Life, 75-words at a time

Something came up at our most recent WordWatchers meeting, a tiny thing really, a passing comment, that has been whispering away at the back of my mind, so I have decided to address it. The gist of the comment is that ‘we’ as individuals, try as we might, are affected by our environment, which in turn effects our mood, which, in turn, affects not only what we write, but how much we write...

Seems obvious, but perhaps, it’s not.

It was Somerset Maughan who wrote: “...no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it” and when I look at WW members Charlotte Betts and Abbie Rushton who are now published authors, with book deals, but still have day-to-day-pays-the-bills jobs, I see this with absolute clarity. They have, to a greater or lesser extent, become a production facility for words, stories, novels. They have to write even when they don’t want to, even, when they can’t!

To be honest it makes the idea of actually being a ‘proper’ published author quite scary - even off-putting.

For me, WordWatchers has been many things, a friendship, love even, of my fellow writers, a time, just a few hours a month, to find a safe harbour amongst a group of like minded (but, equally, very different) writers, to chat, discuss, and to confess...

Confessions in WordWatchers used to be just that. Having set a target from the month before (and documented this intent in the minutes) the confession was your chance to explain, usually in a verbose and carefully crafted manner, your excuse for not meeting the target you had set yourself. The confessions have changed over the years often becoming a far more cathartic affair for some of the members. This has become particular true for me.

You see, for me, life seems to be becoming increasingly complicated. My wife, Vee, suffers from something called Fibromyalgia. It’s a complicated illness and not helped by patchy understanding, or acceptance of what it entails on a day-to-day basis from family, friends (or people you thought were friends in some instances) and even, to our surprise, the medical profession. My wife used to have good days and bad days but now, we ‘joke’ that she now has bad days and worse days. Even the good days now aren’t really good and are tainted with the knowledge that whatever efforts are made on a particular day to be ‘normal’ will have (increasingly long) periods of massively ‘bad days’.

As I write this, it’s January 21st, almost a month after my wife’s concerted effort to be ‘normal’ for Christmas Day, almost a month of constant pain, being unable to walk, or, on some days, get out of bed for more than a few hours at a time. A month where she is often in some much pain that even my attempts to wrap my arms around her and comfort her must be shunned because they are too painful. Yes, that’s as awful as it sounds.

Families get Fibromyalgia, but unfortunately only one of the family gets to carry it around. For me, the best, but still poor, analogy I can give in literary terms is that Vee is Frodo, carrying the burden of the One Ring, but I cannot be her Samwise Gamgee and, even briefly, take up her burden when all seems lost. It is heart-breaking.

As Vee’s health has deteriorated, especially in the last year, I have done my best to maintain my writing. My novel is finished but the 2nd draft is all but abandoned, my time too fractured to do the edit the justice I know it deserves. My writing comes in those tiny snippets of prose that some of you may be aware that I have regularly featured on the website Paragraph Planet. I do my writing a precious 75-words at a time. Ideas, stories, characters, dialogue, concepts... all bashed out in 10-15 minutes, tiny insects of literary prose frozen in storytelling amber, ready to be polished into something even more precious at a later date. Well, that’s what I originally thought.

Having written over 400 of these 75-word stories now I have begun to collate them, analyse them, sift and sort them, into collections, themes, discard piles and ‘to be further polished’ piles. What is interesting (to me at least) is that these little stories are, in many ways, the barometer of my life, and my psyche. I can see the stories where I am very down, sad, morose. I can see the stories where I am trying to write myself out of my doldrums. I can see where I succeed and where I fail (and tumble back down into sad and depressed tales of death and misery). The gaps in time are telling too - gaps where I am too sad or pre-occupied to write anything... Those are bad times.

My little stories show me that the concept of family is incredibly important to me and that my own family is an incredible and constant source of inspiration. They show me that I am a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer at my core. They show me that I think about death quite often, but also that, fortunately, I am capable of poking fun at and making a joke of the figure with the scythe.

Lastly, they show me that, come what may, I am a writer, that I must write. I am grateful for this because without this escape, this safety valve I may have gone mad a long time ago. Of course I may still go mad, but I suspect I will be able to document the process 75-words at a time...

***

75-Squared, a collection of 75 stories, each 75-words long, beautifully illustrated by Helen Withington will be released sometime in 2015 and then you’ll have your chance to explore the little facets of my mind.

Thank-you for your time.

John

A Fond Farewell

I went to see Battle of Five Armies today. Life will never be the same.

In years past I have watched Jackson’s Tolkien movies at one minute past midnight on the day of their release, so I could watch them the first minute I could. On this final occasion I was in the cinema a whole thirteen hours later - an indication perhaps of the lessening hold this last trilogy has on me.

Nevertheless long before the credits rolled I had tears on my cheeks and plenty more in my eyes. Billy Boyd sang his song and I had to catch myself lest snot lay waste to my dwindling tissues. I was the last one in the cinema, lights up and bleary eyed as the last of the credits rolled. A lone VUE girl in her black shirt and trousers, baseball cap, brushed up popcorn and cartons and pop bottles. In some respects I was afraid to leave. Peter Jackson has shaped and driven so much of this creative mind, I was struggling to say goodbye. I know it is not goodbye of course but to Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth the journey is at an end.

It is now twelve years since Jackson and friends first lit a creative fire inside of me. In that time my writing adventure has been filled with journeys. From writing endless blogs after realising I had no words to paint fiction narratives. The marvel of joining a book club and realising there was a world of fiction outside commercial genres. Learning, learning learning. From World history, religion, psychology. Writing short narratives that evolved to short stories that became writing a book. The five year passion of Chasing Innocence and learning traditional and digital publishing on the way. Joining a writing group and the first meeting with my book clasped tight in hand. Through shared experiences these last three years with the writers of WordWatchers. Always easier in my own company I surprised myself and made a few friends along the way.

