The Pipe Dream Diaries (3) Ophidiophobia...

 

Snakes, folks.

Yes, those big ol’ fat, rat’s tails with teeth.

Not for me, serpent lovers… my apologies.

 

A shade over ten years’ ago, when I originally wrote this blog, me... and a couple of friends (one now sadly passed) visited ‘Phobophobia’ on Tooley Street (great name) in the heart of London Bridge. We all had a raucous time in a terror-walkthrough that distilled our deepest fears in a touchy-feely, real-time setting. Because I’d previously attended (and my pals hadn’t), the ‘zombie’ staff locked me away in a dungeon. I had no choice, but to listen to my friend’s screaming to a chainsaw serenade from afar (while standing next to a very life-like corpse). Ah, joyous times.

But it wasn’t quite over. As soon as you left the horror installation, and entered the shop, THEY were there waiting… with their snakes… coiled around their shoulders.

I guess this is very similar to a psychological therapy technique known as Flooding. By being exposed to a sudden tsunami of overwhelming fears, in an instant, and then – in a protracted, form of bombardment – your fears are reset. This is the intended outcome.

Controversial. The juries out. Does it even work? (I have my opinions.)

I don’t suffer with ophidiophobia, I just don’t like snakes that much. In truth, I’d happily hold a metre long yellow Boa, and any slinky version of a non-venomous kind, but that’s my limit. (Even the corn snake, that was “planted” on me, took an unhealthy, and decidedly intimidating interest in my beard.)

 

This occasion happened about three months after I released the first Shelly Clover novel. It was one of the warmest Halloween’s on record in the UK. 23+ degrees. (Hence, inspiration for the climate in Shelly Clover in the Theatre Mind Macabre.) It was a lovely evening – a true treasure of a memory - set close to the River Thames. After the walk-through, we stopped over at the16thC pub opposite. It was a great evening with good ol’ south-east London friends.

Glad I did it. Certainly, an absolute fab memory, looking back. Snakes though… never my thing.

 

The Pipe Dream Diaries (2) The Ninety-Ninth Birthday.

 

 

My post on the 23^rd Feb. 2015, with image included, is of Gran on her 99^th birthday…

Seriously, who even lives that long (and looks that great, right)? And she was truly great; I mean it. Words cannot begin to describe the impact this wonderful woman had on my life.

And of course it is “had” in the past tense (otherwise she would have been 109 this past February).

My Gran’s life and demeanour were characterized by her default settings towards compassion, kindness, and acceptance. She was non-judgemental, peaceful, and her serenity was clear to all, and an ever present. It never deviated, nor did it faulter. She granted me emotional asylum to allay all my fears, in a quaint home, replete with spirally patterned carpets and delicately flowered wallpaper. Here, I experienced an uninterrupted flow of joy; bubbles of hope were a constant. I quickly learned that as our car hit the end of our driveway – a right turn meant boredom – but a left turn was a Ninety percent chance of heading to hers! I’d always ask if I could stay over, and she always said, ‘Yes’! It was a done deal, and I was always so excited. It was better than most other forms of anticipation, because it felt richer and realer.

Staying with my her, was like a haven. I can’t quite describe it, but it was – in the fullest sense.

On occasions, someone might ask you what your childhood was like, and there will be an endless range of replies. Mine: quite good. To elaborate, the combination of my imaginary life, and Gran, are key to this self-verdict. If we forget the dark clouds, and recall happy events/faces to make that retrospective judgement, then my happiness is filled with the face of the woman you see in the thumbnail. I think I only ever saw her flustered once. I caused this. I didn’t like it one bit, and I never did again (because there was no way) I’d ever want to do anything that disrupted the equilibrium of a beautiful soul.

 

Gran reached 100. She passed away peacefully a year-and-a-half after this photo was taken.

 

I have dedicated The Children at the River’s End to her, because I felt so much inspiration writing this novel, and – who better to dedicate a novel to – than an inspirational human who impacted me greatly. One plus one, really does equal two, here.

I hope you too had a lovely Gran. I’m so glad I got to experience one the absolute best in my life.

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The Pipe Dream Diaries. (I) Weird, looking back.

 

(I’ll try making my blogger posts a little different to my website blog.)

26 posts in 2014, and then sporadic entries all the way through to 2020 (five that year), and then… nothing at all. The proverbial tumbleweed bouncing across a dusty, deserted town. If I’m honest, I have no recollection of even posting during the pandemic at all. I guess it’s a time we all want to forget.

 

But reading that final entry in August 2020, is hands down, weird. Musings of another, written in their hand, trapped inside their consciousness; all so strange and detached. I remember that sofa, the sun blazing through the window, and it crumpling as I turned. Sticky, uncomfortable… desperately dreaming my way out of international disease, and internal dismay.

And I recall writing the opening 20,000 words of a novel tentatively entitled: The children at the end of the river. Would it ever happen? Truthfully. There were so many direct/indirect obstacles to contend with.

4.5 years on. A slight title change, a late 2023 release (along with images on this accompanying blog), and, I guess, I possessed enough guile and resilience to smoke the pipe dream into reality.

Still, profoundly weird, though.

 

I initially started this blog, back in 2014, to promote Mis-fit, Misplaced, Miss Shelly Clover, and also because I like blogging/getting thoughts down on a page. But in the meantime (and particularly post 2020), I’ve since re-written, and re-released that novel with a different cover… and also released a whopping sequel. (Also, in the provisional stages of planning the third instalment, and the cover is already designed, and visible online.)

On top of this, I have two other books in the bag: a Christmas novella: Mr Buechner’s Christmas on Shrieker Pass; and the horror novel, which I was starting at the time (and that this page is now dedicated to).

