AUTHOR'S CORNER;

LIVING THE DREAM

It's wonderful being an author, great to have your book out there and on the shelves, circulating the literary world.  Yes, it is fantastic being able to call yourself an author, a creator of fiction, the puppet master of characters in your very own special world.  Clever you! God knows you've worked hard enough for it, suffered long enough for it, watched with great envy as one new author after another graced the shelves of the high street bookshops.  Sighed dreamily at the television when ever an author was interviewed on the morning shows.  You've toiled away patiently at your keyboard, tap, tap, tapping away into the early hours of the morning, creating, painting, furnishing your pages with tantalising story lines and interesting characters!

You have smiled humbly at the mountain of rejection letters that you have received from agents and publishers, reassuring yourself that your time will come.

 And through all of this, through all the hardship, rejections, nights of writer's block and days of editing and re-editing your work, you have kept yourself sane with one single notion....THE DREAM!  you have kept your eye firmly fixed on that big white fluffy cloud in the distance and knew that just behind it lay a rainbow and with it your time to shine.

 

 And finally your dream arrives; wrapped in a pink bow and a party popper for good measure!

You are published my friend, and you ought to be dead proud!

The years of waiting are over, the long lonely road which is tread by struggling writers has come to an end!  You are now officially a writer, not just someone who is aspiring to become a writer, not some deluded person with a word processor and idle time on your hands!  Not a dreamer, not a sad, lonely person who thinks they can write!  No, you have been promoted to the ranks of the creative, the talented, the insightful literary type!  Soon, people all over the nation will learn your name, read your words and praise your mind!  Soon you shall grace the high streets across the land and in each bookshop your book shall reside....soon?  Umm...not quite so soon!  

REALITY CHECK....

Because you now have the task of selling your books in order to promote your books....umm, aren't I supposed to have my books promoted  first in order to sell them?

Which came first; the chicken or the egg?

And how are people going to buy my books when they have not heard of me?  What's that you say, sell them first and then promote?  REALLY????   Oh and by the way, you need to introduce YOURSELF to the bookshops!!  Not enough that you have written the book, not enough that you have it in print, published by a proper publisher, no, you need to try and convince the bookshop manager that you are actually a writer!

AND IT'S A LONG ROAD MY FRIEND!

If you think that the road previously travelled was a long one, think again!  The previously travelled road was a walk in the park.  This road takes a lot of grovelling, much persuasion and an awful lot telephone calls!  

You will find that you will be spending at least 40 percent of your time a week on the telephone ringing up bookshops trying to arrange a book signing!  And no matter how polite, how well spoken or how clever you sound, it will be like trying to draw blood out of a rock!  With the exception of a few kind managers and event people, you are basically chasing your tail! The manager or event person is not remotely interested and treats you with the sort of contempt one would treat an unwanted guest!

Even though you will effectively be boosting their sales with no added cost to themselves! They doubt that you are actually any good and even though they can actually see your book on their website, they can see the glowing reviews that a few good people have left, they are doubting that you are actually who you say you are, and imagine that if they should allow you into their store, that you as THE WRITER, will somehow frighten off all their customers!  Hello, this is a bookshop!! 

Because the question that will always arise, is who the hell are you?  Unless you are in the charts, unless you have been on television, to them you are....well, to them, you are not here!

You will find yourself explaining yourself an awful lot to the bookshop people, trying to convince them why your published book is any good, or even why it was worthy of publication in the first place!!

SOMETIMES, YOU WILL ALMOST BE REDUCED TO BEGGING....

This, my friends, is never a pretty sight!


And all the while, you, as the writer seem to be fading away out of the limelight! Self doubt will ensue! 

More pleading phone calls follow, more polite fobbing off on the manager's part will take place and you will...you will resort to phoning public libraries and local reading groups in a bid to get any recognition!  



You will find yourself debating helplessly with those who have the power to make or break you

ALL RESULTING IN THE CHIPPING AWAY OF THE SELF...  ALL RESULTING IN ONE SURE THING.....

The spiritual death of the writer!!  No wonder it's called dying for your art!

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

WHAT BECOMES OF US?

Every one of us will face the dilemma at some point in life; every deep thinking person, every correct thinking person, every mother, every father, every member of the older generation.  Each and every single one of us will ask the question, if only briefly and in passing, if only in the quietest moment in the night....what of the human race?

 Because, if only in passing, if only in a fleeting moment of conscience, in a split second of a heartbeat, we know, deep in our hearts and souls, we know that we are all a collective and not separate entities, no matter what our race, our creed or our language.  We share the world, just as the soul and mind share the body and brain.  Neither can properly function without the other. We cannot function without each other; yet we highlight differences and point our fingers and make accusations at one another as if our forefathers never originated from the one source.  We are kinder to animals than we are to one another and hold man made objects in higher esteem than we do God created humans.  Why?  

Is it because of the colour of our skins?  The difference in our vocabulary, or the varying opinions and approaches in how we may worship God?  Or do we simply believe that some of us are better than others?  Have we regressed so far that civility is but a distant memory and humanity is nothing more than an old fashioned notion?  

Just because we don't feel their pain, does this mean that their pain somehow does not exist?  Is it somehow obliterated out of reality just because we are not going through it?  Because I am not hungry, I don't care!!!

 
The world has lost its way; we have become confused within the cesspit we have created for ourselves out of greed, prejudice and misconstrued ideas about others.  We have become desensitised when it comes to other's pain. We have lost our compassion and made ourselves blind with falsities and media fed lies.           
We have fallen into the trap of lulling ourselves that we are okay; forgetting easily the examples of before, choosing to justify other people's plights simply because they don't appear to be as sophisticated, as educated or as westernised as we are....does that make them less human?  Are they no longer our brothers, because our brothers come from a family of wealth, media fads and superficial concepts which quite frankly do no good to society?  

