Going okay for a change

So, the writing has been going pretty well lately. I have a plot, of sorts, and I've been writing. Things are happening without me really thinking too much, which is great. I've introduced a couple of new characters, who seem to be taking the story in a slightly different, and better, direction.
On a slightly less great note, I've discovered that I can't do villains! My main antagonist, one Natasha Slee - vampire-mage - is pretty good and evil, but even she was a struggle.
I tried to give her an accomplice, a bounty hunter named Ersum Frost, who she hires to kill the MC, but he's turned out to be a good guy who she misled.
Okay, while writing this post, I've also been working on my story, and I've created a new baddie, a female necromancer who coerces Cornelius into using his magic without a spell (very dangerous and a big no-no).Now I suddenly realise that all my heroes are guys, and both of my baddies are girls! Wonder what this says about me? Maybe I should make Cornelius a girl, and the necromancer a man...hmm, have to think about that.

Ersum Frost

Ersum Frost tapped at the battered door that led into his client's small office. The place was a near ruin. Dank and dark, it sat in a run down, all but forgotten part of town, deep in the slums. This was not unusual for Ersum. Though his clients were invariably wealthy, they often chose to meet him in places like this. Places where no questions would be asked.
A voice called from the other side of the door, telling him to enter. He pushed the door open and squeezed his bulky body through the door. His muscular shoulder caught on the frame, and a piece broke off, crumbling as it fell to the floor. He ignored it and stepped into the room, stooping slightly his head grazing the ceiling.
"Ersum Frost I presume?" the voice was soft and alluring. No commoner this woman.
"Yes. You wish to hire my....services?" he walked further into the room and pushed the door to behind him.
The owner of the vice sat behind a desk at the far end of the small room. A beautiful woman, with long dark hair and deep, dark eyes. He stopped in surprise, surely that wasn't....? It was! What was she doing hiring a bounty hunter? She opened her lovely mouth to speak again. It appeared he was about to find out.
"You are wondering why I need to hire one such as yourself, correct?" he nodded dumbly. "There is a problem that the normal resources I have at my disposal, comprehensive though they are, cannot solve. It requires a certain amount of deniability.....something I hope you can offer me."
"That I can ma'am. There will be no way to trace me you're involvement through me."
"You were not followed here?"
His eyes widened. "Certainly not! I am not followed, unless I wish to be. Ever. There were some who tried tonight, if that information is of use to you."
"I know this, they were in my employ."
"They where in your...." He stopped as the penny dropped. "You were testing me."
"I was. And you did well. Those two were my best trackers. They have never failed me before." She reached into the top drawer of the desk she sat at and extracted a sheet of paper. She passed it across the desk to Ersum.
"What is this?"
"A man will be at this address at 2pm tomorrow. You will go there and bring him to me. Alive if you can."
"If he's alive when I get there, I can."
"Good. The two figures at the bottom represent your fee. The first is for delivery of the subject alive, the second is for delivery of a corpse."
Ersum's jaw dropped as he read the figures. The smaller one was more than double his usual fee, and the larger was.....uncomprehendable. He was good at what he did, and commanded a high price, but nothing like this. He was also not stupid.
"Why so high? Who is this man?"
"Does it matter? Is there anyone you would not tackle? Or could not?"
He felt the blow to his pride and pulled himself up a little taller, an effect only slightly spoiled by the fact that the ceiling was too low to accommodate his full height.
"I can bring in any target, or I die trying. But some need certain.....precautions. Mages for example, need to be handled carefully."

Failing Nano

Okay, slack and without an update for a while again, I'm just not one of nature's diarists I'm afraid.
Anyway, as the title suggests I don't think I'm going to complete Nano this year. I have a little under 20,000 words, and only 8 days left. That means 30,000 more to do in those 8 days. And, bearing in mind that it's taken me 22 days to hit the 20k mark, I really don't think it's going to happen.
But that's ok. I just have to concentrate on what I *have* achieved. Last month, the longest thing I had written was probably about 2,000 words or so. I've now beaten that figure about ten times over. Last month, I was struggling with an unwieldy plot, that I just couldn't pin down. Now I have managed to tame it by the simple method of actually knuckling down and writing it.
Now I just have to make sure I stick at it. I've got to keep myself going. Nano is nearly over, but I can't let myself slip back into my non-writing ways. I may slow down a bit, but so long as I am writing at least a bit every day, I'll be happy.
And, of course, there's always next year :)

NaNoWriMo

Okay, I think I've done something rash. I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It's a kind of competition, run online, in which the participants attempt to write 50,000 words worth of novel in just one month. And it's November too, so it's not even a long month, just 30 days. That's 1666.666.... words per day.