Mixing with writers offers endless opportunities for distraction, often following a common cause to better writing. It has helped me discover the type of writer I am. Significantly in these three years I have failed to finish a single book despite working on three.

The lack of completion has come largely with my ambitious goals for these projects - I had to further evolve as a writer to be able to write them. Recently I also realised I'm not finishing books because I'm a method actor of writers, all or nothing. Which doesn't work well with distractions.

As I sat in the cinema with the credits rolling it dawned on me it wasn’t only Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth that had come to pass. If I wanted to write these stories and bring life to the characters my time with WordWatchers had too.

It was a bitter sweet moment, realising a goodbye and in the same moment the excitement of an obvious path. I've a lot of treasured memories these last three years and friendships I hope will continue.

For now I bid you a fond farewell.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ir8rVl2Z4

Abbie’s Marvellous Moments

Abbie’s Marvellous Moments

#1 – The Book Deal

 On the 13^th of December, exactly a year ago, I travelled into London to meet my soon-to-be editor, Kate. It happened to be a Friday. Friday the 13^th – clearly not so unlucky for me! That day was the first of several marvellous moments along my journey to publication – a day filled with such joy I just have to share it with you!I got to Little, Brown’s offices super-early. I have to say, the imposing Unilever House did nothing for my nerves. I sat in the lobby, researching other titles on Atom’s list. There was Twilight, of course, and a lot of similar supernatural stuff. Where would I fit in? Had they made a mistake and confused my manuscript with someone else’s?My agent, Jodie, arrived, and I nervously confessed that I felt like I was going for a job interview. She looked at me and said dryly, ‘This is like going for a job interview’. Great. Thanks!As it happened, she was wrong. Kate practically bounded out to reception to meet us, full of smiles and energy and enthusiasm. It didn’t feel formal or interviewy at all. We chatted about work parties and Christmas jumpers (Jodie was sporting a particularly fine example!). Kate told me how much everyone on the team loved Unspeakable. I thought she’d come with a list of things she’d want to change, to see how I’d react, if I’d turn into some sort of hideous monster who refused to alter a single precious word. She didn’t. She vaguely mentioned the end needed some work, but that didn’t seem to dampen her passion for the book.I also thought that it would be a pre-meeting to see how they felt about me before they decided whether to make an offer. It wasn’t. Kate was saying that she’d contact Jodie as soon as Jodie was back in her office, to try to get things tied up before Christmas. Did that mean … I hardly dared to hope, but it did seem like they were poised, ready to make an offer.Jodie and I had a debrief in a coffee shop afterwards. It was good to let go of some of the tension and chat about what we might be expecting in terms of the offer – one of the most surreal conversations I’ve ever had!After I’d said goodbye, I walked back to the station, phoning my fiancée, then my parents. I didn’t know what to say! My words just tumbled out in one big mess. I didn’t want to get hopes up by mentioning that I thought they might make an offer that very afternoon, but that was kind of what Kate was saying … wasn’t it?!I wandered along South Bank, looking at the Christmas stalls. I bought myself some celebratory mulled wine. Even if they didn’t make an offer, what a fantastic response and wonderful feeling to see someone else so engaged and excited about my book.On the train back, I was a wreck. Stomach churning, I refreshed and refreshed and refreshed my emails, but there was nothing from Jodie. Oh, wait: check the junk mail! No, nothing.I don’t know what I did with myself when I got home. I knew I was fizzing with energy, hands glued to my phone. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Oh, something! Subject: Thanks. What did that mean? Thanks, but no thanks? They didn’t like me? And then there were two words from Jodie ‘Offer in!’ OFFER IN! OFFER IN!I squealed, cried a bit, ran around the house, did a stupid dance. I gave my fiancée a hug, felt everything inside me melt with relief. All that hard work, all those hours, those sacrificed weekends, finally paid off. I phoned my parents, cried a bit more, managed to announce, in a shaky, tearful voice ‘My book’s going to be published.’ I emailed WordWatchers, most of whom knew nothing about the meeting. Subject: News. Body text: MY BOOK’S GOING TO BE PUBLISHED WOHOOOOOOOOOOO!Before my fiancée and I went out to celebrate, we took some pictures so I could always remember what that moment felt like. Just writing about it now makes me feel all kinds of things at once: happiness, excitement, nerves, relief. Suffice it to say, my family and I had a VERY merry Christmas. I hope you have one too, and that some day you’ll have your own marvellous moment that you just have to share with everyone. 

A Charitable Soul?

Two years ago I featured in a Science-Fiction and Fantasy Anthology called Fusion created by a small Indie Publishing house known as Fantastic Books Publishing (FBP). The anthology was released as an e-Book only, with 10% of all profits going to a cancer charity. FBP will continue to give 10% to charity for as long as the book is sold, so, when it finally comes out in Paperback in time for Christmas, the sales from that version of the anthology will also give 10% to charity.Early next year, FBP will publish another anthology (Science-Fiction only this time) and I've been very lucky to have two stories included in this collection. FBP will be giving 10% of sales to charity once again.

*

I don't write Horror stories - since I don't like blood and gore very much and not overly keen on the feeling of being scared it's an area I've generally avoided - although 'Weaveworld' remains one of my all time favourite books (I keep telling myself that its a Fantasy book that has some horrific moments in it...).Anyway, I digress, it turns out, that I can write Horror in (very) small chunks and I have just had two pieces of Horror based flash fiction published in a Charity Horror Anthology entitled Ten Deadly Tales. Not too shabby for somebody who generally avoids the genre!The ebook (only) is here, if anybody is interested (UK): www.amazon.co.uk/Ten-Deadly-Tales or here (US): www.amazon.com/Ten-Deadly-TalesAnd the charity it supports is Derian House Children's Hospice: www.derianhouse.co.ukOne day I may get paid for my writing, but in the meantime I'm delighted to write for free for charitable causes (perhaps building up my good Karma store for future use!).

