Womblin’s World

Women read more fiction than men. It’s official. An interesting article at NPR found by reading Bryan D Catherman’s blog.

Self Indulgences. Immodesty and chocolate cake, among other things.

I’m rather ill-at-ease talking about myself. Being a born gossip (as all writers are) I’d much rather talk about others and what drives them, what intricacies make them the person they are and what effect others have on them — the good yes, but especially the bad. I want to know all these things, so will happily sit, hand cupped around chin, listening to all and sundry for hours on end, only emerging from a kind of writerly stupor when my subje…er…friend turns the tables and asks about me. Erg. I go stiff then, my mind churning tactics as I try to think of something that might be the tiniest bit as interesting as the info they’ve been feeding me. And I can never do it. My palms sweat, my head empties. What to do? What to do? Aha! Take a leaf from the book of good politicking of course! That is, answer questions with questions.

Yeah, that’s it, turn those tables.

Can’t do that here though, and this poses problems.

So, to satiate your brimming curiosity, here are some little-known facts about me. You may, or may not, think them interesting. They are all I want to reveal for now though.

I have a partner, and yes, I have children. Age and type is neither here nor there.

I have two chickens.

I have one dog, three cats.

I listen to Linkin Park while writing.

I am a fast touch-typist.

I make loads of mistakes while writing.

I adore chocolate cake.

I daydream a LOT.

There. If you have anything in common with any of these, then please leave a comment. I can then ask you questions. Heh.

~Womblin~

Battery hens. Caged and intensively farmed egg-laying chickens.

Yep, you can adopt one or two or three…or as many as you have room for. The Battery Hen Welfare Trust has the low-down. If you don’t live in the UK, I’m sure there must be people in your own country doing the same kind of thing. There isn’t? So you do it then. These birds deserve more from us. They’ve been abused and can do with something a little better than being wrapped in pastry, don’t you think?

~Womblin~

An extract taken from The Moor of the Graves, a current work in progress.

****

Up ahead, no more than four hundred metres away, someone stepped out into the road and turned to face him. David’s foot flew from the accelerator and stamped the brake. “Shit!”

ABS off for sports mode, the Beema fishtailed to a stop ten feet in front of the man — the hitch-hiker David knew he’d already passed — and he sat breathless over his steering wheel, staring wide-eyed at this maniac who’d brought his thrill to a grinding halt.

…Or life to a start.

The odd thought made David blink. He could not fathom why, given the day’s events, he would think such a thing. It was as though someone else had spoken inside his mind. Frowning, he scanned the stranger who should not have been where he was.

The man’s short blonde hair lifted a little in the breeze as he stood equal on his feet, tall and imposing yet easy with it. His hands pocketed, he stood as though waiting for a bus — a ride. Bright eyes held David’s. The man smiled. His ride, it seemed, had come.

Despite the distance, David looked into his rear-view mirror for the hitcher he’d already passed. But the road was clear; the garage was too distant to see, therefore the hitcher would be too. His frown deepened. The first man had been unusual for these parts, what were the chances of another? “Twins, maybe,” he muttered as he glanced through the windscreen again. He hissed in a breath. The man was gone.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers.” David shook his head, moved foot from brake to accelerator once again. “Fucking weirdo, fucking with m–” A rap on the passenger window and he jumped. When he turned, the smiling man was looking in at him.

Not knowing what else to do, caught within the sticky surreality of indecision, David pressed the button and the passenger window whirred down.

The man poked his head in a little and looked around. “Nice car,” he said, his low, slightly accented voice appreciative. “It’s German.” His paper-cut eyes examined the leather upholstery, the dials, switches and lights of the dash, then came to rest at last on David. “I need a ride.” He raised an angled brow. “Have you got one?”

David opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what might come out, not knowing what to do. For the second time that day he felt entirely out of control. “I…um…where are you heading?” he asked, his mother’s voice echoing in his mind from years gone by, warning of hitch-hikers, mutilation — death.

The stranger already had his hand on the door handle, but not at the front. He opened the rear door and swung himself in. “Wherever you’re going,” he said.

