I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can feel more real than the real?
I have a screened in porch, and it's nice to curl up with a book outside when it's raining, especially an old battered classic like 'Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.'
Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.
Financial parasites: greedy people who live luxurious life at the expense and hard work of others." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from the book, Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
I don't understand this irony - valuable things like cars, gold, diamond are made up of hard materials but most valuable things like money, contracts and books are made up of soft paper.
Pitches are like pages of a book; they're so important. The chess game; how I set you up early, and how I'll do it differently later.
Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)
A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.
I'm supposed to say, Bill O'Reilly, that's immoral - click - and then walk back in and book his A block the next day and have a fine day and everything be kosher? I don't think so.
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
My bookshelves were groaning with WW2 books, Hitler's baleful eyes staring out at me from covers and spines for any new visitor (or passing burglar) to wonder if I might be a fan or at least mildly obsessed.
Like Petrach's, my books know infinitely more than I do, and I'm grateful that they even tolerate my presence. At times I feel that I abuse the privilege.
Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'
I'm not a gamer. I've never played any games. I was more a books and games outdoors kind of a person, so I was extremely daunted when I got this job knowing the size of the fan base and the commitment of the fans to 'Halo.'
It turned out that when my younger self thought of taking wing, she wanted only to let her spirit soar. Books are the plane, the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.
You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.
You have to be a lover of books without expecting more of them than they give - a little pleasure, a little insight, a moment of escape, a deepening of your own humanity. Not much else.
Make sure you meet the right people, people who know that industry and are willing to help you. Do your homework - read books about the industry, talk to people. If you don't know something, ask.
'The Hobbit' was one of the first biggish books I ever read. I remember vividly the 'riddles in the dark' passage, and it meant a lot to me to finally get to play it after all these years.
