S.C. Skillman's Blog, page 49

Thank you to Mog and Pauline of Warwick Books for hosting my book-signing event on Saturday 7th May

Many thanks to Mog and Pauline at Warwick Books for hosting my book-signing in the shop on Saturday 7th May… and thank you to those lovely customers who bought copies of my two novels Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit.Although the beautiful weather kept custom low  – I suspect all the regular clientele may have been out and about, or sunbathing, rather than in the shop buying books! – nevertheless I was happy to sign books for some enthusiastic visitors.

One of my book-buyers said:

“I just cannot resist buying books when I come into a bookshop. I know I shouldn’t. My bookshelves are full. But it’s an addiction isn’t it?” When he learned I was a local author selling signed copies of my books, psychological suspense set in the Cotswolds, he immediately said, “Are you? Oh, well I’ll have to buy one of them then! Which one shall I buy?” I told him my 18 year old son Jamie, who was with me, had read both books. He said, “Your son must be saintly! Tell me then…” addressing himself to Jamie… “which book do you recommend me to buy?” So Jamie recommended him to buy “A Passionate Spirit.” He said, “All right then. I’ll buy that one.” So I signed it and sold it to him.

This is the sort of customer I love!  I wish all subsequent customers had followed in his footsteps! But an author  is only too well aware how varied people are especially in their reactions to published books, as shown by online book reviews: and I am grateful for those who encouraged me with their response.

May I also congratulate Pauline for being nominated in the British Book Industry Awards shortlist for bookshop manager of the year.

My next local book-signing event will be in Leamington Spa in  June, so watch out for details of that!

 

Filed under: Books, British, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, life, literature, love, musings, paranormal thriller fiction, psychological suspense fiction, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, book signing, books, life, love, mystical circles, novel, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, suspense, Warwick Books

I’ll be at Warwick Books Signing Copies of Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit on Saturday 7th May

Join me on Saturday 7th May at Warwick Books, 24 Market Place, Warwick CV34 4SL, where I shall be signing copies of Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit from 11am to 2pm.

 

If you’re out and about in the area, and enjoy reading thriller suspense fiction, Warwick Books is the place to be on Saturday morning.

 

I’d love to see you there!

 

Come and chat to me, browse through my books and many others, and support Mog and Pauline, managers of this lovely independent bookshop which, in common with many other independent bookshops, offers a personal service, a friendly welcome and a strong encouragement to local authors.

Mog and Pauline outside Warwick Books

 

Filed under: Books, British, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, literature, love, Mystical Circles, paranormal thriller fiction, psychological suspense fiction, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, UK, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, authors, books, browse, independent bookshop, love, mystical circles, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, Warwick Books

“Inner Child” Faces Down “the Perpetrators” at Constellations Therapy Workshop at Hayes Conference Centre

The most powerful workshop I took part in at the conference “Continuing the Journey: Rummaging for Reality” last week was a constellations therapy group run by a therapist who specialises in working with people who have suffered spiritual, satanic and sexual abuse. Approximately 12 of us took the part of various ‘voices’ in the client’s brain (identity confidential of course). The client had herself, over a long, and painstakingly slow process with the therapist, identified and written down the words spoken by the voices in her head. She had given permission for the therapist to use this material in her workshop with us – and was hoping to benefit from our experience with it.

We all took different roles – in this case, the names of the roles included Me, Body, Sexuality, Inner Child, Anger, Faith, Church, Priest, Nuns, Uncle (the last 4 named roles were all perpetrators). I took the role of Inner Child. As we read out our scripts, and then started to move around in relation to each other, inside the client’s brain, we decided how to interact with each other, and what we needed in order to progress and make changes.  As the workshop progressed, each one of us entered into our roles so strongly we were no longer using scripts. The whole thing became dynamic, and compelling.  I found myself, as Child, being strengthened and supported by Anger; together we were able to challenge and weaken the lies of the perpetrators.  I don’t think anyone who took part in that workshop is likely to forget it for a very long time! I heard different members of the group describing it to others afterwards as “stunning.” For a while during the rest of the conference, when I looked at each person, I found myself thinking of them as the role they had been playing.

