Filth in the cradle

MY WORLD

Two further Cradle of Filth albums arrived in the mail this morning at this cradle of filth, where I write: Bitter Suites to Succubi and Lovecraft & Witch Hearts join Midian in a collection of their records, which will continue to grow as I really like them. Despite falling into the black / death metal genre, Cradle of Filth produce some really quite complex arrangements and pleasant melodies. Some of their lyrics are giving me inspiration for some pretty fucked up short stories as well.

On the writing front, COGS is in Schlock magazine tomorrow and I’m told by my editor that the cover artwork is inspired by the story: should be interesting. Two of my other pieces – Two Wishes and Ticks – are due to appear in the following two weeks’ issues.

So, death metal on the hi-fi, shocking stories planned for writing and I’ll probably watch a video nasty tonight. Welcome to my world. But I’m okay really.

Incidentally, in my research into video nasties, I learned that the very term was derived from “Nasty”, as previously applied to writing and before the advent of moving pictures. There are many more pure writers than film writers, we’re more prolific and books aren’t subject to certification. There is the Obscene Publications Act of course but it would be impossible to review every piece of writing produced. So I’ll see what I can get away with. But I’m okay really. It’s just my imagination.

Proof that I’m alright came this week when I was adopted again: as a daddy. Another teenage girl thinks her real dad is a dick head – because he is – and adopted me, because like the others, she can talk to me about anything. She can’t talk frankly with her own dad, for fear of the consequences. If a teenage girl can’t talk to her own dad about the things that teenage girls do, who can they talk to? Me, as many of them have chosen to do. Just like the others, this one will do wrong and get into trouble but not with me. Young girls do what young girls will do and I won’t stop them. I’ll advise caution sometimes but there’ll never be any punishment doled out by me. I’m just the one who picks up the pieces when it all falls apart, then waits for the next thing to happen. I’m the one who won’t hear from them for a while, then one of them gets into bother and needs me. I’m always here for them.

Like the clingy one and the fold-up one, the flutterby one may not have any social media contact with me, for fear that her real parents may object on the grounds of our relationship being somehow inappropriate. These girls are just fifteen, just sixteen and almost seventeen respectively. To boys their age, I’m sure they’re all fit little things but I don’t look at them like that. It’s just a shame that they all have to conduct dealings with their “Daddy” in secret and that I have to have code names for them. Code numbers as well: 36C, 32D and 34D. They tell me things.

None of the girls are due to visit this weekend, as far as I know. They’re off being teenage girls. So I have the place to myself and I’m taking advantage of it. There are many advantages to living in a bedsit above a pub but chief among them are: 1. It’s above a pub; and 2: it’s a bedsit and as such it doesn’t take long to do the housework; nor move things around for that matter. I had a little shift around last night and the place is transformed, a bit. It’s still wonky and cosy though and that’s the way I like it: like me.

So, everything’s in its place and I’m alone. Time to get writing and to create some filth in this cradle.

Postscript

After writing this, a reader has commented to me: “I know all of these teenage girls say that they hate their fathers and their fathers hate them but at least they have one. I did not from nine years onwards so I did not have the fortune to say I hate my dad. They should be taught by you how to love and get along with their dad’s (sic) again.”

I’ve not published the reader’s identity to protect them but I do know that in the absence of a father, this person sought out a surrogate and that is exactly what my girls have done. They have dads of sorts but those people can’t give them what I do, which is patience, understanding and empathy. Above all, I love them, unlike their “real” dads. One is physically bullied by her real dad, another disowned and the third, psychologically bullied by her step dad. How can I teach them to love that? They know I’m not their real dad because they’re all intelligent girls. They know that they should try to get along with their dads and I tell them as much but they can’t, because of what those men represent to them. I on the other hand, represent everything they should get from a dad but which they don’t.

Frankly, I found the comment from the reader insulting to my intelligence and to that of my girls but I had to respond. You can no more teach me to do what I do, which is considered, measured caring for those girls, than you can teach me to write, punctuate and exercise good grammar. My post was deliberately ironic but that seems to have gone over a head. The girls get me because that’s the way we are and what we do does not require interference any more than our relationships involve it.

Box of the Banned

MY WORLD

Box of the Banned are the words I’m looking at as I survey the morning’s post in front of me. It’s a box set of Video Nasties, banned under the Video Recordings Act of 1984.

For the uninitiated, back in those halcyon days, the home video player had become very popular and there was a big market for straight-to-video titles: movies made for the home market, which weren’t released at the cinema. Unlike cinema releases, straight-to-video films didn’t require BBFC certification and as such, directors had a free reign and material which wouldn’t have been granted a certificate for cinema release by-passed the censors and went straight to video. It’s more complicated than that and there are many caveats but that’s the general gist of things. Following the tragic torture and murder of James Bulger and the – albeit flimsy – finger of blame pointed to Child’s Play, the Video Recordings Act was introduced, requiring all straight-to-video titles to be certificated. Seventy eight titles were banned under the act. Subsequently, many have been re-released, albeit with cuts. Some have been re-released without cuts and there are many different versions of some titles, with varying levels of cuts. I seek out the least censored, or uncensored versions.

A lot of the Video Nasties were purely that: nasty. Some were marketed as snuff movies, although none were ever proven to be so. Other titles though have artistic merit and are actually pretty good films, albeit not for the faint hearted. It’s six movies which fall into this category which make up Box of the Banned: I Spit on Your Grave; Nightmares in a Damaged Brain; The Driller Killer; The Evil Dead; The Last House on the Left; and Zombie Flesh Eaters. There’s a companion DVD containing two documentaries: Ban the Sadist Videos and Fear, Panic and Censorship. I’ve seen all of the films but it’s nice to have them to hand and in uncut form: this box set was quite a find.