*

Finally, it's Movember and therefore I'm rapidly becoming covered in facial topiary that my family is beginning to dislike with a passion, but, with over a £100 worth of donations already, my attempts at growing a 'Lemmy' have been well worth it.

If you see me wandering the streets of Newbury, smile and nod knowingly.

You can find my Mo' page here: MoBro.co/jmhoggard if you fancy a laugh...

Proof Reading - From Word to Mobi to Kindle

I'm currently busy writing a book that's been buzzing away in my head since February. I'm so far into writing the book my thoughts recently turned towards proof reading, which immediately reminded me of finishing my first book. It was in 2009 and the now ubiquitous Kindle was not even a rumour in the UK.

Back then I exported my book to PDF but reading it on the laptop screen was no different than reading it in a wordprocessor, so I printed it two pages per A4, bought a guillotine and binding machine and read my book in A5. The different medium really helped me see the narrative from a whole new perspective.

Fast forward five years and I recently cleaned out my study and found those A5 copies of Chasing Innocence. It was a shock, not so much that I still had them, but a reminder of the trouble I'd gone to, to proof read.  Nowadays I spend five minutes preparing the manuscript and then email it to my kindle for review five minutes later.

Proof reading on the Kindle is so much better. Not only is it always a thrill to see my writing so quickly available to read on a device but the annotation and bookmarking of the Kindle means I'm not left squinting at my undecipherable handwriting days after the proof read, or scratching my head trying to figure why I highlighted a whole paragraph in yellow.

Conversely it always surprises me how few of my writing buddies know how to get their manuscripts onto the Kindle. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool if I did a video on just that - getting your word manuscript onto the Kindle.

There are two videos. The first takes your manuscript and creates a Kindle ready file in three easy steps. The second shows you how to email the file to your Kindle.

I hope the videos are helpful:

1) Manuscript to Kindle

2) Email to your Kindle

Pretty when you cry

I've been a member of the DeviantArt site for a little over a year now, having joined it looking for inspiration for my 75-word short stories when I was having my 1-per-day purple patch of creativity.Occasionally, I come across an image on the site that just leaves me breathless, that I know instantly I must write a story about, not just 75-words, but a proper story. Over the weekend the amazing artist MalKnox posted such an image.I contacted Monique (her real name) sending her the story that her image had inspired. I'm pleased to say that she loved it and asked if she could include the story with the description of the picture. I, of course, pleased with such a great reaction, happily agreed and Monique, in turn, has allowed me to reproduce the image here, so that I can share my story with you alongside the image which helped bring it to life.I present to you: Pretty when you cry When the snows came the village was all but cut off from the rest of the world. Cut off save for one small track through the woods, but nobody would use that because they were her woods and she did not tolerate trespassers. This year, before the first fingers of winter had stretched out and embraced the valley, the chief of the village had travelled to the city and hired a hunter to keep the path clear. The harvest had not been kind and if the winter was harsh and long, they would run out of food before the arrival of spring.The hunter took up board and lodging, his giant wolf hound always at his side. They waited for the snows to come, for the only path left to be the one that scarred her domain and then, confidently, he set out, fearsome axe in one hand, the rope of his hound in the other.The dog picked up the scent almost the moment the village was out of sight. It strained on the rope, clawed feet ripping through the snow and digging into the hard ground underneath as it tried to take up the hunt. He bent low, unlooping the restraint. “Leave some for me,” he said, laughing as he released his grip and the dog tore through the trees, howling with delight.He tracked quickly through the snow, the dog's path was direct and easy to follow. Some distance ahead he could hear his dog bark and he quickened his pace, eager to join the fun. The barking suddenly stopped and then there was a sharp yowl and a puppy like squeal of pain and then silence.He was running now, the air icy as he drew it deep into his lungs, his muscles burning with the effort. He broke through the trees into a clearing filled with carnage. The snow was stained and glistening red from the blood of his poor hound, torn open, spread out like a ragged blanket. Its ribs curved up into the air, picked clean, needles of white, stark against the reddened snow.She moved then, lifting herself up from the carcass. Rivulets of blood swam and swirled and trickled down her naked, ivory flesh. She turned her head slowly. Dark, blood matted hair partially obscuring her frighteningly beautiful face. Her eyes scanned him carefully and her lips parted into a smile that made him shiver.He gripped his axe tightly in his hand and prepared to die. 

***

The original image (available in much higher resolution) can be found here: Pretty when you cry.

Thank-you for your time.

Here I go again...

Two years ago I had a Science Fiction Short Story, Baby Babble, published in a SF and Fantasy anthology called Fusion by a shiny new independent publisher called Fantastic Books Publishing.Since then Fantastic Books (FBP) have gone from strength to strength, culminating in them fully embracing the computer game franchise Elite: Dangerous and sweeping up five of the authors who had funded their writing pack license costs through Kickstarter campaigns of their own (including my friend Drew Wagar and BBC Click presenter Kate Russell). FBP then ran their own Kickstarter campaign to produce some amazing physical books to support the imminent release of the actual game...Anyway, now that they've produced the Elite: Dangerous books they've returned to producing their next (pure) SF anthology and... <drum roll> Two, yup, count 'em, two of my short stories made the Short-list...Dreading the edits, but I always do...Here's the news direct from the site - SF Anthology short-list. Until next time.

Writing in a group; the benefits of a procrastination

At the start of the year the Word Watchers crew embarked upon a retreat to the somewhat fabulously eclectic Symondsbury Manor.

Whilst there we concluded that a gathering of writers could only be termed ‘a procrastination’ of writers. Maybe this was our attempt at convincing ourselves the fun we were having was more purposeful than playing table tennis and drinking champagne to celebrate Abbie’s recent success might have felt.

As the newest member of Word Watchers I wanted to give a newbies’ insight into the benefits of writing in ‘a procrastination’.

