A bit about writing for the aspiring writer.

Ok so I am a writer as I have mentioned before, I have even showed some brief samples of my work from time to time but do I think I am a good writer? Well that is a little hard to answer because the critic inside of me would love nothing more than to rip myself to shreads. Something I have heard time and time again is that critics merly tear apart that which they can not do, or another way its often put is those who cant teach. With this in mind I do not aim to teach anyone, I merly aim to give them a little food for thought. You see when I decided I wanted to be a writer there was no one much to talk to or nothing I could really read that I could relate to. The stuff written by people who had made it, people who had written books which had ended up in actual print I just couldnt relate to it for some reason maybe they just seemed to big to intimidating in a way. So as a guy who self publishes my own stuff through amazon and who keeps his own blog I thought maybe if I talked about how and why I write from time to time it might help someone else who wants to give it a go, so here goes....

Now the main starting point for writing anything from my point of view is to come up with an idea, it cant just be any idea though it needs to be an idea of the right size. Ok so the first thing your going to ask is what is the right size? Well the right size depends completly on what it is you want to do. If you want to write a short story then the idea can be a very basic tiny one as you dont need anything to complex as your not going to have the time and space to devote to disecting it, if your trying to write a huge novel then your proberbly going to need a bigger idea maybe with some smaller ideas which can serve as sub-plots. Of course if your writing a script the same questions can be asked what size does the idea need to be, are you planning on making a feature length or a short? The only real diffrence with films is you have to ask can I afford that? In a book you can keep the stories backdrop constantly changing with no worries about budget, you can be on a futuristic space station and then an alien planet and as long as you can provide enough written detail to flesh them out and make them feel real then there is no reason not to let your plot take your characters to these places. On the other hand if your writing a script can you or the person your intending to sell the idea to afford the amount and kind of sets that your including, and can you or they realistically do them justice. Of course you might instead be writing for a video game and then you need to stop and think about how much choice you are going to include, if a player is free to make decisions that will alter the outcome of a situation or the player is going to be able to have control over conersational choices then you will have to write extra dialogs and alternative outcomes, so you will need to think about how you can have all these diffrent branches which give at the very least the illusion of choice but still keep your central idea the main focal point.

So what kind of writing have I done? Well I have wrote 2 horror based novels, a lot of short horrror stories, I have also written some erotica and I have wrote a large number of reviews articles and oppinion pieces. So is it easy to get an idea and write? Well yes and no to be honest. I have a lot of ideas for stories and for blog posts but not all of these ideas see the light of day. For every idea I see through to completion there are at least another one or two ideas that I put on the shelf. Do I come back to any of them? A few of them I do, but then I also have ideas that I have sat on for years. Its not just ideas either I have entire files full of semi penned short stories a thousand words here or there that just seems to be going well when it runs head first in to a brick wall.

Long time readers will proberbly notice that I had this big idea of doing 150 SNES reviews an idea which started out strong and then stalled a good few times and is currently in limbo, well there is a reason for this and its the fact that when you take on a big project like that you will find that there are parts of it that you are very passionate about and then parts which are just a bit harder to manage, sometimes you have to push past these and sometimes you just have to take a break and wait for insperation to hit you again. Sometimes you might even have to stop and wonder why you have decided to do a certain something.

I will give you an example of an idea of mine which kind of died on its ass. I was stood waiting for a tram in the rain, now they have these LCD style displays which tell you where the next few trams are headed and how long they are going to be. Now 99% of the time the display is tottally clear but on this particular day the thing was just going nuts, numberss and letters where flashing and dissapearing and reapering and allsorts, I had never seen this happen before. For some reason my brain went to ghosts and I just thought hey wouldnt it be weird if that was a ghost doing that, if it was traveling though the electricity, maybe it would be someone who had been hit by the tram or a car near to that sign and part of them had somehow ended up in there and this was them tryng to communicate. I got home I wrote this down in a wordpad of ideas. Oh I will stop you now and tell you that I think its a very good idea to get either a note pad or a computer file and just write down every little idea you have in it for either a story or a blog post or well anything, then when your stuck for something to do you can kind of come back to this and look if you have anything sat there which will inspire you.

