A letter to my younger self

Child, your life will become more amazing than you expect. Not more amazing than you can dream, for some of our dreams remain unfulfilled at the time of my writing this, but some of them are fulfilled – in ways that are truly wonderful and beautiful and unexpected.

You will have adventures as you always wanted. They won’t be quite like the fun adventures you wanted – riding dragons, running away with pirates, travelling to other planets – but here’s the thing: adventures are not truly adventures unless they are scary. And scary things are not often fun. Your adventures will be scary, sometimes painful, and often not particularly fun. But they will still be adventures, and you will come out of them with greater experience, greater knowledge, greater strength, and a story to tell.
And yes: you'll fight with swords. You'll do archery. You'll wear cloaks on your back and knives at your waist, and it will all be as grand as you imagined it.

You will gain friends.
You will gain wonderful, beautiful friends who are not quite like the ones you picture but who supply you with the type of friendship you always dreamed of. You are right about friendship. All of it. You are so right.

You are right about many, many things.
You are right to gain and keep imaginary friends. You will need them and want them even as you grow older.
You are right to remain childlike and to refuse to grow up.
You are right about sexuality.
You are right about vegetarianism, and kindness to animals.
Don’t be afraid of yourself, for you are right about so many things.
Don’t listen to the people who tell you things that you know, in your core, are wrong. You are right: they are wrong. Hold your tongue, for, as you know, there is no use in arguing, but know that you are right: you were right all along.

I know you think you're ugly. But you're not. And as time goes on you will become beautiful. You'll be amazed by the way that, as you find the things you want, you become beautiful. You were never really ugly, child: it's just that you have to wear a mask. But someday you'll need to wear the mask less and less, until it becomes something you only have to put on occasionally, and the rest of the time you can show your real face – your beautiful face – to the sun, and even to many of those most dreadful of creatures: human beings. And you'll look in the mirror and no longer hate what you see.
Yes, really. I swear it.
I know it sounds impossible, but child, you have no idea how much better your life is going to get.

You will discover aspects of yourself that will amaze you. You will be astounded at the beauty and brilliance you attain, inside and out. You will do things that terrify you, things that horrify you, and things that you currently believe you cannot do. I won't tell you what they are, for you won't believe me, but just know that you are going to get even more badass than you think you might – though in ways that will surprise you.
Don't be afraid of that – of surprising yourself. You'll handle it. The surprises are good ones. Yes, really.

You are afraid of so many things. You'll always be a fearful person, I think, but you'll conquer many of your current fears. Disasters lie ahead – but so do triumphs. Yes, even for you. You will discover how brave, how strong you truly are. You think you are lacking, but the truth is this: you are already complete. It's just that no one sees it yet.

And oh, the good things you'll discover. The world has so many good things in it that you have yet to find.
So do not despair, child. Hold on, and keep going. You are right to guard yourself. You are right to keep hold of your soul. Stay the course, child, for your life will get so much better. All you have to do is wait.

And listen: you are loved. Or, you will be. You will be. You will be loved with the kind of love you crave. Your soulmate is already on this planet. Yes, really! You have a soulmate! Trust me: just hold on, and many of your dreams will come true. Even the ones you think are impossible.

It gets better, dear, sad, angry, lonely child. It gets so much better. You will be amazed at how much better and more beautiful your life will become.
Just hold on.

Oh, look: you did.

And it was worth it, no?

Poem: Jesse And The Unicorn

Jesse And The Unicorn 

26 September, 2003. 

A thousand mountains distant,
A thousand trees ago,
A thousand midnight skies away
The Unicorn did go.

In a forest hamlet
Jesse's parents wait.
But Jesse saw the Unicorn,
And in its eyes – her fate.

In the wood stooped Jesse,
Among the Winter snow,
Cutting fuel to warm the meagre
Hut, while cold winds blow.

Behold, there stood the Unicorn!
Silent, white on white.
And Jesse followed the Unicorn,
And vanished from mortal sight.

The axe's chop ceased ringing,
The howling wind cried sorrow,
But when a call like this be heard
One can do naught but follow.

Beyond the farthest sunrise,
Beyond plains green and wide,
Beyond vast deserts, harsh and bare,
A lass and a Unicorn ride.

