AUTHOR'S CORNER:

A POEM

I am the writer who plays with your emotions and senses

Who uses illusions of love and such fantastical pretences 

I am the spirit of longing and the whimsical wind that blows upon your face

I am the angel that guides and the devil that walks alongside your pace

I am love and lust, and all that your heart can desire

I am what keeps you and holds you to your fuelling fire

I am all that you are and all that you can ever dream of being

I am all you have seen and all that you could ever dream of seeing 

I am your winter's snow and your autumn mist amongst the cloudy sky

I am your summer's sun and the blossom that promises life upon the trees so high

I am the one who brings about the sadness of loss and the pain of despair

I am the one who evokes a feeling of happiness or ignites a frightful nightmare

I am the one who will give you food for thought

Or question everything that you have been taught

I am the swallow who whooshes down from way up high

And steals your thoughts within the breath of a sigh

I am the writer who feeds your eyes and enlightens you good

But without you my words will never be seen nor understood

I am the writer who enlightens with my words

Yet without you, my words would never be heard

I am the writer who is the author of your imagination

Yet take you away and I am lost to future generations

I am the writer who keeps you alive with fantasy

But you are the reader who keeps my legacy

I am the fragile pen who writes in riddles about love and crime

As my words of wisdom evaporate with the passing of time

I am the writer who thanks you for helping me survive

For in reading me over and over, you have kept me alive

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

INSIGHTFUL ME

What is the difference between a writer and an ordinary person?  What is it that makes a writer a writer, when most of us are capable of stringing sentences together on a page?  The difference is that a writer has a certain something that keeps the reader hooked right up until the end of the story; a writer can capture the imagination and awaken the senses in a way that most can't.  What is their secret?  Insight!

You see, when a writer describes a scene, they don't just describe a flat screen scene, they describe the scene in a deep, meaningful and imagination intriguing way.  For example, they don't just say the sky was dark - therefore it was night; instead they may describe in this way - The skies darkened and the clouds gathered around the moon, leaving only a slither of moonlight that shone through them like a guiding torch!  Giving the reader an accurate if not fanciful picture of how that particular night may seem.

When a writer describes a human interaction, they don't just say Jane hated Peter because he was bad; instead they might say - Jane felt a surge of loathing that was comparable to nothing she had felt before, her emotions ached and tinkered between the two worlds of love and hate, her heart ached for him, yet her senses rejected him and her pride forbade her to need him!  She felt a pain in the base of her throat, and it was the pain of one whose words were stuck and far too painful to let out.  Her eyes skimmed over him with lust and regret and her memory replayed the pain he had inflicted upon her!

This description conjures up the reader's own emotions, because it is not human to have a one dimensional emotional process i.e. when we hate, there is usually love, regret, pride and anger in the mix.

When a writer wants to describe passion; they don't simply say Jane felt randy and therefore wanted to sleep with Peter; instead they may say - Jane felt a heat in the pit of her stomach and with it her heart raced and her mind went into over- drive; her body desired him, yet her mind told her to hold back.  She knew that if he came near her she would simply give into him and let go of all her inhibitions, yet to do so would only bring shame upon her; what would he think of her, if he knew she was so easy to have?  Thus describing the turmoil one feels when passion overtakes, for where sex is concerned, one is consumed with two things, desire and guilt!  

I COULD GO ON....BUT YOU GET THE PICTURE!

HOW TO BE AN INSIGHTFUL WRITER?  OKAY, HERE ARE SOME TIPS:

1.  When writing consider what you are writing about and try as much as possible to imagine yourself in that very situation.

2.   When you are writing about an inanimate subject i.e. a house, try to visualise this from top to bottom, imagine what the colours are, the style, the smell even; it is always a good idea to search the internet for images of houses according to the style you are describing.

3.   When writing about emotions, dig deep into your own emotions and try and live those emotions and don't hold back; we all experience those deep emotions and as readers we love to read about them, it's a kind of bitter/sweet memory!

4.   When writing about human interactions, be they funny, sad, happy or angry, try to remember that humans interact in a complex and deep way, one word sentences is not a realistic description of human interactions, and none emotional rational answers are not realistic of human interactions, we are not robots!

5.   Dig deep and analyse your reader's psyche; if you are writing a romance, understand that the type of person who is reading it will be the kind who is thrilled by love, by deep emotions of lust and desire. The same goes if you are writing a horror, your reader is intrigued by the supernatural, by the thrill of the unknown.  As is writing a contemporary women's novel, which involves emotions of women and their feminism, your reader is inspired by strong emotions, by cleverness of women to manipulate in a man's world!

6.   Don't be afraid to express your art, because words are the most powerful expression of art! 

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

THE MAGICAL WORLD OF BOOKS

They say that literature is dead; they say that young kids don't read any more, all they do is sit in front of the computer and Facebook or twitter each other!  Films and computer games are the main form of entertainment....the writer is dead!!  WRONG!

