Emily Howitt

I think this is the first thriller I have ever read. I chose to read this book because when I went to the iBook store my finger happened to hit upon this one. I know. I put so much thought into which book I read next. Regardless of my questionable ways of choosing novels, I did enjoy this book. The Heretic by Joseph Nassise is the first book in an urban fantasy thriller featuring a group of Templar Knights who must protect a powerful holy relic from falling into the wrong hands. Wait…didn’t the Templar Knights die out, like, a really long time ago? In this book, apparently not. They just went underground and are hidden from society in order to keep them safe from the things that lurk in the dark. At the center of the story is Cade Williams, commander of Echo team, who has some unique abilities that gained him the nickname “Heretic.” Cade also has quite the dark past. When the book starts it jumps into the action and sets the pace for the whole novel. There is lots of blood, a...

The clouds are angry they are lashing out. Nature is awakening, throwing everything in doubt. The creaking, the groaning, the branch is going to snap. The last building will come down, nature will have her world back. Rain hits the earth. Tiny pellets of fury. A flash of lightening. A scream that echoes in the night. This world is slowly slipping away. This world is coming to the last days. A taste of guilt. A taste of fear. Humans have done this. Devoid of cheer. The animals awakening, coming into their own. Eyes opening wide, gleaming teeth on show. The rain is slowing, it will be over soon. A new world will be born, but it will not be with you. Photo Credit: Wanda Gould  Maddy via photopin (license)

I Hate Myselfie by Shane Dawson is a collection of essays by Shane Dawson. For those who don’t know, Shane Dawson is a YouTuber who makes sketch comedy videos, challenge videos, and collabs about candy. Lots of candy. And food. There’s a lot of food on his channel. In fact, if he could date food, he probably would. Maybe. He also has a podcast called Shane and Friends which is delightfully funny. This book is a collection of short, funny and awkward stories from various times in his life. Some I knew about from watching his videos and listening to his podcast, and others were new to me. But all of them were entertaining and funny. I feel like I should have reviewed this closer to the date when it was released, because in my mind that’s what all the serious reviewers do (I know, I’m probably imagining this), but I was still in university when this came out and didn’t get around to buying it until recently. Plus, I like to review things willy-nilly. Meaning, whatever book I just fin...

Jacklyn was sitting in her living room watching some television. She was fidgeting impatiently. She could not wait for her tea set to come in that day. She ordered it months ago, and she knew that today was the day it was going to come. There was a ring at the door. Jacklyn jumped up knowing it was her tea set. She swung open the door. The delivery man was pudgy and had lots of hair. Too much hair. But she smiled kindly and took the package from him, and signed for it. She shut the door and went to her living room to open it up. She carefully slit the tape and folded back the cardboard. It was everything she expected and more. She held a pearly white teacup in her hand, with soft wisps of pink flowers on it. It was marvellous. She hurried to the kitchen to make some tea. But before she could do anything she heard a loud crack, almost a rip. Like something was happening that shouldn't be. Jacklyn went outside to see what the commotion was, and could not believe her ...

People are weird. They really are. So many of the things that we do make absolutely zero sense, and yet we continue to do them. Take moping for instance. Moping is something we do when we’re upset. I get it. Things aren’t exactly going your way so you mope around looking sad all day. I do it too, or I probably wouldn’t be writing this post. And it’s okay to be sad about something, but moping is more than just being sad. Moping is crawling into a self-pity hole and willingly forcing yourself to stay there. It’s allowing yourself to focus on every little thing that isn’t going right in your life, and it completely eradicates anything that is going right from your vision. Moping does absolutely nothing to fix problems. It delays problems. It makes them seem worse than they are. And that, is not a healthy way to live. Okay, so let’s say you’re aware of this, but you really can’t drag yourself out of the moping mindset. I can’t really speak for other people, but I know that for...

I just published my first poetry book! Well, actually I published it Saturday, but I wasn’t planning on putting this post up until today, because I thought it would take longer for my book to go live. I also didn’t expect the process to be so incredibly stressful. Putting it on Amazon was actually pretty easy, it was more the idea of putting my work out there that I was stressing over, and still am, to some extent, but I think that’s normal. I went with dark poetry because I noticed that a lot of my poems I’ve written over the years had a dark theme to them, and it’s also fun to write dark poetry. For whatever reason, when I wrote something in university it always seemed to turn dark whether I meant it to or not. Some of the poems came from things I was feeling at the time, and other poems came from some dark place in my mind that likes to frolic in the shadows. Either way, if you like dark things, or horror, blood, that kind of thing, then you might just like my poetry. Here’...

Bad Girls by Rebecca Chance is a novel about four people who one way or another wind up at a super posh rehab clinic in LA. There’s Amber Peters, a model who lives her life in a haze of Vicodin and vodka. Joe Jeffreys, a megawatt superstar who goes to clean up his image under the pretense of a sex addiction. Skye Ellwood, an exotic dancer barely making enough to pay her rent and coke habit, until she gets offered something incredible, that is. And there is Petal Gold, daughter of a rock god who does a little too much coke, and has major, major, daddy issues. I bought this book on a whim. Yes, I decided to take a chance on Rebecca Chance. I liked this novel, but I wasn’t overly thrilled by it. It did entertain me, and I was hooked into the story, but it didn’t wow me. I didn’t love the novel. But then again I suppose you’re not going to love every single book you read, or well, no, I don’t think that’s possible. The story wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t exceptionally great. The firs...

Why does everyone expect everything to be easy? Okay, I know not everyone expects things to be easy, but people are often surprised when they aren’t. They often complain about how hard everything is and how unfair life is. Yet, no one said it was easy and no one said it was fair. In fact, people have been saying the opposite for a lot of years, philosophers, religious texts, and probably just the average person. So why do we think that everything should be easy or fair? I wonder if it’s because most people got things handed to them when they were children. I mean, when you’re four you can’t exactly cook dinner for yourself. That’s something I hadn’t thought of before, actually. And no, I’m not suggesting we put children to work, I’m just saying maybe that’s where our idea that everything should be easy and fair comes from, because as children we were cared for and we were made to be nice to other children (sometimes), and then we slam into adulthood where while there are qu...