Ned Hayes's Blog, page 117

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"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the...

"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the day before she died, my mother took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea—the thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the rhythm never ceasing. And she taught me something: strange and secret words in a foreign tongue, a lilting singsong cadence to it."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

PHOTO: south-england: Porthleven »» Thomas Hanks

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So I’m featured on this FREE webcast thing about...

So I’m featured on this FREE webcast thing about “Making Things Up” and “Pretending” (also known as Writing Books) on TUESDAY MARCH 4 — you should join me!

You can go behind the scenes with historical fiction, and learn how I write in a totally different voice (and we’ll talk about some other writers you admire and how they do it too!)

Here’s the schedule — for West Coast people, it starts at 5 pm.

Right after work!  

http://theavocadosisterhood.com/teleseminar-schedule/

“"A bird calls, distant and wounded. The woods are still...

“"A bird calls, distant and wounded. The woods are still as death. Quick steam huffs in and out of Geoff’s open mouth. And with that, the dangerous moment seems past. We gather wood and help Tom build his fire. As I pick up spare twigs and dried bracken, I wonder how far our sounds penetrate into the black forest, and how far our shouts echo along the White Road."

— from the novel Sinful Folk 

PHOTO: brief-candles

"You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic..."

““You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don’t say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book.””

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Italo Calvino; If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (via wordpainting)

Sinful Folk

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”)..."

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

- Carl Sagan (via perish)

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“A bird calls, distant and wounded. The woods are still as...

“A bird calls, distant and wounded. The woods are still as death. Quick steam huffs in and out of Geoff’s open mouth. We gather wood and help Tom build his fire. As I pick up spare twigs and dried bracken, I wonder how far our sounds penetrate into the black forest, and how far our shouts echo along the White Road. Anyone approaching along the road could find us here.
Supper is roasted pork we brought from the village, and warmed snow. After we have licked our fingers clean, we edge closer to the fire, heads cocked toward the whispering wind as it brushes the treetops. Night birds warble, and small creatures rustle in the snow.
Tom continues, the cider giving him a pompous certainty.
They say if you creep along the right valley in the dead o’ night, ’round the dark o’ the moon, you’ll hear them witches a-singin’ an’ a-chantin’.”
Yet this time when he speaks, there is something in his tone that gives us pause. There are some who believe to speak of a thing is to summon it into the world, and Tom speaks with such conviction. We become so quiet that the loudest noise is the sizzle of burning tree sap.
The darkness around us presses down, as if to listen. The music of the wind rises and falls with the swirls of the snow, the creaking of the sea of branches in the darkness above us.”
— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

PHOTO: Horsford woods by Matthew Dartford