I wondered at one point how this experience might play into my fiction. I then realised that even if I were to create fictional characters based upon these different voices in the client’s brain, I would not be able to replicate what happened in the group. For each voice / character needs to be fully rounded in fiction; even if someone is a ‘perpetrator’ and has done terrible thing to a vulnerable victim, we would have to see why that character has behaved in this way. We would need to look into their own childhood, their own background, and would need to understand them from the inside as well as the outside. That we were not in a position to do, within the circumstances of the constellation therapy group.  All I knew was that the voices of the perpetrators had to be faced down.

How this will impact upon my new novel, I cannot yet say as it will take time to process!

 

Filed under: British psychological suspense writer, empowerment, interpersonal relationships, life, musings, psychology, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, thoughts, Writing Tagged: constellation therapy, fictional characters, novel, relationships, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author

Rummaging For Reality at the Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick

Here I am, a psychological suspense writer,  at a conference for psychotherapists, healers, counsellors and creative people – and together with them  I am rummaging for reality.

This is  very brief post in a spare hour before I go off to a workshop this afternoon. But already I feel I am working my way towards a new clarity and insight both into this life and into my new novel.  One came this morning. It was very simple: only these words: “We are exploring different parts of the same reality at different stages of our lives.”

A few days before coming on this conference I was doing some of my own rummaging, through a file of newspaper clips which I’ve kept for about 3 decades now – just to see what jumped out at me in my current situation, a new work-in-progress before me.

 

And it was an article from the Sunday Times 10/5/92 written by the novelist Wendy Perriam called ‘Heaven Can Wait’. It was subtitled Do bad Catholics make good writers? And considered the fact that many great writers – e.g. Greene, Joyce, Spark, Waugh, O’Brien and Lodge – either lapsed, or struggling with their faith, poured out words as once they poured out prayers.

In this article Wendy Perriam says many things which touch me profoundly, despite the fact that I am not a Catholic, present or lapsed. I’ll quote just one point here, which I resonate with, and which shone out at me from my ‘rummaging’:

 

‘A sense of religion does give a depth and resonance to fiction, and if our characters have immortal souls, they’re surely more important, more valuable to their creator, than if they’re regarded as mere accumulations of vibrating molecules.’

Hopefully I may have some more insights from my rummaging to share with you in next week’s post!

 

Filed under: Books, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, faith, inspiration, life, musings, psychology, religion, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, spirituality, thoughts, Writing Tagged: immortal souls, in this life, prayers, psychological suspense, reality, religion, SCSkillman, words, writers

Thoughts on Three Dimensional Characters in Films and Novels – Inspired by Hugh Grant

On the Graham Norton Show which was broadcast on BBC One on Friday 16th April 2016, actor said he took on the role of St Clair Bayfield in the newly-released film Florence Foster Jenkins against his previous intentions, because a) the script was so good and b) because he was attracted by the three dimensional character he was being invited to play – which implies he thinks all his previous characters were one dimensional.

Hugh said that the character he plays, St Clair Bayfield, is “a failed actor” who has chosen to protect Florence (played by the wonderful ) from true self-knowledge because he loves her. In the film, this character goes to extraordinary lengths to collude with Florence’s self-deception, by covering up her lack of ability as a singer and paying off bad reviewers and hiding her from the truth.  In other words he does what seems to be cowardly, morally weak, wrong and even cruel, for complex reasons that are not straightforwardly immoral, and because he is emotionally invested in supporting her and upholding her in the dream she believes in.

I haven’t seen the film yet and so cannot offer a review, but I was fascinated by the point Hugh Grant was making. Many love the characters Hugh has played so far during his film career, but his comments brought me back again to the vital importance of three dimensional characters, not only in persuading major actors to take on film roles, but also in winning success for a novel.

