Author: Neil Bowers

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Neil Bowers has asserted his rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this blog.

The writing on this blog is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

All rights are reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without the explicit prior permission of the Author. 

No part of this blog has been created by AI. No part of this blog is permitted for use in training AI.

The Man Comes Around.

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I am, and I remain at my core, a dyed in the wool battle hardened ‘pantster.’  It is what it is, and it is what I am.

However…

I had this idea for a story, a murder mystery, a true ‘whodunit,’ and while I was fleshing out in my mind the very embryonic basics of the story, I noticed the elephant quietly standing in the corner of the room.

IF I’m to pull off a good teasing mystery, I’m going to at the absolute very least write a framework upon which to hang my tale.

I need to plan the trail of breadcrumbs, the shocking reveals, the misdirects and the whittling down of suspects until OMG the shock reveal is confirmed. 

I may indeed hide behind semantics and self-deluding word play, but if I’m to pull off “Hanover ‘46” (working title) then a plan I must indeed make.

Never done it before – should be an interesting exercise in itself.

I’ll try to keep you updated.

Stay safe, defend your sanity, and hug those you love!  

Take No Heroes Only Inspiration

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If I were to state my literary inspirations, and limit those weavers of tales, those who’ve toyed with my imagination and left a lasting impression to just three, if I were to do that, then I’d amongst the many I’ve enjoyed over the years I’d have to highlight:

James Herbert – he wrote horror, and as a teenager I absolutely loved it.  Lapped it up. Spent all my pennies obtaining his works.  He wrote 20 something tales, The Fog, Fluke, Magic, and as I reread them years after their initial release, they still thrill me.  Tales of the extraordinary told in the world of the ordinary.  If I were to attempt the same tales, they would be twice as long (minimum) as that those presented by Mr Herbert.  I’d have overindulged my descriptive passions, where he balanced brevity with such panache.    

James Herbert takes a bow! 

Clive Barker is our second name to drop.  Longer tales than James Herbert, more descriptive fantasy and world building, but nothing is lost with it.  I picked up a copy of Imajica and I was instantly hooked.  More of his output was obtained, Weaveworld my favourite, and the bookshelf creaks to reflect my love of his craft.  Now it MUST be stated that as a rule, and we all break them, I don’t do ‘gore’, as (IMHO) splashes of blood are often used to mask a poorly told tale – not so Mr Barker.  Love his work.

Third from three, but not in matter of influence.  I have to, just absolutely must mention Terry Pratchett and his fantastical social commentary comedy and sheer entertaining brilliance.  I was given Good Omens to read (you like horror – read this) and from that moment on I was hooked.  The premise, the style of writing, the wickedly sharp humour, everything just clicked – and I just love his foot notes that go on for near pages.  I also think he’s written the only book of fiction that has managed to make me cry tears of genuine sadness. Forty odd books – love them all. 

An honorary mention must go to Jerry Ahern and his twenty-nine-book series The Survivalist – pulp fiction at its absolute best.  Whatever ‘literary’ means (and I do debate the snobbery attached to it) entertainment is key – and these books slip the brain into neutral and entertain.

In true Columbo style, one more thing, I must mention (it would be remis if I didn’t) the poetry of WH Davies, Rudyard Kipling and Percy Bysshe Shelly – a medium I’ve only ever dabbled in, but one that I very much admire. 

So, there are my names dropped.  Some names you know, some possibly you don’t, some of the more successful authors conspicuous by their absence Stephen King, Stieg Larson & Margaret Atwood et others.  I wanted to write my ‘top three’ and so I’ve stuck to that maxim.

None of which my scribbles emulate in style, and nor do I attempt to claim any sort of parity.  But I mention these writers whose prose has taken me on many an imaginative journey.  Inspiration from the above has come, and continues to motivate me to tell my tales, to purge my imagination of the stories that it creates.

My struggle continues to reach/create an audience for my work via the ‘traditional route’, and we are continuously teased with the enticing lure of ‘self-publishing’.

Option A is my preference, but B may just become the practical reality of necessity.

So, this missive must come to an end, and the lesson, the point of it all?  Read. That’s it, that’s the aspiration of this scribble.  Read.  One day you may read my scribbles, but until that day read someone else’s and enjoy the ride. 

Whatever you are doing, stay safe, remain sane, and take no heroes – only inspiration!

Oh, the book that bought a tear to my eye – Snuff (harvesting diamonds).   