Before joining Word Watchers I spent long and lonely days writing the first draft of my novel ‘Crossed Lines’. In many ways this was how I fell in love (again) with the beauty of writing; the simplicity and sense of completeness you can feel with just yourself and your words for company; the ability to listen to the voices of your characters, to develop them and to create a tangible work.

Once you have that first draft though it can be a long and difficult slog to make something commercial from it. Adulterating it so that it complies with the ‘unwritten rules of publication’ such as genre guidelines and sentence structure can become a chore.

This is where a procrastination of writers comes into its own. Yes, sure we procrastinated a little…there was the odd walk, a trip to the beach, and we explored the spectacular country house steeped in history, but most of all there was writing.

For four days the manor house became a haven of creative productivity. A creative atmosphere fostered by the house’s dynamic interior design as described by Word Watcher John Hoggard in his blog ‘A procrastination of writers’.

Writing collaboratively is something that many writers find benefits in. This is why writing groups exist. But sitting in a room with 5, 6, 7, or more other authors, each lost in their own world of creativity, is priceless.

The subconscious pressure that comes from knowing that everyone else is writing, teamed with the fact that usual daily distractions such as the housework or phone calls are not haunting you, means that writing collaboratively can be extremely productive.

Taking a tea break isn’t just an opportunity to refresh your mind (and your eyes for those of us who write direct to a screen), but also to discuss plot ideas and character development thoughts. Concerns or problematic plot issues can be resolved quicker when you have someone with similar interests to share them with. Then, when you finish your break and take your seat it’s so much easier to dive straight in and face any elements of writing that you may have been putting off.

So, having returned from the creative haven that we found over the winter has the procrastination resolved my procrastination? Possibly not. ‘Crossed Lines’ is still a work in waiting but it now has a clearer direction. It’s just currently sitting in the pit-lane awaiting a tyre change whilst faster, more fuel-efficient cars sail by on the road that is life.

By Danielle Auld

Going through a phase

As the title suggests I'm going through a phase. This, it would seem, would be my Neil Gaiman phase. That's what happens when every time you get in your car Neil reads a short story to you... what happens is that loads of little vignettes and flash fiction and short stories that have been gathering dust for sometime in the back of your mind find an escape route. They disguise themselves as stories that I think Neil might have written (if the idea had been his and not mine) and when I'm trying to think of something else to write, they pounce at the lull and write themselves.So, I wrote a 75-worder (different from the 75-worder that prompted me to write the last blog, but pretty much in keeping with the style) and the story was just too big. I mean it went into 75-words, but only in the same way that a family of four might try and pack a week's worth of holiday clothes into a bag meant for carry on luggage. It's in, but you're fairly certain that the slightest nudge and it'll explode filling the cabin with your smalls and odd socks.This 75-worder did pretty much the same thing. While trying to make it fit better into the Paragraph Planet format, the zipper of my metaphorical hand luggage came undone and the story made a break for it. I tried to convince myself that I could hold it in a drabble of 100 words instead, but the story was having none of it and pretty soon I was picking phrases out of the hair of the woman four rows down and unravelling descriptions from the overhead TVs.So I gave up, I wrote it as a proper story since it clearly wasn't going to let me write anything else until I did.I wasn't sure what to do with it once I'd written it, I mean it was done, it was out of my system, but in one last gasp of defiance it demanded an audience. So I posted it on my deviantArt page, it sat there for a few hours and I noticed a that it had been read a few times and it had got a couple of nice comments and well, given how little traffic I get on my page that wasn't too shabby. So, I've tweaked it a little and I've decided to post it here too - this is under the vague assumption that it might be seen by more people here...So, without further ado, may I present Green Eyes:

Green Eyes

The increasingly heated discussion with my wife is interrupted by a crash from upstairs. I stomp up the staircase so that my daughter knows of my displeasure in advance. I find her huddled in the corner of her bed, shaking. I ignore her distracting pretence at fear and I demand to know what she has done. At first she says and does nothing and I feel my anger rise at her defiance. Then slowly she points across the room into a darkness that should not be there and at a pair of luminous green eyes deep within.The eyes do not flicker with fire, they do not blink, they are not windows into hell, they simply are.My daughter final speaks. “He is the Tear Monster," she tells me in faltering tones. "He comes when I have been crying. He waits until I am not quite asleep, when I cannot move and he comes to my side and licks my face and takes away the tears. He likes the taste of my sad tears most he says. He likes it when you and mummy fight. I cry a lot when you and mummy fight.”I am stung by her words, delivered with such honesty.I ask her if she would like to sleep in our bed tonight, something I had told her she was too old to do last year. She does not reply with words but holds out her arms and I scoop her up and hold her close as I carry her to my bedroom and lay her gently on my bed, although she is understandably reluctant to let go.I am whispering her a story filled with princesses and unicorns as she finally, but fitfully, drifts off to sleep and my wife enters quietly, curious, it would seem, to know where I have gone.When my daughter, our daughter, is definitely asleep I rise carefully from the bed, turn and wrap my arms around my wife and hold her close. She is stiff with the anger of the argument, but I persevere and eventually I feel the tension dissipate and she reciprocates my embrace.When we finally, mutually, break apart, I look at her and whisper, “No more fighting.”Her expression tells me she does not believe me, but she nods and we undress quietly and climb carefully into bed, our daughter a snuggly, wriggly wedge between us.I dream of green eyes glowing in the dark, but they are not so intense and indeed, as I watch, they flicker and go out, leaving a purple after image in my mind's eye.In the morning, I rise with the first buzz of the alarm. My girls stir but do not immediately open their eyes. Later, I bring a coffee for my wife and a glass of warm milk for our daughter. I can see that our daughter is watching, studying us carefully as she sips on her drink. I do not carry on where I left off the night before. If my wife is surprised, she does not say so. Perhaps she is just grateful for the respite.Later still, after my wife has left to take our daughter to school and before I genuinely begin work on my book, the rapidly approaching deadline, source of the current discord, I visit my daughter’s bedroom. I stand in front of where I thought the eyes had been the night before and I whisper into the silence, “There will be no more tears for you.”