Ok So I think I will leave it there for now.... Basically my first tip would be think about what kind of things you want to write and then just take it naturally see what ideas come to you and think about what you could get out of the idea, never throw an idea away though even if it seems a little crazy or your not quiet sure what to do with it, still start keeping a log of any ideas you have cause you never know when you might want to take another look at one of them.

My posting might slow down but I am still here.

My posting might slow down but I do not intend to abandon this place, but I thought I would at least let everyone know why and what is going on. I have just gotten myself a new job, it was supposed to be for only 16 hours a week but so far my 3 hour induction day became an 8 hour half induction half work shift and I currently have 28 hours down on my rota for next week due to staff sickness and another person who had been offered a 16 hour position not turning up. If work continues like this then my posting will probably be more of a once or twice a week not every other night sort of thing. I want to continue as an author writing my own books but I also want to have a job for lots of reasons, financial security, so that my daughter gets used to seeing me go to work and come home ,so that this is something normal for her. They always say if your parents work your more likely to work, if your parents attended university they are more likely to do so, so really I just want to stack the deck the best I can in order to make sure she has the best future possible. Also hopefully working hard, being on my feet, lifting and even just not being around the house able to snack whenever I want will help me to loose some weight, as the last few years of my life have left me a little softer and squidgier at the sides than I would like. In all honesty though my first day was good, my boss seems nice, all of the other members of staff seem nice and the job seems good. It was good to be on a till again. My last job was phoning people up trying to push them to donate to charity and it was so terrible that it began to erode my very faith in human kind, the only good thing that came out of it was the core idea for a novella I wrote.

I used to work a lot, in fact I used to work so much that life was nothing more than work. I would wake up and go to work, I would get home and go to bed. I didn't have any time for myself, or for others or for hobbies or even the time to apply for a different job to try and get away from the time sucking soul sucking hole I had found myself in. So what did I do? Well I cut out of the rat race and went back to education. It wasn't like I had not gotten a lot of education in the first place, I had gained a degree but I had never used it, so what I wanted to do was go out there and gain a focused usable qualification. So what did I go and get? I went and got enrolled on a course to gain Early Years Professional Status, this is a course which makes you a very highly trained nursery age child expert. It took two placements inside nurseries and about 30 hours of paper work a week to gain it but it was supposed to be the start of a new life and a new career things were supposed to get easier but they didn't. I was met with sexism, no one would hire me to work with children which was local to me as they viewed it as a female profession which should be filled with women, it was heart breaking and refusal after refusal on the grounds of being a man really left me battered and broken, my ego was bruised. This was what set me on the course of trying to be a writer a course I had dreamed of years ago but never thought I would be able to achieve in my wildest dreams

I haven't shelved these dreams but I do recognise that for the moment I need to find the balance between my family, my job, my writing and my own personal time. I still want to post about horror films, retro games, modern games, wrestling, and my opinions on politics but we will see what time I have and what grabs my attention and makes me feel I need to write..

How I became a horror writer.

I first started trying to write stories when I was in Junior school. I would sit there with small exercise books and I would try to think of something to write, in fact it was at this early age when I first tried to form a collective of writers. Me and my friends would all sit down and try to write stories nothing much every came of it but it was something which helped me to get through the days. 

I had my one and only brush with fan fiction at the age of around 15. I had read some of the what they now call expanded universe Star Wars books and enjoyed them. There was an exercise we were set by school where we had to try and write something within a world created by another so for some reason I gravitated towards Kyp Durren an apprentice of Luke Skywalkers and from there built up what I seem to remember was a reasonable sized tale. This was before I owned a computer though so it has been lost, maybe it will turn up in a draw or cupboard one day but in all honesty I am pretty sure it is long dead. I enjoyed writing it but I could instantly see a million problems in it, principally the fact that no matter how bad or good it was there was nothing much I would be able to do with it, I had wrote about a copyrighted character in a copyrighted universe. ( At this time I didn't really know how many places existed online for posting fan fiction if I had I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it as I did not yet have access to a PC).

