Thomas Brown's Blog, page 10

‘Traum’

Gems such as this are what draw me back to deviantart.com time and time again. Haunting, macabre and evocative, strangely elemental… ‘TRAUM’ by monochrome-21

‘Jerusalem’

Where the branches allow it, moonlight illuminates the path, winding its narrow way between the trees. From where he stands, a little way off, he can see no end to the parade. Light scatters like water through the dark, making silver outlines of pallid limbs, bare footprints pressed into the mulch and, held by thin hands, clutched close to sunken breasts, severed heads; the old dead, nurturing the new with ageless love and sour milk.

The stiff-legged procession stretches both ways into the trees. They might always have walked here; an endless wake marching solemnly beneath their cowls. He moves silently closer, his approach masked beneath the clicking of bone and wet sucking sounds, which he hopes is feet sunk into mud and not cold mouths hungry at stiff teats. He does not speak, but in his head repeats an old hymn, hoping it might help him, ground him, keep him sane and safe from demons and the dark.

Night has sapped the colour from the world but he can still make out spring: ghostly lilac blossom, branches heavy with shoots, roots swollen with rainwater and, from beneath the low cowls, the enthused bleating of lambs, long since slaughtered but revived on this night when life courses renewed through the wet, blood-soaked loam.

‘Silent Planet’

I travelled the world in search of you. They said that you were gone but I knew there were still places where we might talk; where for a few minutes at midnight I might look into your eyes, and smile.

Austria, Germany, the vast trackless forests of Norway. Five times I found you, hiding in the dark, bound to the old locales dotted around the world: cosmic pockets where the dead still dance.

It was a dream come true to watch you waltz under the stars. Then dawn broke, the dream ended and I died inside to be so alone.

The People’s Book Prize

In February I discovered that LYNNWOOD had been submitted to The People’s Book Prize, “a national competition aimed at finding, supporting & promoting new and undiscovered works.” As I understand it, winning entries are those that receive the most votes from readers who have enjoyed the books and want to help raise awareness of them.

Two months into voting, I feel incredibly humbled – not only to have been put forward for the award in the first place, but by the support that I’ve received so far. It has been a real pleasure to read some of the comments left by readers of the book on the voting page; people who have found the book moving, thrilling, frightening, people who have loved the themes, the writing, the setting, the language… For a writer, reading these kinds of responses are as good as it gets. So I would like to say thank you for your support, for reading me and for giving me a chance.

There is about a month left in which to vote, so if you have read LYNNWOOD and would like to support me, please register and vote at the link below. It takes a few minutes, and there is a small space in which to leave your thoughts, if you feel like it.

If you haven’t read the book yet and would like to do so, Sparkling Books have reduced the Kindle price especially for the voting period. You can download a copy from Amazon for just over £1.00 / $1.80

http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/book.php?id=1100

Thirteen Press Week

It’s finally here! Thirteen Press, a new imprint of Horrified Press, opens its rain-warped doors to the world this week with a host of anthology releases. Check out the banner for specific dates and details. I’m very proud to say that I have one story in Mirror, Mirror, and two in Broken, so feel free to pick up a copy of these books if you’d like to see more of my work in print.

Dorothy Davies has edited these collections from her base of operations on the Isle of Wight, and it has been a delight to correspond with her as they have taken shape. For ’Women in Horror Month 2014′, Horrified Press released the following information about this elusive Lady in Horror:

“Dorothy Davies has been writing all her life, starting with SF and sliding into horror as an almost natural by-product of her earlier work. She has well over two-hundred short stories in print, twenty books in an educational reading scheme and twelve novels in different genres. Her interests these days are historical and horror, often being surprised how often the two link together. Her ‘specialist’ time is the Wars of the Roses, where death and destruction were a daily occurrence, it seems… She lives on the haunted Isle of Wight in a very old building which has its own resident ghost.”

Thanks, Dorothy!

 

Why Do You Write?

An Essay on: LYNNWOOD

“Most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.”

Last week I came into possession of an essay written by an A-level student from Oxfordshire, in which my novel had been used to explore the statement posed above. When I heard that she had written an essay on my book, I felt a surge of conflicting emotions, all of which resurfaced at once when she handed me a copy of the finished work: pride, anxiety, honour, fear, happiness and a nakedness that I haven’t felt since my undergraduate days, dancing to Baywatch’s ‘Save Me’ in one of Southampton’s various student clubs.

My particular interest in writing that examines my own work aside, the essay is fascinating reading. Broadly, its author looks at the question of metaphor from a number of angles: conceptually, socially, politically and theologically, examining quite how metaphor relates to these areas, and how the book demonstrates this. Reading the essay, I was reminded of a quote by Clive Barker articulating the innate relationship between fantastic fiction and metaphor.

“The underpinning of a lot of fantastic fiction – horror, science fiction, fantasy – is metaphysical. They’re the tales of the collective psyche, the fundamental metaphors of confrontation with things that may devour us or may offer us transcendence, and may be offering both in the same moment. At its best, fantastic fiction creates an immensely sophisticated, metaphorical language about very basic human issues.” Clive Barker

Mostly, I was impressed by how well the essay’s author has dissected my writing. It is incredibly strange and humbling to know that another person has sat down with the book and given such thought to my writing. For those of us who write in order to share (exorcise?) ideas and imagery personal to us, this is what it’s all about. It’s even more surreal to sit down myself with the essay and read back the very same ideas that helped shape the novel. (And a few more besides!) It has certainly given me food for thought.

I’d like to finish here with a quote from the essay, which I think captures the spirit of book and essay alike.

“For the reader, [LYNNWOOD] is an intimate study into the human condition, what drives us and our true motivations in life [...] provoking the reader to examine what makes them human, and what separates humanity from animals. Brown shows us to be more similar to the bestial part of nature than we might realise [...] through his depiction of humankind as quite simply: hungry.”

You

‘Finger Painting’

Armed with my hunting knife I paint a pretty picture in the grass: tawny brown fur, dappled with white, beside which seem to spill inkwells of red. Pale bones. Beige teeth. Black gums. Steaming innards slide from the gut; intestinal silver in the light.

This is my art; the young stag, rutting, rotting where it fell. It is all art; the streets our human galleries where we run, jump, pretend to play at life before succumbing to the vast canvas of the earth, growing soft, syrupy, making our own small masterpieces with the worms and the beetles in the dirt.

“A Non-Writing Writer is a Monster Courting Insanity.”