Changing Back

The lure of the fantasy story is too strong - I have to write this story. So, the aliens will have to wait for their Earth invasion, I'm going back to Ingund.
After talking out my plot with some of the good people on FM, I think I'm getting to the point where I can start writing it. Now all I have to do is get on with it - something that is still not proving as easy as it should.
I just don't know what it is, but as soon as I sit down to write, my mind freezes up. I have managed to force my way through it for a page or so, but not very often. And even then, I fall into the infinite editing loop and wind up going over and over that one page, tweaking here and there, when what I should be doing is carrying on and leaving the editing for later.

A change of scenery

Lately I've been struggling with the outline of my fantasy novel - going under the working title of Cornelius1 (simply because it is the first book with Cornelius in it). I can't seem to get the plot straight in my head and keep coming up against all sorts of stumbling blocks. It seems that every time I sort something out, the resolution leads to another problem. So I'm taking a break and going on to something else.
I've had a basic premise for a comedy sci-fi in my head for quite some time now. The idea came to me way back when Independence Day was in the cinemas. It was originally intended as a spoof of that very film. I was going to call it St George's Day and have the MC as a guy called George who saved the day from an alien invasion on 23rd of April.
I may still use the St George's Day bit, even though it's been a while since ID was around. Not sure on that one - what do you reckon?
There is, of course, something more to the story than this - a twist in the tale. However, I won't reveal it here because the people I intend to use as guinea pigs read this blog, and I don't want to give it all away before they've read it.
I'm hoping this will be a really fun book to write. I've written one very small scene which I had a good giggle over. I'll include this short excerpt below as a teaser of what's to come:



George picked up a cylindrical object that looked not unlike a torch. There was a switch on the side and, with a distinct lack of respect for the fact that everything was alien here and this was almost certainly not a torch, he flipped it.
With a distinctive Pvvvvshhhh that will be familiar to practically anyone who lived through the last 30 years of the twentieth century, the room was suddenly bathed in an eerie green glow. The light was emanating from the torchlike device George held, only it wasn’t like an ordinary torch. Ordinary torchlight had this odd habit of not forming a solid looking beam three feet long.
Holding the device tentatively in his right hand, George tried a few experimental slashes.
Whummm – whummm.
“It’s real” he said, looking up with wide eyes at Iain, “it’s a real lightsab-“
“You can’t say that, you have to call it, oh I don’t know, a sword of light or something.”
“Why?”
“Copyright.”
“What? Oh yes, okay. Well, you know, it’s one of them, a real working lights…er…sword of light.”
George flipped the switch again and, chuckling at the schwooom sound it made as the blade disappeared, tucked the device into the back of his belt.

Recursive History

Latest RHP Prose competition is over, and I placed a miserable joint 7th (out of nine :(). The subject for this competition was 'Life Story' and I think I may have been a bit clever for my own good in my interpretation of that theme. Let me know what you think:

Recursive History

“Excuse me, young man, might I have a quiet word in your ear?”
His eyebrows arched briefly at the unexpected question, and then he remembered his friends and it turned into a sneer, accompanied by a contemptuous remark.
He turned his back to me and, with a sigh, I wondered how I could ever have been a surly teenager like this.
I left him and his friends and walked away, hoping I would be able to get through to him when he’d had a few years to mature.

“Can I buy you a beer son?”
Again, those raised eyebrows, followed this time by a shrug and a grin.
“I've never turned down a free beer in my life, nor can I see myself ever doing such a foolish thing. Thanks.”
“Never turned down a beer eh? You wait until you're propositioned by a sixteen stone gay man in Benidorm.”
“You think that’s the sort of thing that’s likely to happen to me then?”
“Oh yes.” I said, and turned from his bewildered look to order our drinks.
Without really thinking, I ordered two pints of my favourite ale and passed one to him, forgetting where I was and who I was with.
“I don't normally drink this sort of thing, but what the hell. Cheers” he said and took a long draught.
“Bloody hell, that’s gorgeous.” he said, and threw back another mouthful.
It was then that it hit me – I remembered this meeting. I took another sip of my beer – the beer, it occurred to me, that the old man had introduced me to in the meeting as I remembered it. It had been that meeting that had changed my life.
My hands shook slightly as I began to explain my purpose. I told him of the choices I knew he would have to make. I told him of the choices I had made and why he should make different ones. I did my best to impress upon him the importance of not getting caught by the trap of being the same as everyone else, of living life to the full and doing whatever makes you happy.


“So, you made mistakes in your life, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to change them?”
“Yes, I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Well, I can help you with that, step this way please.”
It was a desperate measure, for sure, but I had to do something. I had to stop that meeting with the old man in the pub. The choices he convinced me to make, they landed me in this situation.
An old man myself now, I had had to endure a life of abject misery – all thanks to that old man telling me to ‘live life to the full’, to do ‘whatever makes you happy’. That’s fine when you are young, but what happens when you suddenly find you’ve frittered away all your money and are left with no career, no house, nothing?

End