Marc Nash's Blog, page 23

Monolith - Flash Fiction

I was quarried from the seed of my stonemason father
And domesticated at my mother's hearthstone
I was anchored by my foundation stone
Safely buttressed by my stone fortifications
Until my father was epitaphed on his headstone
The copestone of his workshop fell on him stone dead
I lost my bearings with this degaussing of my lodestone
My mother draped in constricting grief like a millstone around her neck
Whereupon I became precipitantly blunted scissors to stone
I was angularly gouged by my kidney stone
I was acidly etched by my gallstones
Sticks, stones and brickbats did break my bones
Though I remained stone-deaf to those concussing chiders
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, my windows were all put through anyway
In vain I tried to acuminate myself at the whetstone
Stonewashed drainpipe denim, dressed to kill
Only to be pip pipped by my peach stone
And de-pithed by my cherry stone
These stony-faced partners rejected me from ever becoming their clingstone
I scourged myself with a pumice stone
My own stonewalling body made it like drawing blood from a stone
I self-medicated the pain and became stoned immaculate with alchemical powders
But instead of sinking like a stone
Lift the stone and it's no longer woodlouse me that crawls out
I had been emboldened by my idiomatic stones
From somewhere I pulled out a modern day philosopher's stone
And stone the crows, my ship had come in
Petrified no more by my own stone cold failings
Now I was as polished as my gemstones
Apprised by others according to my precious stones
I positively scintillated from my gemstones
Treasured for my precious stones
I want Ray Winstone to play the part of me in the movie
But under no circumstance will it be directed by Oliver Stone
But the stony-hearted users in the guise of being a friend
Pebble dashing their blarney stone hard luck stories at me
The mephitic whiff of brimstone accompanying their devilish smiles
The road to hell is paved with stoney-eyed intention
My well of ever spouting ambrosia swiftly became sown with stone
Within a year I was back stony broke
But their demands never slackened, immuring me beneath my own foundation stone
My rolling stone stilled, moss gathered upon the inscription of my headstone

Do Judge A Book By Its Cover - Flash Fiction

The bookbinder asked him if he wanted a family crest stamped into the cover to underscore the personal nature of the commission. He told her he’d get back to her within the day with his answer. No mean artist himself, he sketched some versions of heraldic serpents. Although suggestive of the writer’s craft, he immediately ruled out the snake in the skull. Death heads apart, the skull was not a coat of arms trope. B esides he didn’t want to give the game away, tip his hand to the reader before they had cracked open the cover. He drafted involved snakes with their curlicue form consonant with a serif character, but unfortunately he also decided it conjured up a snail. He limned encircled snakes, making some the ouroborus which consumes its own tail to signal eternal renewal. He essayed nowed or knotted snakes, a doubled loop evoking the symbol for infinity, but he felt it looked too much like a reef knot. Besides, these were somewhat missing the point. Conferring untameable power upon the ophidian which cut very much against the grain. In the end he settled on an eagle volant, wings displayed expanded, a snake in its talons. He executed a final design and sent a scanned copy off to the bookbinders.

A fortnight later and his book was ready for collection. The bookbinder carefully unwrapped it from its protective waxy sheath and presented it to him. It was a thing of exquisite beauty. He had opted not for the usual calfskin, nor Moroccan (goat) leather and had certainly rejected the gaudy sheen of seal skin out of hand. No, his book hide of choice had been that of the snake. Its reticulations forming a delicate spangling pattern that surpassed any artificial dye sprinkling of the traditional calfskin. The forked page marker was n ot wrought from silk, but that of the snake’s very tongue itself. Marker of the twin perspectives required to a full appreciation of his text. He could also indulge himself in the fancy that the disarticulated organ could taste the fear and perspiration imbued by his words.  It was only a pity that the hollow fangs could not be somehow incorporated into the divine architecture of his tome, representative of the venom its viperous words laced.


In his vanity, the association he had not been able to make, was that reading his circumlocutory style was akin to the turgid process of a snake working its prey through its body. The squeezing and compression of muscles in the digestive tract was much the same, as was the sense of bloated ingestion. 

Serpent encircled









Serpent nowed

9-Line Nonpareil - Flash Fiction

I author infect you. I stain you with my word markers. I impregnate you with my seminal ink. You download my minuscular packets of lexical data. Even if you scale no further than the opening chapter, my verbal DNA has ineffably entered your bloodstream. Your eyes burn in the back of their sockets. Your breathing stops up and when you swallow for air, it burns the lining of your throat such is the caustic corrosive nature of my verbiage. For you can’t unread me. Words are viral. The symptoms are similar even if you regard the words as invigoratingly communicable, as non-pathogenic. Either way, partially digested or complete, your system extracts the aliment, my propellant, while the lexical orts refuse your expurgation and bulwark and barricade themselves rendering you discomfitedly costive. Your mental immunosuppression system may attempt to quash my word sepsis from reproducing within your host, but they hitch a ride with your vulgate leukocytes. Catch as catachrestic can. Sink their claws into the antigen receptivity, forestall your production of antibodies through a circumlocution here, a turn of phrase there, to elude the wandering phagocyte censors. Suppressing your suppressors. The macrophages who would seek to inject me with their deleterious toxins, when it is in fact my printing press that squeezes and devours them. My words knock off your words. They duel and grapple and attach themselves dual. Whence my muscular molecular vernacular makes use of your cellular apparatus. A reverse transcription to multiply your vocabulary and shape it inevitably mine. I rewrite you. I seep into your very marrow, to be spewed out a thousandfold greater in volume. I bleed you dry, drain you of lymphocytes and replace them through my own hematopoiesis. I transcribe your blood. I author you.  

