Please welcome David McLain to Sapphyria's Books today!
Top five lines from my books. (Not that anyone asked.)
I work at a lot of conventions and art shows, promoting my books. Sometimes if there are a lot of other writers at the show, I will ask them what’s the best line they have ever written. Their own personal to be or not to be, or their it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, or even their own the huge yellow spaceships hung in the sky in the same way that bricks don’t. It’s a test, you see, to see how well they know their own work. I am embarrassed to say, pretty much every single writer I ever have ever asked has failed. The number one answer has generally been ‘I don’t know.’ Some have said things that would have looked better written on the wall of a men’s room. Usually, I have to explain what I am asking them a couple of times. One guy once gave me a quote from someone else’s book. He had quoted it in his book, you see. I didn’t know what to tell him.
So, in order to prove I can give as good as I get, I have compiled my top five quotes from the five books I have published. For the record, although the books are here on the desk, I have typed all of these out from memory. These are listed chronologically, as opposed to best to worst. My publisher, Mirrorworld, would almost certainly prefer that I put my new children’s book, Tabitha Won’t Sleep, at the top of this list. Tabitha Won’t Sleep is a wonderful book about how my daughter Tabitha can do anything in life, provided she goes to sleep first. I love it dearly, but I am going to start with the older material and work my way up:
From The Life of a Thief:
Three years had gone by, and I had seen the sun rise and set over three oceans.
From Dragonbait:
Once, a long, long time ago, a little bit before your grandmother was born, and a little bit after the invention of fire, there was a princess, called Jocelyn.
From The Time Traveller’s Resort and Museum:
“I have loved three men, one from the present, one from the past, and one from the future. I have misjudged them all.”
From Witches, Witches Everywhere:
I will always love loving you.
From Tabitha Won’t Sleep:
“We can do anything, we can fill your life with experiences, and memories, and adventures. Wherever you go, I will follow.”
I can see a certain progression in these. If you write a book. I recommend making it quotable. This sounds like the most obvious advice in the history of liberal arts, but the truth is I don’t remember hearing it before. After all, a writer who doesn’t write something brilliant is just a typist. You can quote me on that if you need to.
David McLain
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