Bryan Islip's Blog, page 43

Twelve Faces from Space

You know how you can sometimes go to sleep at night with a difficult question in the forefront of your mind then wake up in the morning, mysteriously provided with a ready made answer?

Last night I was lying in bed thinking about my 'short stories of the month'. What happens when December 1 2011 has been and gone? (In case you don't know about it, on the first day of each month this year I've been offering my brand new story - around a fifteen minute read - free of charge to subscribers through my web-site http://www.bryanislipauthor.com .)

Although the main point is simply to have folk read the fiction I have personally enjoyed creating, I am hoping that readers of the stories will like them to the extent that they will consider buying my novels or the collection of my short fiction called Twenty Bites. Writing worth reading needs to be read!

As well as publishing the stories of the month on-line I also, as an experiment, have been providing our friends Adrian and Katie Hollister with the stories as paper booklets each month. I have been receiving feedback indicating that these offerings in Adrian and Katie's Mellon Charles Amora Cafe (AKA The Perfume and Image Studios) are being read, and appreciated, by visitors at table. I've also given some copies to The Old Inn at Gairloch for their room guests but haven't as yet been given any feedback from there.

Waking up this morning I thought, why not create black and white portraits of each of my lead characters, put these on the front covers of the booklets and publish the twelve stories of 2011 as a boxed set? 'Faces from (cyber) Space'. Secondly, would other similar venues, not necessarily confined to Wester-Ross, buy the booklets if the cost / selling price ration could be viable? Are the stories good enough, compelling enough, sufficiently well put together? Many tell me it's yes to all these.

Hmmm .......

What is a novel

I was told that my www.bryanislipauthor.com web-site could do with a little refreshment in order to prevent all those crawling Google-bots becoming bored with me. Write a new intro, advised my inestimable web-master, Jackie West of Achnasheen.
So I pondered the question, what is a novel, and why ....
A novel is a bridge fashioned from that wondrous thing we call imagination; that is, the imaginations  of the writer and of the reader. When such a bridge is sufficiently well constructed it allows us to cross together from the land we call reality into worlds strange and compelling, worlds in which we can inhabit in safety the minds of those who live there. And for a while such a world is no less real than the one we temporarily have left behind. The writer and the reader can live in that place and together experience a chain of events for so long as fingers continue to turn the pages of the novel. And when it is time for us to re-cross the bridge, go back to our so-called reality, the places we have visited and those people we have known and the events we have experienced will stay with u and, somehow, the writer and the reader will feel better for having spent time together on the far side of such a wondrous bridge. That's my take on it, anyway.

One big bold otter

We have a friend living just along the loch, a lady born and bred here and one who wouldn't mind me using the adjective 'old'. I am myself as old as she and I have no problems with it. Besides, I don't reckon the word 'old' any disparagement, nor do I think the word 'young' any kind of an accolade. You might as well disparage or praise the rising or the setting of the sun. Anyway this lady has run a croft all her life, in recent years along with one of her daughters. Their care for and their treatment of animals is a local legend. They do everything but talk with their sheep, geese, ducks, dogs and cats etcetera. They have no arguments with the sea eagles and do not shoot foxes, so far as I know.

Some years ago this lady told us she was losing a duck most nights - to an otter that had her holt with a family of cubs close to an adjacent beach. The had actually seen this raider in nocturnal action, but it all stopped when the cubs grew up and left the area - and our friend would never have sought to harm the creature anyway.

But ... of late she reports that the otters have returned, presumably with another group of babies in the holt, and have resumed their easy meal routine. In fact the otter has become so bold as to raid in broad daylight, coming right into the environs of the house to do do. Spotting him or her in action the other day she and her daughter dashed out of the house - but too late! The otter had sized a duck and was making off with it anidst much wing flapping, much squawking. The ladies managed to corner animal with bird, after a proper struggle eventually succeeding in tearing the luckless victim from its assailant's hold.

The otter runs off to raid another day - or revert to fishing for crabs in the sea as he/she may find that less contestable, but the recovered duck was well deceased and no doubt received a decent ending in hot pan or cold earth.

The crofters certainly have no hard feelings - well, just a few - although no doubt secuity is now being increased!

New for old

This pastel painting was the first I executed in Wester-Ross. More than 20 years ago in fact, whilst up here on holiday. As I remember it we had been sitting on the dunes eating our sandwiches, scimitar shaped Red Point beach curving out before us, deserted but for us, an afternoon sun making a shining pathway over sea and wet sand and some ominous clouds building up over Skye. As I began the initial sketch we were attacked by whole air forces of almost invisible midges so had to pack up in a hurry to stay ahead of rain and pain.
Many's the time, since then, that we have walked the clifftop to this beach with our dogs. We never find it less than inspiring whatever the weather. The picture has stayed on our living room wall, wherever we have lived. Not for sale. However one of my good collectors saw it and wanted to buy, so I've just finished painting a new version of the same subject...
This one is without the net drying poles (I became tired of explaining them and they did nothing for the original composition.) Also I have brightened up the day and added the row of anchors that really are there, if only just out of sight around the dunes in real life..

Which is best? That's in the eye of the beholder.

Water water everywhere

I've read that the next global war will be over not land, not oil or gold or other minerals but over good old H2O. Water is life and apparently there's not going to be enough of it in its human drinkable form to go around the world's fast-burgeoning human populations, and the animals and plants on which we all feed.