*

Until next time...

Dream logic

I have been listening to Neil Gaiman reading the unabridged audio edition of Fragile Things. It is as glorious as you can imagine. He is the best of company on my journey to and from work and I am happy to let him do all the talking.In the Introduction he says dream logic is not story logic, easily and comfortably putting into words something I am acutely aware of but have often tried to prove to be untrue (tried and failed of course).However, as many of you may know, I have found I can sneak up on these dreams, ensnare them, at least for a moment, in the form of a 75-worder. For a 75-worder in itself, does not necessarily have to follow story logic given the scarcity of content and the need for the utmost clarity.So, this morning, having woke from the limited sleep I got, filled to brimming with the most wondrously complex tale, I realised immediately that it would be lost to me in minutes, so I captured the essence of it in a 75-worder. It is, unusually, already pushing against this constraint and I have most a drabble written based on this seed. I am hoping that this, with some careful nurturing, will grow into an entry for the Fantastic Books Publishing comp that WW member Pam has already entered (and I was included in the 2012 edition, when FBP published, Fusion).After I had written it, another 75-worder piled in behind it, capturing how the previous process actually felt like (although, for purely dramatic effect, I effectively lie in the final sentence...). I will share that second 75-worder with you now:On waking my mind is filled with the most glorious of tales. I quickly throw open my laptop. The moment the screen brightens I begin to type. However, illuminated thus, the tale dashes this way and that, like a cockroach scurrying into the shadows, trying not to be seen. Eventually it hides beneath the bookcase in my mind, the one filled with other tales still to be told and I know already it’s lost forever.Thank-you for your time and if I finish the expanded story of my dream I shall let you know.

Banishing the tumbleweed

It's been a crazy couple of months for WordWatchers as a whole. Julian has been frantic to finish his Work-in-Progress Sundial ready for the group to critique it in our May meeting. Sundial arrived in our inboxes a few days ago, not quite finished, Julian is hoping to get the last few paragraphs written as we read the main story...

He described it as that wonderful scene from Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers where Gromit is desperately laying track ahead of the speeding train on which he's riding....

Charlotte has been desperately trying (and succeeding) in meeting her Publisher's deadline for her fourth novel. I take my hat off to Charlotte, I really don't know how she does it, she's a superstar of perseverance.

Abbie, having secured her publishing deal back in January has been working her way through her edits with her publisher with little time for anything else.

Debbie continues to seek out every possible opportunity to further the brand of Alonzo the Chicken, while simultaneously finishing book 3 and dabbling in a rhyming book for younger children.

John Potter (along with Julian) has started a new job, bringing his writing bromance with Julian to an end and also, inevitably reducing the amount of time available for writing...And so on and so forth, and this, I guess, is why there's been tumble weed blowing across the WordWatchers blogging area for the last two months.So this is a mini-blog, until normal service can be resumed and hopefully the rest of my fellow WordWatchers pitch in with a blog of their own.Since my last blog my adventures in 75-word flash fiction has continued and I had my 21st  story published on the Paragraph Planet site on April 11th. Helen Withington, my illustrator for our WIP 75 Squared, continues to produce wonderful work for the book. We've been spurred on by the opportunity to present the finished work at the Yeovil Literary Festival in November (organised by fellow 75-worder James Brinsford). There's a chance that some of my 75-worders will appear on bus stops around the city, the idea of which, just makes me smile every time I think about it.I also entered a short story into the Bath Short Story Award (BSSA), I finished and tweaked one of my old WIPs and was very glad to have something to draw upon because I didn't start working on it until a few hours before the midnight deadline. Why did I leave it so late? Well, I wasn't planning on entering, but during the day BSSA tweeted that they were short of Science Fiction stories and I can't resist a challenge to write something in my preferred genre.Finally, today, I entered five stories into Mashable's "Tweet a complete short story in 140 characters" (details here: http://mashable.com/2014/04/15/twitter-fiction-contest-bj-novak/) I suspect they won't win any prizes, but to come up with five different ideas in 20 minutes and squeeze them into less than 130 characters (you had to include the #MashReads tag thus removing 10 characters from your 140 character tweet/story) really does make you think about not just every word, but every character (at one point, in one story, I changed a past tense story to the present tense to save three precious characters).Of course, all of this is tied up with the fact that my wife, Vee, continues to not be very well, so I find it easy to distract myself from the editing of my novel Endless Possibilities which is what I'm actually supposed to be doing...Of course, I've managed to distract myself still further by writing a long overdue blog.Until next time.

John

The Painter's Apprentice nominated for RoNA

For the second year running, WordWatchers' very own, Charlotte Betts, has been shortlisted for Historical Romantic Novel by the Romantic Novelists Association . Having seen Charlotte win last year's award, with The Apothecary's Daughter, we were absolutely thrilled to hear of this year's nomination and have the collective fingers and toes firmly crossed and wish her all the best with The Painter's Apprentice.

Before the Monsoons come

Way back in 2007, WordWatchers held one of its twice-a-year short story competitions. The theme was to write about a story set in Newbury. Although I was new to the group I was pretty confident about my abilities and wrote my story and submitted it to the rest of the group......I came precisely... nowhere...The competition was won, quite rightly, by a beautiful story written by Charlotte Betts. It was, a distinctly Newbury story and yet with its Science-Fiction and Dystopian overtones it was such a different story for Charlotte's normal style that everybody thought the story had been written by me... I wish... I wasn't that good, then or indeed now.It would seem that the recent flooding across the country (of course) but specifically in Newbury had several members of the group instantly thinking about the imagery that Charlotte's futuristic tale created.Although the story was going to feature in our 2nd Anthology (our first, Out of Time, is available here), we decided to share it with you here, instead.(The photographs are by my friend Lindsay Ferris and copyright remains with her, used with kind permission). 