TBR & WiP

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Time is indeed the stuff of life, and how we spend it is the greatest freedom and responsibility we’ll ever have.

Priorities compete, and sometimes what we should have done, what we should be doing, come second and third to what we are actually doing.

Today’s example is the great battle between that alluring pile of newly purchased books – colloquially known as the to be read pile or TBR and that other passion of the works in progress aka WiP. 

These competing piles are part of our passion for life. 

We read because life enthrals us, and we write because we have tales to tell.

My TBR is never empty, and my WiP never complete.

Yesterday, to my TBR, we added another three eclectic titles.  A book on Irish Fairy Forts, a book about Fake Heros, and finally a reread of a classic novel from my youth – James Herbert’s ‘Fog’.

Now these three recent additions won’t sit on the shelf in isolation, they join an illustrious group of other titles competing for my time.

If a book of say 80,000 words takes about eight hours to read, reading in the evenings after work and all chores of domestic life are complete, one book a week should be achievable.

I have fifteen books in my TBR. 

Assuming the one a week rhythm, that’s enough unread books to last a smidge over three months before my TBR shelf is empty – and that again assumes no new books are added (which they will be).

So, it’s safe to say that we have a lot of reading banked up. 

Then we have the near unquantifiable output that is my WiP. 

As a rule, my tall tales have the two-inch spines, they’re long reads, and even longer writes.

Sometimes the prose flows, sometimes it is an all-consuming passion that precludes all others (domesticity being exempt) and it consumes hours as a starving man eating at a free banquet voraciously eats roast chicken.

And then sometimes it feels like untold hours watching a cursor blink… 

For now, the balance is more creaking spines than tapping keys, but this will change, and the pendulum will swing the other way. 

Point of this missive?

If it makes you happy – do it.

Don’t stop doing what makes you happy.

Don’t feel you need to defend your happiness.

And most important of all, don’t assume you have to read sixty books a year AND write a million words.

Pace yourself, enjoy the ride, pause often, and keep your pursuits as varied as you can.

Hug those you love, stay safe, and try to remain sane! 

Fight Club – Rule #1

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We all know it, so let’s just not talk about it!

So, it seems, depending upon which tranche of learned wisdom you read, the No#1 rule for writing is (bizarrely enough) tell NOBODY until the project is finished, complete, polished beyond mere shining, and sat on a shelf somewhere waiting to be purchased – only then may you obtain a drum with which to bang!   

This truth I read on an agent’s website. 

Now, as with all things scribble related, an equal and opposite volume of advice exists stating that born again evangelical zeal is the bare minimum – you MUST have a website, you MUST have a Social Media presence (multi-platform is preferable) and you must parade through the streets while wearing a sandwich board and carrying a megaphone… 

Somewhere between the two isn’t truth, it’s just more bad advice.

For my twopence worth – to be taken with a liberal pinch of salt –

I’m a slow learner, but I’ll share this lesson:  Love your work, be unashamed and let the world know just what they are missing!

To thy own self be true. 

Don’t stay in your lane, NEVER only write about what you know, and NEVER, absolutely NEVER build a shrine (literal or metaphysical) to that author you really like.  Never hang on their every word, taking their mutterings and musings as the absolute and only truth – don’t, just don’t.

Take inspiration from as many sources as you can, read widely, discuss, and share wherever possible.

This book, this novel that you’ve poured your heart and soul into deserves the most authentic version of you to parade it – so speak truthfully, speak joyfully.

Buy a drum & bang it!!!

Stay safe – remain sane.

Pavlov’s dog goes to Vegas.

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That little icon, it’s so inviting, just one last hit for old times’ sake, just one trip round the world, you can control it, you know what you’re doing…

DELETE.

It’s almost an involuntary action, open your phone, click on icon of choice, dribble down chin, become angry/frustrated at the world, loose two and a half hours and have nothing to show for it afterwards.  You don’t feel better, you’re not better informed on world events, you’re not better by any objective measure.

So, you haven’t’ picked up your phone, it’s not ringing so why are you looking at it?

The realisation that your phone isn’t a vital appendage is groundbreaking and liberating.  If someone wants to talk to me it will ping or ring, if it’s silent then leave it alone – do something else!

We’ve been reading – oh the joy, the remembered pleasure of the written world taking you on an adventure.  Currently I’m in Belfast witnessing the battle between a recurring evil and a young woman trying to stop this serial killer – and it’s good.

I’m also when not reading, typing away – purging my own imagination.