That's quite a lot.

So, I will probably be even more reclusive than normal next month, as I pound at my keyboard in an attempt to drag those words from the depths of my brain.
Bearing in mind that the most I've ever written on one project is about two or three thousand words, this won't be an easy task. But it's supposed to be a challenge, and so I shall gird my loins, steel myself and maybe even do a bit of praying in the hope that I can meet the challenge head on and bloody well get something done this time!

Started at last!

Yes, it has begun, my first novel is underway. I have finally shrugged off all the procrastination, all the plot doubts and all of my worries about taking on such a big project. Well, not all of them - but enough to begin the damn thing.
So, I'm going- and this time I've made a pact with myself not to stop. Until I reach the end of course. Even then I won't entirely stop, for after the writing comes the editing. But I mustn't think about that lest I panic and run in fear at the thought of editing something so big.
Managed the first 550 or so words last night, which is pretty good for me. Here's to hoping for much more.

Blitzing!

No, I'm not talking about FFX, I''m talking about Scarlett's LJ community - the Blitz. I joined last week, and it's started helping me already.
Basically, there's a load of us signed up to it, and Scarlett sets exercises, which we then do. Then every - er - so often, I suspect it's regular, but I don't know the interval, there is a blitz - the next of which starts on the 1st of August.
The August Blitz will involve the creation of 16-20 short pieces about 1 character. None of them may involve the character directly, but all must be related to that character. So things like; newspaper articles, love letters, etc.
This looks a) great fun and, b)really useful as I have several characters to choose from that need developing.
Hopefully, the pressure of having others expecting me to produce something will help force me to do so. It's worked so far, for the one exercise I've done already. It turned out pretty good too, got some good feedback, which is always nice to hear.
So, I'm a bit more positive about my writing at the moment, and generally in a pretty good mood :D

Looking better...

It's been a while, and during that while my writing has been up and down like a...thing that goes up and down a lot. [Mental note - work on the metaphors]
First off, I thought I had solved my plotting problems. I was having trouble coming up with a good motive for my vampire mage antagonist to want to blow a lot of people up. Then it came to me, she doesn't want to blow them up at all. They just happen to be in the same place as the thing she does want to blow up. Genius.
Er...no, actually. I was chatting with some people on FM and they pretty much poked holes in my plot all night. Well, I exagerate of course, but you know what I mean, I'm sure.
I was more than a little disheartened at this point. There was I, back on track and happy with the way my plotting was going and those bastards went and pulled it apart like that!
That was what I wanted to think anyway. In reality, I saw that they were mostly right. I was warping credulity to make the plot work. It wasn't until I went back into chat a few days later and had another plotting discussion that I began to be convinced that I could make it work. So, off I went - armed with my new confidence and set to work again. Or rather, tried and failed to set to work again.
By this point, I was going spare and beginning to doubt myself and my writing and, when I was feeling a little less self absorbed, the advice I had been given.
Then I had yet another chat, this time on MSN with Scarlett (another FMer). Wonderful, marvellous, lovely Scarlett :) set me right straight she did.
We talked for a while, I outlined the problem and she gave me advice. But not advice on what to do with my plot, but rather advice on how to go about plotting. She suggested a more relaxed kind of approach, just chill and let the ideas come in their own sweet time. And you know what? I think it's working.
I've basically decided to ignore it, unless something pops up in my head. Alreadysome stuff has, not a great deal, but it's a start. And I've been writing again too. Not stuff for this particular WIP, but using the characters from it in a different context.
So I'm remaining close to it, but no longer crowding it, and I feel much more relaxed and happy about the whole thing now.

Let's hope it stays that way.

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

I wrote something!