BEFORE THE MONSOONS COME

Early morning mist drifted over the paddy fields of Marsh Benham as the Angelika slid through the canal at water buffalo pace. Pirate stood on the prow, his black muzzle twitching as he tasted the air, deliciously scented with the aroma of frying bacon. The other bargees were up early, too, in an attempt to beat the heat. I waved to Old Ibrahim as he lifted a lazy hand at me from his bedroll on the deck of the Star of Arabia as we chugged past.

I’ve always liked coming to Newbury. As far as I can call any town home, having spent my entire life on a barge, this is it. Great-grandfather Marek came over in the First Polish Wave in 2007 and was one of the workers who laid the Market Place cobbles. He saw the Profligates waste their children’s resources by overheating their shops and homes and poison the air with emissions from their cars. He endured as global warming took hold, even before the Chinese Influx or the Middle East Stranglehold, which meant an end to oil. Marek’s son, Jozef, who lived at West Fields until flooding destroyed the houses, was around to see the African Influx as refugees fled from the inferno that had been their country and then my father saw them find employment digging the new canal network.

By 8am the mercury had already hit 42°C when the Angelika nudged her way through the basin to the quayside. The Wharf was bustling. Porters shouted warnings as they hurried by with loaded handcarts. Bicycles zipped in and out of the milling crowd. Sweating, swearing stevedores offloaded the barges, heaving crates and sacks of rice to the ground. Carts rattled over the cobbles towards Market Place.

Pirate jumped onto the quay and provoked an argy-bargy with a couple of mangy town dogs and I had to drag him away and thrust him back onto the Angelika, teeth still bared and hackles raised, but nothing could spoil my happy mood. I was full of the joys of spring not only because it was a beautiful May morning but because I hoped that the day would bring me my heart’s desire. My old Polish grandmother would have muttered something about ‘the calm before the storm’ but, hey, she wasn’t around to spread gloom.

Faisal was waiting for me. Unsmiling, he watched me hook up the first of ten barrels of salted Cornish sardines and swing them over the side to thump down dangerously close to his feet. Several chests of first quality white tea from the Scottish Highland plantations followed, along with a couple of crates of dried chillies and fresh ginger root. He prized open one of the barrels of fish and sniffed suspiciously at the contents.

I smiled encouragingly.

He signed the paperwork and his driver started to load the goods onto a cart.

I waited.

Eventually, Faisal plunged his hand under his robes and extracted a roll of bank notes. “Seven million, five thousand Riyals, I believe?”

“Seven million, five thousand, two hundred and three Riyals, to be exact.”

“Ah, yes. So it was.”

Reluctantly, he counted the money into my outstretched palm and I watched him walk away, his djellaba flowing around his ankles. He’s okay really, a little buttoned-up perhaps but Faisal’s Fine Food Emporium is an important client, nonetheless.

The skipper of the Scheherazade bought me a mint tea and by the time we’d caught up on the gossip, the morning had slipped away. Time to go. I cast off and headed towards my usual mooring on the Kennet in the wetlands beyond Ham Bridge.

The midday call to prayer was echoing from the minaret of the Hambridge mosque by the time I’d tied up. Hurrying, I freed Beatrice from her yoke and staked her out in the marsh to forage with the other buffaloes before I washed and changed. Pirate pushed his nose at my hand and I filled his bowl with leftover rice.

“Okay, Pirate; you’re in charge while I’m out.”

He flopped down with a sigh in the shade of the canopy, watching me with reproachful eyes as I set off along the towpath towards the town.

The Thursday market was underway when I arrived at Market Place. A glance at the clock tower told me I was a few minutes early so I paused to buy a bag of cherries for Mei-Ling. Mei-Ling! My pulse quickened in anticipation of seeing her sweet face again after six weeks away. Weaving my way through the crowd, I saw her slender figure waiting in the shade of the Rice Exchange. Eyes demurely downcast, her shiny black hair hung in a thick plait to her waist. I crept up behind her and put my hands over her eyes. She spun round and I caught her in my arms.

“Jed!” “Did you miss me?”

“Not remotely,” she said, looking at me sideways out of her almond shaped eyes.

“In that case you won’t want me to take you to the fair this afternoon.”

“The fair! Oh Jed, you can’t know how I long for some fun!”

“Is your grandfather playing up again?”

She bit her lip, loyalty warring with truth. “He is old and deserves respect.”

I shared the shade of Mei-Ling’s parasol as we strolled along the road towards the park, eating our cherries as we went. Bicycles and rickshaws sped past us, bells constantly ringing in a discordant symphony. I found myself singing that old folk tune, Nine Million Bicycles and made Mei-Ling laugh.

An excitedly chattering crowd was teeming across the bridge to Victoria Park, drawn by the sound of hurdy-gurdy music. Years ago, the park had been raised using the spoil from the new canals and now it was a moated island. The fair was a splendid sight. Steam puffed out of traction engines and the air was rich with the hot scent of oil and candyfloss. Little children laughed as they whipped around on the teacup roundabout and young men showed off to their girls at the shooting range.

“Look at the carousel!” said Mei-Ling.

I lifted her up onto one of the gaudily painted wooden horses and she squealed as I jumped up behind her. The roundabout began to move up and down, faster and faster. I rested my chin on her shoulder and when she turned her cheek for me to kiss I thought I was in Paradise.

The afternoon passed in a flash and we left the park when the mournful sound of the muezzin calling the faithful rose above the fairground music.

“I must go home,” said Mei-Ling. “Grandfather will be waiting.”“I’ll walk with you.”

Hand in hand, we walked back along the towpath until we came to the Angelika. Pirate’s tail thrashed with joy when he saw us coming.

