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FEEL

10/20/2015

A flash fiction from my LOST AND FOUND collection: FEEL

Clare did not feel any more; she had learned not to. It was easier that way.

At first she felt everything; her entire emotional arsenal in constant overdrive, overwhelming every other part of her, squeezing out logic and reality until only the very basic instinct of survival was left.

They had said there were stages of grief: anger, incomprehension; she could not remember now, not that it ever really mattered.

The hardest part was always in the early hours of the morning, waking from a troubled dream, only to find herself in an even more desperate place. There was nothing to be done then, but sit and think and project futures that were never going to happen, that had no chance of realisation. There was no hope in that place, no reprieve. Even now, that window before dawn, when time stood still, nothing existed outside of sadness.

As deep as those wells of despair sank, there were other moments, happier moments too. Sitting in the sun, feeling the heat touch her arms and cheek, yielding to the wave of contentment brought on by the warmth. They would never last more than a few seconds, but they provided just a taste of blissful release, the escape of which she dreamed.

Sometimes remembering helped; not when they were together – those memories stung like raw wounds; but memories of peacefulness, of contentment - walking across a field contemplating nothing more than the colours in the sky - times of nothingness, that is what they seemed – empty of terror and despair. There was a time.
Who designed her to be like this? Why furnish her life with joy and love, then snatch it away, holding it just out of reach to tempt and taunt?

No long now. The pain helped ease her suffering, made it somehow okay, her dues, her thirty pieces of silver.

Not that it mattered.
Not that she cared.
Not anymore.

She thought it would be easier than this; a gentle drifting towards the sleep she craved. One last bitter joke denied her even that as death’s cruel fingers clawed their way around her heart, teasing her with their grip until finally wringing the life from her, slowly, simply, finally.

Clare did not feel anymore. She did not need to.

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THE NERD IN ME

10/15/2015

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How can you love sci-fi and not love all the paraphernalia that goes with it. Nobody ‘quite likes’ Star Wars (with the notable exception of my husband, although I think he only says that to appease me!) and if you grew up on a diet of Star Trek, you will no doubt have followed The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager; you probably even ploughed through Enterprise because by then it had become a matter of pride.

Science fiction is not merely a genre, it’s a commitment. I used to think it was a phase, but as I have grown older I realise that it is my filthy secret, hidden inside the closet, along with my Barbarella costume and Star Trek communicator. It is an addiction that I cannot break.

Then there are the sub cultures. As a child of the 70s growing up in the South West of England, my influences were Blakes 7, The Hitch-hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy and Doctor Who, a far cry from the sophisticated production and state of the art effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Close Encounters of The Third Kind. I’m still a dirty sci-fi kind of a girl, which is why I love Firefly above all the others – that wonderful escapism so deeply entrenched in reality. Give me a couple of horses and a ray gun over 3D virtual space walking any day.

So how did sci-fi become so rooted within my soul? Well, my parents were the generation that followed the space race, watched the moon landings live and imagined a future where, by the turn of the century, we would all be vacationing on Mars. They had that desperate need to believe, in the same way I leave out mince pies and sherry for Santa on Christmas Eve, long before my teenage children have gone to bed. They introduced me to the next best thing to actual space travel: they read me Carl Sagan as a bedtime story. It runs through my family’s DNA, it is part of our makeup.

Of course, that then leads to the level of commitment to which you aspire, the ‘nerdometer’ against which we measure ourselves. It is at these points of self-appraisal that I regress immediately to the primary school in order to assert my more highly tuned nerdiness, my deeper understanding and greater knowledge of all things nerd, over the pretenders around me.

How many times have you heard “I’ve watched Star Wars over 100 times,” as if that statement is some kind of badge of honour, membership of a club, extra merits for stamina, but few will admit that they did it purely to perfect their Chewbacca call or Hans Solo gait (although it has to be said, a sizeable proportion of time has been spent by half the audience studying Hans Solo in the utmost detail!