A thousand mountains distant,
A thousand stars ago,
A thousand waterfalls away
Jesse and the Unicorn go. 

Fanfiction: Blindness

 Blindness

A Solfie (Solace and Rafferty) fanfic by G. Wulfing (g-wulfing-author.tumblr.com).

Solace and Rafferty belong to Thacmis on Tumblr (thacmis.tumblr.com).

See below for author’s notes. 
 

Rafferty stumbled in the soft sand, dizzy with pain and clumsy without the ability to see to balance himself. He hurtled, barely keeping his footing, toward the crisp sighing of the waves: small waves, rolling gently into shore. The sand suddenly hardened under his armoured feet, and he knew the water was near. He began to cry out. “Solace! Solace!”
He repeated the name several times, as his footsteps squelched, then sloshed, and he slumped to his knees in moving, ankle-deep water, his plate armour clunking.
“Solace!” His voice broke. It hardly ever did that. There was little in the universe that could make the voice of a knight of the sky falter.
He sought to sense Solace’s life force. There were gulls above him – he could hear them as well as sense them – and the whispering grasses behind him, beyond the sand. A wave rushed in and swished loudly against the steel plates of Rafferty’s leg armour, and a thousand grains of sand tinkled and hissed against the metal as the water retreated again.
Rafferty scrunched his hands on his thighs, knuckles pressing against the hard, smooth, curved steel. Don’t make me wait, Solace, he thought; not today, please, not now … please just come to me immediately …
Solace could be anywhere in the ocean, though he frequented this shore, especially when he knew that the knight was near; but there was no guarantee that Solace would be close by today —
“Rafferty!”
The knight had barely finished his thought when he heard his name being called from somewhere out in the sea. “Solace?” he cried.
“Rafferty!”
The call sounded closer already. And then Rafferty’s confused and weakened soul could finally sense it: Solace’s life force, ancient as the depths of the ocean, powerful and clear as towering waves, strong and full of wild motion like the sea itself, but gentle, as gentle as the touch of sea foam on bare skin. Familiar and beloved.
The knight waited. Solace would be arrowing toward him underwater, swift as a dolphin.
Rafferty heard a much larger wave gathering itself and rolling toward him, and then it crashed a few paces away, its aftermath striking his knees and waist. It was Solace’s own custom-made swell, carrying the merman into shore. And, with a small splash, suddenly the mermaid king was on the sand in front of Rafferty, exclaiming in distress, “Raff! My love, what happened?! Your eyes —”
Rafferty felt the merman’s cool, smooth-scaled hands cradle his bandaged face, so gently; and something inside him broke. He felt tears rushing to his face and his throat almost suffocated him with the lump that appeared in it.
“Taliesin did it,” he choked out. “As p-punishment.”
He heard the merman’s intake of breath. “For – me?”
Rafferty nodded, and croaked miserably, “For falling in love with you.”
Solace’s hands left Rafferty’s face, and the knight heard his breathing become heavy.
Then Solace screamed, “WHAT?!”
The gulls fell silent.
There was a hush between waves. 