And it’s all good material for inspiration of course, when I’m writing horror stories. Often it’ll be something I see in a film which will plant a seed for a story in my mind. I don’t copy or plagiarise but I’m inspired. Sometimes my inspiration will be something I see on TV, or read in a book or a newspaper. I won’t necessarily write about what I’ve seen or read but I’ll spot something which gives me an idea. Such is the case with my latest short story, a work in progress provisionally called Living Loans. Watching a lot of TV as I do, I’m subjected to commercials and during the day, there are a lot of adverts for pay day lenders and their ilk. This has given me an idea. I’ve taken a concept, then taken it further, into the realms of fiction. Living Loans is about, well, you’ll see.

Now that this life of the impoverished alcoholic writer is the one I’ve chosen to follow, it’s all about promotion, of myself as well as the writing. Never one to miss an opportunity to share praise heaped upon me, this is a paraphrasing of the latest review I received:

An exciting new writer who has a talent for scaring the shit out of his readers one second, then making you cry or laugh the next. Each of his stories is unique, the latest bi-polar pieces being COGS and Two Wishes. His book, The Paradoxicon, is guaranteed to frighten: you may even fear life itself.

So with the post out of the way, I’m seated at my writing desk and ready to write. Notepads, reference material, newspaper clippings, coffee and baccy are all within easy reach, so I have all that I need.

If I trawl back through my notebooks, there are a lot of things in them which I didn’t include in the final versions of the stories they were notes for. Some of the ideas were simply too much and might have landed me in trouble under the Obscene Publications Act. All of the stories which the notes were on though were published in the end, so they might have been banned but for me self-censoring.

The next anthology of short stories then: Book of the Banned.

Better in the dark

MY WORLD

Some things are better just left. Sometimes, those things – or indeed people – are best left in the dark. In the dark is how I prefer my current accommodation: it just looks better that way. In the glow of the naked, red light bulbs hanging from my ceilings, once the sun sets, this place looks better than it does in the cold light of day. The tinted light puts a veneer on the imperfections. This place is nocturnal; like me.

I like the dark. I like dark things. I’ve always been like that. I like to explore darkness and the things which may lurk within. If I can’t find those things, I simply make them up, such is the art of the writer. My mind just inhabits a dark place. Or perhaps my mind is a dark place in its own right. I certainly find things there. I’ve written about them. A case in point would be COGS.

I was uncomfortable in writing that particular story, not only because of the content but because it might have lost me friends, some of whom are young. I knew that it was a good story which could be written well in the right hands but I ran the risk of alienating some of my younger friends – who are also readers – because I feared they may think that what I wrote about might be indicative of the kind of thoughts I have as a person, as opposed to the writer. I am no more likely to re-enact the events I write about than a film director is to act out a video nasty. I’m both pleased and proud that both of my adopted daughters and my best young mate have read COGS and although they all say that it is grim / morally wrong / disturbing and more, they also note that it is well written and will stay with the reader long after ingesting. Writers – like film directors and others in the arts – have to take themselves out of their own comfort zones sometimes to produce something which is disturbing but affecting. With COGS, I’ve done that: I’m good at my job.

This little place where I’ve chosen to live the impoverished life of an alcoholic writer is just the kind of place one would expect to find an impoverished, troubled writer. And I’m here to stay because a weight which was weighing upon my shoulders has been lifted. No-one need know how that was achieved because certain things and people are best left in the dark.

There is much home improvement still to be done but it is now truly home. There’s the small matter of plumbing in a cooker, so that we have more than a microwave oven here and a toaster would be handy but we have a kettle. Coffee in the mornings – black, because someone has used the Coffee Mate – would be nicer with a slice of burnt toast with Marmite: breakfast has taken on a dark hue.

Now, I’d rather be writing, so I’m off to a dark place. Would the last one in please turn on the lights; the red ones.

Squares time

MY WORLD

The world is square. At least mine is.

Some people have been worrying about me and although I told them not to, their concerns had justification. I’m not going back to my old ways and those weren’t the worries. Rather, I’ve set up my new camp in life and the fragility of that was what was causing concern; for those who care about me and for me personally. But, here goes:

I’m square with the landlord. It doesn’t matter how this came about but rest assured that he is off of my back. I haven’t killed him.

I’m square with two people who may have had an issue with me, who come into the bar and who know one of my past tormentors: the biological, undeserving father of one of my little girls. I’ve spoken to them: they’re on my side and if one individual wants to come and find me, he’ll also find a couple of mutual friends: they’ll be standing behind me.

I’m square with a regular here who is a ghost from the past: a part of the past which is pretty dark and violent; a past relationship. He knows who I am. We’ve spoken. We’re straight.

Charming, aren’t I?

So, now it’s a chilled weekend for me and my housemates.

Chill out, those who might otherwise worry.

Who lives in a place Llike this?

MY WORLD

Frankly, who would want to? Right now, I’m in my room, trying to write, for that is what I do. Unfortunately, I have to write this first in order to simply get things off my mind so that I may focus on writing properly: the next short story, or to continue with my second novel.

I’m somehow guilty for shutting myself away up here in what is in fact my private home. Should I not be allowed to do as I please in a place I pay rent for, provided I don’t undertake anything illegal? Apparently not, according to my landlord.

