Cate Tiernan
"was born in New Orleans, LA, in 1961. New Orleans is one of the most interesting American cities, and it has an incredibly rich and exotic culture that had a profound influence on me. Kids in other cities have lemonade stands; we sold voodoo gris-gris and made wax dolls in the likenesses of our enemies. It's a very beautiful city, and the constant heat and humidity make gardens grow out of control. There's an air of lassitude there, a general acceptance of eccentic or flamboyant behavior--the heat simply makes people do crazy things.
I went to school in New York, and after school went back to New Orleans. Then I went back to New York (Manhattan) and got a job in publishing and started writing. My first book, a young, middle-grade chapter book, was published in 1990.
Living in Manhattan was incredible, even though I didn't have a lot of money. There was so much to do and see, and so many interesting people to watch. There was a lot of frenetic energy there, and sometimes that felt very wearing and hard to live with. After eight years I was ready for a change, and my husband and I moved back to New Orleans. (Are you seeing a pattern here?)
(While I was in NY, I helped edit "The Secret Circle" by L.J. Smith. I thought it was great.)
We stayed in New Orleans five years. By the time we had two small children we knew we had to find someplace safer to live. I was glad my children were born in New Orleans--I had been born there, and my father had, and his father had, and his father had and so on. There was something about the connection of generations of blood coming from one place that I found very primal and important.
Now I live in a cohousing community in Durham, NC. This is the most suburban place I've ever lived, and it's very different from living right in the middle of a city. For one thing, there aren't enough coffee shops. However, it's incredibly safe, and the community is very important to me. There are a lot of strong women here, and I find them inspiring.
Am I a witch? Well, no. Even Wicca is too organized a religion for me. I'm much more idiosyncratic and just need to do my own thing, which is kind of new-agey and pantheistic. It's not that I don't work or play well with others, but I need to decide for myself when I do a certain thing, and how I do it. However, I can really relate to Wicca, and I so appreciate its woman-centeredness and its essentially female identity. I love those aspects, among others.
I have several favorite writers. Barbara Hambly has been the biggest influence on how I describe magic. She's an incredibly imaginative and empathetic writer with a gift for creating a rich, sensual world. I love Barbara Pym, an English writer whose books came out mostly in the fifties. She was a master at describing the thousand tiny moments that make up a woman's day; how the seemingly small and inconsequential thing can suddenly take on a huge emotional importance. I greatly admire P.D. James. She's one of the very few writers who makes me actually look up words in the dictionary. She has a beautiful, precise, educated command of the language that leaves me in awe. I love Philip Larkin's poetry. I read a lot of nonfiction and also have some favorite romance writers. Before anyone groans, let me say that these women write really well about women trying to achieve emotional fulfillment, and that's kind of what we're all doing, right? I also just like reading about sex. Anyway, Jennifer Crusie, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and early Linda Howard are my faves.
And then of course there's my dark side, but more on that later.
" -Source
Cate Tiernan is a pseudonym for Gabrielle Charbonnet
“The Goddess teaches us that every ending is also a beginning. May there be rebirth from this death.”
“There is beauty and darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life in death, thorns on the rose.”
“¿Qué enfermo cuento de hadas era, si él estaba hecho exactamente para mí y yo no estaba bien para él?”
“Then what's the point of trying if you can't even win?""You win in lots of different ways," Asher said. "Lots of little wins. The point of this life is not to be good all the time. It's to be as good as you can. No one is perfect. No one does it right all the time. That's not what life is.”
“I was of the “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, then wonder why life didn’t give you freaking sugar so you could drink the stuff” school of thought.”
“He gave a hard smile and the oxygen in my lungs evaporated. “Weboth know I’m not a gentleman.”“Yeah. Okay, let me out. I’m tired.”“There’s something else,” he said, and I groaned.“What now?”“This.” He stepped closer to me, so close that the containers weresandwiched between us. His eyeslooked down into mine, intent and golden, like a lion.“Oh, no, you don’t!” I hissed, dropping everything. I pushed hardagainst his chest; it was like shovinga tree.“Yes,” he said very softly, leaning down. “Yes, I do.”
“My face is not that expressive!”
“No matter how dark you are, no matter what you think your heritage is or how inevitable your fall is, you can always make a choice in the next second to be different..”
“Tus labios son demasiado delgados, eres demasiado alto, y tu pelo realmente es más parduzco, no dorado. ¡Tus ojos son pequeños y eres bizco!”
“I felt an overwhelming gratitude in my life right now and wanted a chance to acknowledge it. I felt that any thanks given to any god all went to the same place, anyway, no matter what religion you were centered in.”
“Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.”
“Sorry." he said, rubbing his temples. "Do you have any Tylenol?""Nope, sorry. Your doctor's appointment is today right?""Yeah.""Here take this." Jenna rummaged in her purse and took out two tablets.Robbie squinted at them, then tossed them down with the rest of his soda. "What was that?""Cyanide." said Sharon, and we laughed."Actually, it was Midol." Jenna said.Matt whooped with laughter as Robbie gaped at her in dismay."It'll really help." Jenna insisted. "It's what I take for my headaches.""Oh man." Robbie shook his head. I was almost doubled over with laughter."Look at it this way," said Cal brightly. "You won't get that awful bloated feeling.""You'll feel pretty all day." suggested Matt, laughing so hard, he had to wipe his eyes.”