“I WILL KILL HIM!” Solace roared. “BRING HIM TO ME – I WILL KILL HIM!”
“It’s no good, Solace, he’s a commander of the sky –”
“I WILL RIP THE SKY IN TWO! I WILL SHAKE THE HEAVENS UNTIL HE FALLS TO ME, AND THEN I WILL PULL HIM TO THE DEPTHS UNTIL HE DROWNS AND I WILL TEAR OUT HIS THROAT WITH MY HANDS! I WILL DYE THE OCEAN RED WITH HIS BLOOD!”
As Solace raged, Rafferty could feel the air pressure increase, and the prickle of electricity in the atmosphere. The air grew chill, as did the water that washed around his armour – he could feel it through his waterproof bodysuit. He could imagine the enormous banks of black clouds gathering, blotting out the sky, and the first rumble of thunder growled nearby. A cold gust of wind whipped through his tousled hair and found every chink in his armour. The ground seemed to tremble, as though there might be an earthquake nearby.
“Solace, it will do no good,” Rafferty murmured. He reached with one hand for the merman, his other hand planted as a fist in the shifting, waterlogged sand beside his thigh. He found Solace’s forearm, and immediately the merman moved closer, caressing Rafferty’s face, gently touching, at the temples, the soft fabric bandage that covered the knight’s eyes.
“Will they heal?” Solace asked, but Rafferty could tell that the merman already suspected the answer: why would Taliesin inflict a punishment that was only temporary for a love that would presumably last forever?
“No,” Rafferty whispered.
He could feel the tears stinging his ruined eyes, and the pain was almost unbearable. He felt them leak from under the bandage, trickling down his cheeks, and was sure they were mixed with blood.
Solace was silent in horror.
Another wave rushed in, tiny grains of sand hissing grittily against steel plates, and a few small shells clinked as the water dashed them against the metal. The wind gusted coldly again, but there was no more thunder.
“… H-He did it to punish you as well,” Rafferty croaked. “S-So you would know that I could n-never again ap-preciate your beauty.”
The searing pain of the tears was almost as bad as the pain of what Taliesin had done to his eyes in the first place; but he could not stop them. He clung helplessly to Solace’s elbow, his other hand still buried in sand, in a fist so tight that it had gone numb.
He couldn’t read Solace’s face. He couldn’t read anything. He would never see anything ever again – just darkness, accursed darkness, forever. No Solace. No sea. No sunrises. No clouds. He’d never see his own reflection again. He’d forget what he looked like. Worse – would he forget what Solace looked like? Oh, why hadn’t he looked harder at everything when he had still had his vision?! Why hadn’t he memorised every detail of Solace’s face, and his body too – everything about him? Why hadn’t he —
Solace embraced him.
Rafferty could feel the merman’s strong arms around his torso, Solace’s cool hand on the back of his neck, and the merman’s enormous cloud of long, wavy black hair, which was somehow always fluffy and flowing even when it was wet, touching his face. That hair had an unearthly, glimmering starriness throughout – as though it were spun from a glittering midnight sky, or a hundred tiny fireflies were caught in its curling strands. It was strange to feel that familiar hair but not be able to see it. Solace’s smell enveloped him: fresh, salty, wild – the smell of the sea – but also sweet, cool, and deep. Rafferty buried his nose in Solace’s damp hair, trying for a moment to pretend that the reason all he could see was darkness was because his vision was filled with that deep-black hair and he had closed his eyes to bury his face in it. He returned the embrace with both arms, feeling Solace’s cool, smooth skin under his sandy fingers – the contours of Solace’s back and slim waist, the softness of his hair …
But he would never see Solace’s breathtaking sky-blue eyes again. Nor his pale, flawless skin, nor his dark, blue-green, shimmering scales … the thin, draping chains of gold jewellery around his neck and head, framing his youthful-looking, expressive face, his strong dark brows and those thick, long, black eyelashes …
He could remember them – for now – but not see them. All he would ever have, from now on, was memories.
Rafferty choked.
“You do not need to see me to love me,” Solace said quietly. “And nothing – nothing – that Taliesin or anyone else can do can make me stop loving you.”
Rafferty sobbed.
The pain of weeping burned his eyes more and more, but he was past caring. He clung to Solace, vaguely aware that the plates of his armour would be digging into the merman’s bare skin, but Solace did not flinch and Rafferty could not bring himself to let go.
Blue eyes … Solace had forget-me-not blue eyes.
Forget-me-not eyes.
Rafferty tried to picture them, tried to picture them so clearly that he could convince himself he was seeing them, but the harder he tried the harder he sobbed and he could no longer be sure he was remembering anything correctly.
He sobbed so hard that he could not breathe.
Rafferty felt himself swooning sideways, capsizing into Solace’s arms, and for a short while his mind seemed to go dark as well as his vision, and he felt nothing.
It was a relief.
When the darkness lifted, Rafferty tried to blink away the blackness in his eyes, only to feel pain rush back into his head and to remember that he would never be able to blink away the darkness ever again.
“Rafferty? Raff?”
Solace was saying his name, and the wind was cold, so cold, and he was lying in water and sand and shallow waves that rocked his legs as Solace cradled his head and shoulders.
Rafferty tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, his eyes burned, and he wished he could go back into the darkness of his mind where he could pretend that he was only asleep and not blinded forever.
He started to shiver, and the shivering intensified until his armour started to clink with the force of it.
“Rafferty, my love, stay with me. I shall take you somewhere warm.”
Solace started dragging him through the sand, toward the sea. Rafferty barely registered the sand building up in his armour, being scooped up by the plates in one instant, then flushed out at once by the next small wave. In a moment they were in shallow water, being half-lifted by each wave, and then they were floating. Rafferty was on his back, Solace’s arms hugging his chest, Solace’s fishlike tail undulating rapidly beneath him, towing him out to sea.
Rafferty relaxed, trying only to keep his head above water. Once he realised that Solace’s shoulder would do that for him, he stopped trying to do even that, and just let Solace carry him, his fingers trailing loosely through water. After a while, the knight’s shivering became sporadic, not because he was warming but because his body became too numb and exhausted to shiver anymore.