Cutting a very long story short, my landlord seems to have it in his head that I’m withholding rent from him. He thinks that I’ve been paid housing benefit and that I’ve not passed that on to him. His “reasoning”, although he is not a reasonable person, is as follows:

I spend all of my time upstairs in my rooms. Whilst there, I drink alcohol and he wonders what else I get up to. Surely that’s no-one’s business but my own, unless I were to be doing something illegal? He feigns concern for me, saying to my friends, behind my back that he’s counted the number of empty cider bottles in the rubbish. I am an alcoholic. I drink up to three litres of white cider per day – down from nine – at a cost of the price of one pint over the bar downstairs. I have little money and I have an addiction.

He questions the number of DVDs which arrive in the post for me here. So what? I collect rare and extreme films. It’s a hobby. His belief is that I have this money which I’m withholding from him and I’m using it to live the life of Riley up here. I wish I could afford to fraternise more with the dwindling numbers of punters downstairs but I can’t. Not since the landlord took away my cleaning duties. Frankly though, I wouldn’t want to be downstairs in the atmosphere created by some when they’re here anyway. And the DVDs cost about two quid each by the way. He just assumes that I pay for them all: I may not. Some may be gifts: a concept which would be alien to some.

When I’m downstairs, having a drink, it’s assumed that I have money. I don’t. Other people buy me drinks. They’re called friends: another alien concept perhaps. The point is, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Wherever I am, there is a sneaking suspicion about me, based upon nothing but the figment of an imagination.

There seems to be another alien concept: that of maths. What I’m asked to pay in rent – which is a sum few besides the really needy would pay for this place – is not covered by my housing benefit. I make up the difference myself, which is another reason I’m unable to socialise in the bar. I’m in arrears on my rent: this was always going to be the case as I’m on housing benefit and I made the fact clear before I took on the tenancy. Everything I receive from the council, I have paid over to the landlord and I have provided proof of this by showing him my bank statements. I will always be in arrears by the very nature of the arrangement. Despite me topping things up out of my own money, the landlord still thinks that I’m in arrears to a greater extent to that which I should be. Simple fact: I may well be in arrears for six weeks but then I receive my fortnightly housing benefit, which I pay to the landlord. This places me four weeks in arrears: the norm for housing benefit tenants. The landlord’s argument is that I then go into a further two weeks arrears while we wait for the next housing benefit payment. Yes: well done. That is indeed the case and it is normal. I can no further get blood from a stone in getting money from the council than I can polish a turd.

If someone is able to somehow spell this out to my landlord, that someone is a better person that me. For now, I just have to keep throwing money at him to keep him off my back and hopefully keep my home. I do like it here. I want to stay, but for the constant harassment. Harassment is a crime.

So with that off my back but with the landlord still riding me piggyback, my mind is clear, if not cleansed.

Welcome to my place. Or put another way, this is mine and you’re welcome to it.

Now I have work to do, for that is what I do up here, in the part of the pub I like the most. It pays little but it’s a means to an end. I am a writer and the power of the written word is far greater than that of the sword.

Don’t threaten me. Don’t tempt me. 

Sometimes you need to ask if someone may have more on you than you think you may have on them. Because there’s far more to it than what’s written here and if I were to let the cat out of the bag, it wouldn’t be me being obliged to live somewhere else. I know.

Kormamelion

10.05.15 (Day 504 / 62)

20.42

It’s been a quiet weekend here at the pub, for me at least. What a lot of people sometimes can’t grasp is that, despite my often extrovert nature, I’m naturally a solitary person. When I’m in company, for whatever reason, it’s normally me that’s centre of attention, providing the entertainment and doing all that I do. When I’m alone though, it’s not that I get to spend time with myself so much as me wanting to do solitary things, like reading the weekend newspapers and writing.

Now that my life is settling down to a degree, I do sometimes wish that I had someone to share it with but that’s not my focus for a number of reasons. Someone who struggles to understand themselves is not likely to be understood by anyone else, so any special person sharing my life would have to be really quite special indeed. They would need to understand though that sometimes I need my own space, despite being with them. Only one person has managed that in the past but ironically it was my own insecurity and wondering constantly how I’d managed to be with someone so wonderful which destroyed the partnership. She used to say that it was because, quite simply, I was me. Well, it was me that fucked up the love of my once upon a time.

This place isn’t big enough for anyone else really. Certainly not someone with lots of personal belongings, because there’s barely enough room in this crooked place to accommodate me.

Having said that it’s been a quiet weekend at the pub, it hasn’t been quiet in any part of the building other than the little space which I occupy. Often there are more people in the private parts of the building than there are in the bar and the people upstairs can be very noisy. With the landlord being of a particular nature, it’s sometimes like living aboard an overcrowded prison ship of refugees. With a multi-megawatt sound system below decks. But I do love it. It’s crooked, has very few luxuries and costs too much. The story of my housing benefit not covering my rent and me having to make up the rent from my ESA, rendering me unable to see my kids next weekend is already documented. But the place has a certain edge; a sort of danger. It’s like the scene where Clarence first visits Drexl in True Romance, or the house party in Night of The Demons: it’s cool; it’s me. And all I need is somewhere to do what I do: write. This place is the perfect writer’s pad, given all of the ideas it throws up.

Maybe I should be down there in the bar and I would socialise, were it not for the lack of funds preventing me from doing so. I’d like to have a game of pool and see my friends but I have plenty to occupy me up here: writing, reading, books, CDs, DVDs… A recent addition to the latter collection is Prometheus, which is actually on TV tonight. Just like good books though, I like to have DVDs as well as CDs on my shelves. That way, I can watch good films over and over and not have to worry about schedules and commercials. And I have a good supplier. Wait until a movie has its network premier and you can buy a used – but pristine – copy for a couple of quid: that’s the same price as my book. Maybe one day an agent may recognise the potential of that for a film. After all, one of my short stories had already been made into a short film, albeit for a school media studies project. But we all have to start somewhere.

