Saturday 20 February 2016

HANGING AROUND



Obsession has climbed on my back, wrapped itself around my shoulders, my head – which is lost inside a huge fiction...yes, thirteen books one after another will do that to you. I'm back in True Blood land, living in Bon Temps with Sookie Stackhouse, hanging on every word, to the extent of sometimes going back a bit to re-listen because my attention had strayed to the real world...of just one of my other fantasy places. It's a nasty addiction, this audio book trail, this reading with your eyes shut...this falling in love with the deep south accent of the same reader through the books. I've only escaped for a little while to skin Facebook, Twitter, and to force a scribble for blogging. The last book is calling me so I think I might have time to make a quick cuppa after I post this before the walls close in. outside I hear the rain running foul of the wind and am glad to be imprisoned in this wee flat, in this cosy bed.


Though, last couple of days I've been working on another set of tarot majors, including creating the hanged man above. I took that pic in Budapest more than ten years ago, and thought he would be an interesting take on the traditional image.

Tuesday 2 February 2016

Writing with the Tarot

I posted a while ago about using tarot as a prompt, and that I was expanding the exercise to create a stream of characters, names, places and events/plot/situations. So now I have recently returned to the first story that came out of this project and am expanding it. I’d stopped at a thousand words, thinking that it was a short story, but as the months passed I questioned that. It had occurred to me that this may be a novel. Now I think it should be a novella, and it’s sitting somewhere around 6k. The first thousand words sets up the atmosphere of a happy home expecting a late baby, and the expectations of change hitting the mother in an unexpected way; at first she was the key figure and the major change happening to her, and everyone else in the family being satellites who would, of course, respond to what she had done…but I had left the reader to imagine that response.

I myself, even though I’d created them, was charmed by all these characters and that’s probably why I couldn’t get them out of my head. So when I was writing something else I realised that the two girls were Violet and Melody, so I changed the names and moved the pieces over and found the perfect situation to slip their story onto the already written one…and because I’d done that it was natural to continue on with yet another character from the household after that.

So, the tale appears to revolve around one morning, and the choices each character makes and how they affect the dynamics of the family and its future. I did think of killing someone but that would halt the onward progress of their choices. I’m more than half-way through the third section and faced with real action in a building site (which I know nothing about) so I’m faced with the prospect of having to go photograph some of the doings of house-building - luckily, there’s one near me… I just need to wait until the stormy weather calms down so I can go spying.

In this section there are two of the characters, the oldest daughter and her father, coming together really just to show a more stabilising unit within the unit, but during this time something unusual comes to light and perhaps we get to know what’s going on inside this pleasant man’s head…some of the time. It is a very female crowd, and he’s the only man - although, the mother is expecting their first son.

If this exercise is anything to go by, I should get a ton of work out of the whole thing: this set-up came from only the first card in a spread - there are six more to go!

Monday 11 January 2016

Goodnight David



An Ordinary Night in the Muscular Arms

There was gliding downstairs and a gold silk skirt swirling
around my feet, blown up and wavering at my movements
and Bowie pounding his Jean Genie out from the walls filling
my skinny soul with the impossible fantastic dream of this me
barely eighteen, a queen in a bar, in charge of the smallest
lounge searching for a bottle of pink gin that didn't exist – all
I knew was the longing for glamour in a cheap skirt that held me
entranced, dancing with David in the world, letting go-go-go.

Friday 8 January 2016

BOOKS AHOY!

I think I’m on the boil now, my attention caught up in reading three books; one is paper, Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy - very deep and interesting…a bit mind-boggling actually; on Kindle I’ve sunk into a freebie from Bookbub called Wolves by C. Gockel and really loving it…only just finished chapter one so I’m hoping it will keep up the good work; just started listening to the third book, Stephen King’s Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which is a collection of stories…and I love his short/long stories.
There are sooo many unread books in this house, and my Kindle is following suit. I like to have plenty of choice when in a mad reading phase…which is where this recent mad writing phase has led me. So now I want to be all about schedules, and allotting half-hour sittings or more many times a day - and that doesn’t account for the time spent listening to a book… I will always do more of that. I seem to have already done quite a lot of things this year and we’re only at the end of the first week! Things are looking up for me.

Today, I slipped into the local charity shop and found a memoir by Janice Galloway, started reading it and can’t put it down - it refuses to share me with others, so I might spend the whole weekend with it.

Thursday 7 January 2016

LAUNCH DAY


It’s launch day for the anthology, Tales from Elsewhere, which includes a story written by me. There are some brilliant and wonderful tales in this book. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Elsewhere-Sarah-Thomas/dp/1522725628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452170228&sr=8-1&keywords=tales+from+elsewhere

I pondered what to blog about, on launch-day, and have already written about our group of writers on my personal blog - here, so I think the perfect thing is to offer you the out-takes, the bits of writing at the beginning of this project that never stayed in the story.

September 2014

My notes from that weekend include phrases like, ‘It’s bosomy here…’ There is also an unfinished poem, but I want to let that lie around for a while more.