A New Phonetic Alphabet

Can I suggest the need for a new phonetic alphabet? What with Ancient Greek letters, old fashioned dances, metric weights, Canadian provinces and Shakespearean characters, today's youth have little chance of readily recalling the mnemonics attached to the letters.

We need to provide them with words instantly recognisable. Words they encounter every day. Words from the high street (or online shopping at least).

So I propose the following:

Alpha - ADIDAS
Bravo - BURBERRY
Charlie - CALVIN KLEIN
Delta - DIESEL
Echo - ELLESSE
Foxtrot - FILA
Golf - GIORGIO ARMANI
Hotel - HOLLISTER
India - IGI & CO
Juliet - JORDACHE
Kilo - KAPPA
Lima - LACOSTE
Mike - MARK JACOBS
November - NIKE
Oscar - OSHKOSH B'GOSH
Papa - PRADA
Quebec - QUICKSILVER
Romeo - REEBOK
Sierra - SUPERDRY
Tango - TOMMY HILFIGER
Uniform - UGG
Victor - VANS
Whiskey - WRANGLER
X-Ray - X-BIONIC
Yankee - YVES SAINT LAURENT
Zulu - ZARA


And to make it easier, these come with ready-made visual prompts.

 
 

   
 
 

 
 

 
 

 

 

The World Of David Cameron & Mossack Fonseca

I have never had any investments. No shares. No ISAs. No pension plan. Partly because I've never had any disposable income I could afford to put aside. But also because I was exposed to such a world as a child by the dealings of my father and was completely repulsed by what I saw even at that tender age.

But I'm going to offer a story that in some ways best illustrates that world and which may throw some light upon the revelations of the Panama Papers albeit at a much lower level. It's a world that the average person is completely outside of and thus why revelations such as the Panama Papers seem to come as such a surprise when the story breaks. But it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise really. Just think about it, the firm Mossack & Fonseca are merely one of these type of operators across  a fistful of countries and dependencies, who host such offshore financial arrangements that so benefit their rich clients. I'd suggest it represented just the tip of the iceberg, except these countries tend to have hot weather and any ice would melt.

Okay, so on a more personal scale. My father was up in court accused of insider dealing on shares in the 1990s. The law he was prosecuted under was fairly new and was intended to prevent professionals who came by sensitive information regarding companies then made a profit from it through buying or selling shares based on the information. My father was a lawyer and had come by the information when one of his clients, an accountant, came to see him about possibly suing a company who were tarnishing his reputation as he served as a broker between it and another company who were looking to merge. The accountant had bought shares on the basis of this upcoming merger (and eventually pleaded guilty to one count while being cleared of 3 others, which was bizarre since the one he claimed guilt for was buying shares on behalf of his grand-daughter who was under 10 years old....) After the meeting in which he distributed legal advice on the slander and defamation of character, my father then proceeded to buy shares in one of the companies. And that was what he was on trial for. If the accountant hadn't have pleaded guilty to his one charge and subsequently been cleared of that as well as the other 3, then the authorities could not have come after my father, being a stage further removed from the privileged information, when they would have failed to successfully prosecute the primary source.

So I attended the court case over the 4 days it took place. My first warning should have been the moment we stepped up to the building. There was my father in his usual suit and bow tie, in the middle of defendants from the other more run of the mill cases, the Notting Hill drug dealers and gangsters. The contrast was blatant. Next thing I notice was that I'd played football regularly against one of the members of the jury which was a heck of a coincidence. I was in the public gallery so I don't know if he clocked me or knew my relationship to the accused, so it almost certainly weighed more upon my impressions than it did his. And then the trial got started.

One after the other, either for the defence or the prosecution, marched up to the witness box a parade of stockbrokers, lawyers, accountants and civil servants. Now I credit that I'm a reasonably intelligent person, well educated and reasonably well read, but I couldn't pick the bones out of what they were saying. The world of investments and stocks and shares they talked about, was as alien a landscape to me as a reality TV programme would have been to them (a slight anachronism since this was an era still relatively unsullied by the form). Again, maybe this is fanciful on my part, but I imagined I could see the eyes of the jury glaze over, because this world being presented to them just did not compute. These men and yes they were all men were arrogant and presumptive that we all knew about what they were talking about and therefore they had no need to explain and define what they did. Which was use money to make more money and to move money about. They reminded me of Catholic Priests of old jealously guarding the exclusivity of Latin that prevented any body challenging their status or knowledge. The accountants and stockbrokers were made to squirm by the QCs, because bandying words was not really their thing. The lawyers in the box were better suited to the fencing. All were odious to my judgemental eye.

Having sat through that trial, I was none the wiser whether my father was guilty under the law or not (as per usual any legislation drafted by Parliament you can normally drive a bus through its loopholes or lack of definition. Information is a precious commodity in the world of speculators and investors, a bit like getting the scoop on how a horse is training from the stables ahead of a big race. But it remains inestimably hard to decide what and who is 'privileged' in regard to information. I think my father was certainly morally culpable if not technically guilty, a bit like David Cameron. Anyway he was found guilty and as a final disorienting landmark, the fine was paltry compared to the fees of my father's legal team which was what actually bankrupted him. Money chasing after money again, yet not quite at the same level of no win no fee have you injured yourself at work the rest of us get bombarded with on TV...