People worry about me spending so much time upstairs but think about it: an alcoholic living above a pub. As I’ve said before, my drinking is under control and that extends to the bar downstairs but friends are concerned that I’m wasting away up here or getting into another agoraphobic positive rut. I’m not: I’m fine. That’s difficult to appreciate by those who don’t see me while I’m shut away up here, by choice, but one of my closest current friends is someone who lives here. She knows and will tell others that I am okay, because she’s seen me and we’ve had one of our occasional hug chats. This is the girl who I had to be careful to not address as the word which was on my mind. I need fear no longer for we have had that conversation and she knows. We have a mutual understanding I believe.

So, a few people who are out of reach aside, who would want to live in a place like this? With me? I rest my case and am resigned to getting on with life and indulging myself in writing.

I’m in talks with a potential agent on the writing front. More news on that as it becomes apparent; no news if it doesn’t.

People worry that I’m not eating. Well, tonight I had this:

And here’s what it was like.

This was Lidl’s chicken korma, under the Chef Select label at £1.59.

Six minutes in the microwave and turned out onto a plate, it looked like it does in the picture.

There were ten large bite-sized pieces of chicken breast, neither too dry nor moist and which tasted of chicken: an obvious statement and one often applied to things which aren’t in fact chicken; even things of indeterminate origin. But the chicken in this korma tasted as though it had been char grilled prior to cooking as a curry. A quick check of the packaging revealed that the chicken is in fact marinated.

The pilau rice was very yellow but another quick look at the packaging revealed that there are no artificial colourings in this dish at all. The colouring comes from turmeric. The taste of cumin was very apparent in the rice, as was at least one whole cumin seed: more encouraging than distracting.

The sauce was plentiful, as would be expected of a ready meal and especially at this price. The consistency was good though, with the sauce clinging to the chicken and providing a vehicle for the rice. I’ve had better kormas but for a lot more money. I’ve also had many worse. This one was creamy, with a coconut flavour, as evidenced by the ingredients on the packaging. I’d have preferred more cream and coconut flavour but those are premium ingredients which one shouldn’t expect to be in abundance in a budget meal. What was pleasantly surprising though was the gentle, spicy warmth from the marinated chicken pieces coming through the sauce, which can sometimes be simply a barrier.

Overall, a good result: certainly a 3. And with a naan bread, this could easily be a 4. So, 3+.

This lone diner would have preferred a greater chicken over rice ratio but economics dictate at this level.

Perhaps some company as well one day, to improve the whole thing.

 

Automata Appreciation

09.05.15 (Day 503 / 60)

14.42

With “COGS”, it would appear that I have literally created a beast. It’s still password protected on this blog, pending acceptance by my editor but the jury is quite literally out, considering it. A few trusted readers have been permitted access to the story though and the feedback is encouraging.

Writing can be a difficult business. Forget for a moment the competitiveness of writing as an industry, the scant rewards and the sometimes daily struggles with writer’s block. Writers have to be imaginative – obviously – and there is such a vast quantity of writing out there in the world of publishing that pretty much all subjects have been covered, some to such an extent that they have become clichéd. We’re always having to think of new and imaginative ideas, or different ways of looking at things to make ourselves stand out.

I have personally become best known for pulling tricks: this is not to say that I trick my readers, as to do so would be to con them. The usual tricks aside, like the twist ending or sting-in-the-tail, or seemingly hiding something when in fact it was there all the time: those are literary tricks. I also take everyday things and apply my craft to make them frightening. I still have readers saying to me that they’ve never looked at shadows or reflections in the same way, almost six months after I wrote The Paradox of Shadows and The Paradox of Reflection. In those stories, I introduced fear into things which are all around us and which we take for granted. Both are paradoxical tales, for the premises that I suggest can neither be proven nor denied; hence they have been able to take on an aura of terror.

I’ve pulled off a pretty neat trick with COGS because it’s both repulsive and compelling at the same time. It’s said that there’s a very fine line between genius and insanity. There’s also a sometimes blurred line between that which you may imagine but would never play out. Does that mean that if an author writes something which is disturbing, they are disturbed themselves, simply for having the idea? It’s an area for debate. Is a writer likely to act out that which they have written about in a fictional piece? For the most part, an emphatic no and there’s a whole debate to be had about the availability of pornography being either to blame, or for preventing sex crimes. Sometimes we do have to move out of our own comfort zones and write about things which disturb us, because it’s likely that what disturbs us will have the same effect on our readers. Just because we write it though, doesn’t mean that it’s a fantasy which we’re likely to seek to act out.

So the subject matter of COGS is pretty disturbing and that’s deliberate on my part as the writer but the story is not based on a personal fantasy. COGS disturbs me as the writer, just as much as I hope it will trouble my readers. In a 1445 word story, I have raised questions, including that of whether sexual fantasies may be acted out with robots, for robots aren’t alive. Or are they? There are other issues raised and I hope that the story is the subject of future debates. If it’s discussed then it is effective. Incidentally those 1445 words were the product of two days’ work. The final draft runs to three pages: not a lot to show for two days’ work but it’s not just the actual writing of the stories which takes the time. There has to be research into the subject matter, in this case automata: robots and mechanical animals. I personally give a lot of thought to the minutiae, right down to the names of the characters. Then there’s the drafting and crafting: every word must have it’s place, justify its existence and serve its neighbours. Words need to be changed, moved around, or taken out entirely. Then there is the sub-text: that which isn’t written but which is suggested to the fertile mind. Show don’t tell give clues and hints; make suggestions; create thoughts. Ultimately, produce something which remains with the reader long after they finish reading the work. Make an indelible impression on their mind. All of these are the tricks employed by good writers and I’m apparently one of them. Three pages in two days: Paul Auster would be proud.