I really did. So what? you say - you've written several things. Well, this was different.
Yesterday afternoon I was chatting on the writers site I belong to and some very helpful people went over the plot of my novel with me. The novel that I've been failing to write for some time now.
What I ended up with was a page of very untidily scrawled notes in my notebook and a much clearer idea of where I should go with the story. Which is nice. And then I sat down last night and wrote 500 words of the opening scene.
Now, that's not a great deal, but it is a start. And, just as importantly, it's a start I didn't want to immediatly throw away - something I've done a lot of.
I would have posted it since there isn't too much of it, unfortunately, I've forgotten to bring in my USB key today, so I don't have a copy with me. Maybe tomorrow I'll throw it up.

Anyway, I'm happy at the moment - maybe I realy can do this writing thing :D

New RHP Prose entry

The next prose competition at Red Hot Pawn has begun, which means I can now safely post my entry for the last one. Enjoy:

The Blank Page (491 words) It sits there, an A4 sized piece of malevolency, staring up at me. It taunts me from the desk, daring me to try and fill it up, yet I cannot. As soon as I confront that yawning emptiness, I clam up; it freezes my creativity and binds my imagination.
I reach for a pen, flick it’s lid off and hold it, poised above the paper in an attempt to complete the circuit between brain and page. Somehow, the flow of inspiration must start; surely I cannot go on like this forever?
Closing my eyes, I can see the story unfold, but then I open them again and it’s gone, retreating back into the recesses of my brain as if it too is fearful of that terrible Blank Page.
This confrontation is played out all too frequently. So many times have I come up against the Blank Page and so many times have I failed. Too often have I sat there, late into the night, desperate for some inspiration, desperate to plumb the depths of my mind and confer the results to paper.
I have had some victories, but even they have been bittersweet. On the rare occasion that I do take that first step and begin to fill the Blank Page, what I fill it with is almost exclusively awful. Something about the way the prose is put together simply doesn’t feel right. Somehow, between my mind and the page, it has been warped into something barely readable.
Some may say this is a battle I will never win, that I should give up before it drives me crazy. But I cannot simply quit. It would be akin to an asthmatic giving up breathing because it causes him too many problems.
If I quit now, I will be driven to madness anyway by the constant flow of ideas and concepts for which I would have no vent. All of that creativity floating around my mind with no outlet would tip me over the edge as surely as trying and failing.
One day I shall vanquish my nemesis, after all the pen is mightier than the sword, but it may take some time. Perhaps when life outside of writing calms down somewhat, I will be more able to devote my entire concentration the task of overcoming the beast.
Real life is the ultimate ally of the Blank Page. Relationship problems, financial problems and, of course, the dreaded Day Job - all of these things prey on my mind, stifling my creativity and slowly driving me to distraction.
But now it seems I have found a solution. How effective it will be, only time will tell. ‘Write about writing’ someone suggested to me. The fruits of that labour you are just about to finish reading. With any luck it will spur me on to new literary horizons. Like everything, practice makes perfect, and the first step is always the hardest.

Stay tuned...

...there will be some more snippets up here soon. I've had a welcome and much needed boost from a guy on the forums at Red Hot Pawn (see right for link). He started a prose competition on the forums, and I've entered a couple of pieces. My first entry is below but the second one I've entered is still being judged, so I'll wait until I get the results of the competition before I put it up.
This first one was an expansion on one of the 100 word stories you can find further down in this blog. It came third out of five. First place deserved it, but I was robbed of second place >:(