So the world of investment remains abstruse to many of us. Hence when the shock horror, rich people salt their gotten gains away from the taxman revelation emerges, it really shouldn't be a surprise at all, but inevitably is.  I loathe those for whom money is the only interest they have, not just professionally but in their whole mien, so that  though they would proudly pledge themselves to the UK, at the same time getting their money safe from the talons of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, no matter how legally they are behaving. In the same manner as the moment the government mentions a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance, some firms start making noises they'll quit the UK for more tolerant tax regimes. These people have no deep stake in our country. Like the offshore operators they utilise, have money will travel to find the best deal. It behooves us all to try and educate ourselves, to arm ourselves with the information to be able to nail these sharp practitioners who screw the country out of valuable funds. This is why Cameron can bare faced stand up and proclaim he has done nothing illegal, which is true, but it gives the lie to his political message of one nation Conservatism, we're all in this together, the cuts to the welfare budget are all that stand between the UK and economic bankruptcy, etc etc. As my father's case  demonstrated, there is the letter of the law and then there is its spirit.



Justice is blindfolded rather than blind... Coincidently, when I did jury service, one of my cases was about the receipt of stolen weighing scales...

Songs About Books

A few years ago I was involved in an anthology of stories inspired by songs 

I wrote the introduction and reproduce it here:

The Symbiosis Of Music And Literature
I never read books until I was fourteen years old. Typical boy, I was out in all weathers playing cricket or football instead. What tuned me into literature was a respected older cousin’s suggestion to listen to The Cure's ‘Killing An Arab’ and then read Camus' L'Étranger, both of which I dutifully did. At the time I was on the look out for cool bands to drop in to conversations at school, but thanks to this one suggestion I had my appreciation opened up to a second vibrant art form. Oh yeah, I not only read books now, I write 'em as well. And as part of that, music is still key.

Literature is perhaps regarded as the highest, noblest art form for  opening our minds towards contemplation of the world around us. And rock'n'roll, bubble-gum three-minute-pop about puppy love and teenage crushes, is regarded in some quarters as the most disposable of art forms. Books occasionally percolate society's collective consciousness, for example the obscenity trials over Lady Chatterley's Lover or Last Exit To Brooklyn. Pop frequently outrages, from Elvis The Pelvis, through ‘God Save The Queen’ to Beastie Boys. Yet, despite being from fairly opposite ends of art's 'brow' spectrum, the two are fundamentally intertwined and mutually inform one another. 
Apart from the above example of The Cure, Gang of Four referenced Joseph Conrad's ‘Heart Of Darkness’ with ‘We Live As We Dream Alone’ and Kafka's beetle from ‘Metamorphosis’ in their song ‘Anthrax’. Howard Devoto, singer in Magazine, referenced Raskolnikov and  Dostoevsky's ‘Underground Man’ in ‘Song From Under The Floorboards’.  Just a few examples of artists honouring fellow artists who have gone before them. Inspired them. Given them words and ideas to stir their own creative pools...

Of course, it goes the other way too. Poets Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah and John Cooper-Clarke have all performed live with backing bands. Gus Van Sant has set texts by William S Burroughs to music, and Steve Fisk composed music for the late Steven Jesse Bernstein's poetry. Then there are the crossover artists: Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Henry Rollins to name but three with a foot firmly planted in both camps. Plus recently we have had short story anthologies inspired by the words of Mark E. Smith and the music of Sonic Youth. 

So now nine new writers offer their contributions to the symbiosis; nine stories inspired by songs from different musical artists, plus nine stories arising from the same song: "Heroes"’ by David Bowie. Nine very different interpretations, no mere cover versions.

So, here is a music video playlist for books name-checked or referenced in songs. Enjoy.


1) The Cure - "Killing An Arab"


This was the Cure's debut song as Robert Smith took his exam-level study of Camus' "L'Etranger" and spun a song out of it. Later, once tried to retreat from fame into his half-Goth, half-childlike persona, the books he referenced were more of the order of children's books such as "Charlotte Sometimes".



2) Kate Bush - "Wuthering Heights"
I was never a huge Kate Bush fan, but I was heartened when her recent comeback tour sold out so rapidly. Normally I am appalled by comeback tours when artists are way past their prime and the audiences just want to indulge in some nostalgia, but this tour seemed genuinely to have an audience spanning across generations suggesting Ms Bush had picked up legions of fans who have come to her music long after it was in the charts and public sensibility and that must speak for its strength.




3) Velvet underground - "Venus In Furs"
With Lou Reed's interest in all things transgressive and sexual, perhaps not surprising that he should find as an inspiration Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's book that gave us the word 'masochism'. Never has John Cale's viola sound been used to such unsettling effect as on this song.




4) Klaxons - "Gravity's Rainbow"
The blissed out hedonism of rave is not usually associated with the literary, as its fans stand waving glow sticks around in muddy fields, bombed out of their heads. And yet here Klaxons reference  a writer who guards his true identity more than JD Salinger guarded his privacy. But then Pynchon writes about a pretty bombed out American sensibility so maybe it makes perfect sense.




5) Rush - "Tom Sawyer"
Rush were big fans of Ayn Rand, but I'm not going to peddle of her work here. They also quoted Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" which is far more edifying, though with Rush you never quite know. I don't know, like most things Rush, they manage to make this all sound somewhat bombastic.




