Even such an obvious idea as to observe an animal with vertigo or to rotate an animal did not occur to him, in spite of the fact that he conducted numerous vertigo experiments with human subjects and made frequent use of animal experiments.
My father-in-law has ear hair like a wolverine. It fans out from the auricles, wafting from the ridge lines like cilia, like gray feathered plumage.
Our culture places a very high value on storytelling, and the more that Catholic writers are able to master that craft, the more they can speak to the culture, the more powerful their stories will be.
It seems natural to surround my fictional world with animals because my reality is full of them. When I'm sitting there conceiving a story, they just pop up.
I was first published as a paranormal author back in the early 1990s. I was one of the founders of that original wave of paranormal and am the leader of the new wave of paranormal that started at the beginning of this century.
For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.
Giving voice to marginalised characters is extremely important to me. I want to explore the pain of disenfranchisement, the social strata and boundaries we create and how to make them more permeable.
I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer.
I want to believe that while we may sometimes read in the misguided pursuit of preserving our separation, there is a greater impulse inside us that compels us to read in search of the common heart.
There are so many different things out there trying to hook our attention, we writers have to be very selective and make certain that it is coming from inside out, not outside in.
One thing that became clear to me is that images of a divine mother are surprisingly important in the psychological wholeness of women, especially in the process of women taking up residence in their own authority.
I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming.
Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.
It usually takes me about three years to research and write one of my historical sagas; this is one reason why I take medieval mystery breaks, for they can be completed in only a year.
During the summer of 1963 between my junior and senior years, I began a research project on hypothermia in the Department of Surgery with Sidney Wolfson. I quickly became fascinated by the project and continued working on it throughout my senior year...
Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrian's Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.
I realized early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job. Because there are no pay grades and very little structure, people make interesting assumptions about the profession.
I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off.
I have made number mistakes - I have such bad number dyslexia that I can look at a number and see the wrong one. I can't remember them worth beans.
As a kid, I pretty much got nothing but scorn, and occasionally active animus, for writing fantasy and squirreling it away in my closet and, later, under the mattress supports in my bed.
Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its job if everybody agrees with what it does.