Three dimensional characters in fiction are those whose actions, words, relationships, behaviour and inner life all work together to win our empathy.  Just as the hallmark of a great leader is the ability to win people’s confidence, the sign of a great character in fiction is that we care for them deeply, whether their actions are “good” or “bad” or far less easily defined. Whilst reading a recent novel I was starting to intensely dislike a certain character, when his actions and behaviour were depicted from the viewpoint of someone else. But then the author took me into his viewpoint – and my attitude to him was transformed.

I believe we only need to see and understand someone’s inner life, to feel that empathy for them.

Do share in the comments. Which are your favourite three dimensional characters in fiction, and why?

Filed under: films, inspiration, literature, movies, psychology, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, TV programmes, UK, Writing Tagged: dreams, fiction, films, in this life, love, novels, relationships, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, three dimensional characters

Reflections on Crime, Wickedness, and Redemption from the Crime Museum Uncovered, Museum of London

On Thursday 31st March 2016 I read many stories at the Crime Museum Uncovered, an enthralling exhibition currently showing at the Museum of London, London Wall.  Crime cases from Victorian times to 1975, solved by the Metropolitan Police. Most of the criminals were hanged; some were miscarriages of justice; vulnerable people, who today would have received 10 years in jail and might then have turned their lives around and gone on to achieve great things.

Others were people we might think “deserved to die” because the crimes they had committed were so ruthless and wicked (for instance the woman who, under the guise of running a care service for children of the poor, murdered 15 babies).

In some cases, black and wicked hearts were exposed, hearts “as hard and merciless as rock”; and victims whose names we only know by the terrible manner of their deaths, and the disposal of their bodies by their murderers.  People, it seems, who we were to define by the way they died.  And yet, as a novelist, I am convinced that no-one is ever defined by the manner of their death.  We are all complex beings, mind, body and spirit, with our joys, sorrows, memories, dreams, passions and impulses. We don’t define the greatest by their deaths; neither Mozart, nor Shakespeare, nor any other. So why should we define the lives of anyone in that way, no matter how obscure, how ‘ordinary’ they were during their lives on this earth.  This exhibition set out to ‘give the victims a voice’ and yet I did feel it fell into the trap of defining the individual victims by the manner of their deaths.

I am fascinated by human wickedness and this will impact upon the theme and plot of my third novel, following on from “Mystical Circles” and “A Passionate Spirit”. I touched on an aspect of evil in “A Passionate Spirit” but will go much deeper in my next novel. I’m not sure yet whether the paranormal will be there, but psychological suspense certainly will, and so will crime, setting the characters a huge challenge.

The Christian faith teaches that no-one is beyond redemption.

This is just one Christian concept I, along with, I suspect, many others, struggle with.

Alexander Solzenitsyn in his great book The Gulag Archipelago , which I read in my teens, describes  what he calls “the threshold magnitude of evil”. Evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme danger or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.”

Every so often, over the years since reading that book, I have been brought back to Solzenitsyn’s observations.  Whenever I read books about the Nazi Holocaust, his words come to mind.

Yet have we ever considered that, when Jesus took upon his shoulders the sins of the world, as Christian theology teaches, he at that moment was the worst person in the world.

It is a mind-blowing thought.  We read of wicked acts in our news every day, and (unless we are suffering from compassion fatigue) we shudder.

Yet Jesus was the most wicked person in the world, at that time of darkness, before his resurrection.

It shows once again the huge paradox that is the Christian faith. “The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.”

 

 

 

 

Filed under: About Books I love, Authors I love, book reviews, Books, British, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, faith, life, literature, musings, Mystical Circles, New psychological thriller fiction, news, paranormal thriller fiction, psychological suspense fiction, psychology, religion, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, spirituality, thoughts, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, Christian, crime, crime musum, Jesus, Museum of London, mystical circles, novel, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author

A Passionate Spirit 99p on Kindle from 1 April for 1 week only

My publisher Matador have just dropped the price of my kindle ebook for one week.