COGS remains under wraps to all but a few trusted readers and critics until it is accepted for publication, if indeed it’s accepted because it could be pretty controversial. I’m hopeful and certainly pleased with what I’ve done, namely to produce something affecting with words alone, unable to use sounds and images which work together to produce affecting AV media. All I have at my disposal is pure words and all of the sounds, images and thoughts which the words convey.

One of my main test readers and critics is my close friend Nettie. This is what she had to say about COGS:

I have just finished reading the story and it is disturbing but also very good. It’s definitely not for a younger audience. My mouth still feels dry and I actually nearly lost my voice when I’d finished. I can see now why writing it was disturbing for you.

That was yesterday. Then, as confirmation that the story stays with the reader, earlier today:

Just read it again. It is brilliant and very disturbing at the same time. I want to destroy it but you can’t delete a memory and I actually want to read it again, because it’s compelling. It’s in my personal folder, so when I want to make my mouth dry and the hairs on my arms stand up, I can read it again.

I wasn’t keen for my youngest adoptive daughter to read it but she’s pretty persistent, so I relented. Here’s what she had to say:

It’s disgusting, wrong and grim. You captured every slight detail and imagery, in a way which not many writers do but you can.

The eldest hasn’t seen it yet.

So I’ve created a bit of a monster but I’m proud of what I’ve done. I love being a writer and quite a good one at that, by all accounts.

A Writer’s Life For You

06.05.15 (Day 500 / 57)

13.42

500 days of writing the blog. Readers have always been welcomed to my world and if you’re reading this, I’m grateful for your continued interest.

I can’t speak for too many of my peers but when I describe a day in the life of this particular writer, I am also describing that of many others, at least insofar as few days are the same and no day in writing is like a typical, conventional working day. But to us it’s work and this is one of us, on one day.

Normally, I’ll get up at around eleven in the morning: I said we don’t work normal hours. The nights are usually very late, or early morning affairs for various reasons, chief among which is that I’m at my most creative, imaginative and creative when I’m relaxed and chilled out. More of that later, in this post and later today.

The first order of the day is to get to the local shops for whatever provisions I need for the rest of the day: booze, tobacco, food. With everything in, I’m secure in the knowledge that I have all I’m likely to need around me and that I won’t have to go out again.

Then coffee: a 34 fl.oz keg of strong coffee with twelve sugars and lots of Coffee Mate. The keg keeps the coffee warm for around ten hours, which is the length of my average working day. Sometimes I’ll get distracted and only commit a couple of hours to writing. Other times, I’ll be on a roll and can write for sixteen hours straight. I’ll grab some brunch, which is usually a pain au chocolate or a bacon croissant – with the bacon cooked in the microwave of course – and have that with coffee at my writing desk while I go over the notes I’ve made the previous day. The notes can be to-do lists, ideas for short stories, rough hand-written drafts of stories, or the same for the next novel. Then I’ll get to work and that’s where no two days are the same. I’d be a pretty boring and repetitive writer if I churned out the same material every day.

I’ll almost always be playing music in the background. Favourites at the moment are Bran Van 3000, Emiliana Torrini, Imogen Heap, Cradle of Filth and Sophie Auster. It’s background music but music can influence me and give me ideas. Obviously the kind of music can influence the type of writing I produce.

There’ll be interruptions throughout the day, with people wanting to see me, so I might take the odd break and descend to the bar but the working day is sometimes one which knows no bounds, so I often have to decline all but that fold-up daughter, who just folds up in a corner and doesn’t need me for anything other than company while she waits for her parents to get home. She often can’t go home before they’re back, so she comes to her adopted dad. She has her uses, chief amongst which is reading my output and giving me feedback.

I only wish others were as understanding as the little fold-up one. She can see that I’m busy when she’s here, so she just lets me get on with things. Others are persistent, insistent and pressurising. Often I can’t make plans and prefer to do things on a whim. The constant interruptions throw me off course and cause me to lose time and sometimes, patience. If I say that my presence somewhere depends on the outcome of an event, I clearly need to wait to see what the outcome of that event is before I can commit. Unfortunately, not everyone is as fond of my fold-up sidekick as me, so we can’t go together to some of the places I’m invited to and I feel a responsibility towards her over others who have others themselves where she has few. 

I’m usually working on more than one project; normally the work-in-progress novel and at least one short story for a magazine. Often I’ll fill in gaps and get the creative process started by writing a blog post, which is pretty evident here. Like my literary hero, Paul Auster, I’m happy if at the end of a working day I’ve produced one page of finished copy. Two pages is a bonus and three, rare. What ends up as one or two pages might be a chapter of the book or a short story. Before reaching the finished stage, either would be far longer and will have been edited down. I might go through three or four draft versions of something before I’m happy with it, so one page at the end of a day may have involved writing four times the end result. A typical page is about 500 words, so on some days, I’ll write perhaps 2000 words: a fairly typical output for a writer.

Constant top-ups of coffee, lunch, dinner, 40-50 cigarettes, alcohol and other substances fuel the day and as well as the actual writing, the work includes self-promotion, book promotion, social networking and research. Research can be via books or the internet, as I look into myriad subjects to be come learned enough in them to be able to write about them with a degree of authority. At the moment, I’m researching epoch events: scenarios which could be mass extinction scenarios. Of course, writing is mainly fiction in my case but there needs to be a basis in fact. Arguments have to be authoritative. An author needs to understand their material.

