Never Give Up...

Ten years ago, I wrote a short story.

 

No, wait.  Let's go back.  Way back.  Back into time...  Something like forty years ago, I wrote a story.  It wouldn't have been very long and was, I would think, not very good.  I also drew a picture to go along with it.  Again, potentially not very good.

 

I was five.

 

I may have been four, I may have been six but, seeing as one of the poems in my children's book Zits'n'Bits is called 'I Want to be Five', that's how old we'll say I was.  An age of wonder, of Father Christmas, of the Tooth Fairy and of monsters under the bed.  And, of course, the age of very short, potentially badly written stories.  I'm sure my mum and dad were very proud, though.

 

I didn't stop.  Since then I have carried on making up stories, creating worlds and inhabiting them with all manner of creatures and people - sometimes the two being one.  I suppose that classes me as 'writer' then.

 

I remember being stood in the corridor at school with my friend, Tony.  Now Tony has supported my writing from way back then and is a fervent supporter even now - to the effect that he is mentioned in the dedication, acknowledgement and text of Sin.  I'd started writing a book.  A proper novel.  We were on corridor duty, there to make sure other pupils didn't run or fight and so on.  We had badges to proclaim our Prefect status.  I was showing him the beginnings of this book, this powerhouse of prose.  I don't recall if he thought it was any good.  Thinking back on some of the wording, it wasn't.  A teacher came along and asked what we were looking at so I showed and told him.

 

I do recall the teacher being impressed.  Not, I would think, at what I'd written, but with the fact that I WAS writing.  I think the guy was the Geography teacher, but I can't be sure.

 

Either way, I didn't carry on that story.  I did, though, write some GOOD stories at that school.  The English teacher was excellent and it was he that gave me the buzz to actually produce a proper novel.  So much so, in fact, that, after I'd left school and he'd retired, I used to send him my stories and he'd return them with the same sort of marks, corrections and comments he did whilst he was teaching me.  Well, I guess he never stopped.

 

When I left school, my writing diminished.  I still produced stories and poetry and, I believe, it got better.  Life got in the way, as it tends to, and I was letting it.  The bug didn't leave though.  It bided its time then, one day, it firmly bit me on the ankle.  I was writing more.  I wasn't keeping a lot of it, but I was writing it.  The advent of the internet was a real boon.  Thanks to the world wide web, I had my work published in various small magazines in the US and other countries.  Some even won competitions.

 

I then started another book.  I'd had an idea and I went with it.  Again, I drifted off it.  The muse had me, then it jumped onto something different (something that curses me still - luckily, now, it does have a habit of returning).  Reading that story back now, there are some very good ideas in it, I think.  Some I'll use again.  I may even pick it up again and finish it.  Either way, I wrote a good deal and got a fair way into it.

 

Not long after I'd started this, I was getting into web design and so on.  This would be around 16 years ago.  I'd been sending my stories off for a while.  Some were accepted, some weren't - such is the life of the writer.  I set up a website for poetry and prose of my own and soon was receiving emails from all over the world from hopeful authors who wanted a voice and to share their work with the world.  The website soon had the attention of Sky television who asked me to appear to discuss the pros and cons of electronic (which was really just web based then) as opposed to traditional publishing.  There was me, effectively doing this 'in my bedroom' going against someone from Curtis Brown!

 

I had the last word, though...

 

Then, as I may have mentioned, ten years ago I wrote a short story.  That short story is now the prologue to a fully fledged, fully completed, novel.  Not only that, but it's been compared to two of my favourite authors, Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and has been called 'an incredible read.'

 

That and other reviews are quite humbling.  From those stories written by my fiver year old self to the first attempt at a book to today has been a long road.  Though Sin has been ten years in the making, it feels like it has been forty.

 

It's another thing to cross off my 'bucket list', along with sky-diving and walking through the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, both of which I've done in the past couple of years.  I lapsed, but I didn't give up.  I wandered off the path, but my muse took me by the hand and guided me back on.

 

Nor should you - give up.

