I am currently attempting to craft a workable manuscript from my various drafts of this.  I have written several drafts but there is obviously a marked difference in styles. I felt that, as the book takes in some extremely sensitive and serious issues, the sardonic tone I was writing in originally was not appropriate; but I worry that I have wandered into a form of writing that is too self-conscious and not as real.

Here is an extract from one of the early drafts, it will have no context for you, but nonetheless...

"I watched Samuel through the bars of my cell, and through the bars of his.  His face was tired and his hands were scarred and gnarled, while I looked at him they suddenly closed up into fists as if his fingers were startled sea anemones.  He was huddled up on the simple bench that served as a seat and a bed.  His back against the wall and his head leant against the brick, his eyes closed, his mouth set in a pursed frown.

In the permanent false light of the silent cells I could see that so much age had etched itself into his skin, there were lines scratched into his face as if by the talons of some small but carnivorous birds that had paced about his flesh, scoring out these scars with tireless claws.  I sat on the floor of my cell, with my head leant against the cold metal bars, with my hand pushed through the cage and stretched out to him, but not reaching. And I watched him mutter and shudder, as if at the constant foraging of those invisible companions that tormented him.

Then, after some time his breathing slowed down, his fists slowly unfurled, and he slipped into sleep.

And the weight fell from his face, and the lines soothed, like the lines of drought in cracked earth healing to rain, and for a moment I could recognise once more the face of the child that I had known so many years before.

When I saw that familiar kind and noble face, something gave in me.

I found myself sobbing for the years that had passed between us.  Gulping, quiet, sobs.

I wept for myself as much as for him, for the children that we had once been, lost to the savagery of the world and of time.  I wept for the smile that once had shone on Samuel’s face, that had been torn away from him, as if by thieves desecrating some splendid jewelled church.   I wept because I had once prayed there, I had once believed there. I wept for the love of our hearts, and how it had spoiled into hate, I wept for our hopes that had been vanquished.

I wept for Jude and for Rosemary, and all the love that ever had been.

Samuel, in his rags, I in my expensive clothes, spent the night held apart by the metal cages in which we lay.  All night the tears soaked my shirt, and no sleep came, my brain burned with thought and my eyes stang with the bitterness of tears. I stayed awake and I kept my vigil over him, just as he once had guarded over me, that I too might sleep."

Last update : 15-06-2009 22:25

Fiction

These are the projects I am working on currently.  They are ideas that I have been working on for many years, in some sense I have been waiting to be a good enough writer to do them justice.  I am not sure that I am yet, but nonetheless I persevere.  

I do not aspire to write because I want fame,  as far as I can tell fame is of almost no worth in the 21st century, but perhaps a similar vanity might drive an aspiration to seek posterity. Of course, the ridiculous destructive nature of humanity may well mean that posterity is an untenable ideal.  These words will linger for a few centuries as zeroes and ones, a few years as inks and dead, compressed tree pulp, while the moss grows over desolate cities and perhaps the ragged pairs of pincers rise from the smoldering seas.

I aspire to write because I want to make sense of the world in a form that is imbued with emotion, thought and experiential, metaphysical and notional, humane truth.  I want to make beautiful, meaningful things.

The Wisdom of Solomon

 My aim with this book is to take a broad sweep across the landscape of human dogma,through the life of one character whose innocence is corrupted by the delusions of others.

I often feel that the scope necessary for such a work is beyond me  and my capability as a writer, I wrote a draft of it but I was not satisfied with the depth reached, so I have continued to research extensively and attempted to rewrite it.   I think that some of what I have achieved so far is competent and some even good.  If I can do the themes justice, it should be a fairly robust work.  I will not be happy until it is a well crafted and sufficient work.

You can read an excerpt, and there will be more content available to you by registering

The dead don't cry

I had the idea for this novel around 10 years ago, and I wrote a couple of chapters and then, pleased with the character, I developed a plan.  It is a story that needs protecting from too much disclosure in order to be enjoyable. You can read an excerpt.

Come on in the water's fine

When I was 16, so many years ago now.  I had an idea for a book and so I began to write it.  It was a consolidation of my childhood love of fable and of fairy tales and of some unformed (uninformed, perhaps) but heartfelt ideas about the world.  I wrote it over two years, and the result was a confused, overly earnest, mess.

The thing is, that I wanted to capture the very clumsy innocence that I knew I was shedding,  and I was aware, even as I wrote it, that it was not a proper work of literature, but that it was still important that I write it, if only for myself.

 But within it there are several strands and elements that stand the test of time, and it is my intention now to write a version of this as a collection of short stories.

Joke

I wrote this in my early twenties.  It is pretentious and playful, and probably the most consciously literary of anything I have written.

Last update : 04-09-2008 06:43