Poem: When The World Is On Fire

When The World Is On Fire


15 May, 2019. 



A unicorn ran through the world,
Through fields, through rivers,
Over mountains and hills.
It danced through streams, purifying the water,
And passed through forests like a dream, leaving perfume and sweet thoughts
For all who were blessed with a glimpse of it.
The goodness of the unicorn, its gentleness and strength,
Made the world a better place,
And the unicorn knew that people led better lives
Because of the unicorn.
And the unicorn laughed.


One day the Spring was less joyful than usual.
One day the Summer was too hot.
One day the Autumn seemed too bitter.
One day Winter came and never seemed to leave.


The skies never brightened with the Spring.
In Summer, the forests caught fire.
The streams flowed brown, then turned bitter,
And then the fish started to die.


Grass withered and did not grow back.
Rain did not fall — or it fell and flooded.
Plants shrivelled. Animals vanished.
The herds were thinner. The flocks were smaller.
The bears starved. The wolves stopped howling.


And the unicorn wept.


But still the unicorn danced in the streams,
Danced on the mountaintops,
Breathed on the leaves to make them grow greener,
And did all the good a unicorn can do.
Still the unicorn ran through the world.


Then war came.
People screamed.
People died.
Tyrants poisoned the world,
As though they thought they had the right to do so;
As though they thought their cruelty would never affect them.
Suffering flowed like a river,
Glutted with unimaginable evils.
The unicorn did not understand how this could have come to pass.


The unicorn sobbed, and hung its head.


But still it kept running,
Trying to find some streams to purify,
Trying to dance when every whisper of the breeze brought the scent of new evils,
And more pain.


The clouds became darker — darker than the unicorn had ever seen them.
The sounds of war became louder and more horrifying.
The smell, the smell — the stench was overwhelming.
The unicorn choked.


The screams became more numerous. More, and more, and more.
So many. Too many.
The whole world was screaming.
The whole world was on fire.
The seas were boiling, animals dying; 
Flames licked at the unicorn’s hooves.
Birds dropped from the sky —
Lifeless bundles of feathers with closed eyes and silent throats. 
All the green in the world was blackened with blight.
Everything good that had ever existed —
Everything that the unicorn could remember as being good or beautiful —
Seemed to be spoiled, tortured, ruined.


And the unicorn stumbled.
Knees bending, legs weakening,
Strength and grace flowing away and dissipating
Like the clean rivers that had turned to toxic steam.
What is the point of a unicorn
When the world is ending?


How can I bless the world,
Thought the unicorn,
When what it really needs is saving?


And how can I save it
When it is beyond my power to save?


I was not meant to save the world.
I am meant to inspire it, not save it.
But when the world is ending,
What good is inspiration?
What good are sweet air and refreshing dreams
When all the air is poisoned and sleep is a luxury?


The unicorn looked around.
Nowhere was safe.
Nothing was untouched by the blight, or unspoiled by cruelty.


Except me, thought the unicorn,
Looking down at its white legs 
With their satin hide and silky feathering.
I am still untouched.
I still desire good things. I still have a pure heart. I am unspoilt by cruelty.
I am the only place in this world where goodness still reigns.


I can lie down and die here,
And relinquish the last good thing in this world.
Or I can keep moving.
I can run through this miserable, ruined place
And be the last good thing on this planet.


The screams tear my heart to pieces.
My eyes burn from crying as much as they burn from the poisonous fumes.
Every innocent creature that suffers
I mourn.
And my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth because I cannot save them.


But if I am the last good thing on this planet,
I will not let myself die.
I may have no hope for this world,
But if I lie down and die,
I will take away the last beautiful thing from this world,
And I will not be the one to do that.


So the unicorn stood.
Its legs trembled.
Its ears drooped.
Its tail dragged in the ash.


But it lifted its head.
And it started walking.
Because as long as there is one unicorn left on this planet,
The world is not completely evil.