6) Manic Street Preachers - "Patrick Bateman"
After Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" and Tolkein's "The Hobbit"and Orwell's "1984", this is the book most often referenced in song by musicians. And the thing is I suspect most of the musicians creating a paean to Brett Easton Ellis' psychopathic financier probably identify with him rather than embrace Ellis' satire. The Manics maybe one of the few who got it to judge by their sarky opening.



7) Joy Division - "No Love Lost"Ian Curtis was very literary in his refrences, from JG Ballard's "Atrocity Exhibtion" to Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony". Though spoilt for choice I've plumped for a slightly more trashy reference from a book called "House of Dolls" because it's the book from which the band took their name. Curtis quotes a passage from the book directly in the song. 



8) Lagwagon - "Owen Meaney"Having not read the book I hope author John Irving got to the point a hell of a lot quicker than Lagwagon, a band about which I know nothing. Not very informative on this one I'm afraid.


9) The Stranglers - "Death And Night And Blood" Stranglers' bassist JJ Burnel got a bad rap as a thug when in the fledgeling days of punk he just used to lay into photographers at the front of the stage and belt them with his bass. But actually he's pretty well read, evidenced by his solo release "Ozymandias" quoting a Shelley sonnet. But as a song it's nigh on unlistenable. I suspect that this Stranglers ditty was his as well, referencing Japanese author Yukio Mishima's "Confessions Of A Mask". The band identified with outsiders and peripheral guys, such as Sancho Panzer in "No More Heroes". And there were fewer more radical outsiders than Mishima who took his life by traditional seppuku (ritualised self-disembowelling of the Samurai warrior class) after failing to persuade a detachment the army to join a coup d'etat.




10) Jefferson Airplane - "Rejoyce"
Who let the stoners read "Ulysses"? What next, death metal does Samuel Beckett? New Romantics do Flann O'Brien? As impenetrable as the original tome.




11) Iron Maiden - "Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner"
And yet... Heavy Metal, always associated with anti-intellectualism, well Iron Maiden had several songs inspired by literary works so just goes to show you can't judge a band by their hair length. From the album "Power Slave", oh well, you can't have everything. Did someone say "Spinal Tap"?





12) Hawkwind - "Farenheit 451"
I find myself undergoing a worrying transformation as I hit my 50s. I'm starting to get into Hawkwind, space rock drug excessives from the 1970s and still just about going strong I think. I credit it's that period when their paranoid frontman Robert Calvert wrote lots of songs about terrorism which seems somewhat apt today. I dunno.





13) Magazine - "Song From Under The Floorboards"
Howard Devoto is another one of those New Wave music frontmen who drew hecvaily from literature for their lyrics. Dostoevsky's "Rashkolnikov" is name-checked in the song "Philadelphia" and here devoto draws on the opening to "Notes From The Underground".




14) Bomb The Bass - "5Ml Barrel"
And to finish up, a couple of songs which are the result of collaborations between musicians/producers and actual authors reading their own words, or having them sampled. Bomb The Bass (Tim Simenon) did a song based on William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" but here goes one better and has the hard-bitten and yet also simultaneously world-weary tones of Will Self also exploring the theme of drug-taking. And mighty fine it is too.



15) William Burroughs/ Gus Van Sant - "Millions Of Images"
Van Sant's cast Burroughs in his second movie "Drugstore Cowboy" and from that emerged a rather wonderful 4-track EP called "The Elvis Of Letters". Burroughs of course had such a characterful Southern drawl, he never actually would need to sing, the music is there in his delivery anyway.

Widows And Orphans - Short Story for Syria

A fully laden table for our expected visitors.


 








Feasting her eyes on the resplendent banquet, the colours of the food, the architecture of the tureens and serving dishes, she felt she was looking down on a miniature city. Even the nagila standing tall like a minaret, abutting the domed tureen of harira. It was as if the whole variety of the souk had been brought home here on the table, only without the bustle. Her father came and stood beside her and admired the panorama too. He approached the spread and circled all four sides of it. He idly fingered the tassels of the tablecloth. Then with his other hand he grabbed a second fistful of the textile as it hung down over the edge of the table. He gave it a gentle tug as if he was straightening it. Still grasping it, he turned and grinned at his daughter. She put her hand to her mouth, surely he wasn’t going to try it now? What would Mama say?





Was she herself going to be cast as silent witness and conspirator?










For Papa was a devil, always impressing her and her brothers with his magic tricks. The greatest of them being when he advanced on a table, less laden than this yet still with things placed there, whereupon he would make a great show of stretching his arms out and wiggling his fingers and summoning up the sound of the wind with his exhaling. He would stop at one of the short sides and grab the two cornerflaps of the cloth, standing there with great ceremony and concentration, before yanking away the cloth from under all the things stood upon it and bringing the cloth around his shoulders like a magician’s cape. And miraculously nothing would fall from the table or even topple over on the now exposed cypress grain. And no matter how often we children were witness to the magic, we could not but help burst into thunderous clapping.




The thunder of the planes overhead rattled some of the plates even from so high.












Liberators?











The high explosive produced less of a consummate pulling away of the mantle from under us. Mortar was yanked away from bricks, so that the whole room came tumbling down on top of me. I heard my father breathe like the wind into my ear, only he sounded very angry. A real sirocco, bringing with it dust and sand clogging my throat. But then I realised I couldn’t see anything. It was total darkness. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut. It wasn’t my father at all, but the roar of the air being sucked out of my chest and my heart hammering trying to drag it back in. Like my mother would with us kids from playing outside. But I couldn’t come back in since I could move no part of me, pressed under the weight of my collapsed house.