 

Ten years ago, I wrote a short story.  Forty years ago I did the same and added a little drawing.

 

A couple of years ago I shook hands with the Community Development officer at the central library who bought ten copies of my book to put in each of the local libraries.  Within ten minutes of that meeting I'd sold another ten to WH Smiths, a well know book store chain here in the UK - the one, through all those years, that I wanted to walk into and see my book on the shelf of.

 

Never say never.

Wrestling the Muse...

 The Muse.  Now there's a character.  If you could picture him, what would he be like?  I imagine him with an eye mask and a sly grin.  A long dark coat that has a lining of more colours than Joseph's Technicolor garment of choice.  His hair is just so except when you catch him out of the corner of your eye.  Then it's wild and unkempt, a nest of Medusa-like proportions.

 

Then the mask drops and you see him juggling words, deliberately dropping them into a pile at his feet that he dances upon.  As each falls, he plucks another out of the air, smoother than David Copperfield or Dynamo.

 

The Muse.  He stands before you, but you're tied to the chair.  You want to reach out to him, but he stands just beyond your grasp, his eyes watching you and his sly grin taunting you.

 

"You want a piece of me?" he asks.

 

But then, you manage to slip free of your bindings and launch yourself forward.  He skips out of the way, giggling, but you catch him with your foot and he falls with you.  A scuffle ensues and you succeed in pulling the mask from his face.

 

Of course, he looks like you.  Who else would taunt you with words and ideas tossed into the air and piled at your feet?

 

But you have the mask in your hand and the coat is torn open to reveal its multi-coloured interior.  Woven into the fabric are the words that his sleight of hand made appear from nothing.

 

Your smile matches his own as you don the Coat of Many Characters and take up your pen.

 

The Muse pours you a coffee and pulls up a chair beside you.  After all, he was only messing.  He can't just give you the words.

 

You have to want them!

The Case of the Vanishing Idea...

Don't you hate it when you get an idea, but then, when you're in a position to actually do something with it (write it down and CREATE), the idea is gone? Just on the outer edge of your memory, dancing about, leaning in just to tantalise and tease you before jumping back out of reach?

Don't you just hate it?

Hmmm...

I've been struggling, a little, with Mortal Sin. Not in a religious way, but in a creative one. Mortal Sin is the sequel to Sin and I was stuck fast with the whats, whys, whens and who-be-dos.

The 'where' was easy. I was - or rather am - setting it, once again, in Grimsby. They say 'Write what you know,' and I know Grimsby. Not quite New York or London, but it was founded by a Dane trying to protect the heir to the throne of another country from assassination. Not too shabby an origin, methinks.

I'd come up with some ideas, including a 'half-way house' where the our man (though he doesn't know he's Our Man) is taken by a woman feeling sorry for his plight. I knew exactly where this house was going to be. Welholme Road. Large homes overlooking the People's Park. Perfect. Enough room and rooms for the various odd tenants to come and go and to gradually become more... well... ODD.

Luckily, I know someone, my wife, who knows those houses inside out and can give me highly detailed plans and information about the layout etc. From the type of flooring to the colour wallpaper to the light switches, I can get a real image of what they look like inside. Not that I'll necessarily go into that amount of detail in the book. You need to picture it yourself - but I will be able to picture it myself too.

Even if yours and mine don't quite match, that's fine. It's all in the eye of the beholder, but we'll both be walking, pretty much, hand in hand.

But the rest. Sin's DEAL. What of that? Well, I had inklings. I had musings. I had odd samples of script all worked out, though they'd be forgotten by the time I came to that scene - if I ever did. But the actual MEAT, the food on which the hungry reader would satiate their appetite? Well...

A friend at work, yesterday, asked me if I'd watched the new Jonathan Creek on BBC1 on Monday night. I hadn't and I kicked myself for not realising it was on. Jonathan Creek, for the un-initiated, is an offbeat detective show starring the wonderfully strange Alan Davies as a magicians 'assistant' (in that he's the one who comes up with the illusions). He finds himself tied up in various murders and mysteries which have the police stumped and his unique outlook is the only thing that can solve them.

