CURIOUS THINGS is the column from Donnybrook-Bridgetown Mail journalist Nina Smith.
Outside of work Nina's obsessions are writing novels, creating costumes, belly dancing and seeking out the weird, the strange and the curious as inspiration for stories.
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I HAVE a confession to make. It is this: if I’m talking to you, there’s a very good chance I’m thinking about what kind of forensic evidence might be left behind if a fairy self-combusted.
That’s because I’m a writer. I have no other justification to offer.
There’s a meme going around facebook that says, A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
The quote is by Eugene Ionesco. I’ve no idea who he is, but he must be a writer because it’s all true. If you’re talking to me, it’s very likely I’m thinking about how long my newlywed main characters can possibly last together, or about the plausibility of giant fuzzy bees, or how my bad guy can possibly escape his hell prison while wearing lime green, or ... you get the picture.
Being a writer means you’re always in two places at once. I figure out sticky plot points while driving. I dream story ideas. I ponder the anthropology of Bloody Fairy tribes while doing the grocery shopping.
Sometimes I come up with an idea so brilliant it could change the course of an entire novel and then I get super excited and want to grab the nearest person and tell them ... but I usually don’t.
That kind of thing frightens poor innocent pedestrians who don’t know you from Adam.
Then there’s that really exciting, but also frightening moment when you commit yourself to exposing these constant companions to the rest of the world.
It has to be done. There’s not much point being a writer if nobody ever reads what you’ve done, right? I write for me, but I also write for you, because I’m pretty sure you would be amused by the crazy stories that tumble out of my head.
I recently brought out the first book in my Shadow series: it’s a dark comic fantasy called Bloody Fairies. It’s about a sweet innocent Bloody Fairy named Hippy Ishtar and her pet vampire-eating spider, Fluffy Ducky.
Several vampires and at least two fairies turned up to my first book launch for Bloody Fairies at Whitespace Gallery in Mullalyup. I was thrilled! At last, I could be thinking about writing and be in the real world at the same time!
But seriously, apart from the endless antisocial hours spent poring over a computer typing out tens of thousands of words, fitting plots together like ten thousand piece puzzles, earning odd looks from other people every time a new and exciting development makes you laugh or yell out random things, this is what writing is about – that moment when the ideas you constantly dwell on come tumbling out into the real world in the form of a book, and people take those ideas and make them part of their own lives, through reading, dressing up and getting excited with you.
Which is why I will end this random tumble of ideas about writing with three little words: Readers are awesome!
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Nina Smith's latest book Bloody Fairies is available for purchase here. More information can be found on her Facebook page or on her website.
Paperbacks can be purchased at Donnybooks in Donnybrook, or at the Bunbury Library Launch of Bloody Fairies on Thursday October 16, 5.30pm.
Guests are welcome to dress up for the vampires and fairies theme. There will be a shadow-themed backdrop for photos.