When not working, leisure activities can contribute to the writing process: I have many clippings from newspapers and magazines which have given me the basis for material. Similarly, I may watch a movie or a TV programme which gives me an idea. I always have a note pad by my side and the notes I make are filed with the media clippings for future reference. These are what I will go through at the start of a day, look through them again and decide if they have merit. I’ll start with the bare bones of a story and put flesh on those bones to produce the finished product.

At around 3am, I’ll crash out, ready to start all over again the next day.

So writing really can be a full time job if it’s one’s chosen path and it’s the path I’ve chosen. There are few if any rewards at the start but we have to just keep plugging at it, writing as much as possible and getting ourselves out there and eventually to market if we’re to be successful. And for me, it’s all I’m realistically able to do. And I’m doing it in the hope that one day my kids will be proud.

Welcome to my world.

Incidentally, I may have mentioned that I need to sell books. To that end I’m doing as much promotion of The Paradoxicon as I can. It now has its own Facebook page and can be bought on Amazon via the Facebook page or my website. Both need visitors, likes and shares, so go here:

www.facebook.com/theparadoxicon

About You and Me

04.05.15 (Day 498 / 55)

18.42

This is about you: the person I became for a while. It’s also about me: the person I am now. Following an extended weekend of self-reflection, I know me and don’t much care for you. You were drunk. You thought you were ill-treated and that everyone was against you. They were. They wanted rid of you. They wanted me back.

The last six weeks have allowed me to reflect upon and try to come to terms with what happened over the fifteen months previously. What happened? What went wrong? I did. It’s with that realisation and admittance of guilt that I am able to face back, upon the person I was for a while. I went off the rails and I got lost. When I was thrown out by my own mum, when I lost my last resort; when my own mother called the police on me because I was kicking off and I was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace. When I spent that first homeless night in a police cell, I’d lost everything. I had nothing. So what was I going to do? Get drunk. Destroy myself. There didn’t seem to be any point in doing anything else.

The battle to find somewhere to live, to settle down and sort myself out would still have been ongoing now, were it not for my own efforts, luck, circumstance, timing and having people around me who’d seen me start to recover. Because it was about nine months into the sentence I served that I realised I needed to get better for the sake of my kids. I’d never forgotten them but at the depths of despair, I assumed I would never see them again. They have the stability of a step dad now and I was thinking that maybe they and others would be better off without me. I contemplated taking my own life a few times and attempts were made on my life on more than one occasion but I wasn’t thinking that would be best for everyone. Rather, I was thinking it would be best if they were just able to get over me; like a lost cause. Then I realised that all wasn’t lost, because of the love and faith I had around me in the friends who’d remained. I realise I lost a lot of friends during that period. They did indeed give up on what they saw as a lost cause and I can’t say I blame them. As I’ve said before, when I was in the midst of all the arguments, spitting venom and vitriol, I was convinced that they were all wrong and that I was right. It takes sobriety to be able to see the other side of the argument but I was so lost and so under the influence that I was right in my own mind.

But I’m back: I said I would be. I went to a place I’d rather never revisit but I have to have hindsight in order to appreciate the difference between what I was and what I now am. I had to go off the rails and drink myself to the brink in order to see what it’s like staring down a chasm and being tempted to just jump. Those who’ve stuck by me have witnessed my gradual recovery. The only reward they get is to see me better and still have me as a friend. I’m not better from a health perspective but I’m a better person than I was, partly because of what I became and went through. This weekend has been spent in quiet reflection and I was afraid of what I might find as I searched for myself. Because I wasn’t sure if I knew who I was. Neither did anyone else.

Well, I’m still me. Some people – one of my adopted daughters especially – were worried that if I got “better”, I might stop being the person she loved so much. She admitted that my substance abuse and the way it altered my mind was part of what made me, me. She feared that I might be proverbially lobotomized if I got better. Just as no-one has yet managed to fully understand me and I still don’t understand myself, even off the booze, I’m an interesting and complicated animal. I’m still intelligent, funny, worldly wise and all the rest of it; just maybe a little more subdued now that I’m off the drink.

It was the six months leading up to me taking the tenancy in the pub which turned me around; the time I spent in the safe house; at Meg’s. It’s Meg’s and her parent’s – Nettie and Matt – but Meg was the first one of the family I met, back when most days were spent in McDonald’s and I got to know her and many of the others who were to become the Pink Heart family at the squat. “Meg’s” also has a certain ring to it as a name, perhaps for a cool bar. Perhaps that place will feature in one of my books.

At the squat, I at least had something, albeit temporary. It was that realisation which meant that I was free to continue my journey into personal oblivion. I was the boss there. I created a positive rut for myself. When we lost the squat and I ended up at Meg’s, I had to be more responsible. I couldn’t bring all of the trouble that was me and which followed me to someone else’s house. So certain ties were cut. I realised I had to do something for the family who’d placed so much trust in me to get out. I had to sort myself out and not take the piss. There were arguments; there were times when I stormed out and one occasion when I was thrown out. There was tension and it grew more weary as time wore on. Originally I was meant to be there for a month but the tenure became seven months. But they weren’t going to let me go. Not until they knew I was somewhere safe. Unlike in other places, I wasn’t monitored or policed too much there. I wasn’t subjected to the kind of authority which would cause me to rebel. I was given love, time and patience. Yes, it was the stay at Meg’s bar which turned me around.

