Dr Susan Maxwell
@muinbeoarchives.bsky.social
Writer, artist, smallholder, archivist. Eco-fiction, weird, fantastika/slipstream, literary fiction. Indie-publishing tweets @bibliorefuses.
https://linktr.ee/dr.susan.maxwell
https://linktr.ee/dr.susan.maxwell
Coincidentally, the birth and death dates of the outsider artist, Henry Darger, are also 12th & 13th April respectively.
April 18, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Coincidentally, the birth and death dates of the outsider artist, Henry Darger, are also 12th & 13th April respectively.
Meant to mark 12th & 13th April: death & birth dates respectively of Josephine Baker & Samuel Beckett. Both born 1906, long-term residents of France, awarded the Croix de Guerre, and (the real biggie) characters in a short story I've just written. #AmWriting #Beckett #Baker #SpeculativeFiction
April 18, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Meant to mark 12th & 13th April: death & birth dates respectively of Josephine Baker & Samuel Beckett. Both born 1906, long-term residents of France, awarded the Croix de Guerre, and (the real biggie) characters in a short story I've just written. #AmWriting #Beckett #Baker #SpeculativeFiction
Am having great fun reading these epistolatory stories, written as (so far) transcript of 911 call, text msg, email, a journal (with framing letter), missing person documentation, concurrent letters (w/struck-out text), 8th century 'writings', and docs released under FOI. #AmReading #GothicArchives
April 14, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Am having great fun reading these epistolatory stories, written as (so far) transcript of 911 call, text msg, email, a journal (with framing letter), missing person documentation, concurrent letters (w/struck-out text), 8th century 'writings', and docs released under FOI. #AmReading #GothicArchives
We have abruptly returned to a more usual April: after a month (more?) of sun and virtually no rain, we've just had a short shower of...hail. But with rainbow.
April 13, 2025 at 3:52 PM
We have abruptly returned to a more usual April: after a month (more?) of sun and virtually no rain, we've just had a short shower of...hail. But with rainbow.
Latest book acquisition: Beckett's The Unnamable, purchased in @booksupstairs.bsky.social and read Eimear McBride's foreword in their café, snickering aloud at her description of Beckett's prose as having been "stripped to the bone and the bone itself boiled white."
April 13, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Latest book acquisition: Beckett's The Unnamable, purchased in @booksupstairs.bsky.social and read Eimear McBride's foreword in their café, snickering aloud at her description of Beckett's prose as having been "stripped to the bone and the bone itself boiled white."
Book post is always good, but Contributor's Copy Book Post is particularly good. Literature, The Gothic and the Reconstruction of History: The Past as Nightmare; ed. D. Renshaw & N. Cocks, Reading University, pub. Routledge. Ch. 9 (archives, M.R. & Henry James) by the blurry figure in the photo.
March 18, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Book post is always good, but Contributor's Copy Book Post is particularly good. Literature, The Gothic and the Reconstruction of History: The Past as Nightmare; ed. D. Renshaw & N. Cocks, Reading University, pub. Routledge. Ch. 9 (archives, M.R. & Henry James) by the blurry figure in the photo.
Good weekend so far: 1200 more words in my novella during a @britfantasysoc.bsky.social writing sprint yesterday, and 10 li'l tomato seedlings have germinated. Only 52 more to go. (Tomatoes. 52 more tomato plants. Quite a lot more words). Tomato pics from about 3 yrs ago.
#AmWriting #Horticulture
#AmWriting #Horticulture
March 16, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Good weekend so far: 1200 more words in my novella during a @britfantasysoc.bsky.social writing sprint yesterday, and 10 li'l tomato seedlings have germinated. Only 52 more to go. (Tomatoes. 52 more tomato plants. Quite a lot more words). Tomato pics from about 3 yrs ago.
#AmWriting #Horticulture
#AmWriting #Horticulture
It's not exactly June bustin' out all over, but very Spring-like here today in County Soggy, and an astonishing 2 weeks with no rain.
#Springtime #GoHorticulturalists
#Springtime #GoHorticulturalists
March 15, 2025 at 11:52 AM
It's not exactly June bustin' out all over, but very Spring-like here today in County Soggy, and an astonishing 2 weeks with no rain.
#Springtime #GoHorticulturalists
#Springtime #GoHorticulturalists
Foggy and cold here today
February 28, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Foggy and cold here today
Adopting my childhood habit of beginning a book in the middle and reading outwards works better with short stories. First of David Hayden's is "Last Call For The Hated", an unexpectedly satisfying, if pretty strange, account of a worm turning.