I think a lot of my early attempts at writing were met by me simply holding a pencil and nothing happening because I had neither seen or experienced enough. I hadn't read enough books nor had I experienced enough things myself as a person. By the age of 16 I had seen more films than anyone I knew, I also hadn't done bad as far as reading went. There was a sudden obsession for Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs and this led to a lot of my friends being interested in trying to replicate the film, I was known as the one with some writing talent and so I became the one to write the scripts. Looking back they were not my best work, they were incredibly plagiarised borrowing mostly from Dogs but with a sprinkling of various cop shows running from Miami vice to TJ hooker. These films were recorded on to these old half sized VHS video camera cassettes and are now also long lost. Most of them are in all honesty best lost but we did make one called ''The Evil that Men Do'' which although heavily influenced by the films and shows I had watched did feature some considering are age decent acting and impressive stunt work. It wasn't feature length it was about twenty minutes in length but it was something we were all very proud of. It was the high point of all of our work but instead of it being built upon we all ended up going our separate ways pulled away by jobs and higher education

So why has a lot of my writing been horror based? Well to answer that we need to start with another question and that is what do you get if you add the writing talents of Stephen King, the directing skills of George Romero and the special effects work of Tom Savini with just a pinch of Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson and sprinkle of other actors? You get Creepshow a compendium of five short horror tales contained within a single full-length feature film.

Creepshow wasn't the first horror film I came across in fact by the time I saw Creepshow I had seen most of the old fashioned universal classics but this is one of the films I would recognise as the beginning of my real love for horror.I first came upon this film when I was about 12, the film had the right combination of tame scares and gross moments tempered with humour to help introduce me into the world of horror. This film was my gateway to the books of Stephen King, as soon as I had watched this I began looking at his books. and deciding which ones I would read first. This is somewhat amusing considering that the main inspiration for this film clearly comes from the original E.C. crime and horror comics of the 1950's. Creepshow was written by King as a tribute to these comic books which he has often spoke about as being one of the things that helped him become a horror writer. I would latter find myself enjoying both reprints of EC's horror comics as well as frequently watching the TV show Tales from the crypt and the old British film version of Tales from the crypt without at the time truly realising and appreciating the connection between all of these pieces of work.

There is a common theme which seems to run through most of the EC Comics stories, the stories in Tales from the Crypt (many of which were adapted from the comics themselves) and to some degree the tales in Creepshow and that is that they are in some way morality plays where by some twist will happen which will see someone get there comeuppance at the end of the story. I guess having spent my early years in a church of England school I was used to the morality play aspect, the whole idea of those who sin shall be punished. I didn't see much of this in real life, in real life people would seem to get away with being arseholes with seemingly nothing happening to them in return. These stories planted the seed in my mind which would go on to germinate in many of my own stories latter on. I might have first watched Creepshow at 12 but I certainly watched it more times than that, in fact to me it was a classic I would watch again and again.

Sure there were other books and films that interested me, I would go so far as to say that Lord of the Rings was my favourite book of all time but it wasn't a book I felt I could replicate the style of on any level. Tolkien created these thick worlds filled with all new languages and cultures, he seemed to juggle so many balls that I just couldn't grasp how a person could do this. I felt intimidated by them.  Yet I felt I could write stories with a horror twist stories which dealt with morals and with justice.This is how I became a horror writer. I began to play with stories in which a sense of justice existed where people got what they deserved. All that needed to happen from this point was for me to gain the courage to put my work out there and this courage came from two places it came from the kind words and support of my Mother and my Fiancée. I wrote my first proper piece that I was proud of while sat waiting for my Fiancée while she was in a university lecture. I showed it to both my Fiancée and my Mother and they told me it was good. Unfortunately not long after this my Mother went in to hospital and passed away. It was a huge blow to me as my Mum meant the world to me, but it made me decide that it was now or never, I had to self publish my story and get it out there and so I did.