I still drink of course. I’m one of the so-called lucky ones who hasn’t had to abstain completely and go through detox. Circumstances prevented in fact because the detox programme would have been with the administration of prescription drugs, which render the consumer effectively drunk. I simply don’t like being drunk as I dislike the loss of control I experience. Because of the effects of the drugs, the dispenser – a doctor from CRI – needs to know where the patient is: they need an address. For various reasons, I was unable to disclose the address where I was staying, which excluded me from a detox programme. Instead I went through a lengthy programme of controlled drinking, so that now I have my drinking under control. No-one will ever see me drunk because that’s when I get out of control. That’s when I’ve lost it and made the mistakes I did in the past. As recently as last Wednesday, I was somewhat challenged financially and decided to forego our weekly pub pool practice night. A friend and fellow member of the team protested that it was his night out and that he’d like to spend that time with the other best player on the team: me. So he bought my drinks. Come the fourth pint, I declined. My friend protested but I insisted. That fourth pint would be the one which started to push me over the edge; beyond my self-imposed limit. I wouldn’t be drunk on a fourth pint but I would start to feel uneasy. To counter this, I would have another pint and so the spiral would continue. So instead I asked my friend to buy me a soft drink if he’d like to retain my company. He appreciated me being so candid and honest and he shook my hand. It was a brave statement for me to have made, he said.

Six months ago, things would have been different but six month ago was when I was someone different; the one I’m talking to as you. Now I’m me and me is a better person than you: the me I used to be.

I’m still financially challenged, surviving on only my ESA payments and with my housing benefit not fully covering my rent. Therefore I have to make up the difference from my ESA payments. Consequently, I only have enough money to buy food, drink and tobacco. The erosion into my money to make up the shortfall in rent is such that I’ve had to cancel the next meeting with my biological kids in a couple of weeks’ time because I simply can’t afford it. But would I rather have somewhere to live which costs me an amount which prevents me from seeing the children, or be homeless again and able to see them? I have to think practically and conclude that I need my home. This is the way it will be for the foreseeable future: I can just about afford to live but I can’t afford any leisure activities. It’s a good job I’d rather be writing.

There’s a slight chance that I may be able to persuade my ex-wife to being the kids to London on my birthday, when one of my best friends – Nettie – is taking me to London to see Les Miserables. It’s a slight chance though because of my financially challenged position. As it stands I’m being carried financially on the day, with my travel paid for – I believe – and lunch covered. Danielle – my ex-fiance – is joining us for lunch and she gets on well with the ex-wife and the children but the burden of payment would be on someone else, so I shan’t labour the issue and concentrate instead on finding something, somewhere, somehow, to get most of those I love around me on a special day. To be honest, the last few birthdays have been eventful for the wrong reasons, so I’d have liked this one to be special. In an ideal world, my parents and my two adopted daughters would be joining us but in an ideal world, I’d have the money to pay for at least some of them.

I’d rather be writing than worrying and if I can concentrate on the writing, in the absence of being able to do any other job, eventually I might make enough to be able to see my children. They are my main motivation and my reason for continuing to work on what I do best. I need time and space to do it. I need to be more prolific and put in the hours. Hopefully, one day I’l make my kids proud.

Of all the things that have come out of my experiences over the last fifteen months, the one I’m most proud of is the fact that I wrote a book: I actually did it and not many people can say that, in any circumstances, let alone my own.

Please buy a copy: it’s very good and costs less than a cup of coffee. Tell other people, as I need sales if I’m going to be able to see my children. I did well the last time I saw them, by staying off of the alcohol and I want to show them that wasn’t a one-off. I want them to know that it was daddy writing a book which got me back to them. If everyone who’s stuck by me and believed in me continues to do so and buys a copy of the book, then tells just one person and they do the same, I’ll see my kids sooner than I currently might.

Please buy the book: it’s about life. It’s about you and me. It’s about so much more. It’s about a life which hasn’t happened but which could in time. It’s called The Paradoxicon and I wrote it for everyone. It’s available here.

The Paradoxicon is horror / sci-fi. I like to think that it marries the two, as it does science and religion. It’s an exploration of life as we know it but it proposes so much more. It will make you feel small and insignificant but if you grasp certain things, you may realise that you yourself are so much more. The Paradoxicon is more than just a book, as one reader put it:

“I have just finished reading The Paradoxicon. Steve writes in a way that just keeps you wanting to read one more page, no matter if you’re exhausted after a 12 hour shift or not. Taking you down roads of the unexplained and the fantastic, but keeping you grounded by making Victor a real person easy to relate to – I too would muse these events over a cup of tea and peanut butter on toast in the morning! The book inspires thoughts and feelings on many different levels from having to keep the light on when first being introduced to ‘they’, to feeling a very real human empathy for a character battling his own demons and the collapse of his life. A pleasure to read and thoroughly recommended.”

It’s hard to summarise a life but here’s how it begins:

You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.

This is the story of a life which hasn’t happened yet. A life that could have been, given the chance. It will happen. In time.

We are about to meet a man who you may or may not like. You may relate to him or you may judge him. The choice is yours. If you’re watching something on TV which you don’t like, there is an off switch. You are holding a book which you may choose to put down at any point.

Does anyone deserve a second chance at life? Who plays judge? You hold a life in your hands at the moment and you may switch it off any time.

Is it possible to make amends and right one’s wrongs, so that one may clear the slate with life? To live again? Can I put everything behind me and move on?
Is the remorse I feel sufficient punishment for what I have done? Are the constant memories my punishment, to live with me until the day I die?

Travel with Victor Frank in a search for knowledge and the ultimate answer to the ultimate question: that of life. Why are we here?

