What is the cross over moment, between people back-slapping enthusing your ambition, and then quietly, politely, disappointedly, lamenting your lack of success? 

Oh, your wring a book – awesome, follow your dreams dude, go for it!

Then…

Oh, not been published then – why, isn’t it any good???

Or the classic…

Let it go dude, it was a pipedream, you tired, you failed – FFS move on!!!

Ah, the joy that is scribbling tall tales from the depths of your imagination, and the struggle to have other people (paying people) read them!

It would be nice, really nice, for my enthusiasm to be rewarded, acknowledged even with a positive reply from an agent. But, until that fateful day we keep scribbling away, hitting the keyboard with the unrelenting enthusiasm of a steroid filled gym bunny – one more try, one more attempt…   

Amy Grace Volume 2: Magic is now close, very close to being finished. 

This tale discusses the futility of vengeance, the hollow nature that such an act brings, the morality of prostitution… 

This is a tale that takes you through an ancient wood, populated by a dying species, that seek the help from a passing warrior, the help that she gives, and the fairies that she kills.   

We dip our toes into murder mayhem and lost love, the empty desolate space that is a lost love… 

Oh, and through it all we delve into the realms of magic, the good stuff, and the very bad stuff. 

To paraphrase, volume 2 isn’t just your average ho-hum everyday fairy-tale – it is more, so very much more*.   

So, when its available, I hope you obtain a copy, and most of all I earnestly hope that you enjoy the ride!

 

*it helps if you’ve read volume #1 Thomas Payne.

Ah, the untold joy of the re-write! 

The endless task of correcting this, and clarifying ‘that’; a refuge taken when I should be writing a 500-word distilled synopsis of the 130,000-word tale of Amy Grace and Thomas Payne.  

I think I’m suffering from creative defensiveness.  

Every twist, every turn in the book, I wrote them because they add value depth and richness to the story, and trying to create a pithy synopsis, that sticks just to pertinent points, is harder than it sounds. 

What are the pertinent points?

What do you omit? 

Do you (as I fear) run the risk of summarising the plot in too simplistic a manner? 

Does the whole story just become “girl travels world to seek revenge”? 

Yeah, I know, first world problems and all that self-indulgent kinda thing. 

But, here I am happily taking ‘volume 2’ into San Francisco, yet painfully failing to create this one-page synopsis for ‘volume 1’. 

And why you ask do we need a synopsis?

Ah, that is because yet again we are touting our wares, pimping our creation, offering up for sale our labour, and trying very hard to meet the required criteria of a very crammed and competitive market place. 

It is the perennial struggle to convince busy people that my offering does indeed have (commercial) value, to provide what they want, what they need, in order to filter Amy from the chaff. 

She deserves the best opportunity for her tale to be told, and for such a justice to happen, I need to create this superb captivating synopsis that engages and captures the attention of the targeted agent. 

Bugger, I need an agent to talk to other agents on my behalf!

So, anyway, this red-haired young woman travels the world and kills some people…

Sisyphus, Greek fellow, the inspiration for my first foray into writing.  What created this scribbling frenzy was a programme on BBC Radio Four, where the panellists’ waxed lyrical about what they considered to be the best opening lines, and to be fair, what caught my ear wasn’t the books from which they were quoting (the usual suspects), which were by and large excellent books, but that the opening lines themselves, which in isolation, weren’t exactly all that inspiring.  And, therein a spark became a something, that in turn became my first attempt to write a story.

I started with an opening It wasn’t a cliché…

And then I kind of just meandered into a paragraph, and then a page, and well you can guess how the rest of it all develops.

The story itself evolved out of a reaction to the proliferation of ‘warrior porn’. You know, the memoirs of the pivotal killing machines, ALL snipers in Seal Team 6?!? These reluctant heroes, who despite their presence in theatre, neither Iraq, or indeed Afghanistan, were resounding successes for the coalition forces – with such killing machines on our side, who’d have guessed?

Oh, for the absolute avoidance of any possible doubt, I am NOT belittling any genuine heroic events – my total and unreserved respect goes out to those people who did heroic things.  My frustration, my objection is with the telling of the tales by those who somehow weren’t…

So, I thought to myself how about writing a self-confessed bit of honest fiction?  You know, a real and genuine tale of human failings, insecurity, and all that kind of stuff – and, so, I did, and my first sad story “Sisyphus’s Burden” was written.

I should have stopped there, I should have, but I didn’t, and from a Greek perpetually pushing a rock up a mountain in Afghanistan (Sisyphus’s Burden) we ended up with an angry vengeful woman flying around the world killing people (Amy Grace) – oh, and tales of unrequited love and yet more murder (The Big House) and loneliness and isolation (The Diary of a Nobody).

A happy puppy dog story, about finding a lost balloon, and drinking celebratory lemonade may follow – maybe, but until then, we’ll just keep plodding along with the above, and see how it all pans out.

You climb to the top, drag your body up the millions of vertigo inducing steps, to stand looking down at the tiny chlorine filled puddle of water – now what? 

You want to jump, you really do. 

Yet, fear of so many things keep you firmly away from the edge. 

You swing your arms back and forth, rocking from left foot to right, trying to create momentum to take you forward to the concrete edge, past it, and into the abyss of the known unknown.  

But, despite all the deep breathing, arm swinging, foot swapping, you are as far from the edge as you’ve ever been. 

Friends, confidants, little sayings on calendars, they all tell you to do it, that you’ll be okay – that you should jump.

Ignoring your passion is slow suicide!

Burying your talents in a field for fear of failure – you can recall a parable about that, you are sure you can…

Swinging arms, hopping feet, deep breathing…

You ask for signs, look for totems of assurances from the gods, from karma, the cosmos; then you seek second opinions, validation of the first sign, and the second – maybe you should just make sure, to be sure, after all what if you are wrong, what if you fail?!?! 

Swinging arms, hopping feet, deep breathing…

You know it’s not the critic that counts, that it is all about the doer of the deeds, you love that Roosevelt ‘Man in the Arena’ quote, yet…

If you never jump…  well you know how that plays out. 

Swinging arms, hopping feet, deep breathing…

You are currently living the foot hopping life – you’ve always been living the left right foot hop. 

So, why do you want to jump, what is it you are looking for, what are you trying to achieve?

It can’t be fame or fortune, they are transient whims so easily lost, if you are to gamble what is it you are trying to win? 

And, despite your lifelong love of words you cannot dig from your lexicon words to articulate the hunger, the need, the primal desire to jump. 

Yet fear is easy to describe; swinging arms, hopping feet, deep breathing…

And then…

You fall forward, legs almost buckling under your weight, the concrete disappears, and the air rushes past your body as you plummet downwards.

But, you are not falling, you are flying.  Flying down towards your fear, towards your dream.

Chlorine smells strong, the water warm, the splash painful, the joy exhilarating, the euphoria of jumping intoxicating.

You are climbing before the water has fallen from your body, jumping again and again, the thrill never diminishing, never changing from one jump to the next.

You don’t need validation, witnesses, scores held on cards above heads – your glory is personal, maybe shared with friends, but held next to a pumping heart, not a cold and timid soul who knows neither victory or defeat!