Jonathan Creek is... different. It's comfortable and quirky and fun and I always enjoy it. As such, I wasn't too happy that I'd missed this episode. The show finished a couple or more years ago, so I wasn't expecting it to resurface. On Monday night, oblivious to Creek’s resurrection, I'd been watching Broadchurch, an excellent drama series starring (amongst other familiar faces) ex. Doctor Who, David Tennant. So, last night, tablet in hand, I watched Jonathan Creek courtesy of the BBC iPlayer. And it was a welcome return indeed - not disappointing in the least.

So? And?

And. I don't know what, in the programme, prompted me. I really don't. But, something in that 90 minutes of conundrums and disappearing bodies, an idea popped into my head. It wandered around for a while, letting me concentrate on the show, and then, as I lay in bed, it expanded in my mind and became a plot. It became a three course meal for those ravenous readers. That was it. That was what would happen. That was the what and also the WHY.

Then I fell asleep.

Then I woke up.

Now I'm sitting here berating myself, once again (for this in not the first time) not having a notepad beside my bed.

The idea has faded. It's stepped out for a moment and may be sometime. I can just see its shadow, and its Cheshire Cat grin as it knows I'm trying to grab hold and I can't.

Maybe I'll look the other way. Pretend I'm not interested. Maybe then it'll step back within reach and I can lunge, notepad in hand, and snatch it back up, shovelling it back into my brain like coal into a bucket - fuel for the fire. No, it'd be more cramming it in, like the last pair of pants into a suitcase that you have to sit on to zip up, knowing you'll be over the weight restriction and, once opened, you'll never get it packed quite the same.

Either way, hopefully we'll be reunited, like Jonathan Creek and his not-quite sidekick Sheridan Smith. Let's hope the puzzles will be solved and the end result won't be a crime to the literary world. Eh?

Time...

Where does time go? Who steals it? And why do they take my best intentions along with it?

Damn cheek if you ask me.

Who decided to only have 24 hours in the day? Hmmm? Didn't they realise we need at least twice as many as that?

In my story I Am Death, part of my Dark Places collection, the Grim Reaper talks about 'an interminable period of time between the end of one day and the beginning of another - at true Mid Night - when forever fits neatly into a heartbeat. The Null.' We could all do with one of those, couldn't we?

Why am I so bothered, though? Why do I pine for the stolen minutes and hours?

Because I'm a writer. Because, if I don't write, the words threaten to dribble out of my nose. That'd be messy. I have sinus problems as it is, without the added complication of Vocabularious Vomitus, or whatever it might be called.

But... I also have a day job. I also have a family. I also need to market. The latter also (useful word, that) a way to interact with other writers and fans. I can actually say I have real fans, based on some of the comments I've received for my work. What ends up happening, however, is that writing takes a backseat to everything else.

No wonder Sin took me ten years to complete!

Maybe, one day, we'll all be like Igglepop, my strange friend who runs the Under the Bed Sweet Shop (where you go when your mum says "Sweet dreams"):

He'd a time machine in his belly, which he used twice a day, and the complete Enid Blyton on his wellie, carved in clay (the left boot, of course, certainly not the right! He was strange but not crazy! That would be such a sight!).

Well, maybe I'll pass on Enid Blyton. Classic as they are, I'll settle for The Belgariad or the Odd Thomas books, thanks. Still, the time machine would be useful. Or a voluntary Groundhog Day.

I think all such things are whimsy and want, though. I'll have to continue to let loose my Muse when I can, and strap him down for the rest of the time. He's a wriggly so-and-so, I have to say. I just hope he doesn't escape whilst I'm writing a report or writing out my shopping list.

OK, I don't write out a shopping list. I tend to wander around, picking the things I think I need off the shelves, knowing I'll be half way home before I remember the three things I've forgotten but am desperately short of. But that's half the fun.

So, time. It runs through my fingers and scampers off, laughing at me as it disappears over the horizon. There'll never be enough. Apparently Time is relative.

A far distant cousin, from what I've seen.