The thing that distinguishes books from any other form of entertainment is that unlike any other visual entertainment, which might be two dimensional, or three dimensional (if you happen to go to theatre or have 3D glasses) books are four dimensional, five, six, infinite dimensions, because with books the one crucial difference is they are not limited to one person's vision!  For example, whilst a film producer might make the heroin tall, sexy, dark/fair or even ethnic.  whilst a theatre production will present you with a cast of actors which look a certain way, or a computer game may come up with graphics that portray an image, books give each and every individual reader the power to see, visualise and imagine and feel in exactly the way their minds deem fit!  In other words; each book will be imagined, viewed, understood and felt in a slightly different way each time a different person reads it!  Now multiply that by the population on the planet!  See the magic one book is capable of?  

More so, what a book will evoke in one reader, may not be the exact same feeling in another person, in other words a book is multi-dimensional because we are all different!  I may imagine my hero to be tall and slender, someone else may imagine him tall and slim but with a squarer jaw, or floppy hair, or a thinner mouth!  As is the same for the surroundings of the characters, the writer may describe their surroundings as a quaint town, I may see a small town in the English countryside, someone else's imagination may conjure up a seaside town, or a Hansel and Gretel picturesque northern European village!  No character is the same for two people, no scenery is identical!  The magic and power of the imagination is far more spectacular than any Hollywood film or theatre production!  

In addition, one can see a film in a day, go to the theatre for the evening, play a computer game for a few hours, but a book is read over a few weeks and therefore engages the reader's senses and imagination for far longer!  You live the moment as you are reading it, totally engrossed in what your mind is imagining, therefore you feel it more.  You leave the book to go to work, sleep or do other chores, and there is a niggling feeling to read more and see what else the story has to offer, so already you are thinking about it, the last chapter echoes in your mind, you have a yearning to get back to your reading! 

If you are engrossed enough in the book, you become the heroin/hero, you too feel the pain, the love, the tragedy and the excitement your heroin/hero is feeling.  Not only is your imagination awakened, but your senses are now on fire!  

Book are limitless when it comes to describing human emotions and behaviour, where as films are not; there is only so many emotions an actor can portray in one scene!  There is a time limit on films, therefore the entirety of the book can never be accurately portrayed in any adaptation film!  

Books are explosion of colours, human condition, behaviour, feelings and all that is in between!  Shakespeare's writing, for example, how he explored human behaviour and executed the human mind effortlessly, his Othello, his Romeo, his Macbeth!  Charles Dickens' Oliver, Agatha Christie''s Poirot!  Fay Weldon's She Devil, Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper!  All those books I have found much more enjoyable in reading than in film form!

So if you think books are a thing of the past, if you think technology is so far advanced that reading is a mere primitive pastime, and that moving images are the future that awaits our youngsters.  Think again....the book will never ever die!  And yes, dear readers, our libraries will re-open once again!

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

A TITBIT FROM THE MISFORTUNES OF ELLIE-MAY

CHAPTER SIXTEEN; FIRST PARAGRAPH

It is the stillness of the night that brings about self doubt.  When the skies are dark and the wind does not blow but simply hums.  When the trees stand very still and not a twig or leaf moves, when the deepest black is so black that one can see it amongst the blackness in the sky, when it seems that the earth has stood still for just one long second.  just before the dawn, just that instant before the dawn, before the thinnest of white lines is seen across the horizon.  That is when the depth of the soul is exposed, that is when the shields to the heart come down and the armour that one wears so fiercely dissolves, and the soul is left bare, exposed to the elements, at the mercy of the thoughts that go round and round , at the mercy of the contempt that one suppresses for one's self, at the mercy of of the knowledge for our own fragility.  This is when hearts beat louder and slower, marking out every breath, counting our pulse.  This is when our dreams take hold and we are once again told the story of our lives, our success, our failings, our hopes and our fears.  This is when the brain, the mind and the heart communicate with our souls, leaving no truth uncovered, no sin hidden, no happy moment forgotten nor bad forgiven.  This is when we sleep.

DID I REALLY WRITE THIS?

I GUESS I DID!

Dear reader, please find (and feel free to be entertained) an extract from Chapter sixteen, just to give you all a taster of my style of writing!  

OKAY, LET ME ELABORATE ON THE MEANING OF THE PARAGRAPH.....

We all hide a part of ourselves from the world; sometimes we hide it so well that we ourselves, in our own conscious minds are not aware of it.  But our subconscious mind is always in the know.  For our subconscious mind is the true keeper of all our secrets, even secrets we have forgotten about.  And no matter how much we delude ourselves and pretend that we are fine, deep down in our hearts and souls, we are tortured with the truth, albeit we may not register this and only experience a sense of unexplained dread.  It is the stillness of the night that brings about self doubt; meaning that in the quietest moments, in those moments where we have nothing to do but actually face ourselves and take a long hard look, warts and all, is when that feeling of suppressed dread rises up in the pit of our stomachs. 

