Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 88

On The Piano Man, a short story set to music

On Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita - True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. - - I do not know if the pimp's album may not have been another link in the daisy-chain; but soon after, for my own safety, I decided to marry. - - I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that the former Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing...

On danger

You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs. - Terry Practchett, The Colour of Magic

On Hypermobilty Syndrome, fibromyalgia and an over active autonomic nervous system response

I have Hypermobilty Syndrome, fibromyalgia and an over active autonomic nervous system response (it is wonky). Along with that, I have permanent damage in the right shoulder and wrist. Yes, HMS was always lurking in the background casuing little issues here and there since birth. But none of this was a very big deal until three years ago. Now that it is a big deal, people have questions. Problem is, none of these conditions are easy to explain in a sound bite. Nor, from outward appearances, do they seem ‘logical.’ For example one day you may spot me wearing two...

On marketing

‘How do you write a literary vampire story?’ Husband said. Ignoring a book called Dracula (haven’t read) and another called The Historian (have read) I said, ‘I’m not really sure.’ Which was a mostly true statement. Listening in on the conversation were two children. Both of whom that had decided that my attempts at writing a vampire story that they might be allowed to read when they’re twenty was the coolest thing I’ve ever attempted to write. But then Thing 1 said, ‘I really wish you’d write a story with X in it.’ I laughed. ‘Aw, but I really want...

On adventure

Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window. - Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

On madness

I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape...

On The Sea of Wise Insects

Terry Westby-Nunn, The Sea of Wise Insects - The memories are thick and fluid. I tumble down the stairs on a tricycle and slice my forehead open, burn my hands on a hot-water pipe, lose three teeth and break my wrist in a car accident. - - It's as if that was a life she forgot to live. - - There's a saying that goes: 'History is a vast early warning system'. And we can apply that little anecdote to our lives in the present - take the lessons from the past, but don't live there. - - How could...

On writing & housework

Ever since the early 1970s when she was asked how she coped with being a novelist and doing the housework ("I would say, look under the sofa"), she has been aggressively indifferent to criticism. "So I'm told," she says coolly on the question of whether greater visibility increases the impact of failure. She will write what she wants, and that's all there is to it. - Margaret Atwood: 'I have a big following among the biogeeks. "Finally! Someone understands us!"'

On Bloody Satisfied

Joanne Hichens, Bloody Satisfied - His eyes lifted to the polished oak rack above the computer desk. Thirty years of crime novels stood there, shoulder to shoulder, their titles a testimony to his enterprise. - Jilly Morsbach, The Perfect Murder - By the last day of the shoot Ford reckoned he knew the girl's plumbing better than her gynaecologist. - Roger Smith, Falling - I've died into nothingness, an infinitesimal being no earthling can see, maybe the size of a mote of dust, except there's no ray of sunshine lighting up my life. - Anirood Singh, Demon in the DNA...