The Time Machine

At last, it was finished. As he approached the Time Machine, he pondered where to go. Or rather, when to go. Not wanting to upset time too much on his first trip, he decided to start small, just go back a few hours; there could be no harm in that surely?
He walked slowly around the Machine, admiring the product of all the hard work and dedication he had put into this project in the last few years. He could scarcely believe it was finished. So many times he had considered discarding the whole crazy idea. So often he had sat up all night working on the crucial theory that needed to be perfected before it could be put into practice.
He sat down in the worn leather seat that he had scavenged from his old Jaguar, taking comfort from it’s familiar curves. He took a few deep breaths in a vain attempt to calm the butterflies that were rioting in his stomach. Reaching out with hands clammy from nervous sweat, he began adjusting the Machine’s controls.
He finished setting the Machine up for it’s first test journey and paused, momentarily awed at the enormity of what he was doing. He was about to be the first human to travel against the flow of time, into the past. The implications were enormous, the wrongs he could set right, the money he could make. With visions of grandeur floating through his brain, he reached for the lever that would engage the Machine’s Temporal Drive and, finally, got the Machine started on it’s epic voyage to the past.
As the whir of the Drive powering up became louder, doubts began to assail him. What if it didn’t work? What if the failure was catastrophic? He wasn’t an adventurer, he was an inventor, he should have found someone braver to do the actual testing. His pulse accelerated and he took in great gulps of air to quell those rowdy butterflies. It didn’t work, and he began to shake as all sorts of possible catastrophic scenarios flicked through his mind. And then it was too late. With a brief flash of light, the Machine turned itself about in time and headed back the way it had come. A few moments of it’s own time later, the drive wound down and the Machine returned it’s temporal velocity to that which we are all more familiar with.
Inside the machine, he began to realise that something had gone wrong. When the machine had arrived in it’s new time, he had found himself greeted by a sudden rush of air and a cold like he had never experienced. The fear reached a new crescendo as he peered out of the window and looked out at the unexpected inky blackness, speckled with millions of pinpricks of light. Then, as the Machine rolled through the void, he saw the Earth, beautifully framed by the window, but horribly distant. His dying thought was the realisation that in his hurry to conquer Time, he’d neglected that other half of the famous continuum – Space.

It's Harder Than You Think

I'm still finding it surprisingly difficult to do that which I know I must - namely to sit down at my computer and just write.
I just can't seem to take that first step to getting words down on paper. I can do all the planning, worldbuilding and character building stuff - have a mountain of it in fact - but when I sit down to write what I've planned, nothing comes.
Take, for example, that fantasy story I told you about. I have a great world to set it in, a main character I really like, and I have a good idea of where the plot is going, but I can't write it.
It starts with my MC, Cornelius, at university, learning to be a mage. I've been to university, I didn't study magic, but I still have a good idea of what it's like to be a student. All it should take is a little imagination to create the feel of being a student in magic. I don't know where to start though.
It's the same with my martial arts guy, Ryan Philips. I'm less certain where the overall story is going in his case, but I have a very good idea of his situation at the start and still nothing comes.
Writer's block they call, but for me it's not just a block, it's a bloody great stone wall, surrounded by a moat with crocodiles and sharks swimming in it.
It's odd, because I get the compulsion to write at the most inconvenient times. I'll be lying in bed, trying to sleep and suddenly feel this overwhelming urge to write and then have to weigh up the pros and cons of sitting up writing or sleeping to enable me to get up for work in the morning. Or I'll be sitting at my desk at work (like I am now) and be so bored of what I'm doing that my characters start coming to life in my head and all but chant 'write me, write me, write me'.
I've made the oath "I will sit down and write tonight" more times than I can count, and have even kept to it for a couple of nights. I suppose what I need is to stop whinging and just get on with it, but it really is harder than you might think. For all the times I've sat down and managed a couple of hours writing, there's been two where I've sat down and achieved nothing.
Ah well - such is life. One thing I do know is that I won't be giving up soon - it's just not an option. I can't get these stories or characters out of my head. One day I will, they'll be out of my head and down on paper. One day.

Okay, rant over...carry on with whatever you were doing.