This is a journey through time, space, dreams and so much more. A trip through the past, present and future. A journey into the unknown.

All of the answers which we seek are here, if we look for them. But we need to know what we are looking for. In order to understand the answers, we need to fully grasp the ultimate question.

This book covers what it means to be human; what life is all about and what it might mean to us and to others.

There are horrors, encounters with strange beings, mysteries, questions and adventure. All are contained within The Paradoxicon; a book about itself and so much else. Hold the hand of the author and be guided through what is literally the story of a life.

After reading The Paradoxicon, you will see your own reflection and shadow differently. You may even fear life itself.

Finally, an excerpt:

If you are reading this, then you are reading this: you are able to read. And if you can make sense of these words, then you understand and I have made first contact. I think, therefore I am. Or am I? What am I?



I may have to leave any time soon. In the event of my leaving, I hope that what I’ve gathered can be kept together; to be retained as a collection: I think it’s all connected but I don’t have time to join the dots. I may not have time to label or catalogue everything, so if someone with more time than me finds all of this, I hope they can continue what I may have to leave. I hope they can find what I sought.



But exercise caution, for some of what I believe to have discovered may require a broad imagination. If you are of a cynical nature and not open to suggestion, then I would politely request that you pass on what you have found to someone who may be better equipped to continue my work. If you wish to be my student and learn, then please read on. One thing you will certainly need is time, which I can give you.



Briefly yours,



Miles Brunner.

So if you want to make a life, buy my book please.

I’d Rather be Writing

04.05.15 (Day 498 / 55)

16.42

I’d Rather be Writing is a book I’m re-reading, by Marcia Golub. The strap line is “A guide to finding more time, getting more organised, completing more projects and having more fun.”

I’ve read the book before and I’m doing so again in readiness for a working week which starts tomorrow. Yes, it is a working week. I write. That is my job. It doesn’t pay much at the moment – a few miniscule royalty payments from The Paradoxicon aside – but the hope it that one day it might. For now it’s a hobby which I enjoy and if I keep working at it, one day I may earn a living from it. My skills are recognised by some and my aim is to have my craft noted by a mainstream publisher.

I’ve worked a little on Bloodstained Knaves this weekend but have been distracted by snooker, newspapers and myself. As well as keeping abreast of current affairs, I read the weekend newspapers – Guardian and Observer – and the supplements to give me ideas for my writing. I’ve been a distraction for myself this weekend as I have deliberately spent time alone to try to find myself after the traumatic period which preceded the time I’ve spent here. For the most part, I like what I’ve found as I’ve become re-acquainted with someone I’d lost touch with and who has changed: the man in the mirror. I also know now where my heart belongs, after lengthy conversations with the love of my once upon a time, who also misses me and our relationship. I lost that and have been coming to terms with the fact that my broken heart may never be healed: that’s the life-long scar I shall bear as penance for screwing the relationship up. With a broken heart come daily regret and remorse: mental pain, more painful than anything physical could ever be.

I’ve concluded that I’m such damaged goods that I’ll never be able to return to doing a “normal” job: I wouldn’t want to. So this is my job now: writing.

I’m grateful to those around me for respecting my privacy and space over this weekend of self-discovery. Now that I’ve decided that what I want to do is to write, that courtesy needs to be extended through my working weeks. I have to exercise self-discipline and not be distracted from what I’m hoping one day to get paid to do. So even though my work is unpaid at the moment, I need people to understand that to me, writing is a job.

I fear my kid sister may be the hardest to convince, calling me daily as she does and asking if she can see me. Why? Because she’s bored. Well, I’m working. That’s not working; it’s your hobby. You don’t get paid for it, so you don’t have to do it. I can hear her now. Well, I do have to do it because I want to and I have to impose some discipline on myself.

My literary hero and influence, Paul Auster, is happy if he’s written one page in a working day which can run to sixteen hours: ONE PAGE. But he is a perfectionist and his writing is perfect, with each word serving its neighbours. Often I’ll write five, six or more pages in a day but only have one or two pages to show for it at the end of the day, once I’m finished editing. I’m happy if I can produce a chapter of a book, or a complete short story in a day. At the very least, a blog post. These posts are not literary; they’re my stream of consciousness, just writing everything down to get it out of my head so that my mind is clear to write something with more artistic merit. If I’m suffering writer’s block, sometimes a blog post will help me get over it. Despite their comparative lack of merit, these blog posts are at least writing. And that’s what I’d rather be doing than wasting my time by myself or in the company of others. I may have to make the occasional concession for the eldest daughter but she can just be folded up and put in a corner with no need for me, while I get on with work. Most others are more needy than my fold-up girl.

Of course, I’ll take breaks. I’ll meet friends for lunch or after work in the bar downstairs. I can take breaks whenever I like to work around other people as I’m self-employed. But this is work: I need to get used to this being my chosen path after a period of reflection and others need to as well. It’s not just the writing itself, of the books or the short stories for magazines: it’s research; it’s critiquing others’ work; it’s contributing to writing groups and online fora; it’s marketing and promotion; being a writer involves a lot of hard work if one is to eventually become successful. So it doesn’t pay but I have the skill and the means to do it and it will pay eventually. It’s like starting a new business and earning nothing while you build it up. I’ve done that before and ended up making a lot of money from the businesses I built and ran. I lost them. Now I need a new start and this is it: my choice.

So, when people ask me what I do? I’m a writer. I’ve published a book and several short stories, in magazines and in an anthology volume. The more prolific I’m able to become, the sooner I may get the break I’m looking for. That means writing full-time.

I am a writer and I would rather be writing.