Tobsha Learner is a feminist author of historical novels and erotic short stories and plays. As T. S. Learner she writes psychological thrillers.
No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.
Living is a hazardous profession.
So many of man's actions appear to have no immediate consequence but, concealed, do their work until finally all catches up and forms a complex web of cause and effect.
Danger is an aphrodisiac.
We cannot choose the times we live in. Just as, sometimes, we cannot choose whom we love.
As a reader I like both great characterization and fast moving plots. The challenge is to balance the both and not compromise one for the other.
It seems to me that women are freed from their responsibilities only when they are merry widows or eccentric old spinsters.
Be bad, and if you can't be bad be worse.
You must appreciate that love is the last reason for which a man marries.
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.
I was very fierce and very driven at eighteen. But my basic philosophy I think has stayed the same, I'm still an atheist, I still believe strongly in the power of free will (despite the mysticism in my prose). I don't believe in the notion of a pre-ordained destiny, and I think because of the sudden death of my father at sixteen I learnt then that it is essential to live life to the fullest as it could be snatched away at any second.
Indeed, you become what you eat. In which case I am an onion. Layered, slightly sour and guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes.
Trust is won not given.
Two bones fell down my chimney and into the bedroom this morning. Hysterical thing to happen to a thriller writer. Murderous ravens perhaps?
Humiliation scars deeper than the lash.
This may be the very nature of love, a passion as fickle as the sea, full of certainty when the object of desire is absent, yet dubious when confronted again with the lover's presence.
The novelist is more a marathon runner than long-distance runner and the kind of courage it takes working in such isolation cannot be underestimated. I really respect my fellow writers on this front.
Everything flows from God, but we are limited by imposing our human perceptions upon him. Man designs God according to his own image and the image man has of himself is flawed.
Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.
Love wasn't a piece of music you could play over and over again with different interpretations. It actually needed to be improvised as you went along.