I might not be famous but I know that people have read my work, I might have only made a little cash out of it but I can happily say that I am a writer and no matter what anyone says I gave it my best and I tried. I am still writing and still trying to make an impact and maybe I will or maybe I wont but I dont think that is what really matters, what matters is that whoever you are , whatever you love and wherever you are you chase your dreams as that's the only way to really be happy.

The Light in the Darkness: Chapter one... A sample of my writing.

OK so I have mentioned before on this blog that I am a writer and with this in mind I thought I would share a little bit of my work. This is not taken from one of my books nor is it a finished piece, it is a draft of a first chapter, a draft which if ever used will most likely go through a process of rewrites and corrections. With that in mind here it is and I hope you enjoy it.

The Light in the Darkness

Chapter one

The coastal town of Lands’ end was thought to be a somewhat plain place as far as everyone seemed to know nothing much had ever happened in its long history. Yet for its beauty it has often attracted many holiday makers. It was certainly true that the area was filled with natural beauty, jagged rocks and perfect crystal blue water. Sticking out of these waters was an impressive structure a lighthouse which now stands abandoned, yet still remains strangely magnificent. It had been damaged and rebuilt several times, but yet there it remained standing in one form or another, always there always shinning out in to the sea, at least it did until the day it was finally turned off, until the day the light went out for the last time and the horn sounded its final cry into the night sky. Yet despite this there have always been rumours quietly mumbled in the darkest corners of local drinking establishments, rumours that this impressive tower was once the centre of a dark tale. The kind that would bring a shiver to ones spine.

The light had been turned off for the last time with not so much as a sigh or a whimper, nobody seemed to care. At the time the area had enjoyed almost full employment, times were prosperous and the joy seemed to be almost endless. Yet here in the now things are very different, so as the 20^th anniversary of the day it was turned off drew closer people were told that it’s a cause for celebration a reason to embrace not only its history but the history of the area in general. Most people were more than happy to accept any invitation to raise a glass in hard times but yet alongside its intended purpose of spreading some much needed joy the announcement of celebrations also seemed to cause a rebirth of the old stories, the tales of incidents of paranormal activity began to be talked about again, only now the stories were not stuck in the darkness coming out of the mouths of drunks, they were being talked about by everyone in the light of day.

The tales told of a time long ago when the light which was supposed to be used to help keep wary travellers away from the rocks was instead perverted by five men, they were called the founders of the town. They used the lighthouses light to deliberately mislead ships, to cause them to collide against the rocks, to sink them in the hope of plundering there goods. These dark legends told of how the profits garnered from this twisted enterprise was used to expand the area, not only did it line the men’s pockets, it allowed them to live comfortably, to have families, to raise children, and this seed of evil was what the town grew out of.

Just a short drive from this point the rain was rhythmically bouncing of the roofs of the houses, some people would think this was a horrid sound, it would signify a sense of captivity.  It would mean that they were stuck inside held prisoner by the weather with no idea when it might stop, of when they would once again be free to step outside. Not everyone see’s rain in the same way though, to one particular young lady it was rather soothing. Jasmin had grown up in a large house with a big family, she was the youngest, and in fact she had later learned that really in some ways she wasn't supposed to have even exited. The doctors had told her mother that she would be unable to have another child but then three years latter against all of the odds her mother had fell pregnant. The birth had been a complex one and it had made her mother rather ill, hearing about this latter Jasmin would feel a sense of guilt but this wasn't the way her mother talked about it, her mother always refer to her as her special little miracle even when she wasn't so little anymore.

Her family might have been large but they certainly were not poor, in fact if she was asked she would have to admit that she had been rather lucky for she had come from a somewhat well-off family. There had never been anything she had been left wanting for, her mother and father had done their very best to make sure she had everything she needed but she knew that all good things must come to an end for she would need to make her own way in the world. It was with this in mind that she had applied to a university with a small campus in Cornwall an area which although wasn't the furthest point away from her family was far enough away for her to be a total stranger, for no one to know who she was or how she had been raised, this was a chance for her to see who she really was when she was away from everyone and everything she had ever known. In a way it seemed like she had only just left home and yet here she was having just finished her 2nd year of university. She had more or less only just turned twenty four as well although she had largely ignored this fact choosing instead to focus on here studies. It had been a hard few months her recently studying for her exams and staying up late in order to write the best essays she could possible write but it had turned out well, she had managed to achieve excellent grades on all of her essays and she felt confident that her exam results would come back with similarly impressive scores. All she knew now was that she had six weeks to calm down to put the past year behind her and to get ready for her final and most important year.

