So don’t read your reviews. Sooner or later you will have one of those moments of lonely (possibly drunken) solipsism which led to you irretrievably embarrassing yourself on the internet.

When our people’s paths diverged, the road mine were forced down was not a pleasant one, but what it made of us is not something  that you can now discard or repaint in your own image. We are not you, neither do we long to be you. We have our own story, it has given us our names and our language and our songs, and much as I am pained by how we were crippled by it, I will not have you make me ashamed of what I am. That would be another way of allowing you own me, I think, and I no longer have any desire to be owned.

Quartered: WiP 13/05/2013

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.

(a recent discussion on FB brought this poem back to my mind. It has been many years since I first encountered it. It moves me still. Its emotion and honesty chills my spine and tightens my gut.)

Billy Stewart’s wonderful, scat-tastic, samba-ish version of Summertime.

I DARE you not to shake your hips.

I’ll certainly be putting up bits and pieces of art work, and also any news that comes along re the UK/US  publication of Into the Grey or the released date for Resonance, but other than that, it’ll be a little quiet around here for the next while or so.

For now, big hugs and see you around FB or Twitter.

xox

Shhhhh… don’t tell my daughter, but this is a detail from her 19th birthday cake. I’m only showing a little detail because the entire cake is to be a surprise (not that she reads my blog anyway! But just in case!) If you want to see the whole thing, with an explanation of the picture, go here)

The Hollow Men

- T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I’m so horribly behind in answering my fan-mails. Seriously I should be shot. I can only apologize (again), and promise (again) that I’ll catch up soon. BUT I got two separate messages this morning that so filled me with glee and pride and triumph that I had to pause what I’m doing and very quickly share.

First was an e-mail from a fourteen year old Australian reader (Madeleine) who wrote to let me know that, due to how Christoper speaks to Wynter in the Moorehawke books, she now has ‘very very high expectations of boys‘

Second was from a reviewer in America who wrote to tell me that her daughter had come home and told her:

“So this kid in my class was being sexist… he said I’m a girl so I either have to get married and have babies or be a crazy cat lady. So I told him, ‘I am not a slave to my belly, so f**k off!’ And you know where I got that from? Moorehawke!”

I was so proud of my girl  Thanks for the positively feminist influence on my preteen!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am with these messages. Wynter and Christopher’s support for each other and the concerted effort they continue to make in understanding and accommodating each other’s differences through out the books was so important to me and to the underlying themes of the Moorehawke trilogy – it thrills me when I find I’ve done it right.

We all want what we want from a fictional romance and there is no ‘one size fits all’ but in Moorehawke I wanted to portray two very different people who bring their own disparate yet complimentary strengths and experiences to a relationship and in so doing improve each other’s lives.  In so many stories of young love there is what is, for me, an unfortunate tendency to portray romance as being heightened and improved by conflict. It is as if the only way to prove that two people like each other is to show them fighting. As if somehow conflict and a struggle for dominance rather than support and communication are the vital ingredients in the recipe for true love (I dislike in particular the trope of a patient and accepting woman ‘reforming’ a surly male character into a ‘good husband’) To me conflict is naturally part of any relationship, its just not a ‘romantic’ part.

Wynter and Christopher’s love is based on their compatibility. It doesn’t manifest itself through displays of  jealousy or prove itself via struggles over who can take the most abuse and keep on coming back for more. It is – as I have said – all about two very different people learning from each other’s experiences and combining strengths to build a relationship which not only nurtures but also supports and encourages the growth and changes necessary as they move forward together through their often difficult lives.

That, of course, and teasing, and kissing, and hugs, and sex and laughter and all the truly great stuff that comes when you’re comfortable and happy with the person you love and trust. Hurrah for true love, hurrah for supportive partners, hurrah for romance! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!