Effectively, four novels, since that scorcher in the pandemic… where I had an anthurium for company – and Kevin and Mabel – the two pigeons who would faithfully perch on my windowsill.

Glad to get past all that. 100%. And that the words actually became ‘physical things’ on a page, that people can now read.

 

A Strange Flash of Revelation

 

On the day I reached 124,055 words of the first draft, at the point of crafting the finale (and a whisker away from completion), I experienced a truly strange flash of revelation.

I was standing in the kitchen, holding a tea-towel.

It was subtle, intense.

The towel I held was green and white and I was drying a pan. What happened next was unexpected: I didn’t go looking for it; it just came to me from nowhere. And it was real, and it was right. I knew its inherent truthfulness. I understood in completeness something so very, very important as I approached the final chapter – as to why this book was so dear to me.

(Disclaimer: I originally wrote this blog on 9^th November 2021. I started writing the novel at the end of March 2020.)

The ‘pandemic’ months/years, for a vast amount of us, were like been fast-track along a street called desperate, in a town named despair, with back-drop of constant apocalypse. Each and every day, part of the world was outside our reach. The sun grimly shone, and every evening the moon was our silent companion.

Our minds, and our bodies were fighting against the unspeakable, invisible assailant. Life opened up to us our own personal paths of anguish that we often frequented alone… sometimes, fearfully alone. Well-meaning people tried to help, but were coping with their own emotional, social and physical traumas. Their occasional words were like a postcard from a distant relative, from a far-away land, arriving battered and bent – and for all the best intentions - with writing smudged beyond all comprehension. It was a good message that our heads could neither embrace, nor perceive; far gone to accept the healing words of hope - day after gruelling day, isolated in the lockdown.

Writing this book is my own way of dealing with the pandemic.

This was my tea-towel revelation: I had to do something to get through. The book was ‘that’ essential, something.

To be honest, I don’t think I had a choice. It had to happen. I had to write it. Another example in my life of: do, or die.

I can’t tell you how much this book saved me in the last year and a half. It was a vision of hope, but I’m absolutely fascinated about how and why it happened, or how it even came into being. This is the truth. I felt so ill on the day I conceived the idea in my mind; awful in fact. Looking back; it was a case of beauty from ashes – my self-help manual written and acted by myself.

To quote Arthur Kingsley McFadden from Mis-fit, Misplaced, Miss Shelly Clover:

‘The beauty is in the process, not the prize. It’s about the passion, not the patent!’

This novel was conceived in pain, delivered with joy… and when I look back, and it was my hiking boots, compass, water bottle, crooked stick and fleece through a dark, treacherous mountain pass; this and so much more.

When I hold a copy now and flick from front to back, and really look at the words dancing by, it 100% brought me through so much: Christmas alone; my neighbour dying (I can see her walking to the ambulance even now); my key-worker letter spread out on the passenger seat of my car, should I get pulled over by the police; the truly horrific abuse from a hacker in an online ‘live’ lesson (“I know where you live.”); the confusing physical pain; the one-way blue arrows in the corridor, and despite government denials, the unequivocal anger that the next lockdown was incoming.

Do you know what? I’m super grateful I got to write this. I really am. I thank God for it, I really do. It’s made the last three years mean something. And to have meaning in life – in whatever capacity – is what it should be all about. To think, if I hadn’t used Google Earth, and scrolled down on the beck on that fateful morning…

Take care, folks. All the very best for your creative lives; please don’t neglect it.

 

James Steven Clark

Writing in this "Scorching" British heat wave.

 

I write on a leather sofa that I stick to. That's pretty uncomfortable - truth be told.

At the back of my mind, I’m thinking about schoolwork; the creation of a brand new Sociology GCSE without reasonable time to manifest and deliver - as always - trying my best for great students. I worked in the first week of the holiday, so I’m ‘entitled’ to cast you (work) aside for now.

In the meantime, I’m writing and I’m being faithful to it.

I love how I feel compelled to write even when this unusual scorching "British" August dulls my senses into submission. I battle back. I open Scrivener. I start typing. The sun beats down and fights my resolve to write and create. Ha Ha, I win again today. I win big time.

Oh, to do this full-time: what.a.joy! If only.

Me -prolific? Potentially anyway. What do I do to make this happen, to make this continually happen?

Pipe-dream.

Maybe…

For now, anyway…I take heart in accomplishing another 1,000 words, and I drive forward, remembering the 5 star reviews, rationalising the 3 stars and never,giving.up.

Never.

Heat – you are but a momentary distraction; I welcome you. I approach you with fortitude and undying resolve.

 

 

Making Life that Little bit More Worthwhile

I do think three quarters of the battle in this life is finding a wholesome passion to pursue.

Something so worthwhile that it moves your soul and consumes it; You feel it richly igniting.

Writing does it for me totally. It’s therapy. It’s productive. It re-aligns my head. It nourishes my creative urges. It makes life a lot more worthwhile.

I used to love writing stories as a kid and I’m so glad I rediscovered my long, lost passion. (Glad I found this treasure again with a better brain and a richer understanding of human experience.) I’m lucky to have a passion…but I don’t believe its out of reach for anyone on this planet if they just keep looking, keep turning over life’s stones, and clearing the mud off the underside.

Selfish ambitions and vain conceit simply DO NOT cut the mustard for me: what’s the point in doing something for those reasons? Yet, we’re all wired differently, and some would disagree.

Even if my books are never discovered, I had a heck of a fun time writing them, and I showed great resolve and patience in completing them. I know I can look back on my life and say; at least I made the most of my little talent and tried to nurture it to flourish even if it was only a tiny flower in a garden of abundance.