“Come aboard for a moment,” I said.“I mustn’t be late.”

“Just for a moment? There’s something I want to ask you.” My heart began to thud.

I made us mint tea and she sat in my favourite old armchair in the shade of the canvas canopy, stroking Pirate’s ears while she listened to me. I talked about my travelling life, working my way from one end of the country to the other and all the places in between. I told her how I liked to lie on deck at night looking up at the stars and how I revelled in the freedom to make my life be whatever I wanted it to be.

Her eyes shone. “It all sounds so perfect.”

“It is. Except for one thing.”“What is that?”

“You. I’d like to have you by my side to be my travelling companion, to share my life and be my love. Could you do that?”

Her joyous smile was all the answer I needed. I took her face between my hands as carefully as if she was a piece of precious porcelain and kissed her rosebud mouth. But when I opened my eyes again there was a tear sliding down her cheek.

“What is it?”“Grandfather… He won’t want to let me go.”

“You’re a grown woman now!”

“He has cared for me ever since I was a little girl. He took me in after my parents died …”

I stroked her cheek with my finger. “He can’t keep you for ever. I’ll speak to him tonight, man to man. Come, we’ll go now before he begins to worry about you.”

We took the footbridge over the wetlands towards where the Old Racecourse used to be. Now, as far as the eye could see, we were surrounded by the paddy fields owned by Mei-Ling’s grandfather. The fields were flooded in readiness for the June planting and the early evening sun touched the water with gold.

Mei-Ling’s family home was very fine. Built on sturdy piers to escape the floods, its roof had so many solar panels that I could only imagine the luxury inside. I doubted I could give Mei-Ling all the comforts she was used to. She had told me that she helped her grandfather but now I realised she could never have been a regular labourer in the paddy fields.

We walked up the house steps and as we reached the veranda the screen door creaked open and Mr Lee appeared. A drift of cool air followed him. Air conditioning. Here was a rich man, indeed!

“Grandfather, I have brought a friend to meet you.”

He stood looking at us for a long moment, his narrow eyes inscrutable in his wizened yellow face. “Go inside, Mei-Ling. It is time to light the lamps.”

“But I …”

“I said, go inside!”

Mei-Ling sent me a pleading glance, her eyes full of tears. Then she slipped through the doorway and was gone.

“Mr Lee, I have come to ask you …”

“I know why you have come.” His voice was quiet but there was authority in it. “I make it my business to know what is happening in my beloved granddaughter’s life. And now you will go, before I ask my men to throw you back in the canal.”

“Mr Lee, I love Mei-Ling and I want to look after her!”

“Look after her? What can you offer her?”

“Love. Freedom. And I have savings …”

“Ha!” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “You are nothing, a newcomer!”

Comparatively speaking, of course, he was right. The Lee family had come from Hong Kong as far back as the 1970’s, long before Newbury became the rice bowl of southern England, before the Chinese Influx and years before great grandfather Marek arrived. I’d done well for myself and I enjoyed my travelling life but I could understand why he didn’t approve of me.

“Mei-Ling wants to come with me.”

“I need her here. When I decide the time is right I will find a suitable man for her. A man who will not take her away.”

“But …”

“Go!” The old man turned his back on me and went inside.

I stood there for a moment, at a loss. Then I slunk away, full of anger at him for not giving me a chance and at myself for not standing up to him. I walked for hours, eventually finding myself sitting in the dark among the ruins of Donnington Castle, listening to the swish, swish of the wind turbines all around me. The wind had changed and was coming from the west, lifting the tails of my bandana and flicking them fretfully against my cheek. Soon, it began to rain, great, heavy drops pelting my skin until it stung.

It rained all the next day and the day after that too. Summer rains are dangerous; the sun-baked ground is too hard to soak up the water. The Kennet burst its banks and the wetlands flooded. I had to take Beatrice to high ground and secure the barge with extra ropes, anxious that the fast running river would sweep us downstream. Thunder cracked all around and Pirate hid himself under the table while the rain hammered down on Angelika’s roof.

At the end of the night Pirate began to bark. I sat up in bed and peered out of the window into the grey dawn. Still raining. On deck, I scanned the rising waters all around. A movement caught my eye. A man was standing on the towpath, up to his thighs in water, cutting my mooring ropes.

“Hey!” I jumped onto the flooded ground with a monumental splash. The man looked up and I recognised Mr Lee’s yellow face. “Stop that!”

He started, lost his footing and slipped below the surface of the river. Then his head bobbed up and the floodwaters snatched him away.

Boiling with antagonism, I waded along the treacherous bank until I saw him in the middle of the river, entangled in the overhanging branch of a willow tree. I scrambled up the trunk and out along the branch. The Kennet raced past a few centimetres below me. I stretched out my hand but I couldn’t reach him. Inching forward, my weight dipped the branch under the swirling water, along with Mr Lee’s head. I couldn’t get him! Picturing Mei-Ling’s grief if he drowned, I lunged forward and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

The branch collapsed with a loud crack and we were swept away. Hurtling along in mid-stream, I clung to the branch with one hand and Mr Lee with the other. Suddenly the branch snagged against an underwater obstruction and spun sideways towards the bank where it lodged in a split tree trunk. Coughing up water, I dragged us along the branch until my feet found the bank. Still hanging onto Mr Lee’s collar I scrambled up and then, slowly, painfully, started to haul him out. Exhausted, I paused to catch my breath, thinking how easy it would be to let him go, leaving Mei-Ling free to come away with me. Mr Lee’s eyes locked with mine and I knew he knew what I was thinking.

An hour later we sat wrapped in towels silently drinking tea in the Angelika.

At last he spoke. “So, I suppose now you think I owe you?”