David frowned and looked back over his shoulder. “Front’s free, you know.” He reached for the solicitor’s papers to clear them, casting an eye between the front seats to check his baseball bat still lay there. It did.

“That’s quite all right,” the stranger said. “I like to stretch out, if you know what I mean. This is after all going to be a very long journey. Isn’t it… David?”

David looked at the man as he shut the car door. Did I give my name? Straightening slowly, he stared past his own puzzled reflection in the rear-view mirror and to his new passenger behind. The word ’smooth’ didn’t quite cut it. David got the impression as he watched the man settling back against the passenger door, his long legs stretched over the seat, that nothing could faze the guy, nothing would disturb. He blinked as bright eyes turned his way, staring back at him through the mirror’s reflection.

The stranger faded from focus as David looked at his own eyes, comparing them. He’d always thought them bright, but they were dull and grey measured against this man’s piercing orbs. His hair, also, he’d thought a light blonde, but the man’s fair head made David’s look dirty, unkempt. And as he gazed at the curve of his own quizzical eyebrows, David realised that the whole of the stranger’s demeanour seemed sharper, more defined than anything around him. As though the world were only a backdrop and the man was the reality — the keystone and the focus.

David wondered at this strange clarity. Does this mean I’m not real? He rubbed his eyes.

Now the man looked around and pursed full lips. “Are we ready to go, David?” he asked. “Time ticks. Oh, you might want to pull over, out of the way of the lorry. Quickly.” He lifted a finger to point at the road running around the left-hand bend David had been about to take before the stranger stopped him.

The skin on David’s back prickled. With a bizarre panic urging him, he dumped the clutch and selected first. Pulling away, he chanced another glance back at the man, a small part of him expecting he’d be gone.

He wasn’t.

And as David accelerated, steering left and away from the log wagon that hurtled around the corner at that very moment, its wheels astride the centre lines, the man leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “You are ‘South’, David,” he said. “…Listen.”

…a writer’s life for me.

I feel just like Elizabeth from The Pirates of the Caribbean — I have a sense of what being a writer entails, much as she thinks she knows what being a pirate involves. And, just as she knows that self-sacrifice shouldn’t play any part at all in the great scheme of things when dealing with scabbious and thieving pirate dogs, (that one should never throw oneself willy-nilly onto one’s cutlass in too much of a hurry, for example), I indeed know what is expected of me as a writer, that is lively prose, a unique voice, professionalism in manuscript preparation, great synopses, dedication and a great deal more time than the twenty-four hour day will allow, etc.

I know all this.

But, like her, I simply cannot shake the feeling that I’m playing at it, somehow. This is despite my publishing credits, despite having written and completed four novels, despite holding an editing position with an excellent online publication. Yes, despite all this, guilt and the need to find a “proper job”, plague me and tell me to stop messing around. This is, afer all, the “real world”.

I am a writer though, and so don’t wholly live in the real world. My mind occupies a place that is one step aside this reality, one step away from the drone of everyday life. It’s a place that has me smiling whenever I walk into a place where I’ve set one of my stories. I wander along grinning to myself, thinking: Ah yes, this is where suchansuch chased thingy, and thingy got stuck on a chain-link fence leading into the town centre car park… I smile and get strange looks, but don’t care. You see, everything seems much brighter/duller/happier/sadder/etc., in my mind, in my writer’s mind. Emotion is doubled, intensified. Detail, from the tiniest drop of dew, to the grit in a sandstone wall, is noticed. Yes, noticed. Because it’s all there in this reality, the stuff I write about, it’s just that I notice it and bring it to others. Anyway, I bring all these things a single step to the side and so into my mind, I collect them ready for use in my fictional worlds. I inhabit a strange dimension, as a writer, one in which I bring life, and of course spend it. One in which I can create anything, and just as easily destroy. I truly am a god in my imagination, in my stories.

No wonder I can’t shake the feeling that I’m playing. Just as Elizabeth found herself pitched deep into a world of treachery, back-stabbing, strangely-edged swords and rotten teeth…I, too, am having a game of it, right here and now.

I really should go out and find a “proper job”, eh?

~Womblin~