was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who said 'A goal without a plan is just a wish.'

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Next step, make a plan.

After that, find a way to stick to the plan.

But hooowww!?!

I remember I started to read a book on procrastination at some point and it really made sense, talking about the psychological factors behind procrastinating, self-doubt etc., but I lost it in my sea of books.

Need to find that!

It's a plan!

Yeyyy! Hours of digging through my books! If that is not sticking to a plan I do not know what is!

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