OUT-TAKES

Liza had felt the invitation, the crisp flick of paper in her hand; she feared her sweating fingertips would smudge the officialness of her name, her right to go there...to drive up that lane listening to the arse of her poor old car dragging its tail on the un-gouged middle. This place was nowhere, with no witnesses...anyone standing on the moon would never give that landscape a moment's thought, wouldn't know of its existence.
She stepped out of the car in a gravelled circle and pushed the door closed with a click. Someone knew she had come, would have heard her scrunching up the lane and now the gravel could bring the meeting onto the path. Liza was instantly taken with a table and chairs set out under a tree but she turned towards the cottage's open door.
'Hello,' she called.
A sound from the door on her right might've been an answering voice – Liza opened the door and walked in...into a bathroom and found a little round woman sitting in a bath with all her clothes on.
'Did you want to speak to the Oracle?' the wet woman asked.
'Is that you? Are you the oracle?'
'Well, I'm in her bath so it stands to reason that I am probably her.'
'But you're fully dressed.'
'Which is my own business in my own bathroom.'
'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that, but the front door was wide open.'
'You must be expected then. Take a seat.'
She motioned for Liza to sit on the fluffy lid of the toilet.
Liza sat and looked at the woman.
'Why are you taking a bath in your clothes..if you don't mind me asking?'
'Why should I mind you asking me personal questions?'
'Well, there was no answer at first then I thought I heard someone say, Come in.'
'What's your name dear?'
'Liza.'
'Hmmm.'
Liza took out her invitation and waved it. 'I was invited,' she said, 'though I don't know why.'
'Well, Liza. Perhaps you might like to climb that little tree and pick me a few apples before we begin.' She pointed out of the window.
'Begin what?'
'Introductions of course.'
Liza stood up and peered around the flapping curtain out of the open window.
'Oh. Okay,' she said, and left the room.
She walked down the side of the garden, looking into bushy corners but no one appeared. It was a big space, not quite a lawn but pleasant short grass. Picking the apples was only the first task of seven; there were mushrooms to get, chestnuts to gather from the cemetery and Ginger-beer to bring up from the old schoolhouse. Now she was stuck at the fish and had no idea what the other two chores would be.

*


I can't see Liza in the kitchen but I know she's still staring at that gutted fish on the kitchen table; she knows it's dead but can't get past the wide eyes, won't chop the head off because it's a vile thing to do but is in a quandary about serving it up cooked. She's a carnivore for God's sake. Distance is a dance. I only met her a few hours ago and already she trusts me to teach her something that will help her to cope with all the things she can't talk about.
September here is bosomy. I live under this tree, sit outside all day and pretend it can change me, make me more fundamental, grounded in the basics that exclude electronics...and yet, knowing that the skies are hoaching with technology and I was reduced to candles, oil lamps and scrubbing carbolic wouldn't bring me the tranquillity I'd need to fulfil my purpose – if I had one. Liza thinks I have; she heard it from a good source.

*

'Oh I do love a bit of company,' said the Oracle when Liza came to join her under the tree. 'You arrived on time dear, now come sit. I feel the skin holding us together burst, seeding our words into autumn...'
'I feel as if I've been here for days.'
'And all the better for it. Tell me now, what is it that consumes you?'
'Last night I dreamed about a woman who could astral walk, talk to others and live a different kind of life but her body was killed while she was away, and all I can think about now is where does that leave her? Are we attached to our bodies even when we're gone? Would she be a waif-ghost?’
'What do you think?'
'I'd want to believe the most, the positive but the state of the world these days, what with all the privatisation and food-banks, I'm leaning towards the opposite. She's fucked, isn't she?'
'But she doesn't exist in the world of politics so cut them from the picture and see what's left.'
'Everything.'
'Exactly.'
'The fish must be cooked by now,' Liza said.
'Yes, the others will be along soon, oh yes I hear them coming up the lane.'
As they walked up the lawn voices drifted through the trees that used to be hedges.

There had been no introductions, no names, just women passing bowls of food to each other. Sauce boats sailed up each side of the table, crossing at one point before being captured and re-filled. The great fish had been picked clean, only remnants scattered inside the curved cage. Liza loved the way the steaming flesh had slipped off the bone just from the hook of a fork. Apples, cheese and cake appeared like magic as hands lifted the old course away...the talking caught her at every turn – she couldn't keep up. There was wine but not too much to notice and yet there must've been a lot. She counted fifteen at the table, though some of them just wouldn't stay still and their faces blurred into smiling characters from a story she'd read in her childhood. What was she doing here?

The next morning, in the middle of all the small conversations going on all over the place, there were shouts and laughter, and two heads rising over the lilac bushes. A little round woman was taking photos of the two gyrating women on the trampoline. Liza stood behind her and watched her capture them up in the air, legs and arms dancing – she was breathless just watching them and the world was suddenly quite overwhelming. Why was she here? And then a memory slipped into her mind – had she eaten anything? She couldn't remember the taste of the fish the night before, but she must've had some...she was right there amongst the others, who were all eating and enthusing and congratulating the cook. When she looked down there was a mug of tea in her hand.
'I am here. It is real, isn't it?'
No one answered her; she wasn't sure if she'd spoken out loud, but it was pretty noisy where she was and anyone passing was watching and laughing at the trampoliners.

https://talesfromelsewhereblog.wordpress.com/



Saturday 2 January 2016

HUNGER GAMES

I have a new project - of course I do. It will also help re-shape an old project, which is good; I'm building a book of prompts, and it's been lying around now for a couple of years, more than partly done so this idea should polish it into a finished product.

January is going to be all about Hunger in all its glory or mess, and the poem below is still in first draft but in essence is the birth of a creative spirit...whether you're new to writing or not.

HUNGER GAMES

The days in front of me are lawns of empty pages…
my stomach ponders the arrival of more food
but I'm thinking about women starving to feed children,
and the news I can't watch will offer visions of need
into my poor but satisfactory life. I buy bargain food,
save my money for £300 phones, and gadgets
that starve my muscles of exercise – I'm comfortable,
not ashamed to have survived my struggles.