A New Direction

I’ve decided on a change of focus for this blog. I discovered recently that posting something here is effectively the first publishing of that work, and publishers don’t like things that have been published before. I just used three different variations of the word ‘publish’ in that sentence. And I want to be a writer. Sheesh.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that I don’t want to go publishing (there it is again) all my stuff here and then later find that I can’t sell it. So, instead, I’m going to use this blog to post details of what I’m working on, progress reports, things in the real world that might be affecting my writing and maybe, if you’re lucky, the odd snippet of my work.
So, just what am I working on? Well, at the moment not much. I have several ideas in my head, each vying for my attention and I'm not really sure which to go for first.
There's an action/thriller about a martial artist who goes against the grain and starts kicking criminal butt all over the place. I'm not all that certain exactly where to go with that one. The lead character is a good one, although there's a little too much of me in him for my liking.
I like the premise, basically our guy, Ryan Philips, is sort of like a real life superhero. He doesn't have any special powers, he's just a very good martial artist, oh and clever too (of course, I did say he was like me ;)), so he's more realistic in that sense, but he is in another way too. Unlike Batman, or Superman, or just about any other superhero (except, perhaps, Spiderman), he works against the law. He has to fight the authorities too. Although, because he's the good guy, he can't actually hurt them.
The problem is that I don't really have anything more than that yet, no real plot or story. But I'm working on it. Watch, as they say, this space.
Another idea is a story written from the perspective of a character who has brain damage of some kind, because of an accident, or an illness or something. Inside their head they are fine and can think perfectly normally, but outside, the damage to their brain prevents them from communicating effectively with the rest of the world. This novel is basically my answer to how the brain and the soul can be seperate entities, as religion would have it. The soul - the true 'you' - communicates with the world via the brain. If the brain is damaged, they can no longer communicate.
Then there's the fantasy stuff. One world I'd really like to write about is an advanced magic using world. It's not as easy as it sounds, because I don't want to simply replace the technology we use in this world with magic, I want their magical technology to have advanced along different lines to ours.Again, I don't really have any stories or plots to set in this world, I just really like the idea.
My big project, the one I really really like, is also a fantasy world. I don't want to give too much away here because I hope that some of you will end up test reading it for me, and I don't want you to know the 'big thing' about the world before you do.
This world started off as an attempt to write a novel in the style of an RPG game. If you've ever played Baldur's Gate, you'll know where I'm coming from. In this game, you play a character who goes off on a quest. Along the way you meet people who can join you on your journey, both to help you and to enlist your help with their own quests. When you meet each new character, they have a whole load of backstory that is gradually revealed as you play through the game.
I wanted to do something similair, but I wanted to reveal each of my character's backstories together, not waiting until they met the main character (henceforth referred to as MC). The trouble here was that this would essentially result in my having 6 or more MC's, and therefore 6 or more points of view (POV). This is not a god thing in a novel. It could work if they were all seperated, but I wanted them all together, which would make it hard to get the reader close to any of them.
So I've shelved that idea, but I've kept the world and the characters that I began to develop for it, and they've already begun to give me some good plots.
Too many good plots, in fact, which is one reason I haven't actually done much writing. I just don't know where to start. It's very hard to explain, but all of this stuff is flying around in my head, wanting to get out onto paper, but when I sit down to write, it all disappears. It's like it's shy or something.

As well as using my own brain, I've begun picking a good deal of others too. Firstly I discovered an absolute gem of a website, called Forward Motion: http://fmwriters.com/community/ .
It's basically an online writers' community with forums, tutorial articles, research links and tons of other stuff. I've spent quite a lot of time browsing around the site and have already learned a great deal about the business of writing.
I've also bought a few books on the subject. Self Editing For Fiction Writers is a book written by two professional fiction editors and offers loads of tips on editing your own manuscript before submission. I just finished this one on the way to work, and I really liked it. I don't have a manuscript to edit yet, but it will surely pay to have the editing points in mind when writing.
Writing The Breakout Novel promises advice on how to set your novel apart from all the rest, but since it has yet to arrive, I can't say how well it performs, but it has very good reviews.
On a non-fiction note, I also got How To Be A Freelance Journalist, as this is something I have considered as well as a career. I haven't started reading this one either, but again, it was well received in all of the reviews I read.

