TIME AHEAD

Coming to the end of another academic year and time ahead (not too far ahead now) to recharge the batteries and to get down to a creative project of my own. What to do? Haven't written too many short stories this year,,, less than a handful. But have been working on the 'bigger' pieces. One children's novel completed; one full length adult novel completed; one novella length adult piece completed; and several other things begun. A few stories are beginning to make a noise in my head and there's another children's novel that needs attention. Maybe this summer will provide me with the time to do some of these things.

Recently some of my stories have found homes in nice places, including 'The Book Of Possible Loves' finding a home with Ether Books. Indeed, one of the team at Ether Books described my story as 'excellent', which is always nice to hear. Check it out if you want to see if excellent is quite right.

Oh, and I may not have mentioned in the previous two posts that I have a piece in the anthology 'New Sun Rising: Stories For Japan'. My piece is called 'Kimika And The Ants'. Check it out and all the other wonderful pieces of writing... and everything given freely by the artists and writers, everyone touched by the disaster in Japan a year ago and motivated by feelings of wanting to help in some way. Hope this helps.

NEW SUN RISING: STORIES FOR JAPAN (post 2)

THE ANTHOLOGY IS OUT THERE. (see the post below this one)

Here's a piece that didn't make it into the anthology but represents a knee-jerk response to the catastrophe over a year ago.

THOUGHTS OF HOME

It was on the news. Pictures of buildings shaking, and inside the buildings books falling from shelves and clocks dropping from walls and people knowing what to do and crawling under tables to be safe.

There was someone I worked with and her sister was married to a Japanese man. The sister had children and another on the way. They lived in Tokyo, my colleague’s sister and her family. I’d seen pictures of them taped to the wall beside my colleague’s computer. Holiday snaps mostly. And I’d tasted chocolate brought back from Japan and left on my desk with a postcard that was never sent. So, seeing the news and the pictures, I was worried for this woman I worked with and the sister over there.

‘No, no, it’s fine. She’s safe. They are used to it. They know what to do. There’s been an e-mail.’ 

And though the school building where the sister worked had danced and shook, and the school bell hadn’t stopped ringing, and they’d been under the desks for almost six hours before they could come out, the sister and everyone was fine. She was a school teacher, the sister. I hadn’t known that before. Seven months pregnant and crouched under a desk needing a pee but not daring to go. We laughed at that and hugged and said, ‘Thank goodness.’

But there was more to come. A tsunami and aftershocks and nuclear reactors not doing what they should and countries ordering their citizens home and evacuations and still more aftershocks. Whole villages had been washed away and on my tv a crook-backed woman, shrunk to child-size, stood looking lost in a place that should have been home and was nothing more than split timbers and mud.

‘She’s still ok,’ said the woman I worked with and meaning her sister. ‘She’s gone to the south of the country, to a beach there.’

And we laughed again, at the idea, thinking a beach was the last place to be in the circumstances. We laughed, but she looked strained as though she’d slept little, as though she was only pretending to laugh. We hugged again and I think that was too much. There were sudden tears then and she said she was being silly and I said she wasn’t. And she showed me pictures again, the same ones as before, pictures of Lucy and her husband and the children she had, and I made my colleague a cup of tea and we talked. ‘His name’s Kiyoshi. It means ‘quiet’. That’s nice, I think, that names have meaning. And he is quiet. Talks in whispers and considers what he says before he speaks. I like that.’

She was worried about her sister’s condition. Lucy’d been to the hospital in Tokyo before heading south. They’d checked her over, the baby’s heartbeat and hers, and they’d said everything was normal and there was nothing to worry about. Of course, that wasn’t quite what they meant, not with what was going on.

‘I said she should come home. She’s my sister, why wouldn’t I say that? But she got cross. She said she was home. She said it firm, so there was nothing more to be said. And it made me cry when she said it, like I was losing something.’

I remember watching the television that night, the replaying pictures that were already old, and the black water sweeping across the screen, and houses scrunched like paper, and things falling in the street, and people wearing face masks digging through the rubble, and snow falling in big flakes, and the crook-backed woman looking lost again, and one of the nuclear reactor buildings exploding. And then there was something new, a woman in her twenties and she was standing before a board with lists of names, the names of those who had been found, and she was comparing them to the list she had of those still missing. And she said they were people from her village, the place where she had lived all her days, the place that was home and now was no more. And doing this was doing something, she said. It was the least she could do, and her voice was cracked and her eyes held back tears and she turned away and she ran one finger slowly down the thousands of names listed on the board.