The real nerds embrace the commitment, the attention to detail. I cannot count how many months of my life have I devoted to creating the perfect fancy dress costume (and let me tell you, you do not attend a party dressed as a Borg if you intend to eat, drink, dance, sit or pee at any point during the event). Come on, who hasn’t got the T shirt with the obscure line from the film that only true fans would appreciate – why? To give that little nod, that knowing smile – ‘we know, we share something the rest of the world cannot understand’.

My children too have learned to live with science fiction, from being sent to school on mufti day as a very cute six year old Malcolm Reynolds, to attending Comic Con as Scarlet Witch. They knew there was no point in fighting it and so it is with a sense of pride that I dust the action figures and tidy away the Alien box set, knowing that I have done my job as a parent.

So yes, I am a sci-fi nerd and always will be. The costumes, the conventions, the DVD director’s commentaries, the fan clubs, the social media are so much part of the books, the films and the TV shows in which we can immerse ourselves. The more there is, the more we crave, which is perhaps why some of us go in to create our own, to be a part of it, to join in the party at a fundamental level. Why? It is because of a collective belief in humanity, in imagination, in possibility.

That is why I am a nerd. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Isaac Asimov - "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." ("My Own View," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)

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The tools of the trade

10/12/2015

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Every tradesperson loves their tools, cares for them, cherishes them even: a favourite screwdriver, a particular paintbrush, the worn but comfy chair.

Writers have different tools.

Yes, yes, yes I have a great fountain pen with which I love to write but, let’s be honest, writers will carve words out of stone if they absolutely have to.

Pens, pencils, notebooks; we all have our preferred type, but all of these are short-lived, disposable and, however much we may love a particular roller ball, one day it will make its way to the great pencil case in the sky.

These are the tools of my trade, oddly nothing to do with writing at all: drinking the right coffee from the right coffee cup; a slice of toasted sough dough or, on occasion, a bagel. My own space, no disruptions beyond the sounds of traffic on the road and the occasional snatched scrap of conversation from passers-by.

I can write anywhere, but I have to be comfortable in that space. I need to be able to immerse myself in the lives and minds of my characters, to become fully absorbed into my story. It’s not easy. The very process by which I am trying to promote myself in order to enable my writing is the very thing that detracts from that comfortable space. Social media, in all its glory, conspires against me and my grand plan, seeping into my subconscious, tempting me with tangents. It’s all there to disturb the balance.

My tools are my peace, my tranquillity, my imagination. Just give me a chisel and I am ready to go.

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Procrastination as an art form

10/7/2015

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I would like to claim I have been procrastinating for months about this post; in actual fact it has been getting on for half a century.
The issue is, I think, a firm grounding in the art of procrastination, along with a healthy dollop of self-doubt.
Writers' block? That's nothing compared to the stomach twisting, heart lurching agonies of accepting that somebody else might read, or even that they might actually want to read, what I have to say. In fact It was not really part of my agenda when I sat down to write The Minerva Project; writing is just something I do. The concept of other people reading what I have written had somehow hidden itself deep beneath layers of publishing dreams and projected successes as a multi-million pound author.

If only the rest of the world were to think the same as I do.

It would appear to me, in my own little writing world inside my head, that I am so full of wit when it comes to writing tweets of one hundred and forty characters. My perception of my own brilliance and hilarity thrives on the brevity of social media, but when it comes to the permanence of a blog, reality emerges into my head space and with it, an accompanying aura of self-doubt: yes a very definite sense of doom.

Like anyone who has ever taken the drastic step of combining paper and ink, I find it virtually impossible to prevent a tiny piece of my soul tagging along with each phrase, so that any published work becomes somewhat akin to posting naked photographs of myself on the internet. Twenty five years ago I might have possessed the self-belief to bare my inner being to the world, confident in my abilities and even oblivious to the concept of rejection. (Thankfully the World Wide Web did not exist then and consequently no such photographs exist!)

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FEEL

THE NERD IN ME

The tools of the trade

Procrastination as an art form

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