The latest missive started as an opening line.  A man sitting on a pavement café in Sardinia, who is just watching the end of a day:

So little liquid, so much potential compressed into it.  It had gone cold, but he still sipped absentmindedly at his expresso.  People came; people went.  Life’s rich tapestry was a slowly changing tableau to his front. He watched but seemed to follow little.  He should have been paying rapt attention, but he wasn’t.   He was a middle-aged man in a nondescript jacket and open neck shirt sitting in a Sardinian pavement café drinking coffee.  He was sat alone, which for this café was unusual, he also had no open laptop, newspaper, or mobile phone competing for his attention, and that if noticed would have struck any viewer as strange. 

But nobody appeared to paying attention to anything.  Everything was slow, mañana personified.  The sun was lazily sinking into the sea, the fishing boats half-heartedly bobbing with the lackadaisical tide, even the evening breeze moved with all the speed of a sulking teenager… 

And good bad or indifferent this little section of prose helped pull me from the abyss that took two and a half hours of my life every day. 

I’m a pantster by trade and I’ve literally no idea where this tale is going, except it is going to Vegas because that town has always fascinated me.

Lots of tall tales have migrated towards Vegas, and HIM is no different.  We don’t know who he is, or indeed why THEY are after him, and importantly neither does he. 

HIM is my post social media project.  A dalliance into writing a short (10,000) word story.  So far, it’s working.

Oh, the tale we are weaving and the fun we are having – Intrigue, murder and a kind-hearted prostitute who doesn’t want or need rescuing.  

So, point of this missive.

Time is the stuff of life, you only have so many breaths/heartbeats etc.  You can spend two and a half hours every day doing something you don’t really enjoy, or you can delete the app and do something else. 

As a child (age spoiler) I remember a TV show imaginatively called – Wdyjsoytsagadslbi?: Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?

Maybe the folk in the late 1970’s weren’t too far off the mark?

Stay safe, remain sane AND Wdyjsoytsagadslbi?

#176.

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Walk away, just walk away, don’t look back, never look back.

Social media, it’s a blessing, it’s a key to the great beyond, it’s potentially wonderful, but it is terribly destructive too.

The algorithm picks things for you to see, things it thinks you’ll like, and slowly but surely an echo chamber is created. 

Not just an echo chamber of things you like, but things it thinks you’ll react to.     

Save your sanity and walk away.

Negative comments and stories of sorrow woe and cruelty dominate, and you become the world you read.

You know you’re in control; no collection of ones and zeros is going to dictate your mood – but it does. 

It is pervasive and it is unrelenting – it is all of that, until you just turn it off and walk away.

Two and a half hours a day the average person spends on social media – two and half hours EVERY day!!!

Imagine if you looked at your calendar and saw two and a half hours EVERY day blocked out to read things you didn’t want to read – EVERY day, two and a half hours every day, what have we done to ourselves???

Social media truly is the SOMA of our generation, the true opiate of the masses, and I really need to go cold turkey. 

The plus, my sanity aside, is that time spent scrolling is now spent writing, is now spent reading, and I feel so much better for it – I genuinely do.

It’s not an airport, so your departure needn’t be announced, yet here we are …

Maybe I’ll go back, maybe at some point over the horizon I’ll revisit, but not just yet, it’s too much of a cesspit of sadness – it is the piss-stained wet blanket that smothers/suffocates the entire world.

For now, this is it, this is the only voice into the wilderness that I have.

So, drop by and say hello, or just have a read and mosey on past.

Stay safe, stay sane!

Turning the Supertanker

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“So, you’re a writer, published anything?”

Shoulders curl in to touch each other, your gaze falls to the floor and a barely audible whisper wrapped in shame says “no.”

That’s it, its all over.  From this position there is NO recovery, you’ve been found out, you are indeed a liar, charlatan, and all-round despicable person.

Stolen Valour vibes permeate the air…

That’s kinda how it feels, maybe not how it goes, but definitely how it feels when folk ask “what’cha doing book boy, you writing a book or sumfin?”

Okay, I couldn’t resist it, yes, a little artistic licence is at play here – after all I am a writer.

The sentiment however, the feeling of despondency and disappointment they remain undiluted and true.

If I was a painter I’d show you my canvas, the result of my effort and you’d be satisfied with my claim at being an artist, so too if I picked up my guitar and played a riff so sublime the very birds from the trees flew down to join in.  At no point would a critique follow about my inability to fill the Royal Albert Hall or have my work displayed in the National Art Gallery in London – nope for those artistic outlets participation would be enough.  For those talented folk, a rendition of Malaguena or just some canvas covered in oils is the only evidence of accomplishment ever needed. 

