About NTT

I’m Amy Whitley. When I’m not blogging, I’m a freelance travel writer, an essayist, and an aspiring novelist. If you’re new here, I might as well come clean (you’ll learn the truth soon enough anyway): Never-True Tales is not about the bling. Rarely will you find slick giveaways or contests here. Very seldom will you read promotional posts. My photography is mediocre and my social media savvy is below the curve. No, at Never-True Tales, it’s really all about one thing: the writing. The bare bones. The proverbial black on white.

It all started with a certain youngest child of mine whose imagination runs so deep, he believes he has done it all and seen it all, the world over. According to him, he was present and accounted for at every single world event that pre-dated him, from the rise and fall of the dinosaurs to the legendary day his older brother Calvin was pecked by a lorikeet. In fact, he could pen an entire autobiography recounting his adventures as a baby alone.

The day it all began–the birth of this blog–Toby was, as always, spinning a tale. This one had something to do with erupting volcanoes and scorching hot lava and giant boulders, but our protests of its credibility was, as always, met with his favorite line of iron-clad plausibility: “It’s true (it’s all true!), because when I was a baby, I was super-speedy, and super-smart, and super-strong.“

And there it was, the tag-line that stuck. After all, he had been super-speedy, super-smart, and super-strong when he had swum under the ocean to fight all the sharks of all time, too, and when he had single-handedly put together all the Lego structures for LegoLand, and even back when he had known Indiana Jones. Apparently, being super-speedy, super-smart, and super-strong are huge assets when battling the elements and dominating global enemies and flying over the tops of buildings.

And when you look past all the fantastical storytelling, that’s what his tales are really all about: defying gravity. Somehow beating the odds and becoming greater than himself, or perhaps simply a greater version of himself in his eyes, in which all his best traits are fully realized and all the limitations of flesh and blood and, in his case, short stature, are wiped out with the finality of ferocious battle or the thick, all-encompassing flush of lava.

And I find myself rooting for him. And for myself. And for all of us, who blog and read and raise our kids. Because aren’t we all trying to define ourselves within the overwhelmingly large scope of the universe, day in and day out? Aren’t we setting forth armed with ambition and weighted down by limitation, trying to sort out whether we’re the cause or the effect, the victor or the spoils of our own histories and that of the world at-large?

We all want to be heroes, but as we look out upon the insurmountable, we also want to know that somehow, we can be saved. It is this paradox that I believe makes Toby insist he’s taken on the world, wrestled it into submission, and lived to tell the tale.

Within these pages, you’ll find memoirs on parenting, anecdotes, reviews and recommendations, reader feedback, and anything else I believe epitomizes life with children today. Settle in, enjoy, and don’t be shy!