The Addiction

2004

“My name is Edmund Wright, and I am an alcoholic.”
As I stood there, addressing the members of the support group, it suddenly struck me how absurd those words sounded. You go to a meeting of an organisation known as ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’, and the first thing you do is to give them your name. Where’s the anonymity? I suppose you could make up a name, no-one would question it, but it is still a label and thus you are not entirely anonymous.
It didn’t really matter to me anyway, I gave my real name, so I wasn’t anonymous, but then I wasn’t really an alcoholic either.
I have a kind of addiction, that much is true, but there are no support groups for my problem, nor are there ever likely to be – it’s not really a problem most people are aware of, let alone accepting of. This was the nearest I would ever get. I looked around the small hall where we met, and imagined everyone replaced by my kind. It amused me to imagine a group of individuals like me huddled together, hugging and congratulating each other on how they had been clean for six months now.
Six months was how long I had been dry and that earned me a round of applause when I told the group. Six months is a long time for an alcoholic to stay dry, for me it had seemed an eternity. It’s odd, for someone of my age to consider six months an eternity, but getting over my problem has been a monumental challenge. A challenge I would not have considered were it not for Ellen.
Ah, Ellen! My inspiration, my love, my saviour. Just picturing her sweet face heartens my soul. Yes, my soul! The soul I once gave up has been returned to me, through Ellen’s love. I am aware of how corny this sounds, but it is entirely true.
When she and I first met, I was a foul, soulless creature, with no morals, caring for nothing and no-one. I was full of evil and, at first, I tried to subvert her, to change her into what I was. Her will was extraordinary and she resisted my every effort to turn her. Eventually, she ended up turning me instead.
She recognised my love for her immediately, or was it simply lust then? It’s hard to say, but whatever it was, she saw it and quickly realised that I would have done anything to have her.
Then she told me that she would kill herself rather than be turned into what I was. I believed her, I had to. The change wouldn’t happen instantaneously, she could well have had enough time to end her life should she have chosen to do so. I couldn’t run that risk, the risk that she would be lost to me forever and, worse, it would be my fault.
Then she announced her intention to cure me, to rid me of the evil, of the addiction, to turn me back to the man I once was. I scorned her, telling her it had never been done and never could be done. She was adamant.
So, to humour her, I let her lock me into a room from which even I would be unable to escape. I was not sure if I would ever leave that room. At the time I thought, like most, that it was more than an addiction, that I actually relied on it for life.
A fortnight later, during which I consumed only normal food and drink once again, Ellen let me out. I was a wreck. She gently nursed me back to health and, as she did so, I slowly felt the evil leaching away, to be replaced by the soul I had thought irretrievably lost.
What came next was as bad as the withdrawal, maybe worse. The guilt. With the evil gone, I had to come to terms with what I had done, all of that evil I had committed over the decades. All of those people, all of that suffering, because of me.
Ellen is helping me through that too. She tells me that I cannot be held accountable for acts committed while under the influence of such a pervasive evil, that it wasn’t really me that did those things, it was the soulless husk of a man.

I am not sure I believe her.