We are okay, we are surviving and thriving and MacDonalds we shall eat!  And clothes we shall buy in abundance and cars we shall drive and we shall never know the pain of losing a child to disease or starvation....so we are all right, we have survived, they did not know how to!  

HOW CURIOUSLY DUMB THE PRIVILEGED BECOME...IT SEEMS THAT COMFORT DULLS THE COMPASSION AND DAMPENS THE EMPATHY!

I have watched on television, how Egypt is falling apart,at the hands of its own people nonetheless, how Syria has fallen apart, Libya, Bahrain, Iraq...and the list goes on, and the casualties are rising and its the children that suffer; the next generation.  Senseless bloodshed and endless honour feuds; when will it end?  


I have seen the dispersed victims of war, forced to become refugees and where once they were doctors, teachers and lawyers, are forced into the poverty trap, forever labelled as something wrong.  I have seen the beatings of Egyptian civilians on television, the senseless killings of Egyptian police and soldiers; all of which, somewhere along the line, may find that they are either distant relatives or know of a relative.  For what reason do we slaughter our own?  Because we disagree on a single point? because some of us think we are better than others?  Perhaps more worthy of the All Mighty's mercy? Who decides who is better than who?  

Because we can blame him, and point a finger and say he is the real terrorist for fighting a cause, but he is just as much a victim as the people he is shooting at; because he is essentially shooting another human being and his humanity is being compromised.  So what becomes of him?  He is only doing his job, what becomes of him when his job is done?

Or what becomes of him?  he is only doing what he feels he needs to do to survive; what becomes of him when he is done with all the shooting?

Or him?
  

Or him?

Once the game is played and all the pawns are down, who gets to decide that enough is enough?  Who is the first to stand up for the human race and not just one race?  

The problem is, our world is on fire and nobody has noticed!  We are like a cancer, we are destroying our own selves and soon it will be too late.




And the only people who would bare testament to this atrocity will be none other than them....

THE CHILDREN

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

DELICATE DILEMMA

Being a writer is a great honour; it is a platform which is only afforded to the few lucky people who have figured out how to put thought to pen, pen to paper and come out with something that fires up the imagination.  Being a writer means that your voice is heard, your views shared and that story (that age old story) that resides in each person, gets to be told, by you!  Being a writer means that you can temporarily hold the hearts and emotions of people, influence the reader, play with their senses and ignite their urges!  Being a writer means that you have the power to put thought into your reader's mind, awaken feelings in their hearts and (if only for a short time) change their morals!  Being a writer is making the reader fall in love with you, loath you, need you, even want to kill you; because for that short space of time which you reside upon the pages, you are the world at which they look at!

It feels brilliant knowing that you, you...you have that power over the minds of other people.  You get to make them imagine, make them think, make them see a point of view that perhaps they had not seen before!

For a short time you are Doctor Who, Time Lord and master of the Tardis; which is the mind of the poor unsuspecting reader.  Make a prostitute seem glamorous and immediately she becomes a heroin in your readers' eyes.  Make a murderer seem victimised and he immediately becomes justified in his actions.  Your page is your world and the morals, manners, behaviours and even logic that govern the real world no longer become relevant; only your morals, your ideas, your perceptions upon the page that engage your reader.  What power!  Think of the responsibility!

The Misfortunes of Ellie-May; a novel about a prostitute who plotted and schemed and killed.  Was she the villain?  Far from it.  Was she the horrible scheming bitch who destroyed lives, killed men and hurt her own family?  No, she was a sweet, misunderstood, quite mistreated by life, and deep down inside, quite decent really!  Do I want the readers to think that all murderess women of the trade are quite sweet and justified?  Not really; I was trying to show how a perfectly ordinary, sweet girl could find herself in unfortunate circumstances, how life could take her down a path which forces her to fight her way back up...was she evil?  No, she was backed up, misunderstood and very much alone.  The moral; don't judge a person by their last action, because there is good and bad in everyone and circumstances dictate the outcome!  Yet I have been questioned relentlessly by friends and family; why glorify a prostitute, why make such a woman the subject of pity, did I want my daughters growing up thinking that it was right to be like this?  

The Devil's Truth; a funny devil who seeks to corrupt three unsuspecting families whilst holidaying in Spain. In my novel, he is a humorous devil, a devil with feelings and often self-pity.  He corrupts and influences people who have over inflated egos, some may say they deserved it.  The moral; people who are influenced are not necessarily bad, do not necessarily mean to hurt those around them, but if we as humans allow our egos to lead us, then downfall is our path, for The Devil is cunning and comes to us with part truths to influence us to his ways.  Am I glorifying Satan?  Am I somehow trying to make him seem less harmful?  No, I used humour and human emotions to put the story across.  

All writers write to make a point; all writers have insightful observations they want to get across to their readers. However, writing a moral manual, or a book on noble behaviour does not make an interesting read, nor does it get the reader to think or even learn anything from your story.  We are writers and writers have to write the world as it is - good and bad.  Writers have to write what makes up the world and not how people would like to see the world. Thus, dilemma comes into it; how far is too far?  How seedy is too seedy and when do the scales tip from a story which makes the reader think to a story which influences young minds?  Therefore it becomes a delicate dilemma that a writer finds himself in; because as a writer, you should not shy away from any aspect of life, but you should never overstep the line which makes us human and dignified. A writer should be able to write the world in verses and describe humanity for what it really is, yet maintain the civility of right and wrong; even if the subject of the story is wrong....it's called the moral of the story!