Formerly Arlath's Daughter. I'd been meaning to change it for a while, but I only just discovered how.

Hello! My name's Beth and I live in Yorkshire/Cambridge. I'm still a teenager (just), and I love Classics, books and writing, along with various other hobbies like playing the violin, learning ancient languages and historical re-enactment. This information should hopefully help explain some of the weird author notes (and stories) that occasionally crop up in my writing.

My current favourite 'verse is Torchwood, so if you're a fan you can expect a few stories for that (Update: ok, a LOT of stories for that). I may get back to HP eventually, probably when I next have time to read the books again or when inspiration strikes. You may be waiting a while though - currently my inspiration-conductor only works for Torchwood.

I mainly write humour, because I feel that Torchwood fans probably need cheering up, what with the show's tendency to kill off their favourite characters. But I do dip into other genres too, experimentally. But humour is the most fun. And cliff-hanger full dramas are also sort of growing on me. Sorry about that.

And on another note I've now managed over 200,000 words on this site (as of 2012) which I am mega-pleased about! But I am annoyed by the way the site has got rid of all my original passage breaks - apologies for this if you are reading any of my older stories! If I ever get bored enough I may one day get round to reinserting them all.

Now, the obligatory quotes section, which was put up ages ago and never taken down...

Some quotes on reading and imagination for your enjoyment and musings...

"Everything you can imagine is real" Pablo Picasso

"I doubt that imagination can be supressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to become an eggplant." Ursula K le Guin. I asked my mum what an eggplant was, and was really suprised when she told me it was the American word for aubergine. I mean, come on?

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, whilst imagination embraces the whole world, and all there will ever be to know and understand." Albert Einstein

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will" George Bernard Shaw

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." – J. Robert Oppenheimer

"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun." George Scialabba

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."Jorge Luis Borges

"This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum." Elbert Hubbard

“I find television very educational. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”Groucho Marx

My favourite Latin quotes

cum spiro, spero 'While I breathe I hope'

alea iacta est 'The die is cast' Useful in games of monopoly.

ad augusta per angusta 'to the heights by narrow paths'

quam fortunatus sumus 'How lucky we are!'

errare humanum est, in errore persevare stultum 'To err is human; to persist in error is stupid.' See fanfic.

sic transit gloria mundi 'thus the glory of the world passes'

verba volant, scripta manent 'The words fly away but the writing remains.'

o tempora, o mores! You've got to love Cicero 'What's the world coming to?'

A dedication section I've been inspired to put on...

alter ipse amicus 'a friend is another self'

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born" Anais Nin

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." Mark Twain

"Friendship doubles your joys, and divides your sorrows." Unknown

"What is a friend? I will tell you...it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself." Frank Crane

"Building a friendship is like planting a quote." unknown

Advice (added at 1.30 am, hence its very existence)

This is for anyone who's looking in horror at my list of Torchwood fic but still wants to read some, so that I can gently steer you away from the ones I don’t think so much of any more.

- Killer – my first, and still one of the best. I try not to read it now, since my style’s changed a bit and I know I’ll never have that good an idea ever again. Sigh.

- Torchwood Philosophy – lots and lots of random short stories to dip into.

- Torchwood Miscellany – my current series. Even more random short stories to dip into, but with less focus on philosophy. Supposedly.

- Too Many Cooks Spoil the Cake – another one-off story. I like those.

- Birthdays - more fairly recent cheerful bits. Read for drunken parties, strip poker etc.

Then there’s some other ok-ish stuff, a few angsty bits I really ought to lock away safe somewhere but which serve as memoirs of my teenage life-crisises, and then even more other stuff that I occasionally feel like purging but which some people still read. If you wander into that it’s your own problem.

I am totally responsible for the content of all of these (and own neither Harry Potter or Torchwood, in case you thought I did) but refuse to take legal responsibility for anything resulting from you reading them (depression, fits of uncontrollable laughter etc. (I wish)). Also, if you think you've worked out who I really am, please don't tell me in a public place this time - I get rather freaked out by it.