1892

I gave a quick twitch of the reins and the horses responded immediately, turning up through the gates of the Harper Estate in Chelsea, the carriage rattling along after them.
Driving for the Harper family was a good job and I was well provided for. I had my own room in the servant quarters, three hot meals a day and a reasonable wage packet at the end of every week. But I was getting restless,
I wanted adventure, excitement, something a bit less run of the mill than driving a carriage every day. I dreamt sometimes of fleeing to America. I had heard tales of the exploits of cowboys, gunfights at high noon, fighting Indians and so on. How I longed to leave the dreary weather of London, and make a new, thrilling life out west.
But it would remain a dream. Comfortable though I was on my wage, I could never afford the fair to America. So I was doomed to a dreary life of dull, repetitive mediocrity, or so I thought, until I met Natasha.
I met her quite by accident late one evening and immediately decided that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon. She had an exotic, Mediterranean look - dark hair, deep, brown eyes and flawless olive skin. Her accent, when she spoke, backed up that lineage, Spanish or Italian, I have always had trouble discerning the difference.
I was thinking of Natasha that night as I pulled the carriage up to the front door of the old house that the Harpers, and I, called home. Natasha had asked me if I liked to dance. I was entranced and mumbled an affirmative reply, somewhat overawed that such a beautiful creature as this would deign even to speak to me. She told me to meet her later on that night. I felt like I was in one of my dreams of adventure. Natasha seemed to be the kind of woman who could bring me the excitement I sought. Or the trouble I didn’t. I was right on one count anyway.
I met her outside the rear gates of the Harper Estate. I was half expecting her to not turn up, for this all to be some cruel joke at my expense, but show up she did, looking even more radiant than before. We drank and danced the night away, into the small hours of the morning. Then she took me back to the hotel room she was staying in.
We made love on the large, lavish bed in her expensive suite and again I marvelled at how a woman like this could show any interest in a man like me. Then, at the height of our passion, came the bite.
Somehow it didn’t seem strange at all, her sinking her abnormally long teeth into my neck, and greedily drinking in my blood. It was no more out of the ordinary when she nicked her finger with a short blade and offered it to me to drink. Drink I did, until suddenly, fatigue overcame me and I collapsed back onto her bed.
When I awoke the next day, I was alone. The previous night was a bit of a blur, and I was feeling the effects of the alcohol I had drunk. I pulled myself out of bed and threw back the heavy curtains to let in the sunlight.
The pain was extraordinary. Every inch of my skin seemed to be on fire. I fell, screaming, back onto the bed, my entire body racked with a terrible agony, until a shrouded figure burst through the door and pulled the curtains shut again.
The shroud fell away and Natasha stood there.
“That is not for you any more” was all she said, before disappearing back into the siting area of the suite.
The pain was subsiding now, but I still had no answers as to where it had come from, or why it disappeared when Natasha closed the curtains. Nor did I have any idea what was ‘not for me any more’. Then I raised my fingers to where Natasha had bitten me the night before. There were two welts, just over an inch apart, over my jugular vein.
A thought crept into my head. No, surely that was impossible? Such things existed only in horror stories or old folk tales, didn’t they?
As it turns out, of course, such things can and do exist outside of stories. I had been turned into living proof of this.
I fled from Natasha, and from London, that very night. She tried to tell me that what she had done to me was a gift, that I had to understand the benefits of what I now was. I didn’t listen to her, I couldn’t. I knew such things were evil, that she had cursed me with this thing. Then it got worse.
The cravings began. The desperate hunger, the longing need for blood, human blood. As my soul began to depart my body, for that is what happened, I found I needed the essence of others to sustain me. The first time, there was still enough of the old me left for it to repulse me, and I immediately vomited and had to feed again. As the evil took over, however, it got easier and easier, and soon it was as much a part of my life as brushing my teeth. My now elongated teeth.
Later, I tried to find Natasha again, to let her know that I had realised that she had indeed bestowed a great gift upon me. I had discovered, through meetings with others like me, that many of the myths surrounding us are indeed true, although some are old wives tales. We are stronger than the average man, quite a bit stronger actually and, although not quite immortal, we do have a life span considerably longer than most people. We do have reflections, of course, even we can’t get around the laws of physics. The sunlight thing, as I found out to my displeasure, is true. Ellen tells me that this is some sort of hypersensitivity to the UV rays. Garlic is as harmless to us as it is to the next person, although it does give me a bit of wind. Oh, and a wooden stake through the heart will kill me just as dead as the next person.
Although I searched long and hard for Natasha, I would never see her again. I eventually discovered that she had been killed. Although we live long lives, when allowed to, there are those who have devoted their lives to destroying us. One of these people had got to Natasha before I had.
After that, and for nearly 150 years, I roamed the planet, having the adventures I had always dreamed about. Until I met Ellen, and everything changed.