Where was Mama? There was no ‘in’ to come back into.




‘In’ was on top of me. In was trying to press inside my body.












I tried to cry out but I have no idea if any sound left my mouth. The only thing I could feel was rats scurrying over me. Scampering to feast on the banquet meant for us. But as a glint of light blinded me, igniting flashes in my bruised eyes, I realised it wasn’t rats, but bricks being peeled from my skin and scraped away off me. Papa was coming to save me and pull me from the rubble.




But it wasn’t Papa.











They scooped up all the broken shards of me and swept me into a taxi to whisk me to hospital. I screamed for my parents, but the sound got mangled in my parched throat and I think they just thought it was from the pain I was in. Someone gave me an injection. Mama hadn’t been in the room with me and Papa. So she should have been safe. The streetlights overhead strafed me as the taxi passed under them. I was reblinded about every three seconds. This was like being at the disco with a stroboscope. Only I couldn’t move, let alone dance of course. I was afraid, that awful sensation when the strobelight freezes your body, then eclipses it altogether. I didn’t think I’d ever get my body back from the darkness.




I floated away.




 






I couldn’t follow my dreams, except that I briefly saw Papa perform his tablecloth trick and drape himself once again in the fabric. But then the picture moved to his whole body wrapped in the cloth like a cere sheet so that not even his face was visible. Mama and my brothers were nowhere to be seen in the dreams. Then I got confused in the dream and thought since they were not here that I was the one who had died and was being removed to be sent into the ground. Eventually I woke up and saw that my whole body was set in plaster with the bed tilted up and a spaghetti of tubes hooked into my arm.




I must have looked like a nagila.












The television they had hanging on the wall of the hospital showed the news on with the volume turned down. There was film of a minaret blasted by explosives so that it lay down across the rest of the demolished mosque. Another echo of the nagila, though this time no longer tall and proud. These images replayed about every ten minutes, so that you could easily imagine it to be a new destruction of a mosque, until they had razed every last one in our land. We are all Muslims aren’t we? So how can we spill each other’s blood and pull down the mosques? It made no sense to me, though the bomb that dropped on our house had been sent from another continent altogether.





I knitted back together like one of Grandma’s needlework creations..










But I had a bad limp. I made my way back to my house. But it was completely flat as a pancake. Well not completely flat. More like when you tip out all the jigsaw pieces from their box and then smooth the pile a bit to reveal the pieces. But I wouldn’t be able to put this together even though I held the picture of it in my head. Even though the doctors had put all my pieces together whole again. I didn’t go rooting around in the debris. What could it tell me? What if the tablecloth was no longer buried in there somewhere? What would that tell me about my father’s fate? Mama hadn’t been in the room with me and Papa. So she should have been safe. But now I see that the whole house has gone.  I needed to know where my parents were. But next door where our neighbours used to live was only a crater of scorched brown earth. The bombs seemed hell-bent on returning our cities back into the desert. All our street had fled their houses so there was no one to ask. No friendly faces left at all. All the familiar landmarks were still in place, yet I felt completely




disoriented.














Lost.




The myth of the flying carpet was just that. A myth. I made my escape like so many others. A camel train without the camels. People with humps on their back under their baggage. On foot under the endless sun and then into a camp just beyond the border. I had no papers. They wrote down my name and ran a finger down lists of names on sheet after sheet of paper. They said my parents weren’t in this camp but they might be in another one. They would try and trace them for me so we could be reunited. Then their fingers returned to the top of the list again for the person after me.




I was adrift.














All the faces here were unknown to me, yet they were instantly recognisable. Tired. Drawn. Fearful. Twitching. I wondered if my own face was similar. But there were no mirrors for me to check. There was nothing much to do all day. There were a few toys but none of us child adults played with them. There were no books for me to read. The gruel they served every day was colourless and made me pang for the rainbow of foods that had sat there on the table before the fiery rain of spicy seasoning and red hot sauces fell from above. That’s what it was, the children’s faces also were totally lacking in colour. They ate without joy and the blanched food just reflected this. All we had in the camp was television. I wondered if one of the refugees had hauled their satellite dish with them here on their back. The sound was turned down just like the hospital. Nobody ever watched it except me. I guess they had their own constant rolling images inside their heads already. Watching the ticker script at the bottom, pleading, begging for it just to have some new words to say, just by way of change. But it never did. Perhaps they only changed when you weren’t looking. I felt like I had at school, being forced to repeat the words over And over again until I read them out correctly. Only here I never graduated.




Images of dead men hung upside down by their feet.





















Like joints of lamb hanging from the ceiling of our butcher’s shop. Gravity had effected the modesty of veiling their faces behind their clothes draping down, though it could not conceal the impiety of the flesh so exposed in its place. The dangling pendulums may have been still, but beneath them coming and going were observers pointing up and gesticulating wildly. The camera lens was too far away to pick up their faces clearly. Heaving shoulders could have indicated crying or laughing. I deduced that since there were no mothers present, these men had to be those rejoicing in the devil’s verdicts enacted above their heads.




A man presented the stumps of his arms where the hands had been cut off.



