“I didn't know where this stuff was coming from - all of a sudden I was a little magickal sprite, bonding with my stone, feeling my earth roots, la la la...All I can is describe the way it felt. And that was how it felt. So sue me.Was I swaying? I felt like I might be swaying.”
“I should have known the power-hungry slave drivers at River's Edge would see my five days of freedom only as a challenge to be filled.”
“I held a nail in place and slammed it with the hammer. Best. Chore. Ever.”
“Please, please be some sex-starved nutcase who wants to kidnap me and make me your love slave, I begged silently.”
“There's beauty and darkness in everything: Sorrow in joy, life in death, throns on the roses. You can't escape pain and torment anymore then you can give up joy and beauty...”
“Could he actually be my muirn beatha dan?”
“David held up his hands. "Hold it. This is going nowhere. You two are both afraid, and being afraid makes you angry, and being angry makes you lash out.""Thank you, Dr. Laura," I said snippily."I'm not afraid of her," Hunter said, like a six-year-old, and I wanted to kick him under the table. Now that I knew he was actually alive, I remembered just how unpleasant he was.”
“Heritage does not equal destiny.”
“You went to all that trouble just for my body?" I said, amazed and so grateful.Reyn looked up, irritation on his face. "Yeah. We were going to have you stuffed, as an example to future students."I grinned, "You could put me on wheels, move me from room to room.”
“Come with me," Reyn said. "I want to show you something." Frankly, I had expected something more original. "Really?" I asked, "That's it? That's what you came up with?”
“No, officer, I have no idea why I'm wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad."-Nastasya”
“In fairy tales there's always one person who is made for one other, and they find each other and live happily ever after. Cal was my person. I couldn't imagine anyone more perfect. Yet what kind of sick fairy tale would it be if he was the one made exactly right for me and I wasn't right for him?”
“It was all I could do to not knock him down right there in front of Asher and climb on him. If I stunned him with a frying pan first, he might not struggle too much.…”
“What would it be like to care so little about what other people thought of you?”
“Years from now I'll look back and remember today as the day I met him. I'll look back and remember the exact moment my life began to include him. I will remember it forever.”
“At that moment I remembered something Cal had told me: that there is beauty in darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life and death, thorns on the rose. I knew then that I could not escape pain and torment any more than I could give up joy and beauty”
“He seems so.. English sometimes, kind of distant or reserved, but then he'll look at me, and his eyes see right through to my soul..”
“Don't be ridiculous. Heritage does not equal destiny.”
“The heart that loves must one day grieve. Love and grief are the Goddess's twined gifts. Let the pain in, let it open your heart to compassion. Let me help you bear your grief and then may your heart ease and open to greater love. May the love that flows eternally through the universe embrace and comfort you. p.85”
“Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one’s life.”
“But I also meant that loving someone really opening your heart to them is just asking to have your heart smashed and handed back to you in little pieces.”
“What an amazing day," Bree said, stretching in her seat."Thanks to me and my weather charm." I said lightly. Robbie and Hunter both looked at me in alarm. "You didn't," Said Robbie. "You didn't," Said Hunter. I was enjoying this. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't."Hunter looked upset. "You can't be serious!"Cahn't, I thought. Cahn too.”
“Please, ground, just open up and let me fall into an endless crevasse till I hit the center of the earth and combust. Please. Is that too much to ask?”
“Now he was kissing me, not in a scary way, not with hostility, but with warm, seductive intent. In a hayloft, in the barn, in the middle of the night. This scene brought to you by the letters W, T, and F.”
“Oh my God, can you see me? I thought I was wearing my invisibility cloak.”
“You're not honey. Your'e wine. You're the deepest, darkest shadow under a tree on a blazing day. You're strong and hard, coursing like a current at the bottom of a river.”
“I don't love you. But I see the value of you, the incredible worth of you, more than anyone I've ever known.”
“Everything is fine and bright. Day must follow every night. My power keeps me safe from harm. The Goddess holds me in her arms.”
“You have to admit he's good looking," Bree pressed, leaning against my kitchen counter. "Of course I admit it. I'm not blind," I said, busily opening cans.”
“Stay here!" he commanded me, then he raced off after Cal. I stopped for just a moment. Then I ran after them.”
“Robbie turned to the house again. "Got a flashlight?" "Of course not." I smirked. "That would make me too well prepared, wouldn't it?”
“Better stupid and safe that smart and dead.”
“I'd once read somewhere that is takes about half as long to recover from a deep relationship as the relationship lasted.”
“There are no coincidences. And everything means something.”
“Of course, when we got home, we found that Dagda had peed on my down comforter. He had also eaten part of Mom's maidenhair fern and barfed it up on the carpet. Then he had apparently worked himself into a frenzy sharpening his ting by amazingly effective claws on the armrest of my dad's favorite chair. Now he was asleep on a pillow, curled up like a fuzzy little snail. "God, he's so cute," I said, shaking my head.”
“My sister thought about it for a few moments. "Well, that's boring," she said finally. "Why can't you read porn of something fun that I could borrow?"I laughed. "Maybe later.”
“I-just want you. I want you so bad, all the time. I know I shouldn't, I know I can't, I know it's wrong... but even when you're pissing me off, when you're reminding me of pain and despair and torture-it's there, the wanting. I'm tired of fighting it. I fight so many things, all the time, every day. I don't want to fight this. Not anymore.”
“It happened again this afternoon. Just the way it did that other night. We were talking--talking about how to protect her, actually--and then, suddenly, I looked at her and it was as if I'd found an entire universe in her eyes.”