#WritersLife – Page 5

#TheWeekThatWas: don’t punch down

It only occurred to me a few weeks ago that Gwyn in Taking Flight is a bit out of the ordinary, because he’s trans. And some people still find that edgy, or unusual or something to be looked down on.

And this post is to say, I am so sick of that. Of all of it. I’m sick of it from the wider world and I’m sick of it on a smaller, punching-down scale from within the LGBTQIA+ community.

I came across a post on a facebook group the other day where someone was bemoaning all these new genders and sexualities people can identify with. It really, really upset me. It was from someone within the community, who I would therefore hope would have know better. How dare that person imply that identifying as an even more marginalised identity than their own was somehow unacceptable?

We’ve always been here. The fact that there are words now when there weren’t before doesn’t mean we’re new.

Homosexual can only be traced back to 1880. Lesbian has an earlier origin but was only used commonly as a noun to describe same-sex attracted women from about then as well. Transgender dates from the early seventies. These are all labels that are now in common use and have a common cultural meaning to most of us. Labels are helpful for our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of those around us. They’re not cast-iron boxes we’re locked in, they’re a starting point for dialogue and exploration.

Just because you don’t understand the label doesn’t make it any less real.

That goes for those people out there who don’t understand how people can be lesbian, gay or trans, as well as those within the community who can’t understand how one can be non-binary, or bi, or pan, or demi, or use neo-pronouns, or identify however one bloody well wants to.

Don’t punch down, basically. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of living in a racist, ableist, transphobic, discriminatory-on-all-levels society where it’s okay to say these things. I’m sick at myself for not calling this person on their comment. I feel stupid for writing a story about someone very marginalised and not realising what I was doing because to me, being trans is just as normal as not being trans. About the first four iterations of the blurb didn’t mention it, for fuck’s sake! And then I thought… Oh! that might be something readers might like to know about! How stupid is that? There’s a major drama in there, where a prospective lover discovers he’s trans…and it initially didn’t occur to me to put that in the blurb.

Was that because being outed is such an everyday worry to a load of people I know that it was another normal thing for me? Probably. Who knows?

I’m so tired of all of it. Everything is a fight, a fight to force people to be kind. And it shouldn’t be.

#TheWeekThatWas: Growing into yourself

I can’t remember what I wanted to be as a small child. But after I hit about fourteen, I had a plan that involved never marrying, living in a small, remote house with a garden and a duck pond; and keeping a flock of ducks and a string of lovers.

Some of this has happened. Some of it has been sadly lacking.

I grew up on a smallholding. My background is one where ones income comes from growing or making stuff and selling it. After I hit fifteen, my pocket money came from keeping a few dozen ex-battery hens and selling their eggs in the local market every weekend. Ma and Pa took a load of vegetables and flowers in to sell every Friday for the Saturday market and they’d take my eggs as well. Ma paid my sister’s school fees with the sales of apple pies and jam each weekend. She says she knew she had to make a certain amount every week to cover the bill, else that was that.

When I left home, I went to college for a bit and got a couple of degrees. I have never used the first one – Archaeology and History are fascinating but their real world applications are pretty minimal unless you want to actually work in the field – and in between that, I learned to copy- or audio-type at seventy words a minute whilst simultaneously holding a conversation about a completely different subject. That’s the most useful skill I have ever learned. And thinking about it, fantastic preparation for parenthood.

architecture building castle city — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

After a bit of time copy-typing and regretting my college choice, I fell in to a graduate degree in Geographical Information Systems, which was in its infancy then. Now, you can do an undergraduate course and specialise really early on, but then – the mid nineties – you could only go the postgraduate route. It seemed like a really good way to combine my interest in both the past and computers. Afterwards, I toyed with the idea of a doctorate, but in the end, I’d had enough of the ivory tower of academia and wanted to be back in the real world. Retrospectively, this may have been a mistake, but I was in my mid twenties and had a certain amount of judgemental arrogance. Instead, I went to work for a well known UK telecoms company and used the time to discover I really, really hated the corporate world and that the money for nice shoes, whilst lovely, wasn’t more important than my sanity.

I ended up quitting and teaching various levels of IT and office skills in an adult education setting. I loved it. My favourite class, ever, was made up of Hilda, Ada, Muriel and Betty. They had come to my ‘Computers For The Terrified’ class on a Friday afternoon as a change from their usual crochet sessions. Their average age was eighty and they were hilarious.

“Remind me how to save the file again, dear. I’m so sorry. I used to be able to remember things, but it’s all gone now.”

“I can’t get used to this mouse, Ally. My granddaughter has given me her old lapthing and it hasn’t got a mouse, it’s got a trackpad.”