The Present

So, what next? What does the future hold for a reformed vampire? I’ve been thinking long and hard about how I can repay my debt to mankind. About how I can make up for all the people who I have killed over the years.
Thanks to Ellen, I have realised that the need for blood is really nothing more than a craving, a symptom of the disease I contracted from Natasha. I don’t need to take lives, I don’t need to drink blood. I just want to. But no more.
I have retained the strength and the longevity, along with the aversion to sunlight. So whatever I do, it will have to be done after dark.
My thoughts keep straying to a TV show I’ve seen a few times about a vampire cursed with a soul and the guilt of what he has done. To alleviate his guilt, he fights against the evil creatures that most believe are fiction such as vampires, demons and the like. Actually, most of them are fiction, but more than you might think are real. Every now and then I have these romantic ideas of fighting the good fight, as he does, fighting for what is right and protecting the innocent.
Unfortunately, the real world isn’t like that. There is one of me and many of them. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Among humans, I am powerful and able to easily defeat even the strongest, but there are many vampires far stronger than I.
Perhaps I should give it a try anyway, throw my life away in a futile gesture saying ‘look at me, see how good I am’. A noble sacrifice, or a foolish waste? I would be inclined towards the latter.
I have thought also of turning myself in to the authorities. I have committed a lot of crimes in my time, murder, torture, rape. You name it, I’ve probably done it. I could wipe out a substantial proportion of London’s unsolved crimes at a stroke.
But is this not just another futile gesture? It may be, but certainly less so than throwing myself to a certain death. I could offer myself up as proof of the existence of the paranormal, allow experiments for the good of mankind to be performed on my body to give a better understanding of how we vampires are the way we are.
But again, I feel this would, ultimately, be in vain. For one thing, I suspect the powers that be already know about such things as vampires. The people that killed Natasha seemed a little too organised and well funded to be amateurs. I have seen other evidence of governments being behind similar hunts, all around the world.
Besides which, this being the government, they’d only mess it up. Arguments over whose jurisdiction it would be, which department should get to do the examination and so on.
I remember speaking once to one of those I called friends in the old days. He was speaking about the relative roles of Good and Evil in the world. He argued that Good and Evil were essentially the same thing, each seeking the eradication of the other. He said that, like Evil, Good sought to fight against the enemy it had made in Evil. He spoke as if they were two nation states arguing over a common border, a dispute that has been going for so long that no-one is able to remember who started it, or who is in the right.
At the time I believed him. I had chosen my side, or had it thrust upon me at any rate, and I was quite willing to believe any argument that agreed with that choice.
Now I can see the fundamental difference between Good and Evil. Good does it’s fighting as a result of the actions of it’s enemy. An evil creature, such as I was, will pre-emptively strike against those weaker than itself, no matter how innocent they are. A good creature on the other hand, will merely retaliate against threats to itself or against those dear to it.
So this has to be what I do with my life from now on. I must take my inspiration from that which is Good, and retaliate against evil in the world. But haven’t I just stated that I am unable to do anything against such forces? That emulating the TV character would, ultimately, be a futile gesture?
Yes, but not all evil things are stronger than me. There are many men out there, normal men, who thieve, rape, abuse, assault, and commit all manner of other crimes. These I can do something about.
In fact, I already have. There is currently a man sitting in the local police station, giving dubious stories about a man moving faster than a speeding bullet, wresting the gun from his hands and bending it in half. The man is wanted for several armed robberies and for questioning in relation to a shooting that left one man dead and another on life support.
Oh, and for the record, no I didn’t move faster than a speeding bullet, the man simply had tectonically slow reactions.
So this was the course I chose to follow, this is how I intended to repay my enormous debt to society. But it seems it hasn’t been enough. Some people simply cannot forgive. I can’t say I blame them; it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to believe that someone with my history can change.
They have the house surrounded now and it is surely only a matter of time now until they break in. Ellen, bless her, is downstairs, attempting to persuade them that she has changed me, that I am now capable of acts of good, but I doubt very much that it will do any good.
And so I leave this document, my final words, as a sort of testimony, proof – if they are believed – of my change, of what Ellen did for me. I hope that someone will read these words and see that removing evil is not such a forlorn hope, it can be done.
From the sounds I can hear from downstairs, they have broken in and I have but moments to convey this, my final wish, if I am deserving of such a thing. I merely ask that anyone reading this at least takes the time to consider the possibility of it’s veracity. That is all I ask, that you consider it and come to your own conclusions without leaping to them.

Thank you and goodbye

Edmund Wright

Some Drabbles

Here are some drabbles (these are stories of exactly 100 words, no more, no less) that I have written:

The sounds of battle raged around him, the Axis troops were close to breaking the Allied defenses. He knew he would be dead soon.

Hidden away, he gripped the gun tight to his chest. He could smell the oil he’d used to clean it earlier that morning, and the faint whiff of cordite from the last time he’d fired it, back at the range.

After some time, he raised the gun and, blinking tears from his eyes, slowly squeezed the trigger.

As the bullet blew the back of his skull open, the TV turned to static.

The battle was over.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, it was finished. Stepping into the Time Machine, he pondered where to go. Or, rather, when to go.

Not wanting to upset Time too much on his first trip, he decided to start small, a concert he’d missed last month. No harm in that, right?

He set the controls and hit the big red button, he’d had to have a big red button to make it go.

Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. He looked around, but could see nothing outside. Then, Earth, beautiful, but tiny, far in the distance. In his hurry to conquer Time, he’d forgotten all about space.

When I finally get around to writing stuff, I'll post it here for review