Tony Abbott's Blog, page 6

FBR 74: I have such reverence . . .

This morning I had breakfast with several writers and a writer/illustrator, and our conversation got round to things electronic, as the illustrator was in the process of turning some of his enormous output into E-book apps for the iPhone and iPad. Another of us, a writer of illustrated stories, was, if I recall correctly, crafting a manuscript as an original iPad publication. Heady stuff, and completely depressing if you happen to like the old wood-based book as more than a museum artifact.

Th...

I have such reverence . . .

This morning I had breakfast with several writers and a writer/illustrator, and our conversation got round to things electronic, as the illustrator was in the process of turning some of his enormous output into E-book apps for the iPhone and iPad. Another of us, a writer of illustrated stories, was, if I recall correctly, crafting a manuscript as an original iPad publication. Heady stuff, and completely depressing if you happen to like the old wood-based book as more than a museum artifact.

Th...

FBR 73: The curio shop of memory . . .

Your memory is a shop of old goods, both true antiques and cheap junk. It stands in a narrow passage the sun has never seen, a crooked alley off a series of crescents and side streets, far off the traveled road. This main road, by the way, is a substantial thoroughfare, set east to west, reasonably sunny, but resolutely one-way. You have to battle your way back through the oncoming traffic of your life to find your shop of memories but, strangely, no matter how far you travel on your road...

The curio shop of memory . . .

Your memory is a shop of old goods, both true antiques and cheap junk. It stands in a narrow passage the sun has never seen, a crooked alley off a series of crescents and side streets, far off the traveled road. This main road, by the way, is a substantial thoroughfare, set east to west, reasonably sunny, but resolutely one-way. You have to battle your way back through the oncoming traffic of your life to find your shop of memories but, strangely, no matter how far you travel on your road...

FBR 72: Houses of candy and pain . . .

We are talking now about the early 1960s, after my family had moved from Ohio to Connecticut, and I was hanging around with my brother, who was a year older, and a boy named Tommy, an orphan who was adopted by a family two and half streets away from where I lived. Tommy had a beautiful sister, fine boned, quiet, striking in an aboriginal kind of way, if one can say that, a primal beauty, the fact of which I noticed even when she was a child of eight or nine, two or three years younger than...

Houses of candy and pain . . .

We are talking now about the early 1960s, after my family had moved from Ohio to Connecticut, and I was hanging around with my brother, who was a year older, and a boy named Teddy, an orphan who was adopted by a family two and half streets away from where I lived. Teddy had a beautiful sister, fine boned, quiet, striking in an aboriginal kind of way, if one can say that, a primal beauty, the fact of which I noticed even when she was a child of eight or nine, two or three years younger than...

A house of candy and pain . . .

We are talking about the early 1960s now, after my family had moved from Ohio to Connecticut, and I had begun to hang around with my brother, who was a year older, and a boy named Teddy, an orphan who was adopted by a family two and half streets away from where I lived. Teddy had a beautiful sister, fine boned, quiet, striking in an aboriginal kind of way, if one can say that, a primal beauty, the fact of which I noticed even when she was a child of eight or nine, a year or two younger than T...

FBR 71: And I don't mean the witch doctors . . .

After a week filled to the gills with the sketching out of one book, the second revision of another, the last gasps of a third, and the first tremblings of a fourth, I've got, as they say, nothin'.

Except this little nugget from a pleasant little book I picked up by John Malcolm Brinnin about his friend Truman; this here bit from 1948; will let TC have the last word:

"How was Haiti?" I asked as we were shown to the table he'd reserved.

"Almost died," he said. "Some kind of jungle fever so...

And I don't mean the witch doctors . . .

After a week filled to the gills with the sketching out of one book, the second revision of another, the last gasps of a third, and the first tremblings of a fourth, I've got, as they say, nothin'.

Except this little nugget from a pleasant little book I picked up by John Malcolm Brinnin about his friend Truman; this here bit from 1948; will let TC have the last word:

"How was Haiti?" I asked as we were shown to the table he'd reserved.

"Almost died," he said. "Some kind of jungle fever so...

FBR 70: An old man, a Census flyer, and a Ferris wheel . . .

Spoke yesterday at a regional SCBWI conference at the Free Library in Guilford. Some 45 folks attended. It was a mess of a talk, all jumbled, the best part of which was that I was able to bring my friends along — in the sense that I quoted from several books by the writers who keep me company in my room when I write. Each of them dead, of course, or they wouldn't all fit into my room or at the podium. The talk made so much more sense on my note cards than it did when I gave it, and it was so ...