For what seemed like a long time – or maybe it wasn’t; he really couldn’t tell – Rafferty felt nothing but darkness and an occasional slosh of water against his cheek. His mouth tasted of salt. Something strong was wrapped around his chest, and he was floating, bobbing. Something in his head hurt, or maybe it was his whole body. And there was darkness again, blessed darkness.
And then he had a splitting headache.
It was warm; he was on firm ground, with something vaguely cushioning underneath him. He could see nothing but darkness, but his head felt like his skull had been split with a sword and his eyes burned as though they had been —
Rafferty whimpered, then screamed.
An undignified, unholy sound to come from a knight of the sky. He screamed and screamed, uncontrollably, scarcely pausing to inhale, until somehow the sound of Solace calling his name and the sensation of hands gripping his arms filtered through the screaming, and it petered out into gasps.
“Rafferty, Rafferty, my love, I’m here. I’m here. Breathe. Breathe, my love.”
“S-Solace. What – where are you —”
“Right here. I’m right here, my love.” Solace placed Rafferty’s hands on his own face, letting him feel the mermaid king’s smooth skin and long eyelashes. He kissed Rafferty’s palm.
Rafferty calmed somewhat. “Why can’t I – why can’t I see you?”
His mind knew that something terrible had happened, but somehow he could not understand it.
Solace’s breath hitched. “B-Because – because you — Because Taliesin did a terrible thing, my love.”
“… Taliesin …?” Rafferty breathed.
And then he remembered.
For a moment he felt utterly numb. Even the splitting in his head stopped, for that moment.
“Taliesin blinded me, to punish us,” he said hollowly.
He felt Solace nod against his hands. Wetness appeared on Rafferty’s fingertips: Solace’s tears.
Slowly, Rafferty pulled his hands from Solace’s grasp and placed them on his own face. The bandage was still there.
He lay still for a moment.
“Did you look?” he asked Solace. “At … at the wound?”
“No,” the merman whispered brokenly.
Rafferty lay there, head pounding, eyes burning, in silence. He felt Solace’s fingertips brush the back of his hand, silently requesting mutual comfort, and he took the merman’s hand and gripped it.
He realised that his armour was gone: he lay in his bodysuit on some sort of vegetation. Life force was all around him – he could feel it like a gentle hum in the back of his mind – but he was far too exhausted to examine its sources.
Eventually, the knight asked, “Where are we?”
“On an island. Small. Warm. There are no people here of any kind; just birds, insects and plants. You can rest here, for as long as you want to.”
Rafferty could hear the tears in Solace’s voice.
“I will bring you food, and –” the merman’s voice broke, and Rafferty could tell by the way the hand clutched his, shaking, that Solace had dissolved into weeping.
He pulled the merman closer, feeling that cloud of hair fall over him, and they lay chest to chest, holding each other, as the mermaid king sobbed for his love’s lost sight.

~~~

Two days passed. 
Solace had been out of water so much that the scales of his arms and hands had started to temporarily fade into skin like the rest of his torso, and his hair had lost most of its fluffiness and starry shimmer. He had refused to leave Rafferty’s side except to find food, lugging himself awkwardly over land or swimming around the island’s coast until he found overhanging trees that bore fruit. He had positioned Rafferty near a freshwater stream that flowed into the ocean, and used a piece of Rafferty’s armour as a dish to bring him water to drink. On the third day, he guided Rafferty to the stream and helped him to bathe.
Solace’s heart grieved every time he noticed how differently Rafferty moved now. He was tentative and uncertain, where before he had been graceful and sure. The knight was still strong, inside and out, and Solace knew that he would survive; but he was damaged, so damaged.
Once Rafferty had bathed, Solace, at Rafferty’s behest, forced himself to unwrap the bandage from the knight’s eyes. Rafferty sat on a mossy rock at the edge of the stream, while Solace, lying in shallow water, carefully unwound the long strip of white fabric from around Rafferty’s head.
The eyelids were fused closed; the thick, soft, fluffy white lashes stained and crusted with blood, sticking in clumps to each other and to Rafferty’s brown skin. Red trails – tear trails – led out of them and started down Rafferty’s cheeks, down to the point where the ocean had washed them away. The swelling that had been visible even with the bandage in place had diminished to a slight puffiness, but the delicate skin all around Rafferty’s eyes, even to his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, was livid with horrifying bruising.
The knight had been using his magic to heal himself, and Solace winced inwardly at the thought that this was the healed version: how much worse might his wounds have been if Rafferty had had no magic?
“… How does it look?” Rafferty asked, with some apprehension in his voice.
Solace clasped the knight’s face in his hands, and kissed his forehead, above his white brows. “You are as handsome as ever, my love.”
Solace washed the bandage in the stream, then used it, with painstaking care, to clean the dried blood from Rafferty’s face. The knight sat, calm and accepting, while at every other moment Solace had to wipe away his own tears.
That this horrific act had been done to his shy, sweet knight – the gentlest person Solace had ever known, whose magic was all about life-force and growing and healing – made Solace’s heart burn with anger. 
And that the love of Solace for Rafferty, and of Rafferty for Solace, was the reason for it, made his heart break.
Eventually, after a long time of Solace working in silence, Rafferty said, “Solace.”
“Yes?” The merman paused, holding the moist cloth in mid-air before the knight’s face.
“I still know that you are beautiful. Even though I can’t see it, I still know it.”
Solace gulped, fresh tears rushing to his eyes.
Like all merpeople, Solace cared a great deal about his appearance, and was proud of his beauty. Taliesin had chosen blindness as Rafferty’s punishment because he knew that it would hurt Solace to no longer be admired by his beloved, and to no longer be able to bring enjoyment to Rafferty through his appearance.
It was a foul, cruel manoeuvre, and Solace would wait for his chance to take revenge on Taliesin, no matter whether Rafferty said it was useless or not. Like the sea, Solace’s rage could be sudden and devastating; and like the sea, he could also wait forever, and slowly, slowly wear away anything that he wanted gone. Taliesin would keep. And someday, somehow, Solace would make him wish that he had never even breathed near Rafferty.
“Solace?” the knight prompted, since the merman had made no response.
Solace had no words. Instead, he put down the cloth, leaned forward, and, taking Rafferty’s warm brown hand in one of his and using the fingertips of the other to lightly support the knight’s chin, kissed Rafferty gently on the mouth.