February 27, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Adopting my childhood habit of beginning a book in the middle and reading outwards works better with short stories. First of David Hayden's is "Last Call For The Hated", an unexpectedly satisfying, if pretty strange, account of a worm turning.
Trying to write an essay; instead have created a leaden morass in which a few thoughts bob about sadly. Read Brian Dillon's essays: now know that Gass wrote a book-length 'catalogue' about blue & "you could make a study of particles in Woolf's novels and essays". Own essay remains a particle...
February 21, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Trying to write an essay; instead have created a leaden morass in which a few thoughts bob about sadly. Read Brian Dillon's essays: now know that Gass wrote a book-length 'catalogue' about blue & "you could make a study of particles in Woolf's novels and essays". Own essay remains a particle...
Hurray for the postal service: Book Post one day, Seeds Post the next. #AnPost #Seeds #GrowingSeason #Books #Archives
February 21, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Hurray for the postal service: Book Post one day, Seeds Post the next. #AnPost #Seeds #GrowingSeason #Books #Archives
Tiny coincidences: re-reading Murnane's Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, and he gives the date on which he was writing about Swann's Way; my birthday in 1989. #AmReading #InvisibleYetEnduringLilacs
February 21, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Tiny coincidences: re-reading Murnane's Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, and he gives the date on which he was writing about Swann's Way; my birthday in 1989. #AmReading #InvisibleYetEnduringLilacs
I forgot to bring my Kobo to work and picked this up to read at lunchtime from the bookshelves in the canteen to read over my sandwich: lovely, spare writing. I'm only as far as the first horse, though.
February 20, 2025 at 7:49 AM
I forgot to bring my Kobo to work and picked this up to read at lunchtime from the bookshelves in the canteen to read over my sandwich: lovely, spare writing. I'm only as far as the first horse, though.
Public libraries providing for cold, rainy nights - these three waiting for me today. L.R. Lam, Peter Ackroyd, and David Hayden.
#AmReading #LaoisLibraries
#AmReading #LaoisLibraries
February 17, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Public libraries providing for cold, rainy nights - these three waiting for me today. L.R. Lam, Peter Ackroyd, and David Hayden.
#AmReading #LaoisLibraries
#AmReading #LaoisLibraries
A visit to Trinity College's second-hand book sale during the week, and also to @booksupstairs.bsky.social , and came away with these lovelies (the Beckett and the O'Cadhain are new...) More bookshelves!
February 15, 2025 at 12:03 PM
A visit to Trinity College's second-hand book sale during the week, and also to @booksupstairs.bsky.social , and came away with these lovelies (the Beckett and the O'Cadhain are new...) More bookshelves!
....aaaaand we're back to snow. With more storm tomorrow....First picture kinda crooked but I was trying to get the crescent waning moon.
January 25, 2025 at 8:11 AM
....aaaaand we're back to snow. With more storm tomorrow....First picture kinda crooked but I was trying to get the crescent waning moon.
You can't tell from the photo but I am being eyed closely by corvids hoping for food.
January 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM
You can't tell from the photo but I am being eyed closely by corvids hoping for food.
I put my hand out of the window and can confirm that yes, this certainly feels like a freezing fog. It was thicker earlier (and too dark for me to take a photo), and looked like it was snowing again.
January 8, 2025 at 8:50 AM
I put my hand out of the window and can confirm that yes, this certainly feels like a freezing fog. It was thicker earlier (and too dark for me to take a photo), and looked like it was snowing again.
Just finished watching The Dead. "...snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves."
January 6, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Just finished watching The Dead. "...snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves."
The snow is back, at least for a short visit. Treacherous roads and storm-wrecked well-pump sheds to worry about aside, it does look lovely. All it needs is a lamp-post and a faun...
January 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
The snow is back, at least for a short visit. Treacherous roads and storm-wrecked well-pump sheds to worry about aside, it does look lovely. All it needs is a lamp-post and a faun...
>evil chuckle<
January 5, 2025 at 5:33 PM
>evil chuckle<
And sometimes it looks like this...
January 5, 2025 at 5:31 PM
And sometimes it looks like this...
Just so y'all know it doesn't always look like this...
January 5, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Just so y'all know it doesn't always look like this...
Last few photos before the light faded and my fingers froze to the shutter...
January 5, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Last few photos before the light faded and my fingers froze to the shutter...