Victoria Reeve
Bio
Creative writer and academic, specialising in theories of narrative emotion and reader involvement.
Stories (5/0)
Piratica
Five hundred year ago, they come. A band of pirates. One ship at first. They happen upon an isolated land, not by hook or by crook, but by mistake. They take it for a deserted place, they do. Bury their treasure, an' all. Aye. They come and go and come back again. That’s when they gets an idea in their heads. One among 'em had read a book. In Latin, an' all. Thebook, he says. Thomas More’s, like. And this was it—Utopia, he says.
By Victoria Reeve3 years ago in Fiction
What is love? How we connect with others
It looks like love, right? Looking into each others’ eyes, like that, it sure looks like a moment of affection. In the midst of their play the other day, my dogs paused and looked at one another. It was the briefest of moments, captured accidentally as I photographed them rough-housing in the backyard.
By Victoria Reeve3 years ago in Humans
Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Reading requires a degree of comfort. The more comfortable we are, the more likely we will experience that lovely gentle buzz or humming sensation, recognizable to us at different times as satisfaction, ease, and sometimes even wonder. Beyond the problems of distraction, it's probably the reason "Listen with Mother," a 1950s British Radio program for children, opened with the question that appears in my title above.
By Victoria Reeve3 years ago in Journal
Memories of Dust
I remember I had gone into the garage to get something. I can’t recall what that was now because I became distracted. There is a corner of the garage that is full of old junk. Things I’d meant to take to the tip months back. Things I meant to sell or take to the local charity shop, just a block away. I’m not sure why, after sorting through everything, I stopped and let it all rest in place, these odds-and-ends of a life. Worn-down brooms and battered lampshades. Fragments of those things that unaccountably tend to survive the death of their patron—the boxes of things that seem to mean something but which are, in practical terms, wholly useless.
By Victoria Reeve3 years ago in Families
As wolves do
Tiny and determined, Maggie May definitely does not suffer from small-dog syndrome. She doesn’t strut around imagining herself to be larger than she is. But that doesn’t mean she’s demure. She may very well be only half the size of her papillon breed, but she’s every bit as agile and as smart as the best of them. Emotionally intelligent, after more than two years, she has me wrapped around her tiny paw and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Whether it’s playing ball at her insistence, or being carried around town in a boho bag (as she is here in this photograph), Maggie knows her own mind, and she makes that very clear as she governs her ambitions and manages the scope and limits of her 4 pound frame.
By Victoria Reeve3 years ago in Petlife