Patrick Matthews's Blog

October 15, 2025

6 Questions with Stirling Davenport

Despite having shared stories for years, Stirling and I have never met face-to-face. Part of an extended writing group, we know each other primarily through our stories. Which, all things considered, is a pretty cool way to know someone. She’s an accomplished writer, poet, and painter, and I’m thrilled she agreed to answer my questions. You can learn more about Stirling on her site at https://stirlingdavenport.com/.

Onto the questions!

Question 1

Poetry, science fiction, fantasy, childr...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 15, 2025 12:40

October 8, 2025

Comfort Zone

Picture a middle-schooler slumping off the soccer field, soaked in sweat and splattered with mud, doing everything she can to not cry.

Soccer, when you’re in middle-school, is more than a game. It’s self-respect. It’s pride. It’s social standing. For many of the kids I used to coach, it was even more than that. Failing grades, broken families, gender confusion, bullying… The list of challenges those kids faced was broader and deeper than I could have imagined.

But on the soccer field, all...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 08, 2025 14:42

October 1, 2025

6 Questions with Margaret Reyes Dempsey

Years ago, before any of my books had been published, I was invited into the kind of writing group that all unpublished authors dream about: five professional writers and me. It was an amazing experience that taught me a ton, and not just about writing. Margaret Reyes Dempsey was one of those writers, and she’s been a friend ever since. A former technical writer, she’s the author of the psychological thriller Mind Games and The Benefactor, as well as a fantastic Substack on practical spiritualit...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 01, 2025 13:59

September 24, 2025

Welcome to Monster Island

If you were to leave my house and drive north, you’d find yourself on a long flat bridge that’s low enough for you to see alligator eyes. They poke up out of the water like rocks, watch you for a few seconds, then submerge. Above the bridge is no less interesting. Its lamp posts tower above the road, so tall that osprey and bald eagles perch on them. If you pay attention, you might even see one dive off to catch a fish.

Crossing this bridge may sound fascinating, but once you’ve done it doze...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on September 24, 2025 17:15

September 17, 2025

The Secret Equation

Have you ever wondered why one creative project catches fire and another doesn’t? Why some feel like work and others like play?

Me, too. All the time.

Lately, my mind’s been going back to a butterfly garden my sons and I built for my wife during covid. It involved loads of hard work and a ridiculous amount of failure.

How much failure, you ask? Well, for our first iteration, we focused on flowers that attracted butterflies. The strategy brought in a lot of butterflies, but the first cr...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on September 17, 2025 14:47

August 30, 2025

Sharing Space

One-two, three-four.

That’s my cadence. When I’m riding my bike and my body starts to fail, my world narrows to four simple numbers.

One-two, three-four.

“One” starts my right leg, pushing through pain to force the pedal down. When it reaches the bottom of its journey, “two” kicks my left foot into action. As my right foot rotates back to the top of the circle, there’s the briefest of pauses, so small I’m not even sure it’s real, and then “three” sends the right pedal forward. “Four” i...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 30, 2025 10:27

February 25, 2025

It’s our turn

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the plight of the Ukrainian people seemed hopeless. Massively outnumbered and outgunned, how could they possibly resist? It seemed, at the time, a clear defeat for democracy and the free world.

And yet it wasn’t.

Instead, the Ukrainian people refused to surrender. Not only did their military rise to the occasion, so did civilians. Farmers, retirees, business people, drone hobbyists… The list of unrecognized heroes exceeds anything you or I could have pr...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on February 25, 2025 17:26

November 9, 2024

Standing Up

It’s been a fair number of days since the election, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about its results. I’ve done my best to analyze what it means, and ridden the emotional roller coaster that it caused, and I’ve come through it with a single piece of clarity.

His victory doesn’t change who I am.

I stand against people who commit sexual assault, trebly so against those who brag about it. I also stand against racism, misogyny, bullying, the abuse of power, and the demonization of humanit...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on November 09, 2024 13:04

September 17, 2023

The Voice of AI

The first time I encountered a piece of software designed to help my writing, it was a simple spell-checker, and it was extremely popular.

Unfortunately, I found myself arguing with it more often than not. I was trying to write fantasy at the time, and I preferred the older (and in some cases, British) spelling for many words.

My friends thought I was crazy to even consider arguing with the spell-checker. Who cares how a word is spelled?

Grammar checkers were next to arrive. Hailed by ...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on September 17, 2023 17:27

July 16, 2023

The Wrong Garden

Growing a garden means committing to a vision. Whether you’re planting for vegetables, herbs, or butterflies, the process is the same. You select what you want to grow, work out a design, and then do the hard work of planting, tending, and weeding.

It’s that last job that can be the most difficult. If you’re like me, you don’t always know what is a weed and what isn’t. One little green seedling can look much like another, particularly when you’ve spent the past two hours in the hot sun.

A ...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 16, 2023 08:40