When the trees stand very still and not a twig or leaf move, when the deepest black is so black that one can see it amongst the blackness in the sky, when it seems that the earth has stood still for just one long second. Just before the dawn; it is that moment just before the breaking of the dawn, when if any of us are ever fortunate to witness, where the world seems to become very still and the skies go very dark, just before the birth of a new day.  If ever one looks up at the sky it is immensely dark and in some places appears even blacker than the rest.  In other words it is that witching hour, that vampire moment, that ghostly atmosphere that many a novelist writes about.  

That is when the depth of the soul is exposed to the elements, at the mercy of the thoughts that go round and round, at the mercy of the contempt that one suppresses for one's self; because this is the spookiest time of the night, the defences weaken and self doubt seeps in.  One begins to dissolve the defences and all that is felt is fear and anxiety.  

This is when our dreams take hold and we are once again told the story of our lives; our dreams are but a dialogue between our conscious and our subconscious minds, they reflect every experience we have been through.  when we dream, good or bad, we are merely acting out our life story.  Nightmares are guilt, fear and unresolved issues.  Pleasant dreams are acceptances, resolved issues and satisfied outcomes.  When we sleep we are transported into another dimension, and not a supernatural one, but a world full of ghosts and ghouls and weird happenings....these are the ghosts of our actions and life choices we have made with our conscious minds, they merely live in the subconscious realm!

THE MISFORTUNES OF ELLIE-MAY; AVAILABLE ON AMAZON WEBSITES!

THE BOOK I HAVE JUST READ!

ASSIGNMENT OF DEATH BY CONWELL & RODGERS

Brilliant read!  would recommend to those of us who enjoy the thrill of the underhand world of power and corruption!  Conwell captures human greed very well in this book and shows the darker side of money and wealth!  Enjoyed this book very much and almost yearned to be a character in the story....not one that meets an untimely death though!  Set in the last recession, the story is about banks conning each other and how revenge is exacted in a very unorthodox fashion.  There is not one bit of corruption that currently exists that Conwell has not touched upon; fraud, blackmail, sex, violence and murder all went into making this interesting literary stew!  Well done to the author!

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

DARK NIGHT & THE SEVEN DRAFTS

So the novel is finished and I find myself with an exhilarating sense of achievement and excitement which is beyond my rational control!  Wow, I have finally done it, I have finished my novel and all that is left is for me to print it and send a copy of the manuscript to an unsuspecting publisher!  So I print....

But wait, as the pages are sliding out of my Epson printer I catch a glimpse of line three of chapter one and I can spot a typo!  Oh no.  Stop.  I cancel the print command and go back to my computer, correct my typo and foolishly proceed....Chapter six, paragraph three, line fifty, another typo, and a rather badly constructed sentence at that!  Once again I stop the print command and go back to my computer!  Seven chapters, fifty typos and thirty sentence rewrites later I am overwhelmed with a sense of worry and a feeling of utter failure; my novel has more mistakes than a teenage rave fuelled with narcotics on a hot summer's night!  Not to mention the fact that I have wasted about a hundred sheets of paper and my printer is thoroughly confused and is blinking its little blue light at me!  My ink is running low and I fear that I will have to nip down to an all night supermarket in search and desperate hope of printer ink that will suit my printer!  

I run to my computer in a half-hearted attempt to conjure up some magic and I chant "Computer, computer in my hand, who is the best writer in the land?"  But my computer does not like my tone of voice and simply beeps at me before the screen goes black....oh no, I forgot to plug the damn thing and now the battery has gone dead!  I may have just lost my work!!

I am suddenly aware of how dark and how late into the night it is, and worse how lonely and desperate I am!   This is as serious as it gets for any writer!  Because (and I know I'm not supposed to start my sentences with because, but hey, I'm panicking) I have been foolish enough not to edit my work after each and every single chapter!  I thought what I was writing was brilliant and I was lost by my own thought process that I did not stop to think if what I was writing was polished enough, good enough or even grammatically worthy for the eyes of the mighty publisher!  My life was fast dimming and I was quickly fading out of existence!  Now, not only did I have to rush out to the shops for more ink and paper, not only did I have to plug in the computer and pray that my entire novel was not deleted, but I have the tiresome task of going through three hundred and forty pages with a fine comb and checking for mistakes and style!  

I think I am going to scream, excuse me .....aaaaaaaarrrrghhhh!      AAAAAARRRRRHHHHHH!!!!

So after a brief nervous breakdown and several cups of tea to restore my composure, what have we learned from this ugly night?  Yes, that's right....Never attempt a print out unless ....

