I first read Tanith Lee in the mid-1980s, with this collection of short stories. I've been reading her ever since, and occasionally I gloam all her work for details such as this:
"The shuttered house too was gaunt in the moonlight. Was it not somewhat like a tall thin skull, eye-socket, nostrils, cave of mouth with its teeth knocked out. And what about that phalanx of round attic windows above? Of course, the scars of bullets which had gone through the brain and killed it long ago."-- Stained with Crimson, Book of Paradys.
Emotionally invested description was her gift. She painted her stories like an artist. She paid attention to color. And I reread her all the time just to see the words, all those beautiful and yes, sometimes, very dark words.
Tanith Lee has died, and I am so sad to hear it. If you look on Goodreads, you'll see that she was in my top five favorite writers, always has been and always will be. Others come and go, but she remains. She was very prolific and I have heard she wrote some 300 short stories and 90 novels. I can't even imagine that. But I want to read them all. I think I had to write this today, I had to post it, because it's difficult to believe there will be no more stories and that she was ill and well, we distant readers, do not ever hear of such things. And now she has died and left this world.
Another hole in the soul that cannot be filled.
I once wrote a poem about this house when I was a young girl. It was called The Moss Between the Bricks. I used to play here at six years of age, and later, much later, I rode my bike over the six long miles from my house to the gate of Oakley. It's so enchanting a place that you can hardly believe it's real, that it exists in the modern world and perhaps, it doesn't, that once we take a step on the ground that surely belongs to it, we are transported to another place and time. The old bricks are soft and red, and in the cool months of spring, moss grows between the bricks. There is a garden, with neat boxwoods and camellias, and there, the bricks take form and make a path. You walk and walk, slowly. Beside you, the house is tall, old, worn, but alive with all the people who have lived there. You feel it in the wind, you hear it in the bird noise, the ground speaks to you. And a part of you never wants to leave. This, you soon understand is not nostalgia, but the power of place and the weight of history.
I don't mind saying, that when people come to my house, they are always looking at my books. I have books all over the house, in every room, even the kitchen and dining area has its books. Every room has books. The first question people ask me about my library is if I have read all of them. Truthfully, there are always a few dozen that I have not read, but the rest of them, well, I may have read most of them at least five times. I've always loved books, but more than that, I've always loved reading. All kinds of books, poetry, biography, histories, fairy tales, mythology, Bibles, (the Book of Job is my favorite from the Old Testament), Dante (right now I am rereading Dante), and of course, fiction. I adore fiction. Reading good fiction is akin to a big adventure.
I've developed some great friendships while reading the same fiction. It's a terrible thing to admit, but I'm prejudiced in that I do judge people by their reading! Laughing. Oh, that was mean, but to a degree it's true. I do have some good friendships that are not based on reading, but my deeper friendships have grown out of love of good fiction. A lot of my life is about books and stories and the best relationships that I have are with people who share this passion. It's a good thing Fred and the boys love and read books. And they do, and I am so lucky, and I am going to teach both my grandchildren to read good books.
If you are a writer, it is essential to read as much fiction as you can, all across genres. This is how you will grow as a writer, how you will learn, and how you will understand how fiction changes over time. You can't make good fiction without knowing what it is. It just doesn't happen.
But I guess what I am saying here is, a life is much richer and fuller with books and stories from a variety of styles. The world becomes very big by reading all kinds of stories. So read. I think it was Stephen King who said if you want to be a writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot.
Well, I'm out of here. I moved over five-hundred books today.
Later...
When I was little, I was always fascinated by plants, especially flowers. I noticed them right off when visiting relatives or friends. I'd always remember a person by what they had planted in their yard. "The person with the yellow roses." "That lady with the bushes with orange berries." "The man who swept his lawn with a broom and had neat boxwoods." And on it went for years and years until I became more sophisticated in naming plants. I still remember places and events by carrying an image of the landscape in my mind. It's odd. I remember one particular time when I was having a meeting with a doctor in his office, and the older man was talking to me and all I could do was focus on the roses he had on a table. I finally had to ask him if they came from his garden. They did, but I knew that, because I knew exactly what kind of rose they were, an old china rose called Old Blush. They make terrible cut flowers and the petals and leaves had fallen all over the table, but they were a favorite of mine, and from then on, I kept wondering what kind of man would put them in his office at work. It was totally fascinating, and that man went on to help me with three difficult pregnancies.
I suppose I am writing this because this morning I am going to work in my garden and because I am thinking about how I look at developing character in my current book. I am thinking about how personal writing can be even when we are writing genre fiction. It's all so telling.
I don't know the name of this painting. It may be a detail from a painting. I found it on Pinterest. But I love it. It's green and white for one thing and GREEN is the color of my mind. In some ways, it's very telling of me.
Out to the garden for the day.
