Here we are with nowhere left to go… 

Yeah, it’s a lyric, one attributed to a certain Mr Burns, but hopefully stealing that little segment wont’ have me in court sued for millions and billions that I don’t have…   

Not that the above has any real relevance with where we are now, or indeed the direction of continued travel, but, it is a nice little snippet.

So, where are we? 

What are we doing?

Why are we still doing it?

All good questions individually or collectively, questions that need continual and constant validation.

We are still typing adventures for young Miss Grace. 

Other projects exist, but she has a way of getting under your skin, and I as much as any reader want to see a resolution, a peace or happiness be granted to this young lady.

It’s just not that easy to create it. 

Is this all going anywhere? 

Do we have a targeted end state?

We are still trying to strike a balance between the creation being the justified end in itself (Art for Art’s sake) and the peculiar need for some sort of external validation.

We’re not being needy (we hope), but the base urge to have others appreciate your work grows with each page that is finished.

I didn’t think I’d need, or indeed seek such – but I am, and I do.

Somehow this lurking spectre has grown in strength, this ghost who haunts each written page is taunting away in the shadows seeking all the sustenance of a crying Audrey Jr…!   

In the interim Book #3 Gotham is looking to being twice as long as the other two. 

It is developing into a story that is going to take much longer to tell. 

So, patience from the readership is required. 

This one is a much slower burn, a more emotive than physical journey – maybe it will be liked, maybe it won’t.

So, Audrey Jr is acknowledged and accepted, the food that she craves isn’t the blood of those sacrificed on the high alter of literature, instead she craves positive feedback, confirmation that was has been created is liked, is appreciated, is enjoyed… 

And herein lies one of the problems.

Do you write for the ego, the crying plant in the cellar, or do you write to satisfy your own curiosity and creativity? 

If you write to satisfy what the audience wants you may indeed gather plaudits garlands little massages for your ego, but each word you type will be a little cut across your back, and then eventually, inevitably, what you write will be empty meaningless ‘soap opera dead babies at Christmas’, and then once you’ve allowed such rubbish to be your output, why are you bothering?

Ah, to be appreciated for your own ‘art’…

So, five hundred or so words saying not an awful lot, other than expressing my barley supressed need for external validation and my real fear that in seeking and achieving such I could end up writing banal rubbish for which I have no emotive connection, no passion, no love…

This is a blog, not a collection of essays exploring and debating the human condition, so a coherent ending isn’t mandated, a point doesn’t have to be reached or unambiguously explained, and maybe that is the whole point, this is me and the big empty auditorium. 

My ramblings, my mutterings.

Nothing more and nothing less.

So, this blog exists, as do my writings for their own right to exist, they are my words and nothing more.

I just hope that somebody out there likes them… 

Sitting here typing away, creating a new character, and then the question hits you “What do you call protagonist THX 1138?”

I’m sure that there are proven methodologies used by the great the good and the very clever – complex algorithms that take innumerable social economic and cultural factors into consideration – and I’m sure people do that. 

I don’t.

New character. 

Government lackey, secret service kind of bloke. 

Needs a name.

Look over my right shoulder, sees a book, opens it, finds the first name, likes the name, uses it.   

Johnathon Lilburne a character following in the path already well established by Thomas Payne. 

Mister Lilburne was a Leveller of some repute, an interesting man, a name that deserved resurrection, a man not as instantly recognisable as our pamphleteer Pain(e), but one who deserved to be.   

But then I suppose we do have the locksmith come contract killer mister Wilbur Smyth, a nod to the literary giant that is indeed Wilbur Smith who must be my most recognisable name..? 

Nod given.

And when you start looking, and when you notice it, I tip my hat to innumerable characters, works of fiction, songs and poems. 

If you like the band New Model Army, the poems of Shelly and Byron, references abound.

I am that transparent. 

Flip even the hotelier, the charming suntanned Freddie is a tip to my favourite artist John Fredrick Lewis and his superb painting Lilium Auratum  displayed  (free to view) at Birmingham Art Gallery in their Pre Raphaelite section – worth an hour or so of your time.   

Anyway, our Leveller, our incarnation of John Lilburne is a agent for a department that does and indeed doesn’t exist, and he has an offer that Amy just cannot refuse – I think you’ll like it!

Oh, the book over my right shoulder “The Leveller Revolution by John Rees”. 

And yes THX1138 is a nod to a film of the same name.