Here in the western Highlands of Scotland, for twenty four days, at some time or throughout, it has rained and rained and rained, the wet stuff always being driven slant-wise before high winds. Every river, burn (stream), loch and locan is full to overflowing. All the sea-facing downstairs window frames on our lovely old Kirkill House have finally given up, allowing a steady drip drip drip into the makeshift receptacles Dee has emplaced for the purpose.I'm closely watching (sea) Loch Ewe for any sign of a huge wooden boat filled with animals ... and a very old white bearded gentleman ...

And still, as Bob Dylan wrote and the Met Office forecasts, 'There's a cold rain a-coming'.

Water, anyone? Going cheap.

These Four Lights

These Four Lights
My child, I've come to understand four lights,by which I've walked my troubled way, knewthem as friends throughout my blackest nights.And now it's done, as I sink out of view,my blood, I pass them gladly on to you.
The first lights up the eyes of God and sothrough it we glimpse His face, infinity,the universe, our place within the flowof life: thus offers us stability:the brightest hope for all humanity.
And now the second lights our race, our world,shows all our tribal actions on this tractcalled Earth and shines upon the flag unfurledby which we gladly march, pro patria intact,to kill and still avoid hell's cataract.
This third, so dear to me as my end nearsburns bright on us and each one we call ours,those of our name, through joys through fears through tearsbinds us together through the passing hoursshould paths be roughly paved or decked with flowers.
And now this fourth, the brightest and the best:that's yours! That's yours the instant of your birthunchanging should you guard its interestand may live on if what you do has worthso long as Man shall walk his mother earth.Child, tend it well: this fourth light is your sunas you are mine to shine when I am gone.


In answer to the query, Sam, the above was the poem referred to throughout my first novel, More Deaths Than One
I wrote it as if through the mind and the pen of John Macrae, deceased father of our viewpoint character, Thomas Thornton. But you cannot write a poem like this one without incorporating in it some of your own philospohy.

Works of Creation

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.— Edward Steichen
The above  was sent by my friend Adrian Hollister, owner with Katie of the nearby Perfume Studio / Photo studio. I responded...

Adrian, yes! I just thought of another one - true or not: 'The photographer works more closely to the mind of GodThe artist to the mind of Man.'He responded I guess without any religious connotations, what the good photographer is doing is trying to bridge that divide - communicating the beauty of creation/God/evolution (however one sees it) in a way that Man can better appreciate it. I respondedYes, 'religion' as such wasn't in my thoughts whereas 'The Creation' certainly was. Take a landscape view - any landscape view; I reckon the photographer is trying to replicate not just what may be seen through the best of lenses and computer representation but also by the 'feelings' evoked, in the mind of Man, by that place in those conditions of time, season, weather etc. With similar equipment some will do it far, far better than others in the same way that, given a Maclaren formula one car, Mister Hamilton will go round the track considerably more quickly than, say, me! (And me more quickly than most, perhaps!)On the other hand the artist with paints or pastels etc, will be attempting his own act of creation - and hardly ever getting even to base one unless he/she is that one in a million 'Hamilton of the easel'. A Monet or a Turner for instance. Most so-called artworks including my own definitely are bullshit failures as 'acts of creation' in a way that a photograph, however snapshot, never is; simply because it shows an aspect of The Actual Creation to those who may not have seen it for themselves. Having said all that, the works of competent artists with cameras and competent artists with easels can occupy folks' living room wallspace to equal decorative effect. That's my view anyway.What's yours?

Going with Gabriel (and Andrew)

I blogged the other day about the hard guy cyclists we sometimes have the pleasure of welcoming into our Aultbea B&B. The latest group had booked in and were upstairs getting ready for going out to dinner (how on earth do they carry all that gear over terrain and distances and in conditions such as often prevail up here?) when we heard one of them playing the penny whistle. And very, very well, I might add.

Now, those who have read my second novel, Going with Gabriel, will know that my viewpoint character is an ex microbiologist now street musician called Gabriel. Gabriel is expert on the pennywhistle and flute. His 'signature tune' is a 300 years old Irish protest number called The Roissin Dhub (Black Rose).

Before the novel came out a couple of years ago (ISBN 978-0-9555193-1-4) some local friends were kind enough to read and review it the ms. To present their findings (all v good I'm pleased to report) they invited Dee and myself to Sunday lunch. Afterwards they presented me with a penny whistle - of Indian make and of hardwood - inscribed with their names and numbers just as my Gabriel inscribed his own whistle with his girlfriends' ditto!

Fast forward to last weekend. I took my treasured piece upstairs. Our new friend not only played it most beautifully, but rendered the Roissin Dubh without help of music into the bargain. He was extremely complimentary about my whistle, as was I about his playing of it.

What was I saying about 'the best part of B&B'ing'?

All our yesterdays

From somewhere unknown Dee produced this picture to show to a friend. How do women manage to squirrel stuff away in remote and random places, always remembering exactly where a particular item is stored? 
The photo is of me and was taken in July of 1953 by my first wife, Joan, who passed away in 1996. I was then aged 19 and was half way through my National Service in the R.A.F. . Joan lived in York and I was based at nearby Full Sutton, a jet fighter station in those days (but latterly a high security prison). The photo was taken on a minigolf course in Ayr where we were on holiday.
This photo demonstrates three things. (1) It was my camera but not all that effective as there is a clear double image here. I have no idea from where or exactly how the background gasometer came into things. (2) I must have recently seen a James Dean movie  (3) Never use your golf club as a walking stick.

Parallel Universes

Sunday 1 May 9:30pm  – 79 U.S. Navy Seals raid Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Have you read my short story Call Me Captain? It's included in my anthology of short fiction, Twenty Bites. (ISBN 978-0-9555193-3-8)

If you have read it did you notice the parallels?