S.C. Skillman's Blog, page 73

Extract from the first two pages of my new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles"

This is the first in a series of extracts and character profiles  from Mystical Circles.

 

Juliet was trembling. It had all happened so fast. The explosion of anger between the two men. The rush for the car park. The engine roaring into life. As the rear lights picked her out, she dodged aside just in time. The next thing she heard was a loud bang. And the sickening crunch of metal giving way. And a fountain of fragmenting glass.

He'd slammed on the brakes too late.

And it was all her fault.

 

She hurried up to the attic, along the passageway and into her room. She listened to footsteps passing her door. Another door further along the passageway opened and closed. A few moments later, she stole out of her room again. Fear and shock still gripped her. Would he be all right? How badly injured was he? How would Don handle this? Where had he gone, and why? And how exactly should he have 'dealt with all this' much earlier, anyway, as Patrick had suggested?

Juliet's palms were slippery on the steering wheel; she wiped the sweat away from her upper lip. The air conditioning might offset the strong heat of this June day, but not the burning anxiety she felt. Even the spectacular beauty of the high limestone hills and deep valleys as she headed west from the A417 had failed to calm her.

Before her, she could see the two steeply pitched gables of the farmhouse with its mellow honey- coloured stone. It looked idyllic. But that held no pleasure for her; her stomach twisted with apprehension for Zoe.

She drove round the house to the gravel parking area at the back. A Bentley and a Saab were parked up against the woodland fence. She was about to nose her Renault Mégane in between them then realised there wasn't quite enough room, and reversed into the space on the other side of the Saab. She drew to a halt and turned the engine off.

She pulled a copy of an email from the door pocket. A few phrases leapt out at her with the same force as when she'd first read them.

 Hi, you in crowded, stressed old London from me in the peaceful, perfect Cotswolds…massive change of plan…I'm in love…Craig invited me out for supper…got to know him a whole lot better…gorgeous, sexy, intelligent…all I ever dreamed of…moved to his place…fantastic farmhouse a few miles from Cirencester…group called Wheel of Love…changes people's lives…won't be coming back…glad to leave London…paradise here…staying for ever…why not visit?… Material for a documentary here!..I'll tell Craig you're ringing…know what you're like with a story.

See what you think!

Love Zoe.

Juliet bit her lip, folding the sheet of paper. Zoe's tone still needled her as much as when she'd first read it. Zoe knew her sister wouldn't be able to resist coming to find out what was going on. And the suggestion about a documentary had worked out just as Zoe had proposed. Still, Juliet didn't like it, not one bit.

She was deeply suspicious of this Craig guy, for a start.

Do creative writers ever feel they're on the inside? Or are they always on the outside of everything looking in?

This morning I was listening to Howard Jacobson, comic novelist and Booker Prize winner, on Desert Island Discs, and among the many things he said which touched and amused me, the most striking was this, "I have always felt myself to be on the outside of everything, looking in." He gave this reply to the interviewer's question, "Now you've won the Booker, do you feel you've arrived? Do you now feel you're on the inside?"

What a wonderful response she received to this question! And this seemed to me a true writer's response. I identified with it absolutely. This is what I have spent my life doing. When I was researching for my newly-published novel Mystical Circles, I was an observer. I was on the outside looking in. I investigated many New Age spiritual groups and lifestyles and philosophies, and I always saw myself as being on the outside looking in – just as Juliet does in my novel. How anxious Juliet is not to get involved, not to be drawn in, to keep her objectivity as a journalist. It almost seems a personal threat to her to get involved. Yet as more than one character says to her,  "You have to come alongside us to truly understand."

My character the Rev. Theo sees this clearly. "I'm all about people on spiritual journeys," he says. "I'll go anywhere, come in on anything." It is no contradiction to him, a young clergyman, to enter a New Age spiritual group and to come alongside the members of the community and to live as one of them.

So you, my readers, will probably have spotted the apparent contradiction here. Do I believe in being an outsider looking in? Or do I believe in getting involved, coming alongside? The truth lies in paradox. And this is the paradox Howard Jacobson embodies. Of course he is on the inside! Of course he has arrived! And yet – he has the soul of a writer. And so he feels always on the outside looking in.

Charismatic gurus and esoteric groups

The other day an early reader of my new psychological thriller novel Mystical Circles told me:  "Your story reminded me of a group I used to belong to in the US a few years ago called The Fellowship of Friends. It was led by Robert Burton. In your novel I recognised the way the group members interacted, how quickly new relationships flare up in such a hothouse atmosphere, and especially the tension and interplay between the characters at dinner every evening, with one person observing everything and writing it down…"

I looked up the Fellowship of Friends on the web.  Also known as The School Group it was founded in 1970 in California by Robert Burton aka The Teacher.

Here are the aspects of The Fellowship of Friends which find their counterpart in the esoteric group The Wheel of Love which I write about in Mystical Circles:

1) The group is led by "a conscious teacher". His only true credentials are his own presence and his effect upon his students.

2) The group's location is a place for students to "work on themselves" in an atmosphere of beauty, effort and friendship.

2)  The group is trained in "self-remembering" which involves "being present" within a moment – this is the universal message of esoteric schools.

4) The members of the group gather daily  to "work on themselves" at meetings, study groups and dinners.