Jasmin had contemplated taking a break over the summer in fact in her mind she had always planned to spend the time doing some travelling.  When she had finished her exams and began to pay attention to her bank account through it soon became apparent that she simply could not afford to go travelling to strange new places so this was simple out of the question. She did consider visiting her parents after all this would not cost anything apart from the price of a train ticket and it had its advantages. Jasmin knew that if she visited her parents were she would be able to eat their food, watch there large television without having to pay for the electricity and would not have to spend a single penny on pretty much anything. At first this seemed like a great idea but then Jasmin thought about it about being back at home. She would have to hear her parents talk about how well her older sister Alisha was doing in her new job, how her and her fiancé were doing so brilliantly. Then there would be the questions, sure she could manage them asking her about her marks and if she had considered what her options would be when she had finished her course but what she couldn't deal with were the personal questions. Why had she never brought a boy home? Didn't she like boys? Was she perhaps a lesbian? 

Going home and spending time with her parents was not the perfect solution after all as it presented its own problems. Jasmin always felt smothered by talk of her wonderful sister who had already finished university, who already had a dependable trust worthy boyfriend and a full savings account. Sure it would be nice to see her folks but she wasn't sure if she could put up with spending the summer in her sisters shadow once again. It was more than that though. She had grown up in what she would describe as a large but warm family, a family filled with love but this was no longer quiet the case. There was her brother Adam. He had grown up in the same environment as her under the same rules and with all of the same chances and yet he had squandered them. He had gotten some young girl pregnant and had several problems with the law. Not only would her mother preach to her about how wonderful her sister was, she would have to listen to her mother curse and moan about her brother. She wasn't sure which was worse in all honesty. It was hard to be told how much better her sister was doing but it was also hard to hear her brother be talked about in such a negative way, especially when her own thoughts and feelings on the matter were always so confused. Yes he had made mistakes, yes he had used poor judgement yet she knew that deep down inside he had a good heart. Their relationship had been so different when they were younger he had been her big brother but he had been so much more than this he had also been like a second father to her in some ways and then she had also idolised him like a super hero. It was hard to focus on who he was now and the things he had done when it clashed so much with the childhood image of him that she had held deep in her heart for so long. Even with the small amount of cash she had, she guessed if she stayed in the local area or maybe took a bus or two there would be things she could see and investigate, after all she might have been in the area awhile but how much time had she really spent wandering? Most of her time had been spent in various lecture halls and in either her flat or the library buried under a sea of course literature. Maybe she would even go to the lighthouse celebration some people had mentioned that was happening close by, after all one of the reasons she had picked this area to attend university in was a longing to be close to the sea. Still she had plenty of time to think about it there was a whole six weeks’ worth of holiday and so she decided to sleep on it before making any rash decisions.

As Jasmin was falling asleep the night was only just beginning for Rochelle, while one girl was tasting toothpaste the other was enjoying the feeling of sweet white wine trickling down her throat. A diet of white wine while walking and dancing on 6 inch heels wasn't the brightest idea that had come in to her head recently but then this moment in her life wasn't about being bright it was about letting go and cutting loose. Some people would have seen her there dancing in the club drinking cheap wine and shaking her ass in a mini skirt and thought that she was some dumb young slut, this couldn't be further from the truth. Jasmin was a girl who was sure she was going places not only was she tall with a beautiful olive complexion a model would kill for she was also a university graduate, she knew she was going places she just wasn't sure where yet. 

There was a lot that Rochelle and Jasmin had in common, they both came from well off families but unlike Jasmin Rochelle was a lonely child. She had no brothers and no sisters, she was her Mum and Dad’s only child they called her there special little princess. They were so happy when she had gotten in to university and even more so when she had begun getting her marks back. This wasn't the only thing that was different between them Rochelle had grown up in this area not only did she know every pub and club she knew every road, ever lane and every back alley, these were her streets and so she never felt any fear about travelling them at any time. She had plans upon plans for what she would do if someone tried to corner her, she had a map in her head of every twist every turn and every bolt hole in the area. She was a confident young lady and it was this confidence which let her step out from the club, that made her feel no hesitation at the prospect of walking from one night spot to another.

Yet somewhere else somewhere not to far away there was a figure stumbling in the night, surrounded by a fog in the darkness not a dull grey rolling fog but instead a fire-lit, ash-dusted fog which moved flowing along with the figure.  A noise seems to come from this fog at first it sounds like a man talking but no there were more layers to it than that, it isn’t the sound of a man it is the sound of a dark choir moaning and sighing in an almost rhythmic fashion, it is a symphony of pain and suffer, a pain and suffering which has continued on beyond the grave. This thing could smell the living, it could taste them in the air so as Rochelle left the club it knew it. Somehow it could taste her sweet perfume even through its own smell a smell which was as dark and disgusting as her perfume was sweet and light enveloped it. It wanted her and yet it didn't quite know why it just knew that she would take away the pain, she would make things better for a time at least. It had to feed things were always much clearer when it began to feed.

Rochelle was simply walking now, as far as she was concerned she was leaving one club and heading to the next. At first she didn't know she was being followed, the fog stayed far enough behind that in her inebriated state she didn't pay any attention to it, in fact the first thing she knew was that the temperature seemed to be rapidly dropping. It had felt almost warm when she had first stepped out and now it seemed to be getting colder by the second.

Suddenly she realised that she was being enveloped by some kind of fog, at first she tried to reach out to find a wall or something she could feel, something she could use as a guide but nothing seems to be near her. Soon she has turned around and stumbled so much that she doesn't even know which way she was originally facing. Then she begins to think that she can hear a sound, she thinks she can hear a voice and the sound of footfalls on the ground. Her heart beats faster and she starts to think that she should run, but she can’t even tell which direction the sound is coming from, this is when she realises that there are lights in the fog, lights which are all around her circling her getting ever nearer. This is when she begins to try and make a run for it, she starts to move quickly now her heels making a noise which sounds almost like a horses gallop but as loud as the noise is the voice has now become louder, not only this but it is now coming from multiple directions, it is not one voice but a choir of voices she can’t make out what they are saying but it scares her, she is so scared that she will freeze in place again so she does the only thing she can think off and clamps her hands over her ears.

Rochelle trips and comes crashing to the floor, the pain is unbearable she looks down at her ankle and realises that she won’t be able to stand on it, but this soon proves to be unimportant because now the lights are upon her. Soon she can see nothing but light, its hot and blinding and it seems to be entering her body at first she is scared but then the voices which were previously harsh seem to become soft and enticing ‘’Join us Rochelle, give in, join us, join us.’’ The voices pleaded and pleaded and what at first seemed scary suddenly seems somewhat pleasant.  The light is replaced with images of some of the most pleasant memories in her life she can simultaneously feel the joy and emotion of the time she was five and she got her first bike alongside her first kiss at fourteen alongside hundreds of other moments of joy and pleasure. For a second she raises her hand up and she can see it is glowing almost as if it is on fire, but there is no pain there it feels good in a way which is beyond words almost as if it was being massaged tenderly, kissed from top to bottom simultaneously at the same moment and bathed in a warm bath. Every nerve seems to be being stroked and teased and pleased all at the same time the feeling spreads throughout her entire body and then in a final flash of light she is gone and the fog begins to retreat slowly dissipating, for now it is satisfied its hunger has been fed and it can think straight again, but more than that it is able to understand things it didn't before it has become somehow more. 

                

Rochelle’s parents would never know what had become of her, without a body to find they would never even know she was dead, sure they would guess she was dead and yet hope that she was alive but they would never know. Her life had ended in a wave of pure pleasure put the ripples of her passing would create nothing but misery for those who had known and loved her.