I blew on my tea. “I’ll be on my way as soon as the flood goes down. There’s business to be done, profitable business. Mr Lee, I love my travelling life. But I love Mei-Ling more. Maybe it’s time for me to settle down, make fewer trips away. I’ll never give up my boat but I’d make sure we were always in Newbury for the rice harvest, before the monsoons come.”

Outside the rain eased. Mr Lee remained silent.

“Perhaps you might like to come on a fishing trip on the Angelika with me? The pike are plentiful and very good baked in herbs.”

Mr Lee looked out of the window at the flooded land. He worked his mouth for a moment, chewing his words as if they tasted of something he couldn’t quite identify.

After a long time, he turned to look at me with a glimmer of a smile in his wizened old face. “When I was a boy,’ he said, ‘I used to like fishing.”

***

May you all be safe and dry. 

And now we can tell you...

When I wrote my last blog about our weekend away at Symondsbury Manor, I said we had lots of fizz, but I couldn't tell you why... Well, now I can!The lovely Abbie Todd, our powerhouse Young Adult author wrote a fabulous novel (amazingly a couple of years ago now), that we, as a group, loved. After what has seemed an eternity of tweaking and rewrites, in collaboration with her agent, Jodie at United Artists, the novel has emerged all the stronger and has been picked up by Little, Brown and is going to published in March 2015.When we read it we knew it was very special, but, even for something very special you still need at least a tiny bit of luck (alongside all that hard work) and Abbie has finally got her well deserved break.You can read about it here in the wonderful press release from Little, Brown via The Bookseller. Until next time.

A Procrastination of Writers

Apparently the collective names of things is made up, there is no official rhyme or reason to it, no rules and therefore, "We", i.e. WordWatchers, while on our writer's retreat decided that the most appropriate, informative and accurate collective name for a group of writers should be: A Procrastination.This particular procrastination consisted of the current core ten members of WordWatchers plus our most successful alumni Katherine Webb and it collected together at Symondsbury Manor. We met on the evening of Friday, 17th January and, if we're honest, ran around this magnificent manor house like naughty school children for the first hour. It had so many nooks and crannies to explore. Several of us looked for entrances to Narnia.The house's interior is simply wonderful. Absolutely nothing matches or is coordinated in any way. The furniture is at odds with the light fittings, which wrestle for attention with wall paper and ceiling decor...My own room for example contained an enormous (and extremely comfortable) four poster bed......and on closer inspection......a lamp constructed entirely from cable ties...I think that sums up the feel of the house rather well - gloriously quirky and great fun.I got a good feeling from the house and its grounds and while I never found such a gate, my first piece of inspiration was turned into a 75-worder within an hour of arrival:

The gate was green with age. Iron hinges had rusted away. Instead, tendrils of ivy tied the gate up against the cracked stone pillars. The gate had been chained and bolted some time ago, but with a sharp tug, years of rust fell away and the chain came apart in my hand. I pushed on the gate, expecting to meet resistance, but it instead it toppled inwards, drawbridge like, inviting me to cross the threshold.

 It really did feel like we had crossed a threshold entering that house, a magical place where writing would somehow, just happen, I had no doubts about it at all.So, when I nearly knocked myself out an hour later by failing to duck sufficiently to get into the larder which had a very low doorway (and I hadn't even had a drink at that point!), then I immediately (well, after an ice pack was applied to the Tom & Jerry like lump on the top of my head) wrote another 75-worder:

Yet again, he had failed to duck sufficiently. People rushing forward, hands to mouths. He was sitting on the floor, looking up, waiting for his brain to stop slopping around inside his skull. Waiting for the momentary double-vision to pass. Waiting for the shock to wear off and the pain to rush in. They handed him a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel to press to another soon-to-be scar upon his bald head.

 All in all I wrote sixteen 75-word stories over the weekend, in fact I wrote fourteen of them just on the Saturday. At one point I was turning them out at three every hour. That's in no way meant to come across as showing off, but for those wonderful hours on Saturday I really was 'in the zone'. The house and the inspirational company of my fellow WordWatchers just made it feel very easy.It wasn't all writing, there was huge amounts of food, cooked beautifully by Charlotte, who would often dash away from her novel to briefly do battle with the house's old AGA, and then return to her work, a glorious waft of whatever delight would be served later, following her up the stairs.There was wine, lots of wine in fact and quite a lot of fizz too, except I can't tell you why there was fizz, not yet...And of course, being WordWatchers, there was cake, lots and lots of cake...During Saturday, in that incredibly creative run I reached my 300th Paragraph, this was the number I had set myself to reach over the weekend. It is the number I have decided to stop at. It is the number I think I need to have enough material to carry out my plan to release three books full of 75-word stories over the course of 2014.I have been submitting one 75-word story to Paragraph Planet every day since July 4th 2013. The sixteen I wrote over the weekend will take me, unplanned but serendipitously to February 4th 2014. Seven months to the day and, I feel, a fitting end to this facet of my writing journey.On the Sunday of the writing weekend I fired my novel back up, much neglected, much in need of a good edit - the very reason in fact I started writing those 75-word stories, to improve my editorial skills, to overcome my urge to overwrite (little did I know they'd be so addictive!).Endless Possibilities is in need of even more TLC than I recall. All those 75-worders have certainly removed much of the tint of my rose-tinted spectacles of my own writing and it is clear from the opening chapters that I was enjoying the writing more than I was enjoying telling the story. It's going to be a battle, this edit, a bloody battle and many, many words will fall over the coming months.I think however, this time, I am ready for the onslaught.Finally, I'd like to end with my favourite picture of the weekend. It is of Julian, deep in thought as the new novel swirls around his mind's eye, but not necessarily making it to the end of his fingertips. The cup of steaming coffee and ping-pong ball are there accidentally, but are rather symbolic of the entire weekend.One thing I think is certain, WordWatchers and Symondsbury Manor will become intertwined again. There is talk of doing this every year and I'm definitely up for that.Until next time.       John