~~~ End. ~~~

Author’s notes
This fanfiction story is based on a particular image Thacmis drew – ‘Blind’, the second image in this set: <http://thacmis.tumblr.com/post/167067793775/jayessart-inktobers-19-24-using>
I don’t often write fanfiction, so this surprised me somewhat. Thacmis’s art is utterly beautiful – deeply sweet and romantic. After sighing for hours over Thacmis’s art of their enchanting characters Rafferty and Solace, I was suddenly and madly inspired by ‘Blind’, and this story tumbled out of my fingertips. The story doesn’t fully gel with the canon that Thacmis has explicitly stated for Rafferty and Solace, but the image ‘Blind’ seems itself to go against some things in Thacmis’s canon; so ‘Blindness’ is based specifically on ‘Blind’ and what it suggests.
There is not a lot of detail in the lore established for these two, as far as I can find, so I’ve had to make some guesses.
Rafferty is sometimes drawn with his wings and sometimes drawn without, so for simplicity’s sake I’ve not mentioned them. I have called the skin-tight garment that Rafferty wears under his armour a ‘bodysuit’ and guessed that it must be waterproof, for knights of the sky must surely fly through rain and clouds and wouldn’t want to get soaked to the skin every time they do. I couldn’t find a name for the ‘superior angel’ who blinded Rafferty, so I chose a name that, like ‘Solace’ and ‘Rafferty’, exists in our world but is somewhat rare. I don’t know if Solace calls Rafferty ‘Raff’ or not, but I took a chance. Solace’s power seems to be to cause earthquakes and tsunamis rather than thunderstorms, but I couldn’t think of an effective way to show either of those that wouldn’t disrupt the emotional atmosphere, so while I included the fact that he can influence nature with his mood I’ve taken some poetic licence as to how.
I have posted this on my Tumblr blog as well, and Thacmis has read it and has been very complimentary. I am thrilled to have pleased the person who inspired me so.