The scrolling text explained that he had played the ‘ud which was viewed as taking him away from prayer and devotion and consequently they had put a stop to it. I couldn’t quite comprehend this as the devil dogs behind this had lots of songs and music of their own. But then maybe you can’t march to a lute. I shuddered as I thought of my father and his beautiful hands that could do magic tricks. If he fell into their hands they would remove his. I could only hope that torn from me his heart would be too heavy to show his magic. Maybe he had forsworn all magic anyway once he realized it could not hold up his house or keep his family together and safe.




Beheadings.



























A kid holding up severed heads, one in each hand. Like a bowling ball. Like a roadside watermelon seller. There is colour in his face alright. But not in that of the floating head. Bloodless, Like the children here in the camp. We are all orphans even if our parents are still alive somewhere. We have all died and lost our blood. Our heads pulsing with thoughts and dreads separated from the rest of our numbed bodies. Another boy clutches a decapitated head by the hair with both his hands. Like a bag of heavy shopping. These youths are the same age as my brothers. An adult fighter is crouched down holding his little child so that its thrashing feet dance across a severed head lying on the ground. I can only think of a hamster in its wheel. This child lost to humanity before he can even speak. A blank page already inscribed with blood.  

Reflecting on the Writing Process for my new book

I'm currently writing a new novel and I thought I'd share the various stages of the process for any readers who might be interested and for any writers so they can go 'yes that's an interesting approach' or 'no way can you possibly make that work!'

After quite a long period without an idea for a novel, during which I published two new collections of flash fiction, around November an idea came together in my head. For some reason it always seems to be around November when I undertake a major writing project, but that's probably because it has two advantages; 1) I can shadow NaNoWriMo (write a novel in a month) which means I can share some of the impetus of that whole thing of others writing feverishly during November and 2) it's not too long for the extended holiday period in December when I usually get a lot of uninterrupted time to write.

So last November I sat down and started to write. I'm not a planner (of which a bit more below), but usually I sit with an idea for about 6 months to let it seethe away in my sub-conscious, so that a bit like baking a cake, at the end of the period it's ready to come out nicely risen. However, my previous novel hadn't followed this process and neither did this one. Usually during the seething period, I make no attempt to start writing anything but a few notes, certainly I don't start on the first draft. But in this case before I formally started on the first draft, I did do some detailed sketches of some of the chapters.

1st Draft: This is my favourite part of the whole process. Because anything goes! I refer to it as like playing in a sandpit. Throwing sand around. Filling moulds with sand and turning them out to make solid structures. Turning some out and seeing them collapse in front of your eyes! That's why I say I'm not a planner. I often hit upon sections of the writing that surprise me and if they come as fresh to my eye, then hopefully they will be equally fresh for any reader.

When I'm on this draft, I don't go back over what I've written but keep ploughing on through. That way I keep the creativity rather than start to lose some of the flow and momentum with editing and thoughts of shrinking and reducing. I trust I can do those necessary things in editing drafts down the line. I know other writers are different, but I don't think it matters which preference you have, it's just what works for you personally.

I have a day job at 28 hours a week, so I was writing a chapter here or there up until Christmas, then got about 6 chapters done over the holidays and carried on into the new year at about 2 chapters a week, one during the week and one at weekends. By the end of February I'd finished the first draft, 31 chapters in all, 60,000 words in length.

I left it about a week then started the 2nd draft, always a big moment. It's big because this is really where the writer sees if they've got a viable project. It's akin to having a dream that half wakes you out of your sleep and you write it down because it seems very important that you remember it; but when you read it back the next morning, at best you wonder why you thought it so meaningful and at worst it's complete gibberish. Well, after the playtime of the 1st draft, the second draft reveals the critical verdict. Is your project viable? Is it coherent and does it hang together? Reading through the 2nd draft often reacquaints you with the early bits of the 1st draft that you may have forgotten as you pressed on deeper into the book. And if on rereading you feel that hey, actually there's some pretty good bits of writing here in these early parts, then you're probably going to be alright across the whole piece.

Plenty of writers will tell you that in all cases, their first draft is gibberish and that the book is only made viable through vigorous editing and rewriting. I don't concur that it has to be that way at all. Some writers have almost perfectly formed 1st drafts emerge. I think if you are very plot-bound as a writer, you are more likely to have to make surgical changes to a first draft to resolve plot issues which may require an overhaul of the whole structure. The same can be for a character when you decide to introduce and additional emotion or motive, then you have to go back throughout the whole novel sewing that in seamlessly and how that may impact what you'd already written. All in all in my  case, I'd left three of the chapters unfinished in how I ended them  as I pressed on with writing the 1st draft. I knew I'd complete and fix them in the 2nd draft.

The 2nd draft took a fortnight, starting rewriting bits but I knew the book worked. I ended up taking out 1 chapter, because the writing wasn't up to the standard of the others, nor the ideas in it (which probably explains the less confident writing also), bringing it down to 30 chapters, though in rewriting some of the more clumsy sections as well as completing the unfinished chapters the word count stayed at around 60,000.

