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Books, Causes, Passion Projects, and All Things Inspiring
Welcome to the Iridescent Inkwell website! Please expect regular inspiration in the form of art, poetry, music, activism, and more.
Iridescent Inkwell is the blog of of Courtney Diles, also known as Coco Henderson, and this website offers book editing and proposal writing services.
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Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hogle: An All-Time Favorite
This is one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a book I can turn to when I need comfort or a laugh—or validation of the complications...
Courtney Diles
May 162 min read
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"Tools, Not Rules" Grammar Series: Passive Voice
A lot of the “rules” of writing are more flexible than some believe. Any given construct of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure,...
Courtney Diles
May 136 min read
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Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
Spoilers ahead! One of the things I love most about Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series is the Howl’s Moving Castle vibes. While Emily...
Courtney Diles
May 92 min read
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Complex Trauma Rep in The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson
Spoilers! Spoilerific, this one. Let’s start with the spectacular: Bel’s character development - her progression from avoidant and...
Courtney Diles
May 63 min read
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My Side of the River: A Memoir by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez
Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez shares her heartbreaking testimony of what life was like when her parents were deported back to Mexico and...
Courtney Diles
May 21 min read
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Southern Indiana Bookstores: Riddled with Ink—A Creative Beginning
Did you miss Independent Bookstore Day? It’s not too late to support an indie bookstore. Riddled with Ink is an online/pop-up bookstore...
Courtney Diles
Apr 291 min read
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Southern Indiana Bookstores: The Magic of Books—Fantastic and Fantasmic
The Magic of Books was started in the middle of the pandemic, a bold and inspiring endeavor that uplifted the small-town community of...
Courtney Diles
Apr 252 min read
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Southern Indiana Bookstores: Lores Untold--Wonder to Behold
When I moved to Seymour in 2017, the nearest bookstore was half an hour away, and my favorites were at least an hour’s drive. Now I’m...
Courtney Diles
Apr 222 min read
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Southern Indiana Bookstores: Viewpoint Books—Two Chapters, Many Voices
I started this blog with the intention of writing about things that inspire me, and Viewpoint Books fits the bill beautifully. You enter...
Courtney Diles
Apr 182 min read
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Short Review of The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science and Poetry
I like to read poetry in the mornings. I always like poetry, but it's such a great way to start the day - bearing witness to writers...
Courtney Diles
Feb 261 min read
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The Poetry of Black Roses
For Black History Month, I want to talk about "Black Roses" by Harold Green III. A lot of poetry overlaps with advocacy work – lifting...
Courtney Diles
Feb 233 min read
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Indiana's Giant Ghost Trees
If I have a "Roman Empire," something constantly and recurrently on my mind, it’s the Trail Companion produced by Indiana Humanities,...
Courtney Diles
Jan 214 min read
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The Wonder and Poetry of the Sandhill Cranes
The evening before the first snow back in November, I was in one of the gardens cutting corn straw for an outdoor cat enclosure when I...
Courtney Diles
Jan 162 min read
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Bonker's Kitty House: Our Outdoor Cat Enclosure
I originally drafted this post in November. We have a wild porch kitty. We’ve been calling her a porch cat because we don’t have a barn....
Courtney Diles
Jan 112 min read
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Book Review: Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries: A Novel by Heather Fawcett
This book was in equal turns cozy and delightfully horrifying. It has a gradual ascent into the fantastical that is something I aspire to...
Courtney Diles
Aug 28, 20241 min read
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Mini-Post: Moths and Glass
Look at this eight-spotted forester moth I caught sleepin' on our kitchen windowsill! It probably just hatched. The second yearly brood...
Courtney Diles
Aug 4, 20241 min read
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Nourish Your Soul
This is one of my favorite artworks I've freehanded so far. It's just the corner of a mandala, transitioning into vines where I started...
Courtney Diles
Jul 31, 20241 min read
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Find Your Locus of Control
Find where your actual control is. Find out how that overlaps with your responsibilities, needs, and wants. It seemed horrific, at first,...
Courtney Diles
Jul 29, 20241 min read
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Today's Inspiration: The Art of Jane Small
Enjoy this art with me. I stumbled upon this artist called Jane Small. Look at these fields of yellow flowers. That's what Indiana looked...
Courtney Diles
Jul 24, 20241 min read
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Things We Control on a Healing Journey
As the movie Inside Out 2 recently taught us, anxiety is an emotion best directed at the things we actually have control over. This has...
Courtney Diles
Jul 16, 20243 min read
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