Poem: How To Be Alone On Valentine's Day

In the spirit of Tanya Davis’ and Andrea Dorfman’s short film ‘How To Be Alone’, I have composed a poem regarding Valentine’s Day – that traditional celebration of romantic love. Romantic love is only one type of love, and it is not necessarily even the most fulfilling or valuable type of love. Far more important is to love and accept yourself: by all means improve yourself, but understand that you cannot truly love anyone or anything until you love yourself.

How To Be Alone On Valentine’s Day
On Valentine’s Day,
Date yourself.
Use your favourite bodywash in the shower;
Or take a three-hour bath with candles and bath bombs.
Wear your favourite scents.
Get dressed in your favourite clothes – pyjamas, jeans, or tuxedo.
Wear your favourite jewellery.
Smile at yourself in the mirror: you look amazing.

Take yourself out walking, to the movies, to a park,
And imagine how many people wish that they were you –
Envying your self-confidence, your self-sufficiency,
Your strength in not needing a partner to validate you.

You are enough in yourself.
Your looks – your body – your intellect – your personality –
Are enough for you.

Go your favourite restaurant. Buy yourself dinner. Forget the cost; enjoy. Breathe deeply. Today is a gift to yourself.

Or curl up at home with books and D.V.D.s.
Eat straight from the tin, with a cocktail fork.
Make yourself your favourite dessert.
Light those special fancy candles. Enjoy them.
Put flowers on the table, for yourself.

This day does not have to be one of loneliness.
It does not have to be a day of regrets, or insecurity.
It can be a day of devotion and strength and sureness.
On this sugar-coated, pink heart-shaped day,
Remember how to love.
Not how to give gifts or how to buy flowers,
But how to show a person that they are valuable … precious … cherished … adored.
Humility is not self-hatred.
Confidence is not conceit.
Self-love is not selfish.
Love yourself, listen to yourself, be honest with yourself, accept yourself, honour yourself,
As you would love and listen to and be honest with and accept and honour a person who was most precious to you;
And you will find yourself loving and listening to and being honest with and accepting and honouring
Others
And the planet
And all good things.
There are so many ways to love.
Start with yourself.

In which I talk about books that are nocturnal and require sugar

Some of my books refuse to be written in daylight. They are nocturnal.
It's quite bizarre. Raymond, for example, was written very quickly: 21 pages in 3 days, and most of it written between 15:00 and 03:00 (3 p.m. and 3 a.m.). It was written in Winter, and where I live, the Winter dusk starts to fall at about 16:00–17:00. So the vast majority of the story was written during the hours of darkness. If I tried to make progress during daylight, the ideas would not flow. As soon as the sun went down, the muse awoke, and the story unfolded itself in my head. I did not try to fight this phenomenon: it very quickly became apparent that this story had its own way of doing things, and I was not about to argue so long as the ideas kept flowing.
Seven years later, when I wanted to edit Raymond for publication, it refused to be edited in daylight. I spent hours staring at the manuscript on my computer monitor, but could not make any progress on editing it, no matter how I tried. And then, inexplicably, as soon as the sun went down, I could.
After the editing was complete, I needed to format the text for publication, and this the story allowed me to do during daylight. Formatting requires little creativity, so perhaps that is why I could format in daylight; although, in theory, editing doesn't require a lot of creativity either. Editing does, however, require lots of decisions to be made – lots and lots of tiny decisions – and apparently I couldn't make them while the sun was up.
The sequel, Raymond's Nemesis (due to be published in December 2018) was the same: in daylight, nothing; at night, the inspiration flowed. It was harder to write than Raymond was, and took much longer, so there were more sleepless nights and more sugar was consumed.
Incidentally, some stories require certain sorts of sugary treats – in addition to my usual hot chocolate, masala chai lattes, or mochaccinos – to be consumed whilst writing them. Raymond's Nemesis, which was also written in Winter, was – if I recall correctly – the strawberry Oreo book: I had access to a large box of those biscuits, packaged in threes, and every hour or two would leave my computer to make another hot drink in the benighted kitchen and retrieve another packet of Oreo biscuits, to be eaten at my desk while the heater blasted warm air into the room. Another nocturnal book, The Vine, required a large box of Turkish Delight, which I already had in my possession (I love Turkish Delight), and which I started eating so that I could describe the taste of it really well for the story, then kept eating because I was writing at night and wanted the sugar to keep my physical brain awake and functional while the muse fed ideas into it.
To anyone who does not believe in muses, or who is not possessed of an artistic temperament, or whose muse is less capricious, this must seem ridiculous. Surely, one can set a time for writing, then sit down and write. How hard can it be to put words on paper, or on a screen?
Certainly, that is what one tries to do. But there is a thing called 'inspiration'; one cannot wait around for it, else nothing will get finished: one must write regardless of how uninspired one feels; but at the same time, inspiration is the magic without which stories simply cannot exist. One cannot force it; one cannot wait for it; and when it does arrive, one must allow it to seize and drive one's imagination for as long as it will do so, because the result of such possession is always wonderful and beautiful and far better than anything one can produce without it.
So if inspiration descends upon me late at night when I am tired and want to sleep, I have a choice: tell it to come back another day, and risk it not doing so, or stay up and write for as long as I can, until either I or the inspiration is exhausted. This is why I call the particular type of inspiration that comes to me my 'muse': she seems almost like a person, with whims and moods, sulks and passions. Sometimes she ignores me; sometimes she pesters. Sometimes I can almost see her in my mind's eye. And the magic – the inspiration – that she causes to flow through me is worth losing sleep over.
These nocturnal, sugar-laden writing processes are neither healthy nor sustainable, occasionally frustrating, and certainly not my preference; but when that is how the story insists on being written – or how the muse insists I write the story – that is what I must do, and a series of nights of sleep-deprivation and sugar highs is worth it in the end when I have a complete, or near-complete, story before me.

My seventh book: Raymond

As a special post-Christmas surprise, I have just published another book!

Cover by the inimitable DrRiptide.

A short blurb:
Toby Wilson’s considered opinion is that his classmate Raymond is weird. Intelligent, poised, and strangely sophisticated for a teenage schoolboy, Raymond seems decent enough: he did save Wilson’s life, after all; but is he really just a weird teenager with unusual eyes and a foreign accent or is he far older than he looks? And does he keep staring at people’s blood, or is it Wilson’s imagination?

It is currently available, free, on Smashwords. Here's the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/773774.
You might also find it at your preferred e-book retailer. 

This fulfills my goal of publishing three books this year. It was a battle, but I did it.

Have a peaceful end of 2017, and may 2018 bring more joy and peace than this year, and its predecessor, have.
Either way, keep fighting. Keep hoping. Keep surviving. Outlast and outshine the darkness.
Breathe deep. Seek peace.

Peace to all of you.

My sixth book: The Enemy Soulmate

My sixth book, The Enemy Soulmate, has been published at Smashwords.
It was a struggle and a slog, but I won: the book is finished and published.

It was published in the early hours of 1 December, but I'm calling it a November publication and have backdated this blog post accordingly. The reason for this is that I have another story planned for publication in December: my goal was to publish three books this year, but publishing two books in one month feels wrong: they should be more spread out than that. The Enemy Soulmate was, after all, supposed to be published in July.

A blurb about the book:
In this fantasy novella, when soulmates meet for the first time, matching tattoo-like soulmarks appear on their bodies. 18-year-old Fedir is hunting in the woods when he discovers, to his horror, that his soulmate is a young man from an enemy tribe. If Fedir kills his soulmate, the problem will be solved … but can he bring himself to kill the person who is fated to become his dearest companion?

The beautiful cover by Em Krebaum and DrRiptide.

I blogged extracts from the book here and here.
You can read a larger sample, and buy the book, at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/762783. You might also find it at your preferred e-book retailer.

I'm exhausted.