The third draft. Normally this is the draft where the real detailed revisions comes, drilling down into every word of every sentence. But that will actually be my 4th draft (see below). This is because the nature of this particular book is that the 30 chapters are linked thematically rather than through a protagonist carrying the action of a plot. So the 3rd draft is the key but really difficult process of deciding which order the chapters will be. I know how tricky this process is from having published short story collections. But there's another muddying factor. I actually envisage that this book can be read in any order, that the reader can pick and choose how they want to read the chapters. Whether this happens or not will probably come down to convincing the editor/publisher and whether there is a budget for such a production as the chapters will have to be loose leaf in some manner. So in the consequence that I can't bring that about, I will need the contingency of having ordered the chapters. This is where I am currently. It involves a spreadsheet as each chapter is laid out with its theme, tone (comedic/heavy, stylised etc) as you're trying to avoid chapters with similar feel or theme next to each other. So far I've got to separating the 30 chapters into 1st half or second half  of the book, so that now I've only got to order 15 at a time.

The 4th draft will be the detailed revision. I will go over a chapter as many times as necessary until I almost have every word pulsing inside me. That way I can recognise repeated words, check the flow of sentences. I  really do work at the level of each individual word during this phase. I won't read any of the other chapters until I am satisfied the one under current review is finished (unless I need to cross-check whether I've repeated myself in a different chapter).

The 5th draft is a real chore but a vital one. I read aloud each chapter., Doing this really helps you judge the flow for the reader. You'd be amazed how many sentences running three or four lines long you pick up at this stage which don't reveal themselves even during the process of draft 4, because of the difference between reading something silently inside your head and reading it aloud. Reading aloud the whole book chapter by chapter is a long haul, but a valuable one in the editing process.

The 6th draft may make some of you laugh. I do a word search for every your and you're and its and it's because even though I have some 112 books behind me now, I still get these wrong from time to time. I think it's a product of the speed at which I write the first draft, nothing is to slow me down, so I'm writing it how I hear it inside my head which may involve getting these mixed up. It doesn't take too long and  can be done in one session. I may also do a word search for words that seem to crop up a lot in the book and see if I can't change some of them out. I already know that in this work which is about the different stages of development and maturity as children grow into adults, that the word juncture seems to put in a lot of appearances and may need to be pruned out. This would be the 'juncture' for doing that here in this draft.

The 7th draft is the penultimate one, a final read through of the full work, since the previous detailed edit was done on a chapter by chapter basis and I just need to check the piece as a whole. This may be done more than once, it just depends how the book is flowing as a read.

The 8th draft is a final proof copying one. Do NOT rely on Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check. It will not pick up words that are homonyms, that is correctly spelled but not the right word you'd intended; eg one I perennially fall foul of sew/sow. Hopefully reading aloud in draft 5 picked all these up.

And there you have it. My A-Z, or perhaps 1-8 of the writing process. Hope it was either or both of some help and interest for you. I'm really excited about this book. It encapsulates many of my ideas about literature that I've explored in my writing and discussed with other writers in the most comprehensive and I hope coherent manner that I've yet been able to attain.

Watch this space...

Guest Post - Author Virginia Moffatt

I've asked one of my favourite writers Virginia back for a guest post (her post on my blog for her debut flash collection can be found here) as she has an exciting new project to talk about. I say new, but I know she's been working on this novel for a while as I was lucky enough to read an early part-draft of the book "Echo Hall". It's a book I really hope gets published and here's Virginia to tell you a bit more about the process and the book itself.



After ten years of writing  my novel, ‘Echo Hall’ and two years of submitting to agents and independent presses, I’ve finally been signed by the publisher Unbound.  I couldn’t be happier, and  I’m very grateful to Marc for inviting me here to tell you about it.Unbound is a relatively new and unusual publisher. Formed in 2011 by three writers - Dan Kieran, Justin Pollard and John Mitchinson – it produces books by crowdfunding, inviting readers to get involved. The company is both a funding platform and a publisher, offering authors 50:50 royalties once the book achieves its target.I first heard about Unbound in 2013, through Shaun Usher’s ‘Letters of Note’ twitterfeed.  I loved reading the letters on twitter so I was really pleased to hear they were going to be published.  ‘Letters of Note’ went on my Christmas list and I thought no more about the company until after my copy had arrived a few months later.I was visiting my friends Hugh and Zoe one day, when Hugh rushed in hugely excited to have his hands on the copy of their friend’s Unbound book. That friend was Paul Kingsnorth, and the book, ‘The Wake’ has done extremely well. (Deservedly so, it’s a remarkable novel). At that point, I sat up and paid attention. Two great books in a few months suggested Unbound was on to somethingAfter that I followed Unbound with interest, and though my first pitch to them was unsuccessful, I was delighted when my second was accepted by Scott Pack earlier this year. Although, the idea of raising the funds is daunting, I am also excited about the possibility of working with readers before the book is even produced. And, I love being part of this young, vibrant company, whose enthusiastic staff are all book fans and produce beautiful hardback and paperbacks.I’m also delighted to have been signed by  Unbound, because I love the idea of working with readers to make the book happen. I’ve kept going with ‘Echo Hall’ for all these years because I really believe in my novel and am excited about finally getting it out into the world.
Set against the backdrop of three wars – the 1991 Gulf War, World War 2 and World War 1 – the novel follows the fortunes of three women who become involved with the Flint family, the owners of Echo Hall.
The book concerns the impact of unresolved conflict within families and nations, which asks does history always have to repeat itself, or can we find another way?  I have peopled it with characters who go to war, characters who don’t and I hope, as well as being a gripping yarn it will make readers think about the questions I’m raising. Although this is a book set in the past, it is very much a book of the present as the  origin of today’s wars in the Middle East can be traced right back to World War 1.
If you are interested in backing this book, it is easy. All you have to do is sign up to Unbound and pledge here https://unbound.co.uk/books/echo-hall.  (But be warned there are some great titles on there, pledging can be a bit addictive!)