And yet it’s different for writers.

You can’t stand there with a ream of papers and pronounce ‘ta da’ and expect accolades to fall from the heavens. 

It’s not enough to have written, to have crafted, to have taken the reader on such a journey that for weeks, maybe months later they will reminisce that one scene in the kitchen and long after the book was finished still shed a tear.  

It’s not good enough when you write to have crafted such a tale, for those words ONLY have validation, only achieve worth when they are read.

And therein dear reader of my blog is the $1,000,000 question, the true conundrum of my life. 

My art, no matter the passion of its creation, my art is without worth until it is read.

To be read is the prima facie function of a tall tale, and it is one that I am struggling with. 

I am, I know, stuck in a loop of my own making, and the success or failure of my work is completely within my control.

I can publish via Amazon (et others) and be dammed, let the tiles fall where they will, or I can strive struggle and suffer trying to hook that elusive white wale of a traditional publishing contract.

These I can do. 

Bemoaning my fate, I should indeed abandon.

It’s such a self-indulgent cop out – and reality needs to be acknowledged.

Sympathy evaporates and so too should my self-flagellation.

If I am to evoke Invictus or indeed emulate ‘the man in the arena’ then act indeed I must.

Prevarication is a comfort blanket that protects me from criticism, but it is also one that smothers out any embers of praise…

It’s slow to turn, but the supertanker is changing direction.

Thanks for listening.

Stay safe, hug those you love, and live the life that you’ve been gifted with all the passion that you possess! 

He punches and he misses…

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We dance around the ring with aplomb, we shuffle our feet, feint a left jab, and throw a well-balanced right hook.  It’s a haymaker, if it connects then it’s all over, they will go down, the count will pass ten and victory will be ours.  But the hook it misses, their shoulder is dropped, bobs are weaved, and the bell is pinged and another fresh round declared.

Each submission I offer fails, everyone I agent, each one I select dodges and deflects, no points are landed. 

The three round fight now looks certain that it will go past ten, I just have to summon the stamina.

I’m knacked.

It was never going to be a sprint, a middle distance run possibly, but back-to-back ultra marathons never…

I’m knacked.

A towel is flapped in my face, water swilled round my mouth, garbled words of encouragement given – but I can’t hear them. 

I’m knacked.

All these rounds danced, so many shots fired and all have been misses.

I’m knacked.

The towel stops waving in front of my eyes, the bucket and stool are removed, the bell it dings to announce the start of yet another round and again I must enter the ring with the same elan as I did in round one, as I’ve done in every round.

I’m knacked.

The will to fight is still there, but it is a tyring and exhausting experience.

Dance left, dance right, dominate the centre of the ring, jab jab jab…

Maybe this round.

Maybe.

Stay safe, and whenever possible shout encouragement from the cheap seats, as this is going to be a long fight!

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.

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“To sleep perchance to dream.” 

It is a wonderful quote, contextually a tenuous link, but it does pull you in the right direction.

For those that don’t know, I have incredibly poor sleep.

Rhyme and reason are all understood, and we make lifestyle accommodations to keep things in check.

Relevance to this blog and my writing?

I could say that Amy Grace suffers from terrible sleep terrors – but that would be far too artistic a lurch to try to compare our scenarios.

Her terrors are written in Aptos font 11 for those with a will to read.

Mine, mine are my own, mine to share, and mine to keep to myself.

Mine may bleed subconsciously into my writing in the same manner my unquestionable rejection of unfairness percolate into my tall tales.

Sometimes writing helps sooth the savage beast that screams into my nighttime, sometimes the tap tappity tap of the keys is just the pressure relief that my mind needs – and in that there is so much truth.

And sometimes the mental fatigue of sleep deprivation fogs my thought and holds my imagination hostage to the elusive Will-o’-the-wisp of sleep.  It is kept in view but always tauntingly just that little out of reach – and in that there is so much frustration.

So, big empty void of the internet I am currently in one of those biorhythmic troughs where sleep, sweet restful sweet sleep is absent.  Time of rest, where perchance I may just dream, this time alludes me, and my output suffers for it…

This time will pass as all things in life do, but this known burden, these rough waves I must endure.

Hug those you love, hold them tight and remember that out of darkness cometh light!