And I touched the walls of my own house and felt them reassuringly solid, and I looked at pictures of my own kids, all their grinning growing-up pictures, and I thought of my brother and how we had not spoken in some time, and I picked up the phone and clicked on his number.

NEW SUN RISING: STORIES FOR JAPAN

NEW SUN RISING: STORIES FOR JAPAN

Just to bring this to people’s attention – today, available as a download for the Kindle from Amazon, a charity publication in aid of the Japan Earthquake Appeal. This has been a while in the putting together, but at last here it is.  The need for aid still exists over a year later and you would be doing good by purchasing this as all proceeds go to help those in need in Japan.

Lots of worthy writers and artists have donated their work for this publication. Go check it out.

See HERE

NOT VERY NICE REALLY

In a blog a person can seem to be what they are not. A sweet smiling picture, some carefully penned words, and voila, we have a good woman before us. Throw in some charity work (or just the mention of a few charity donations) and a few testimonials from friends and you couldn’t hope to meet a nicer person. For good measure add in an account of personal trial and suffering, and garner a handful of sympathetic messages from well-meaning well-wishers and the character is whiter than white.

People rarely read between the lines. Rarely see the invention, believing what they read, taking what they are presented with at face value. But the character of a person is much more complex than that. Add to this the fact that a person rarely writes so publicly about the bad that is in themselves, and, yes, a nice person. Must be.

Then they trip up and something they have done reveals them and there’s no hiding after that… not on the blogosphere.

I was inspired three years ago by a story someone else wrote. Her ideas got into my head and combined with other ideas from science and psychology and life (my life, too), and out-spilled a story of my own. The relationship between the original story that was the source of my inspiration and what I had written was obvious; I did not try to hide it. I was subsequently accused of plagiarism and a campaign that was vehement in its assassination of my good character ensued.

I apologized to the offended writer. I removed the piece from public view. But what I did not (and could not do) was admit that I had done wrong. Precedents for this kind of ‘borrowing’ stretch back to Shakespeare and beyond. In a recent book by neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer he talks about how creativity works and he draws attention to this aspect of creativity, the borrowing of ideas and the recombining of different ideas in new ways. Lehrer’s argument is sensible and his thoughts carry the substance of what I had already argued for in defense of what I had done.

Then I paid for a legal point of view of my borrowing and was encouraged when, despite the relationship between my piece and the source being obvious, it was seen as the within the normal sphere of influence and not an example of plagiarism.

So why am I writing again? ‘Methinks he doth protest too much!’

I had a story accepted for an online publication and it was duly posted. Then one day it just disappeared. I did not discover this disappearance until a long time afterwards and only by chance. I contacted the people concerned and was told they had received a letter from someone complaining about my work being available on their site. You see, the above offended writer had written to them to complain and had further assassinated my character. Because this was done in such a 'backdoor' way there was no chance for me to defend myself... except this time I contacted the people concerned. After some discussion and explanation the situation was rectified. But this is not the first time that this seemingly nice person (nice on her blog) has done this – written e-mails to places where my work is to appear to undermine my success. She has not made any public statement on the matter on her blog. Go figure! But three years after the event she still sees it as her mission to destroy my reputation as a writer and as a person and to do so in such an underhand and sneaky way - like the poison pen letters schoolgirls disseminate in class. And she still appears as this ‘nice person’ on her blog.

Surely it is time to draw a line under all of this? I stand by my apology to her. I have not used the 'offending' piece again elsewhere – which I could quite easily have done. I have not garnered any further accusations of ‘too much borrowing’ since. There is only one thing more I can do – and that would be to admit I had done wrong… and that I cannot do… and it seems that neuroscience and psychology and common sense all support me in saying creativity works precisely by borrowing and through the reconfiguring and recycling of ideas. So I say again, surely it is time to draw a line under this incident and to move on.

I do not name the offended writer here. She knows who she is. If she wants to make this all public, her hurt and her unflagging and sometimes anonymous campaign against me, then she can with my approval… but I don’t think she will because that would be to undermine her good name. If she wants to discuss the matter privately with me through e-mail she can… but she never has. But what I would say is that the underhand and almost sneaky way she has chosen to deal with her hurt does her no credit at all.