“I’m so sorry dear. I have no idea how this came up on my internet search. I really wasn’t looking for naked men. It won’t get you in trouble with the centre, will it, that he’s got that big erection?”.

man standing on cliff watching punch bowl waterfalls — Photo by S Migaj on Pexels.com

At the same time, I was extracting myself from a relationship where my partner thought it was acceptable behaviour to throw me over the sofa. I eventually moved out and found myself a little house deeper in the Welsh valley I lived in – South Wales is a bit like Narnia, in that further up and further in is the way to go to uncover all the glories. The house was ten feet and one inch wide, with a garden a hundred feet long. I borrowed the money to renovate it from my father and did it up myself. I swore off relationships completely.

And then of course, OH turned up. I considered dating him simply because the house I had bought had no duck pond and I knew that my adolescent dream couldn’t come true whilst I was still there.

Twenty years later … I have had the duck pond. I have had the remote house. I have even had the string of lovers, a long time ago. But never all at once. And I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever you start off wanting – astronaut, scientist, writer, duck-keeper, Madame Bovary – you are pretty lucky if you hit that happy streak straight away. I think you’re more likely to find your groove by the process of elimination.

On-the-job skills

So, Taking Flight is out next Tuesday! (It’s already on pre-order at a few places if that’s your thing). I thought I’d do one of those terribly insightful writer posts about how sometimes things work and sometimes things don’t work and sometimes you have no idea which is which until you start to get the words out on the page.

Three covers of Contemporary Celtic Myths

The Celtic Myth stories began almost as a joke. The Cariad Chapter of the Romance Novelists’ Association were talking about Welsh romances for St Dwynwen’s Day. St Dwynwen is known, rather inaccurately, as The Welsh St Valentine. I didn’t have anything to put forward to be promoted for her ‘day’ of 25^th January, so I sat down and wrote something. I took the elements of the Dwynwen myth and made a short, low-heat hurt-comfort story about two men who meet at a remote cottage in the depths of January. It also featured a large dog and some chickens.

I enjoyed writing it so much (and making the cover) that I thought I’d do another one. I have always been fascinated by crows and so St Kevin and the ornithological element to his legend was easy. I still really enjoyed the short-story exercise, so I just kept going and because the previous two stories were about birds, the story of Brânwen and the starling seemed like a natural progression.

It brewed around in my head all the time I was writing The Fog of War, with the starling as the main character. I was going to have him fly off with Brânwen’s message to her brother Brân and then fall for Brân and the two of them go back and rescue Brânwen. But when I came to write it, it really didn’t feel right.

This was partly because it’s such a huge story, I think, and I didn’t want to write a full-length novel. The Mabinogion is not for the faint-hearted. But it was also because as I went along, it felt like Brânwen was just a plot device in the story. And of course, she is, in the original. The poor woman has no self-realisation at all…she gets married off, she gets banished, she gets rescued, her son gets killed (by her half brother!), both Wales and Ireland get razed to the ground around her and the only decision she makes at all is at the end of the story, when she kills herself. It felt really weird trying to craft a low-key romance for two other people around that.

Nevertheless, I tried.

After a while, I realised I was writing rubbish, so I stopped and had a think. And my think led me to the conclusion that I didn’t want to write about Brân the Blessed at all. He’s Gwyn’s big brother in my story and I had great fun with him when I was able to cast him as overprotective sibling. As a main character though, he didn’t work at all.

Once I’d got that straight in my head, I was able to take the Brânwen character and make her/him the master of his own destiny. Gwyn gets himself out of his situation at The Kings of Ireland hotel with the help of Darren Starling. He has some help. But he manages his own life rather than being moved around like a chess piece.

It’s a much more satisfying story and was a salutary writing lesson for me.

I really hope you like it!

Preorder Taking Flight here

Taking Flight

Gwyn Mabler is on secondment at the Kings of Ireland Hotel at Tara. He and his brother Brân are in the process of buying the place and Gwyn is getting to grips with the everyday running by shadowing the current owner, Mal Reagan.

Gwyn’s an idiot, though. Mal made it clear from the start he’d like to get Gwyn in his bed and after a couple of weeks of pursuit, Gwyn gave in. Mal was hot and pushy and just the kind of dangerous to pique Gwyn’s interest. He honestly thought Mal knew he was trans.

Since that horrible night, Mal has had Gwyn ‘workshadowing’ Chef in the deeply unhappy kitchen. He doesn’t want to go home and cause a fuss that might make the sale fall through, but when a huge row breaks out over a flour delivery and Mal backhands Gwyn across the face, he finally decides enough is enough. With the help of Darren Starling, one of the line-cooks with whom he’s formed a tentative friendship, he leaves.

During the two-day journey from the middle of Ireland home to Wales they have plenty of time to exchange confidences. Could the delicate pull of attraction between them grow into something stronger? Is it safe for Gwyn to out himself to Darren? Will Darren want to go out with a trans guy? And how will his brother Brân take Gwyn’s arrival home with a stranger?

A 14,500-word short story in the Reworked Celtic Myths series.

Preorder Taking Flight: Amazon – Everywhere Else!