If you are interested in pitching to Unbound, that too is easy. Just send your details via this link https://unbound.co.uk/authors/work-with-us.  Alternatively, it is worth following Associate Editor, Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) on twitter. Before Christmas he invited people to pitch to him directly and has promised to do it again. Really worth doing, it worked for me! 

Songs About Actors

Songs about actors, who could have imagined it would produce such a rich vein? And none of includes songs about ex-actor Ronald Reagan since they tend to address his post-actor career in the White House. Sadly no songs either by the wonderfully named band JFA, as in "Jodie Foster's Army". Still, no shortage of ditties devoted to thesps.


1) Julian Cope - "Robert Mitchum"
Only Julian Cope could pull off something so twee as this. Imagine it as the soundtrack to "Night Of The Hunter"? Nope, me neither.




2) Kim Carnes - "Betty Davis' Eyes"
Not to be confused with The Adverts' "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", or Half Man Hal;f Biscuit's spoof on this "Dickie Davis' Eyes". Which is a pity as I prefer both of those infinitely to this pop pap, even if in the video people beat out a rhythm on the floor with their hands. Too much of that and they'll have Betty Davis' hands.



3) Lee Perry & The Upsetters - "Clint Eastwood Rides Again"
But Marc I hear you cry, this is basically an instrumental, so what has it got to do with Clint? Other than the ridin' along on ma horse rhythm and the increasing insinuation of gun shots you mean? Reggae artists love cowboys and spaghetti Westerns, honouring them in many a song and even artists taken the names of cowboys, such as well Clint Eastwood and Dillinger (all right he was more 20s bankrobber than cowboy). My chart, my rules.



4) Angel Corpus Christi - "John Cassavetes"
Try tracking this obscure album down... Amazed it's on YouTube to be honest. John Cassavetes, actor and film director. His work was talked about in hushed tones with great reverance, I saw one called I think "Husbands". It was fairly turgid. I wonder if he's still so highly regarded now that he's been dead for so long? The movie world can be as unforgiving as the music biz if you don't put out new product. Anyone remember Alex Cox these days? Thought not.



5) Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
True story this. After my university finals but before we graduated we had a lot of time to kill. So we decided to play a gig outside the halls of residence. Plugged into the basement and off we went. Only the bassist could actually play, I was hitting a beer barrel with a sledgehammer for percussion (I was heavily influenced by Test Department at the time). And the song the bassist could really play well was this. The singer knew the lyrics. He was very active in the Animal liberation movement, hardly what one associates with the Goth revival as typified by this song. Funny world.



6) Billy Bragg - "Ingrid Bergman"
In which Billy punctuates his stand up repartee with a song 6 minutes into this video. Sorry about that.



7) Beastie Boys - "Lee Majors Come Again"
Let's crank it up with some noise. Lee Majors played the 6 Million Dollar Man on TV. As an actor you might not have given him more than 6 dollars. I think the Beasties may have drawn similar conclusions as the connection to lee Majors is tangential at best.



8) Nirvana - "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle"
KK was obviously much taken with Ms Farmer since he named his only daughter after her. I was never a great Nirvana fan, actually preferring the work of his Mrs, Courtney Love's "Hole". You want to make sure you put the speech marks round that or it takes on a whole different meaning. This song is even more dirgey than the usual Nirvana output. The name "Nirvana" was ironic right?



9) The Clash - "The Right Profile"
The Clash were always dropping references to real people in their songs. This checks the name of Montgomery Clift, actor in the classic "From Here To Eternity". Another actor who suffered a serious car crash, although he managed to eke out a tad more of his career after that. Now we've covered that, I don't have to post The Eagles' song "James Dean". What? If this was a chart for songs about actors involved in car crashes, then maybe...



10) MDC - "John Wayne Was A Nazi"
I don't feel I have to add anything to the song itself.



11) Natalie Merchant - "Lulu"
Okay let's take it down a notch or two. Merchant's paean to silent actress Louise Brooks, she of the famous hair do. What I called in one of my novels, the 'Roman helmet' cut.



12) Banarama - "Robert De Niro's Waiting"
God I hated this song when it came out. Still do. See, this is how generous I am posting songs I can't stand.



13) Madness - "Michael Caine"
This song was rubbish too. I'm beginning to think actors make lousy subjects for pop songs.



14) Sonic Youth - "Madonna, Sean And Me"
Bit of a cheat this one because everyone knows the song as "Expressway To Yr Skull", but for some reason when the album was released, this was the name they gave the track. Still, this revives my faith in the concept of the actor themed song, cos it is epic! Was lucky enough to hear them play it live a couple of times, walk off the stage at the end of their set and the guitar feedback was still squealing through the amps for a good few minutes later.



15) Serge Gainsbourg - "The Initials BB"
A song about his sometime collaborator on songs Bridget Bardo". Unless you speak french, you'll just have to take my word for it. I think Bardo has gone on to become the ultimate cat lady in her dotage.



16) Roxy Music - "2HB"
No, not a song devoted to the middle of the road in pencils, but extolling Humphrey Bogart. Bryan ferry sounds even more drawly than normal in this.



Just In From our NRA correspondent"
17) Stump - "Charlton Heston (Put His Vest On)"
God knows which bit of my deep-lying memory I dragged this one from, but a day after compiling the chart, this came to me.