My buddy Kate goes all-out for All Hallows Eve.

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~ the Night Table Notebook presents ~

“She added some advice all writers could profit by:
‘Begin— the first sentence is everything.’

[and]

“Jane had a journalistic eye for the graphic, and a poet’s ear, as is evident from the example she cited of Irish keening by a bereaved mother:

O women, look on me! Look on me, women! Have you ever seen any sorrow like mine? Have you ever seen the like of me in my sorrow? Arrah, then, my darling, my darling, ‘tis your mother that calls you. How long you are sleeping. Do you see all the people round you, my darling, and I sorely weeping? Arrah, what is this paleness on your face? Sure there was no equal to it in Erin for beauty and fairness and your hair was heavy as the wing of a raven, and your skin was whiter than the hand of a lady. Is it the stranger must carry me to my grave, and my son lying here?”

- from the bio of
Jane Francesca “Speranza” Wilde

Mother of Oscar, by Joy Melville