Publishing Delays

wood desk laptop office — Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

As those of you who follow my newsletter know, the last couple of weeks have been a real nightmare here at Lester Towers.

Littlest had an accident at school and broke her nose, which has caused all the fuss you’d expect, plus worry that she’d have to have it re-broken and re-set to ensure it’s still possible to naso-gastric tube her in the future if necessary. This has, thankfully, turned out not to be the case, but it’s taken ages for ENT to decide. I’ve had a visit to hospital for a minor procedure which was more tedious than worrying, Talking Child has been stressed about school and her sister and me. And finally Mr AL has put his back out lifting Littlest, which has caused our whole family raft to list alarmingly to one side.

So, we’re struggling, basically. Writing itself and my somewhat intermittent early morning writing sprints with my Office Colleagues, Ofelia Grand, Nell Iris and J. M. Snyder have been what’s keeping me going.

The cherry on the top of the disaster-Bakewell tart however, has been that my dear friend and editor has been hospitalised with covid. She is home and recovering now, which is an enormous relief, but as everyone knows, it’s a long haul.

The result of all this non-writing stress is that we are pushing the release of The Fog of War back until 16th August. I’m very sorry about it, but there it is, people are more important than stories when it comes down to it. The Starling story (which still doesn’t have a name, this is clearly my brand) is puttering along but again it’s all a bit up in the air.

School breaks up for summer in the last week of July, so I have no idea what my writing schedule will be over the weeks after that–last year I did quite well getting up before everyone else and getting on with it. The plan is to release the Sylvia trilogy three months apart, and I’m still hoping that will work, although I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve over-faced myself. Time will tell!

Anyway, that’s it. We’re all okay, but it’s been a tough few weeks. I hope you’re all doing all right too in these uncertain times.

The Day of the Triffids and nightmares

I don’t watch scary films and I don’t read horror…and this is probably why!

When I was about fourteen – in my second or third year at Senior School – we had an English teacher who seemed set on giving us all nightmares. He was thought of as a nice bloke. He played saxophone for Screaming Lord Sutch and his band when Such toured the West Country and he took various groups of kids camping on Dartmoor and Exmoor.

However, he must have had a really sadistic side. He showed us various TV Series as ‘treats’ in one particular lesson slot every week and they were invariably really traumatic. He showed us the 1982 Q. E. D. Documentary A Guide to Armageddon about the consequences of the detonation of a small nuclear warhead over St Paul’s Cathedral; and the TV adaptation of Z for Zachariah, which is a fantastic book, but watching it in the context of the tail end of the Cold War and preceded by watching the St Paul’s Nuke thing was terrifying.

The story that really, really freaked me out, though, was Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. I don’t think that we even read the book in class. He just showed us the TV Series. There was a BBC serialisation done in 1981 that had large fibre-glass and latex ‘Triffids’ that were operated by a chap crouched down inside, with a radio-operated clacker-thing to make the rattling noise.

I know this NOW, because Wikipedia. However, then, it was terrifying.

The thing that made it double, triple, a million times more scary was that I lived on a horticultural nursery. Where we grew flowers. Big flowers, small flowers, short flowers, tall flowers. I’d get home from school as it was getting dark and my parents would be somewhere out on the seven acre plot. And I’d run, run, run around the house and down the path along the back of the greenhouses to find them in the flower-packing shed, all the time waiting to hear that rattle. We used to grow huge swathes of Chrysanthemum blooms – globe-shaped single blooms about four or six inches across – and the white ones would look ghostly in the dusk. As you walked, or ran, down the Back Path to the flower packing shed, they spread out in great luminous swathes in the half-light and I was convinced they were watching me.

I’d arrange my music lesson every week in the same slot so that I had an excuse to miss watching the serialisation. When he realised what I was doing, the teacher reported me to my Housemistress and they stopped me and forced me to sit through each episode. I would sit there with my eyes shut for the whole forty minutes, trying not to hear what was going on; and if he noticed, he would try and get the rest of the class to tease me.

Cover of the 1981 Penguin edition of Day of the Triffids

To try to help me not be so scared, my Pa, who was a bit of a old-school Wyndham fan I think, bought me a copy of the book. I can remember him watching the series on the BBC every week as it was time for us to go to bed and he wouldn’t let me sit with him, so he must have known it would affect me. I was a voracious bookworm even then, but I couldn’t even bring myself to even touch the covers of the paperback he bought. That episode of Friends where Rachel puts Little Women in the freezer for Joey? That was me. I couldn’t even have it in the living room. In the end, Pa put it on the table by his side of the bed. When he died, twenty five years later, it was still there. Nothing has ever, ever scared me like that, since.

Strangely, I grew in to be a huge science-fiction fan. Some Wyndham I love. The Chrysalids is one of my all time favourite books. Give me some nice post-apocalyptic drama and I’m happy – especially if there is romantic tension thrown in there. No walking plants or clacking noises, even now though, please.