1.   You have of course plugged in your computer.

2.   Have plenty of ink and paper.

3.   Checked and edited your work after writing each chapter....YES, you heard me, after every single chapter!

4.   Read out your work to yourself or any other poor sod who is willing to listen and make sure it sounds good and that it makes sense.

5.   In addition, you must have checked again and read over once more, every three last chapters you have written, just to make sure it all flows into each other properly!

6.   Always keep a notebook with all characters names, places and details, or you might find that where your character started off as John smith, he may end up as John brown by chapter twenty....it takes about a year, if not more to write a whole novel, you are bound to forget if you try and commit all to memory.

7.   Once work is finished and yes, even if you have done the above and checked after every single chapter and then checked after every three chapters to make sure it flows and read it out loud until the neighbours could recite it off by heart....LISTEN NOW BECAUSE THIS IS IMPORTANT....Check and Edit it one more time!  

8.   Now bring up the print command, smile confidently to yourself and let your finger press down on the key and PRINT!  

9.   Skim your eyes over the pages that are sliding out of the printer and check that there is not one pesky mistake that has slipped your attention.

!0.   Now place in an envelope addressed to a poor, busy, overworked, unsuspecting publisher and send!

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

ARTISTICALLY MELANCHOLY ME!

Temperamental?  Horrid? Moody?  Who me?  I don't think so!  I am nothing more than a deep person, and insightful human being who has the ability to scrape through the rubbish of the world, to push through the cobwebs of politically correct, newly invented phrases, to see past glorious sunsets and mountains capped in snow!  I am an artist who sees colours you don't see, who hears expressions you fail to hear, who feels the roughness of a smooth texture and the smoothness of that which appears rough!  I am vision and sound personified!  Artist!  Artist!  I am Artistically Inclined!  Therefore I see what you cannot see and I do what you cannot do!  

SO IF I'M SO WONDERFULLY BLESSED WITH SUCH INSIGHT, WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH ME?  WHY AM I JUST NEVER CHEERFUL?

Okay then ask yourself, was Shakespeare?  was Van Gogh?  Was any self-confessed artist ever actually happy?  I think the answer to that one is NO!

Q; WERE THEY UNGRATEFUL?

A; NO THEY WERE NOT!

Q; THEN WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?

A; THEY JUST SEE THINGS IN 'DEEP' 

EXPLAIN......

Okay, writers, musicians and artists alike, are not like the average Joe who walks the streets; they are in fact a slightly different species who have evolved over thousands of years. A bit like evolution of normal man 

only we are interested in portraying/writing what we see and expressing ourselves through the pains and tribulations in society!  In other words, pain appeals much more, because as everyone knows, pain is drenched in vibrant rich colours whilst happiness is simply

pastel soft!

You see when a writer thinks of a love scene, he/she does not just see boy, girl and sunset.  No, what a writer sees is boy - misunderstood, branded as a troublemaker, father in and out of prison, and let him down  when he was a kid.  Mother had to work all hours to support him; has a talent for football but nobody knows it yet!  Girl - beautiful, tormented by her loyalties to her working class family; her father has been laid off work, her mother is suffering from mysterious illness!  Boy meets girl, girl is Jewish boy is Muslim!

 OH MY GOD!!!  

(Worse what will the kids be?  Since to be Jewish you must have a Jewish mother and to be Muslim you must have a Muslim father....They will be Mewish!)

His blue eyes are a symbol of how cold and icy society can be when it comes to forbidden love!  Her red lips, are not happy, but a representation of her bleeding heart; a heart that was not allowed to be with her one true love!  DO YOU GET THE PICTURE???  

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE....

They run away together and set up home; at last they are happy!  No, because the guilt that has been planted in between the bedding of their marriage has now started to grow; and now it seems justified and real!  They seek to live up to the prophecy of their failure and sabotage their own happiness.  She suspects that he cannot be happy being with a girl like her as his parents disowned him.  The truth is, he is happy being with her, very happy in fact, that he cannot believe that she  loves him and only him, and hence starts to stray out of fear of rejection!  Oh, the pain, the pain.....

THE ENDING?

After a colourful explosion of wrecking emotions and heart wrenching scenarios, (and a few displaced Mewish children along the way) it all ends rather explosively and awkwardly, where they finally realise that they should have ignored all foolish social pressure in the first place!!

TA DA !  Life in a very colourful nutshell with all its rubbish, crap and pains of a society with more hangups than a butcher's shop!  

So yes, writers, Musicians  and artists do see the melancholy in life, it is what makes them so wonderfully creative and so delightfully colourful and interesting!  OH THE SUFFERING FOR OUR ART!!

So, next time anyone criticises an artist for being moody, remember, it is the moodiness that ignites the flame that heats up the furnace of creativity!