I have in the past been impressed by the teachings of George Gurdjieff (upon which Robert Burton based his group) and have experienced a number of such groups myself (see the page About Mystical Circles) and indeed I was the person doing the observing (although not actually writing it down at the time!) Having read the personal testimony of an ex-member of The Fellowship of Friends, I see clearly how powerful a charismatic figure can be and how the most intelligent of people might fall prey to such a person, and therefore create situations in which many people become victims of "mind control" or "brainwashing". I must also say this applies to many situations in life, not just esoteric groups. Witness the power that Hitler came to have over the minds of the German people in the 1930′s.

Read my novel and find out what you think of The Wheel of Love and whether you too would believe in someone who promised you that "here you may take your subtle knife and cut a window into heaven." Would the group's leader, the charismatic Craig, draw you into the group, in the hope of throwing off your past and living in the present? It may be you have been a member of such a group yourself. I'd love to know about your experiences. Please send me your comments!

Sacred places of other religions and thin places in Celtic spirituality

Today Ezine Articles have published my article on "What can we learn from the sacred places of other religions?" (see below). I wrote this after a visit to Uluru (Ayer's Rock) in Central Australia, back in 2009.  The thoughts expressed in this article feed into the content of my new novel "A Passionate Spirit". I am working on this now, and it is a sequel to my first published novel "Mystical Circles".

I am particularly fascinated by the relationship between spirituality and place.  Last night I was reading "The Spiral – Crop Circle News" published by the Wiltshire Crop Circle Study Group. What stood out for me was the crop circle enthusiasts' idea of places "where the Otherworld prevails and the veils are thin." This connects to the awareness of the Celtic Christians that some places are "thin places" where the veil between this world and the spiritual world is thin. This applies to all sorts of places which have numinous quality e.g. Lindisfarne/Holy Island, or Iona, or St Cuthbert's tomb in Durham Cathedral, or Cheddar Gorge, or Wells Cathedral, and there are many other examples that readers of this may already be well aware of.

I am reminded of something Rabbi Lionel Blue wrote: "Eternity is all around us. Part of us inhabits it already."

Read my article on Uluru here:

http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Do-the-Sacred-Places-of-Other-Religions-Have-to-Teach-Us?&id=5746009

"We could only be in the Red Centre of Australia. Brilliant light, glowing ochre earth, intense blue sky, pearl white ghost gums – and Uluru itself, dusky pink at midday.

Uluru, otherwise known as Ayer's Rock, an iron-rich sandstone monolith arising from the heart of Australia, is sacred to the indigenous traditional owners, the Anangu. It tells their stories, it shows the actions of the Spirit Ancestors in their violent conflicts during the Dreamtime, displaying evidence of their falls, their spear-thrusts, their lost shields. Uluru itself has a strong, brooding presence, which you begin to feel as soon as you see it, and which grows as you approach and gaze. It speaks with its changing colours, amber, fiery red, deep brown, depending how the light falls upon it at different times of day, and its knife-edge shadows and fissures, flaking surfaces, indentations, pockmarks, wave-like effects, and most outstanding of all, the skull formation. On another level, it almost seems like a giant plasticine model which a giant has pressed his fingers into or dragged a comb down, or stippled and stabbed with a palette knife.

A walk around Uluru is full of marvels. The trees and shrubs are all much greener than you might imagine – the wattles, the fig trees, the desert bottlebrush. The aboriginal cave-paintings fill you with wonder, every experience defeats your expectations – none more so than the Mutitjulu Waterhole. We came upon it unexpectedly, tranquil and mysterious, the Rock's multi-dimensional character reflected in its quiet waters.

The feeling I brought away with me after walking round the Rock was like that of walking round a great and beautiful cathedral, imprinted with the devotion of many centuries. I can well understand how the Anangu revere the Rock, which has taken on an awesome spiritual power from the thousands of years of sacred ceremonies and teaching and story-telling centred upon it.

To walk around it is a living experience, making the aboriginal culture richer and more meaningful for visitors, and increasing mutual understanding. I firmly believe all truth is God's truth. And if this is so then God can use other traditions to show Himself to us. Aborigines inherently see landscape in spiritual terms – and this has much to teach us as we look at God's world."

Sheila S

http://www.scskillman.co.uk

My BBC Radio interview with Liz Kershaw

This was my live interview with Liz Kershaw of BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire on Sunday 7 November 2010. Liz clearly understood the struggles of a writer and asked some very good perceptive questions. I greatly appreciated the opportunity she gave me to talk about my writing journey on live radio.

scskillmanlizkershaw-interview

HELLO WORLD! My first personal blog on the writing life

This is new territory for me – though I've written lots in my life I've never written it "nearly live" (apart from Facebook of course)!  Usually I correct what I write over and over again – even emails. Yes, I still long for those far-off days when Mr Darcy sat down and composed carefully-thought-out letters to his little sister Georgiana and impressed the watching Lizzy Bennett with his devotion. I love the radio programme in which celebrities read from and talk about their teenage diaries. I enjoyed listening to Meera Syal's weight loss miseries at the age of 13.  Surely the very essence of the personal diary is that it is private and totally honest and never going to be read until after you die and it is unearthed from an attic (if you're lucky). So this is "nearly live" writing, and a very exciting departure for me!