In which I explain how I was turned into a writer

My short bio, or profile, begins thus. “G. Wulfing, author of kidult fantasy and other bits of magic, is a freak. They have been obsessed with reading since they learned how to do it, and obsessed with writing since they discovered the fantasy genre a few years later.”
However, it was really one specific series of books in ‘the fantasy genre’ that did it. These books are now famous, but at the time I was one of few people I knew who had even heard of them. They are The Chronicles Of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis said that a book named Phantastes, by George MacDonald, ‘baptised his imagination’, and this ultimately led to his becoming a writer of science-fiction, fantasy, and other things. For me, C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles Of Narnia did the same. As a child, I was introduced to the second episode of the B.B.C.'s television adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe; and it was as though a light went on in my head, illuminating everything.
I already loved reading, but my exposure to fairy tales, legends, myths and fantasy had been minimal. I had no concept of fantasy such as Narnia showed me. It is not an exaggeration to say that with that single episode of that television series, my world was blown wide open. I felt like I had seen the sky after living my whole life underground. The very world around me had shifted, or perhaps I had shifted within it. Everything felt different. I knew that I had been changed irrevocably. And I knew that there was nothing more in the world that I wanted to do than go to Narnia.
I watched every subsequent episode as it aired, fanatically. Then I watched the adaptations of Prince Caspian, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair, as they aired. When I realised that the series was based on a series of books, I asked my mother to read them to me. She read The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, then decided that she disliked it – which was baffling, but adults have always been baffling to me – and said that she would read no more: if I wanted more, I would have to read it myself.
So I did. I read every book about Narnia. I thought about it constantly, and wrestled with the question of how to get there.
Yes: how to get to Narnia. As though it were a real, non-fictional place. Because, on some level, I felt that it was, even as I knew that the books are fiction. I still do: if you told me that Narnia does not exist, I would, on a rational, cerebral level, with my adult brain, have to agree with you; but part of me – the child inside me – would feel that I was lying. Part of me, deep down, knows that Narnia is, somehow, in some way, real.
Of course, I surreptitiously checked every likely-looking wardrobe I encountered, just in case one of them was a portal to Narnia. I checked everything else that looked likely, too. Every mysterious, magical-looking object, every strange door, every curiously perfect gap between trees. I sought out places that looked like Narnia, or looked like they could hold a portal to it. I fantasised that the next time I looked up from a stream, or passed between two large rocks, or stepped into a ring of daisies or mushrooms, I would find myself in that beautiful, perfect land. The land that held everything I had ever wanted; the land where I could be everything I wanted to be, and have everything I wanted to have. The land so far removed from everything I have always hated about this cruel, unsatisfying world.
And as the years passed, and no portal appeared, I reluctantly had to admit to myself that my chances of reaching Narnia were negligible, and I was wasting my time looking for an entrance.
The only way to get to Narnia was take myself there.
And since I couldn’t go there physically, I would have to go there in my mind.
I already went to Narnia vicariously, through the books themselves. But if I wanted more, the next best thing was to create it myself.
But I couldn’t imagine stories about Narnia by myself: that would be wrong. I wasn’t the author, so I couldn’t possibly know what the author’s characters would do. I could fantasise about meeting Aslan, and Peter and Prince Rilian and the others, but that wasn’t the same as being able to create whole adventures in Narnia by myself. I did not know, at the time, that there is a word – 'fanfiction' – for what I was contemplating, but the concept felt wrong to me. It would feel … fake, somehow; dissatisfying; because I would be writing about people and things I hadn’t actually experienced. (I am not disparaging fanfiction in general: I like fanfiction, and have written some myself.) I didn’t want to write fanfiction about Narnia – I wanted to go there. But if I couldn’t go there, and I didn’t feel that I could write fanfiction about it, the only other option was to write fantasy that was like the Narnia tales but did not actually feature Narnia. I would have to create my own world.
So I did.
And then I wanted to explore other ideas that the rules of my world did not allow for; so I created another world. And another. Some were well developed, some were fragments; – shards just big enough for me to tell a story on. I wrote short stories, and parts of stories, and outlines of stories, and poems. Then I wrote a first draft of a novel. And, of course, I read every book I came across that looked like it might give me a feeling that could almost compare to that which Narnia gave me. Some came close. The Lord Of The Rings, written by someone who I later discovered, to my delight, was actually a friend of C.S. Lewis, made me feel very much the way Narnia did. So did the Star Wars films.
And it wasn’t the same as being in Narnia. It wasn’t perfect. It did not fully soothe my longing; oftentimes it aggravated it unbearably.
But, in the same way that travelling to your destination can give you a taste of the joy of being there already – as you look at the horizon and know that you are drawing closer to where you long to be – as you pack and prepare and work toward your desire – so did seeking and creating other worlds help to make me feel less far away from Narnia: the land that held everything I had ever wanted.
There are now a thousand worlds I want to visit. A dozen or so, so far, of them are ones that I have created myself, and writing about them is the closest I – or perhaps anyone – can get to reaching them.
I am still a sad little beast, longing for a Paradise: for a world that holds everything I have ever wanted.
But so is everyone else.
I have realised that, deep down inside, and though most people would never admit it, everyone longs for a Paradise. And that everyone has a different concept of what Paradise, for them, would be. For me it is Narnia, or Middle-Earth, or something like it.
I have also learned that this powerful, powerful longing for Paradise – for something more, for a world that holds everything we ever wanted – is not a bad thing. Many people criticise those who they know yearn to visit another world, dismissing them as daydreamers and escapists. But, as Lewis and Tolkien and others would agree, the whole point of escapism – of fantasy itself – is to enable us to rest and recover from the sorrows and suffering of our own world, and to teach and entice us to build a better future than we can currently imagine.
If we can envisage a world that has everything we ever wanted, and has not the things we hate about this world, we can be motivated to make changes to what we have now. Escaping to other worlds helps us to return to this one stronger, and longing for something better helps us to change what we already have.
The Chronicles Of Narnia changed my world. It is entirely possible that everything I am now, I am because of Narnia.
I cannot quite flatter myself that any of my worlds will have the same effect on someone else. But if any of my stories eases – or aggravates – someone else’s longing for Paradise, or makes them feel just a little less further away from it … then I will not consider my time wasted.
Somewhere out there may be another sad little beast who understands exactly what I mean. If I am talking to you now, little beast, then I greet you. These words are for you.
Keep searching for your Paradise. For travelling toward a desire, even an unattainable one, is better than standing still and accepting a world that dissatisfies you.

Poem: The Truth

The Truth 

March, 2006.  

I told you of magic carpets,
Of phoenixes, genies, and kings;
And you believed me.

I told you of dragons,
Of rocs and wyverns and satyrs,
And you believed me.

I told you of a place where the sky is purple,
Of floating islands and hoards of gold,
Of forests where magic is rife —
And you believed me.

I told you of unicorns, miracles, and angels;
I told you of fire and water and earth;
I told you of sweet air and magic swords —
And you believed me.

There are mountains that hold up the sky;
There are rings that can make you invisible;
There are magic wells that can heal wounds —
And you believed me.

And then I told you what no one else knew.

I told you the truth.

And like no one else had,

You believed me.

In which I talk about the administrative side of writing

Something that writers don’t seem to speak of often is the administrative side of writing. The pages and pages of notes and research that have to be sorted and arranged for easiest use and access whilst writing. The images, calendars, and maps. The timelines and outlines that are constantly being altered, and how these constant alterations are fitted into the manuscript itself. The research – links, screenshots, saved images, copied and pasted text – all of which has to be sourced because otherwise you’ll forget which website you took that information from and now you need to cross-reference it to make sure it’s not nonsense … If you put all your reference images, soundclips, videos, etc., into Scrivener, that keeps everything together, but does it make the Scrivener file too bulky? Is it just as easy to keep all these things in the project folder that already has the manuscript in it?
And where should this paragraph be stored? It’s part of a draft copy of a conversation that you’ve written out six times and you could probably delete it but you might conceivably need it later … should you number these drafts? Do they need their own file? If you put them in a separate file will you forget that they are there? Does this minor character need their own character sheet, or should they just get a few notes at the bottom of your master notes document? Is the master notes document getting so enormous that it’s unwieldy? Can you find things within it easily enough or do you need to break it up into smaller documents? If you do, will you be able to find things or will you be constantly flipping through all the smaller documents trying to find that particular paragraph in which you decided what the minor character’s political affiliation is? Where did you put that snippet about the history of phlebotomy, and should it go in the ‘medicine’ section of your notes or does phlebotomy need its own section? Have you updated the manuscript to reflect the changes you made to the timeline last night or were you planning to do that today? Are these notes you left yourself about that particular aspect of the story still current or have you fixed that part already? And then there’s colour coding: blue for passages that need more research, turquoise for tasks that are completed, pink for things you need to remember as you continue writing, red for things that urgently need changing, orange for things that might need changing depending on what else happens, grey for passages you’re no longer convinced you want to keep …
Managing a large writing project is an important aspect of the project in itself. Every world, every narrative, every character a writer creates needs to have all its details recorded in order to avoid a thousand continuity errors that will be jarringly obvious to the reader but which got lost somewhere in the overcrowded chaos of the writer's mind. I use all the techniques mentioned above, and I have organisational systems in place to make sure I can find everything with minimal difficulty and don't end up making stupid mistakes; but there are still times when I spend five minutes trying to locate a particular passage in my notes or manuscript, or find an old note to myself and think, "What was this about? Have I dealt with this already?" and have to spend ten minutes of precious writing-time ascertaining that yes, I did deal with that issue, but I forgot to change the note's colour from red – 'must deal with this' – to turquoise – 'have dealt with this'. Sometimes, the alarming question of "Why did I change that? What did past me know that current me has forgotten?" arises.
And this is only the administrative side of writing. The management of a writing project, without making any mention of managing the story or the characters or the themes or the style or the setting ... or blogging, or social media, or self-publishing, or cover design ...
The scraping-together of a coherent, entertaining, hopefully even edifying, narrative, with no continuity errors or glaring inconsistencies, out of thin air, is a task on a level of difficulty that is beyond the understanding of those who have not achieved it, and deeply intimidating even to those who have achieved it multiple times.

Poem: If I Called

If I Called 

26 January, 2006.

If a voice through darkest midnight
Reached your ears as you Southward journeyed,
Would you turn and start the road back?
– If I called you, would you come?

If a cry upon the salt wind
Touched your heart as with waves you fought,
Would you manhandle the boat about?
– If I called you, would you come?

If your name spoken in suff'ring
Tore through air and through space to reach you,
Would you drop what you were doing?
– If I called you, would you come?

If I weep alone at midnight;
If I cry out in the battering wind;
If I moan your name in pleading –
If I call you, will you come?

If you need me to be near you,
If you cry though the distance is great,
I will turn and start the road back –
If you call me, I will come.

–––

I also post short poems to Tumblr sometimes. You can find them by searching my Tumblr blog for the tag 'poem'.

My eighth book: Raymond's Nemesis

Raymond's Nemesis is now released. Huzzah!

Cover by the superlative DrRiptide.

You can see a short blurb and read an extract from the book at my blog post here, or go straight to the book's page at Smashwords here.
Thank you to those who preordered the book, and thank you to everyone who buys and reads it.
Raymond's Nemesis was 'the strawberry Oreo book', and while I was preparing it for publication I bought a packet of strawberry Oreos and ate them, for old time's sake.

The cover for Raymond's Nemesis

The cover for the sequel to Raymond is finished.

Cover by the longsuffering DrRiptide.

As you can see, DrRiptide and I designed it to be similar to the cover of Raymond, which you can see here.
My previous blog post here contains an extract from Raymond's Nemesis. The silver wolf statue on the cover comes later in the book, and once again, Raymond's special graveyard is featured in the story. Threats are made, Wilson has a moment – or two – of awesome, Raymond uses vocabulary that only he would use and comes up with a cunning plan, and we see more of Callum and George.

Raymond's Nemesis will be released on 31 December 2018 – though if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that will be the 30th for you, and websites that are based in the Northern Hemisphere will show the release date as the 30th.
Preorders of Raymond's Nemesis are available at iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. You can view the book's page here at Smashwords, but Smashwords does not have the capacity for preorders.