I wrote an article about urban fantasy set in London for Borderlands Books' monthly newsletter. Check it out here: http://borderlands-books.blogspot.com/2016/07/london-heart-of-urban-fantasy-empire.html?spref=fb
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I co-wrote the editorial for the "Blood"/Spring 2015 issue (vol. 8) of the Tufts Historical Review with my good friend Rebecca Xu. We wrote about the origins and evolution of the vampire myth through history. You can read it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxpjqDUtMK-WeWFpU2doY3A0QXc/view
I wrote many of the Children's Fiction blurbs in the May and June 2014 issues of the Noe Valley Voice. Check them out here: http://www.noevalleyvoice.com/backissues.shtml
My Vignette, A San Francisco Symphony was published in the Noe Valley Voice February 2014 issue. Read it here: http://www.noevalleyvoice.com/2014/February/index.html
I contributed to Silver Moon Photo's calendar again this year – there are some beautiful photos and lovely accompanying writing pieces by several different writers. See it here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/silver-moon-photography/calendar-2014/calendar/product-21326775.html
My poem won Thinkgeek.com's monthly techie Haiku contest and was published in their newsletter today under the title, "Astronaut Warning." The original title was "In space, no one can save you from your own stupidity," but it was understandably shortened, as the title was nearly longer than the actual poem.
"Astronaut warning" When on a space ship, Do not open a window. It's not refreshing. I just can't resist taking on new projects. I've recently taken up a rather ambitious one called The Thousand Words Project with a small group of creative and talented writers and photographers, with the aim of merging writing and photography to tell some fantastic stories! The website will be live June 7th at www.1kwordsproject.com.
I took up a project with a friend of mine – we made a calendar together (his photos, my poems), with the theme of animals representing the different opposing forces of the universe.
You can check it out/ order it here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kyle-chong-and-miranda-phaal/silver-moon-photography-2013-calendar/calendar/product-20513801.html Why is it that happy endings are often considered to have less depth, less sophistication and overall less "artsiness" than sad ones?
It is true that we as a species seem to have an enduring fixation with destruction, which can likely be attributed to our fascination with our own demise, and what comes after. A mystery that we will likely never solve, though mysteries do make great stories... However, I do not believe that our collective morbid curiosity quite accounts for the whole picture. I think that somewhere, we know how a story is supposed to end. A true ending is as final as the plunge of the guillotine's blade, for every life ends in death, and every flight in a fall, or at least a return to earth. Any story, or history, that tells us otherwise, simply has not continued long enough. So a happy ending marks an incomplete story, and we feel it, even if we are not quite able to articulate why. We feel cheated, tricked, infantilized, because the writer is keeping something from us that they don't think we can handle. As a writer who has written many endings, both happy and sad, even I cannot say what compels me to end a story in one way or another, except perhaps something in the story itself. But I can say that sad endings cause me as much pain to write as they do to read. I do not want to end a story in tears, because if my readers were half as attached to my characters as I am, I may well start a violent revolt. So if happy endings are not true endings, that's fine with me. I'll take a wedding over a funeral any day. I wrote a short story inspired by thoughts of the great writers and philosophers Pascal, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche for my English class that is probably not going to be in my next anthology (A Brief History of Totem Poles). I've therefore decided to post the entire thing as a freebie. You can find it under the title of Infinity in the "Short Stories" section of this blog, and it's a painless (and dare I say interesting?) way to get yourself thinking about some of life's big philosophical questions. Go read it!
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Miranda Phaal
Miranda Phaal is a college student born in San Francisco and currently living in Boston. She first became interested in writing at age seven when she wrote a series of short poems. From there she started writing short stories, and then novels. She has a couple of story collections in the works now, as well a couple of novels. Archives
July 2016
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