Anyway, I’ve been itchin’ to get involved in some form an’ fashion again and so the powers that be came up with a noble thought. I did time working in a library and looking up information – why not continue using those skills to answer questions asked of Bellairsia. So I’ve been dubbed the site’s Question Box moderator and purveyor of searched keywords. What that means (I think) is that I’ll be the looking over statistics and such and coming up with some sort of report. It doesn’t sound as evil as my other contribution but what the heck, right? I’m sure it will all gel as time goes on.
So here goes.
I’m puzzled at a number of queries for “Chapter 6”. Of what? “Chapter 6 of The Curse of the Blue Figurine”, says a final search on that theme. Still, what are you hoping to find? I checked my copy and chapter 6 is where Johnny first meets Mr. Beard. Does me telling you that help in some way? This one seems sort of silly.
"What influenced you to become a writer” – ah, that’s an intelligent question and one I hoped led to the following comment from John: “I write because I like to fantasize." Someone decided to find where all we include the word “Smoking” on the site. John smoked a bit while in college at Notre Dame:
"He was especially fond of a big calabash of the kind traditionally associated with Sherlock Holmes. When he went out he carried smaller pipes with him, but in his room he preferred the calabash."John's preferred tobacco was Balkan Sobranie, which Professor Childermass had the good sense to smoke as well. Or at least did: did anyone else feel weirded-out when Johnny was trying to come up with games to get Childermass to put down his cigarettes for good? Seemed like an editor at work, to me.
“Wedgewood” popped up for some reason, perhaps someone was misremembering Willoware? There’s a big difference: the willow pattern is one of the most popular patterns in china and is often blue and white (and called "Blue Willow") but since it comes in other colors, it generally goes by the name "Willow Ware." Wedgwood is a line of porcelain and pottery produced by Josiah Wedgwood from 1759-95. And “Picts”, the people of ancient Scotland, garners a few queries though I can only imagine why. Maybe a Dolphin Cross thing (I need to finally see what all the fuss is about with that thing). Someone attempted some cutesy search parameters with “(The childermass clock) AND (The childermass clock)” AND I hope they found the article about the cursed object. A number of years ago we mentioned that this lovely little timepiece would get a mention in the British magazine, Dolls House and Miniature Scene, for an article about the use of dollhouses in fiction.
I won’t get into who (or what) “Cthulhu” is – though apparently one would know it if one ever saw such a thing – but you can read about his...its...place in the Bellairs corpus.
And that’s the highlights for now. I started writing this last week but got delayed with the organization for this week’s Thanksgiving luncheon we’re having. Sandrine, my daughter said she’d bring the turkey – which is fine, but this better not be some joke about her husband, Peter. And now Dalcy’s got some recipe with wild rice she’s itching to try. I dunno – rice isn’t exactly the sort of thing I associate with Thanksgiving.
We’ll chat again next month. Happy searching and believe only half of what you read.
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