Take the chance to snap up my new paranormal thriller “A Passionate Spirit” on Kindle at the special price of 99p.

The deal ends on Friday 8th April when the price will revert to its usual level of £3.99. So this is a great opportunity.

And if you read and enjoy, do consider leaving a review on Amazon. Reviews are critical to an author’s success!

Filed under: British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, paranormal thriller fiction, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, deal, ebook, kindle, opportunity, passionate spirit, price drop, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, special price, spirit

The Power of Light to Uplift the Spirit and Transform a Dark World

Add light to any situation, and it changes dramatically.

 

I have often thought the Shard in London looks like a mystical tower. Here in this view it certainly lives up to this image! Highlight one element of a picture and immediately it starts communicating its message  – as you will see from these pictures of places I find inspiring: whether that be the view over the London skyline from Parliament Hill, Hampstead; Coventry Cathedral; or the reflective glass building at 250 Euston Street, London.

According to the gospel of John, Jesus Christ described himself as the “light of the world”. John picks up on this image of light many times – “the true light that was the light to every person coming into the world.” Here in Coventry Cathedral I didn’t realise how the the Graham Sutherland tapestry of Christ was illuminated, until I looked at my photo later:

I don’t like to see “darkness” necessarily equated with evil, or given any moral character at all, but when we see the pitiless acts of cruelty and hatred which have filled our news over the last weeks, months and years since so many bright (and perhaps false) hopes were raised at the millennium, we seem to crave words to convey our response, and we fall back on words like “black” and “darkness”. These words have acquired a spiritual resonance.

In the last few days I have been seeing just a few examples of the power of light to transform, and to convey a message.

Let’s hope that we can ourselves be creative…

…in how we shine light into the world, in however small a way, in our own situations.

Filed under: faith, inspiration, life, places I love, places of inspiration, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, spirituality, UK Tagged: creative, dark, inspirational, light, love, mystical, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, spirit, transform

Signed Copies of Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit for Sale at the Stratford-upon-Avon Craft Fair on 1st May 2016

On Sunday 1st May 2016 I’ll be selling signed copies of Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit at the Stratford-upon-Avon Craft and Gift Fair.

The Fair starts at 10am and finishes at 4pm. I’d love to see you there if you’re free on that day, and in Warwickshire!

In addition to my book stall, there will be plenty of crafts and gifts for you to browse through and buy. It’s being held in Stratford Town Hall, 1 Sheep Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 6EF.

If you’re not a regular visitor to Stratford-upon-Avon why not take the opportunity to come along to the craft fair in the morning, then visit some of the lovely Shakespeare properties later on?

I hope to see you there on May Day!

 

 

 

Filed under: Books, British, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, love, Mystical Circles, paranormal thriller fiction, places I love, psychological suspense fiction, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, UK, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, books, craft fair, May Day, mystical circles, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, Shakespeare properties, signed copies, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

Come and See Me at the Stratford-upon-Avon Craft Fair on 1st May 2016

On Sunday 1st May 2016 I’ll be selling signed copies of Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit at the Stratford-upon-Avon Craft and Gift Fair.

The Fair starts at 10am and finishes at 4pm. I’d love to see you there if you’re free on that day, and in Warwickshire!

In addition to my book stall, there will be plenty of crafts and gifts for you to browse through and buy. It’s being held in Stratford Town Hall, 1 Sheep Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 6EF.

If you’re not a regular visitor to Stratford-upon-Avon why not take the opportunity to come along to the craft fair in the morning, then visit some of the lovely Shakespeare properties later on?

I hope to see you there on May Day!

 

 

 

Filed under: Books, British, British psychological suspense writer, creative writing, love, Mystical Circles, paranormal thriller fiction, places I love, psychological suspense fiction, SC Skillman, SC Skillman Author, UK, Writing Tagged: a passionate spirit, books, craft fair, May Day, mystical circles, SC Skillman, SC Skillman author, Shakespeare properties, signed copies, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire