(I was thrilled to win an award voted on by readers, the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award, and as I was not present for the awards ceremony I want to thank all those who voted and gave me the chance to speak about An Outsider Inside and why I wrote it.)

I would have received this award from Rachel Gold which to me is the most fitting coincidence as she was my alpha editor as we decided she would be called, and the book is what it is because of her. As I've said to her, thank you is inadequate.

When I was a child, I lived in Nigeria. I dug a hole in the ground near our house which was on a school campus in Oyo, in the southern tropical part of the country, so the soil was rich and dark. But there were no trees on our plot, just the exuberant garden of banana and papaya, and pineapple and whatever else my dad managed to grow. I don't know if I would have built a treehouse even if there'd been a tree available. I was a reserved, introverted, mostly quiet child in a pretty loud family.

I am a brown lesbian woman who has had the good fortune to have lived amongst and known a wide variety of people in many countries. While I was blessed to have a good education, I had no formal learning in social studies or politics so I spent most of my time observing and experiencing, but unwilling to speak out too loudly in case I didn't use the right words, the often required complicated words that I find now more often mask simple truths and serve to divide.

An Outsider Inside explores some difficult and diverse issues; narcissistic abuse in relationships, racism in Ireland, homophobia in Indian society, transphobia basically everywhere… How we exclude others even as we tout our inclusivity because of our supposed shared understanding of the pain of exclusion.

Some of the issues explored are from personal experience. I have been surrounded by narcissism and other variations on the spectrum of personality disorders. So for anyone who has experienced this, you will understand when I say my personal learning and life really only truly began in the last few years when I became aware of the effects of those disorders on the recipients.

This is beginning to sound like the start of a joke. What do you get when a bisexual, a person of color, a narcissistic abuse survivor, and a trans person all walk into the karaoke bar at a lesbian fiction conference? The answer should be nothing special. You pull up a few chairs at the table, and life, the singing, and the conversation go on as normal.

Back to the karaoke. Winning the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award is most important to me because, for a brief moment, the microphone gets shoved into my hand and I have the chance to share a song about my friends so that they can live with a little less pain if the audience recognizes them as fellow human beings. But I can't tell all their stories in one speech so I get to say their names – Jaya, Ishmael, Isabella, Lana, Chloe, Zara. They are not real people, but they are real lives.

To go back to that child in Nigeria. I built a hole in the ground that was my version of a treehouse. It even had little mud shelves and seating. That's where I played, alone, many nights, apart from the imaginary companions I gained from the pages of the books I read.

I realized my story is about a young child sitting in a makeshift home in the ground talking to a dirt wall. So while the book is the reason I'm speaking right now, the child is the reason I write. Not to be heard only by a real or imagined audience, but to be heard by that child, to say to that child that the only audience that matters in the end is you and you will never be lonely again if you remember that and you hear that true voice.

So this audience I gained through this award is important not in the group but in the individual who might hear my voice and recognize their own. To those that question, that is the importance of an award.

Thank you.

I find strange ways to silence my voice. I’m working on finding out why, but a mix of factors - personal, familial, cultural, societal – contribute so that when I feel the need to express my bewilderment or anger at a set of structures and rules, I write realms in my mind and those words join the millions of others gathered over a life of mostly quiet observation. The young words push into the decreasing memory space, they watch the older ones fall off the edges, they turn back to face the outside, next time, next time she writes, next time she opens her mouth, we’ll be there, armed with the courage to jump.

One of the strangest ways I find to silence myself is to write a novel. I’m almost guaranteed to imprison those words again, when they’re armed and organized, their desperation cloaked in the quiet politeness of a novel that now needs to fit in to yet another set of structures and rules, those of the ‘publishing’ world where we argue about punctuation, editing, design, creating a brand, finding an agent, the correct way to (not) respond to a personal attack in a review, how to market, how to sell, how (not) to make money, until the energy of those words is depleted, the mind silenced again by the sheer distance of the fall.

I moved to the US for the chance to be in a country where my skin color would not immediately label me. I have to laugh now at my naivety, ending up in a situation where I hesitate to leave my house, because I’m now a brown person walking, where I set my navigation app to alert me if I go even a few miles above the speed limit, because I’m now a brown person driving. The words are gathering, but they will probably slip out in disguise, for the moment, until I am an American citizen.

I hesitate to comment on things going on in Ireland as I don’t live in the middle of it now and I can only find out about it through the filter of the news here (very filtered) and my Facebook friends (possibly an echo chamber, but pierced by hate-filled comments on open threads). I know there’s a debate going on in Ireland about an Irish-born brown person. I know that are many other aspects to the situation, not just the color of his skin. I read the comments on a post about the situation. I felt the same sickening in my gut when I read the lines and between the lines. I only have 30 years of living in Ireland and being an Irish citizen, I don’t have the ‘born in Ireland’ tag, that you can glance at on the collar of a white Irish person’s shirt (on any white person’s shirt). Brown skin is the first handy label, it obscures the ‘Made in Ireland’ for both those who were made there and those who were formed there.  I can only imagine what it feels like to be ‘not Irish’ even though you were born and raised in Ireland. I know what it feels like to agree inside with the Irish friends who helpfully explained that I could never really be Irish. In the same way I knew from a young age that I would never be Nigerian despite being born there. I was Indian, however, until I gave up my Indian citizenship to become an Irish citizen, and in my inner thoughts over the years, I stopped being the Indian I had been and found myself absorbing Irishness, the charm, the humor, the beauty, the warmth, as well as the insularity, and the training that looked at a non-white person and just ‘knew’ they were not Irish.

I wrote a book about an Indian-Irish woman who was born in Ireland, partly because I didn’t want to justify the expectation I felt that I might ever be considered Irish, even by myself, and partly because I wanted her story to speak to the white Irish who can at least allow the unfairness of mentally refusing Irishness to a non-white person who was born in Ireland, even one with a white Irish parent.

Arm out, I held back the hordes of my other words, maybe the next time, the next time I write, the next time I open my mouth, my own story will be there, armed with the courage to jump.

Here are two extracts from ‘An Outsider Inside’ that I’ve picked out, but really the whole book is about labels and fitting in, in whatever society surrounds us.

Prologue

~ 1 ~

Dublin, Ireland. 2012

The shove on my spine was rougher than expected in the jostling, but cheerful, crowd.

I spun round.

He was a typical fecking lesbian-hater. Even had a handwritten ‘No Women Screwing Unless I’m Watching’ sticker on his metal-covered leather jacket. At a Pride march.

I moved towards him, anger outweighing fear. My head came up to his pierced nipples, inches from the swastika tattoo hidden in the jumble of skulls, crossbones, and chest hair. The smell of armpits and the stale sweat of beer on his beard invaded my nostrils.

I took comfort in the gardai I’d noticed about 20 feet away, standing in a group, bantering with the crowd. A female guard who’d eyed me up earlier, now turned, her interest piqued by the altercation.

I glared up at him. “Did you push me?” Raised my voice. “Did you fecking push me?”

He grinned, and I flinched at the stench of his breath. I glanced to the side again, almost wet my pants. Where were the cops? I couldn’t see them on the crowded sidewalk. Too late to back down now. Fecker couldn’t shove me, and get away with it, not here, not now, not with thousands of us marching to be seen and heard.

He said, aiming the comment at the guy beside him, “A fucking loudmouth lesbian.” An English accent. Didn’t think my blood could boil.

“Yes, a lesbian.” Looking him straight in his red-stained eyes, I said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yeah, bitch.” He towered over me. My gut crawled into my chest. Fear and anger had clumped into an adrenaline-soaked ball in my stomach. Where were the women? The fading chants of my group dissolving into the crowd of marchers answered that.

Where was the guard? I risked a glance to where the cop in her now welcome navy uniform had been. There! Two uniforms, pushing through the bodies.

My eyes flicked to his.

His mouth twisted into a snarl. “Not just lesbian, a bastard mulatto.”

The matching, but bigger, companion snorted from his right. “Which one of your parents was the black bugger?”

The first thug leaned in, inflamed eyeballs receding under heavy lids. “Bet a pound twas a dirty black fucker fucked your cheap white mother.”

The fear got swallowed up in the old dark cloud that rose from my heart, fogged my brain. I screamed above the noise. “He was an Indian motherfucker and she is a gorgeous Irish woman who’d eat you English Nazi bastards for breakfast.”

The cops barked warnings, getting louder as they neared, but I yelled into the angry face above me. “Hope you get what’s coming to you in our Irish jail tonight.”

He swung. I ducked and his fist and arm ploughed through the male cop. I leaped to my left as the female cop’s baton crashed down on the thug’s skull, felt a pinch on my jacket as I fell past the other Nazi.

A few colleagues surrounded her, their batons ready, but the thug was out cold and his buddies backed away.

“Are you okay?” Her voice held more concern than required, seeing as I’d escaped and her partner had taken the blow.

Time crawled by on its knees.

I nodded.

Grinned up at the cute cop.

She knelt. “Don’t worry, there’s an ambulance coming.”

“Why?” The word trudged off my tongue. My mind wandered, not sure where.

Gentle hands on my clothes, my lapel badges clicking through the buzz in my ears.

I looked along my body.

Darkness crept out in a circle on the pocket of my pink jacket. Chloe had given it to me a long time ago, but she’d only gone last month.

My hand fretted at the stain, fighting a strange, uncaring, gravity. I squinted at my fingertips. Crimson blurred from six of them.

The breeze touched my brow, chilly on wet skin. I shivered.

The cute cop’s hair shone above me, a dark halo against the sun.

My throat protested, muscles tired, but the words needed out. “My name is Jaya Dillon. I am a lesbian. I am Irish-Indian. I have the right to walk the streets of my country.”

Her eyes were kind. “Yes, you do.” She smiled, held my blood-splattered hand, the only part of me that felt warm. “How bout doin that without pissin off the nut jobs who’d beat up anyone who’s different?”

I wasn’t sure if my lips arrived at a smirk though my cheek muscles started the journey. “Wouldn’t be as much craic now, would it?”

The bursts of a siren picking its sluggish path through the throngs pierced her surprised laugh as the light faded from my day.

Edited Extract (to avoid spoilers as this passage appears twice in the book in different ways) –

“I dropped out of the womb of an Irish-American banished to Ireland by her white family, onto an Irish hospital bed so that gave me the Irish part, the shocking sight of my darker than expected skin and hair lessened slightly (and a little later) by eyes, all of me darkened by the genes of an Indian student visiting New York then gone, lightened by my mother’s pale blonde blue gave the nurses and my mother’s extended family pause before condemnation, gave me a chance in the depths of seventies rural Ireland, a tanned baby rather than the black babies they were instructed to be charitable to, but who’d never drop into their midst, who’d never be one of them.

My mother’s fierce protectiveness, fierce as a lioness who knows her cub is unique, damaged, different, special, beautiful, would inspire unwelcome feelings in the village, even the good feelings uncomfortable, who wants change, but the lioness banned from the wild for being too wild was not going to be tamed by the laws of rural life. She flowed through, her cub in tow, demanding the glory for having produced such an exotic seed. And the family and village, dazzled by her leonine charm, opened their hearts to the bedraggled cub who didn’t officially know she was not full lion, more half-lion, half-tiger.

I was occasionally reminded of my difference, not by accuracy, but by the chants that followed the Travellers when they stopped by the village. I look more like one of them, the easy-tan skin, the dark-blonde hair, and amber eyes glowing with the same wildness no matter how much I kept it hidden under the required tameness of me.

I’m ashamed I didn’t stand up for the Travellers, not that they needed my help and I didn’t add to the chants, but inside I found myself counting the ways I was Indian-Irish or Irish-Indian and the ways I was special rather than different, oh, your hair is so thick and lush, your eyes, holy jesus, they are something else that colour, you lucky thing, you get such a nice tan, no fecking freckles on you.

See, that’s my Indian side. Though the impression most of the village had of Indians was the roaming Sikh salesmen so I guess I was an itinerant to them, anyway. I hadn’t yet seen, and neither had they, the explosion of medical and scientific staff from India and Pakistan, the gentrification of the Indian image in Ireland took place in towns and cities out of view of my child eyes and happened only in my twenties when I was away from the rural, when I was in the urban of Galway, when I creaked and groaned with the growing pains of modern Ireland, growing, but yet unable to graft new shades of skin, unable to see beyond into the Irishness of birth, of soul, of thought, of presence. There were scales everywhere. I felt sorry for the blackest of the Irish born here, but never Irish to the Irish; the half-skinned, born here, but considered a curiosity, a half image of Irish; and the light-skinned right-blooded, not born here, but Irish by heritage, a full image of Irish, but still not full Irish to the Irish.

There are years and years of Irishness I don’t get to claim as there are years and years of Indianness I don’t get to claim either, except in my genes, but all they produce are the features that give me access, the legal right to be present. They don’t give me the key to the Irish and certainly not to the Indian. They give me a door to the displaced, the window on the itinerant passing by, who at least belongs in his own world of motion.”

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of blog posts recording the journey of bringing one of my visions to life.

It's a long story as to how I got here, to this point.
It involves (in part):
Ten moves in three years,
eleven losses in eleven years, the latest two in the space of four months,
different jobs, sick buildings, veterinary hospitals, diverse landscapes, extreme climates,
new friends, new stories, new loves.
And a constant dream, re-imagined.

I’m taking stock now. Dreaming, planning, sending out visions.
Recovering, taking a breath, mourning.

I’ve gotten through the last few years unconsciously relying on writing, moving, making new connections. In the last year, I’ve used a more conscious approach with counseling, therapy, painting, writing, resting, friends, karaoke, improv…

Every day is pierced with unwelcome memories and microscopic chaos. With gratitude, pain, fear, depression, silence, anxiety, joy, love, friendship, laughter, gratitude, always gratitude.

The depth of layered emotions is daunting. So most of the time I skim the surface, deal with the ripples, bob gently, return to calm. Occasionally, I delve deeper, one dive, touching the indigo. Always resurfacing, changed, sometimes gasping for breath, other times quiet, aware, floating. Remembering when I was being taught the mechanics of swimming, that how I finally felt secure was by learning how to float, knowing that I could switch onto my back and float and I would be fine.

Right now, I’m floating on the surface, looking at the sky and clouds drifting, dreaming my vision of what I will create next. This place I have felt at the edges of my soul for as many years as it has been aware.
Home.
Community.
I’ve dreamt it, talked it, skirted it, faced it. Now I build it.
And record the journey.

In the last year, I managed to stumble onto land, a house to be restored, a lake here and to come, wildlife including the biggest bugs I’ve ever encountered…

Yesterday, I got a name, booked the domain, designed a logo.

No concrete plans yet, just a wisp and a vision about what a part of the destination will include: sanctuary, gentle social interaction, nature, wildlife, reading, writing, painting, fishing, walking, hiking, pets, gardening, cooking, yoga, massage, meditation, improv, life coaching, book clubs, pool, singing, games, movies, and more…

Next step: Planning a lake and garden :-)

Thanks to the cool women at Women and Words!

Guest Blogging at Women and Words

Have a read, and leave a comment to win an eCopy of A Place Somewhere.

This is my contribution to the "blog tour" game going around the Internet (#Mywritingprocess). Authors blog about their writing process and then tag someone else to do the same. I was tagged by Sandra Moran, an author I'm very happy to have met recently and whose book 'Letters Never Sent' was the first full-length novel I've read in ages. It was definitely worth breaking my fiction reading block for this excellent book. See her blog post here.

1. What am I working on?

I released my fourth novel ‘A Place Somewhere’ in March (along with a song for the book), and promised myself a break to deal with moving from Ireland to America. However, as seems to happen every time I finish a novel, another one bubbles to the surface.

So now I’m working on the third in the Vision Painter series. I I have an outline worked out and the characters have been talking away to me on my many walks with Clio through my new (temporary) neighborhood.

I’m still at that early stage where decisions can shape the whole outcome. As they say, every journey of a thousands steps begins with one step. If that step sets the novel off in the direction of the East instead of West, it will end up completely different. I find that thought exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.

Falling Colours and Casting Shadows (the first two books in the Vision Painter series) were quite different from each other, and I enjoyed both in different ways. Falling Colours introduced the unique concept of vision painting and its power while Casting Shadows delved into the origins and secrets of the profession.This, as yet untitled, sequel will focus more on the beauty of the unique concept of vision painting, and its future. And there will still be love, pain, deception, and a few twists along the way. Kiran has to face a whole new set of challenges, including a new vision painter in town.

2. How does my work differ from others in the same genre?

I‘d be a lot more able to answer this question if I knew in what genre I wrote and so counted as the ‘same genre’.

I don’t really write by genre. I write the story I need to tell, and everyone’s story is different. I draw from my diverse background as an Indian, born in Nigeria, living for many years in Ireland, and with all my family in America. From my educational and career background as a doctor, an IT person, a restaurant/bar owner, a writer. Even from my brief experiences in summer jobs as chambermaid, inventory clerk, pizza cutter, physiotherapy assistant, flower-stall ‘manager’. From my interests, my daily life, my loves, my failures, my successes.

My work will always, therefore, be different from the work of other writers in any genre. In the same way that their stories will be different from mine.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I write to find out what I believe, what I feel, what life is about, what love is about. To answer the many questions that I have. I write characters who are not me, but they allow me to live in them, to see what could happen in another world, to achieve a temporary sense of control, to say and do what I should have, to make sense of what others do.

I’ve always been an introvert and sometimes, in the past, I’ve lived through my avid reading. Since I started writing stories, I have lived in the minds of many different characters. I’ve had their voices playing in my head. In those years, there have only been a few weeks, between projects, where I’ve woken up to just my voice, to the ‘reality’ of a life where none of us has any control. The sensible advice would probably be to ‘get out more’, but I feel less alone by having the capacity to live in those parallel lives, to have the company of my ‘imaginary friends’ as well. And sometimes I discover things in my characters or my fictional worlds that help me in my ‘real’ life.

4. How does my writing process work?

I’d love to be able to answer that now in the same way that I did for a blog post months ago or years ago. But it has changed again. My writing process seems to be changing along with me, as I grow and learn.

I still work along the basic lines of - get an idea (or get hit on the head with an idea), develop the idea into a concept by asking ‘what if’ questions, work out an outline, design the architecture of the story, write the scenes. I edit as I write, so the next step for me is to get the manuscript to trusted beta readers and see if there is anything that isn’t working for them.

What has mostly changed for this novel are the mechanics of writing. I’m not at my usual writing spot, with my usual PC/laptop. (I’m supposed to be learning MAC programming so I’m now Windows-less and that’s a big change after so many years). When I wrote longhand, it was on the back of old typed printouts of my previous novels. Now I’m carrying around a purple ruled notepad that I stole from my nephew’s collection for school. I try to keep the notepad near me, but usually get whole conversations playing out in my head while I’m on my many walks with Clio (I know, I know, I’m repeating myself, but she really has become very demanding). The walks can be very good for percolating, and I’ve managed to come back from them and get a few conversations down on paper. Which is another change that I noticed from the last few months of writing ‘A Place Somewhere’. I’m writing down more conversations between characters and then building scenes around them.

The best analogy I can think of for my writing process is that of a train. I decide that I’m going to take a journey, I pick my departure and destination and construct a railway line with stations along the way. I create the scenes as compartments of the train. While all of that might seem very structured and mechanical, I need it to keep on track. I invite the characters on the journey and give them the freedom to be themselves within the compartments. They can have a riotous party or they can talk quietly amongst themselves. There are times when I’ve caught them running along the roof of the carriages whooping and hollering, but ultimately we all remain on the train and it is up to me to keep them on board and drive that thing to the destination.

At the moment, with the WIP, I have gathered everyone together for the journey and I’m laying out the tracks. I wrote the Prologue (got too excited about writing again and jumped ahead of myself), but I’m not allowing anyone on board until I’ve figured out the journey. Some characters have already started to have conversations on the platform, so I’m taking notes. With everything that is going on in my life, they’re going to have to be patient..

I'm tagging Caren Werlinger, author of Looking Through Windows, Miserere, In This Small Spot, and Year of the Monsoon. Her newest release, She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things, will be available in May. You can find out more about her work at www.cjwerlinger.wordpress.com.

I'm also tagging Kate McLachlan, author of RIP Van Dyke, Rescue at Inspiration Point, Hearts,Dead and Alive, and Murder and the Hurdy Gurdy Girl. Her latest book, Return of an Impetuous Pilot, was released in March 2014. Please check her out at http://www.katemclachlan.com.

And last, but certainly not least, I'm tagging my best hugger :-) Tonie Chacon McLachlan, wife of Kate McLachlan, and author of Struck! A Titanic Love Story which is being published in April 2015. http://www.toniechacon.homestead.com.

Going to add another tag :-)

I'm tagging Suzie Carr, author of Staying True, Inner Secrets, The Fiche Room, Tangerine Twist, A New Leash on Life, The Muse - A Novel of Romance and Discovery, and Two Feet off the Ground. Her latest release, The Journey Somewhere is now available. Find out more at http://curveswelcome.com.

It’s a dog eat dog world

Me: So what would you like to eat today?

Clio: I’ve a choice? Is that diet you have me on optional?

Me: Not really. But I heard something the other day and I wanted to make sure.

Clio: So this blog post is about you? I knew it. How long has it been? I mean, this has got to be Day 500 or something.

Me: I’ve been a little busy…I did do some writing, you know.

Clio: Oh, I know. I mean seven blog posts on your trip to PTown.

Me: I did a lot there.

Clio: Was I there..?

Me: No…

Clio: Right. So this blog post is about you again?

Me: No, no, we’ll get back to you. How would you like them served?

Clio: What served?

Me: The doggies you’ll be eating.

Clio: What?!

Me: Well, I heard it is a dog eat dog world.

Clio: So you thought I’d like roast leg of Labrador?

Me: They say babies are very tender..

Clio: Roast Leg of Labrador Puppy??

Me: You’re on a raw food diet. No roasting. Tell me, if I brought the puppy in here, would you mind awfully if I left it to you to do the necessary?

Clio: Wait, wait.. I see what you’re up to. Are we adopting a puppy? Because if we are, I’ve got to make sure you and the little tot understand the ground rules.

Me: We're not. Ahem.. I think I’m the one who should be making the rules.

Clio: As I was saying.. One, there are no vacancies for King or Queen. Those are arbitrary words. Just because my title is Princess does not, I repeat, not, mean that any royalty extends to anyone else in the house.

Me: I thought I was –

Clio: No input really necessary. Just write.

Me: Right..

Clio: Two, any time involved in the upkeep of a puppy must not be subtracted from the time spent on me.

Me: But you are a full-time job…

Clio: Three, the puppy must be trained properly from the start. A few steps behind me is fine when we’re out in public. In the house, there’s a spot in the hallway that I’m not all that fond of, it can have that.

Me: But –

Clio: Four, boys only. We both know from experience what havoc females can cause.

Me: Anything else?

Clio: Something might occur to me after you type all that out.

Me: Right. So, I guess you wouldn’t want to eat the puppy..? You know, dog eat dog world…you’re a dog, it’s a dog..

Clio: I’m a dog?

I am thrilled to announce that my fourth novel, ‘A Place Somewhere’, is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

How far would you go? Would you lie to protect the innocent?
ALEX HART risked everything to be with her online girlfriend of two years and moved from Ireland to America. But the unthinkable happened and she is emotionally and financially ruined. Devastated, she turns her anger and betrayal into a mission to root out those who deceive the innocent online.
When a mother pleads for Alex to protect her daughter from an online predator in Ireland, Alex must become what she hates.
How far will she go before losing herself in her own web of deception?

A Place Somewhere on Amazon.com
A Place Somewhere on Amazon.co.uk
A Place Somewhere on Smashwords

It arrived earlier than expected and the song of the same name that was to be released with it is only going to be recorded on Thursday and should be available on iTunes etc by Friday.

After receiving a bit of a hammering from life, my muse has been committed to The Home for the Temporarily Bewildered and Perpetually Confused. She smuggles occasional words out, written on tiny scrolls and hidden in the middle of cupcakes, but I get distracted eating the cupcakes...

Well that’s my excuse anyway for only being 30,000 words into my novel which I’d planned to publish this month.

I’m not all that upset about not writing at the moment. My life took another one of its many turns after my last blog post; that vulnerable (unusually for me), painful, honest bunching together of words that had me terrified to press the Publish button. Part of the resulting change was due to the actual writing of the post, but the major part was down to the responses I received in the comments and in emails. I want to thank those people who took the care and time to reach out. The words you sent were very helpful and the action you took meant even more.

What I was especially glad about was that there was no negativity and not one person advised me to look with gratitude at all the good things I did have in my life. Which made me do that on my own volition. The day after all the responses was a beautiful day in Ireland. I sat in the sun and thought about a lot of things. And the things that flooded into my mind were all positive. All the tiny and huge blessings in my life, from the smile I felt in my heart listening to the sun-baked dog snoring beside me to the astonishingly long list of positives in my life. I had meant to write out the pain in whatever words I could find, as an exercise in releasing it, and I ended up writing out all those good things. And I asked for what I felt was missing.

My life has changed since then. In a multitude of good ways. Most of the things I asked for have come into my life, definitely not in the context I meant, but in ways that are good enough. In fact, they are more than ‘good enough’, they are stunningly brilliant ( :-) I’m not normally an effusive person when it comes to praise so I’m trying to be better at that). And I’m taking the time to address the negative as it happens and to look for the positives and be grateful. It is working, in that the things that are happening are mostly positive, but also in the sense that I’m different in what and how I see.

About a week after I wrote that blog post. I watched a talk on TEDTalks about how we have all changed someone’s life, usually without even realizing it. I wanted to share that video with all the people who responded with helpful advice, a hug, an email, and to let them know that they are now heroes in my life and join the many people who have contributed in positive ways to help me get to where I am now i.e. blessed.

There are ‘small’ things that people do that affect others in ways they cannot even imagine. I read that it is a myth that when you land in quicksand, you sink to the bottom and die. Instead, you are stuck and are more likely to starve or die of dehydration or be drowned in a high tide. That the best way to survive is to try to float and if you have a strong stick you should get it under your back to support you and gradually start to move your feet and work your way out. At that bad time when my mind felt fractured and I was unable to do more than just float in quicksand, an almost stranger reached out and held a stick under my back. She did that by emailing every day, checking on me, supporting me, encouraging me to write if I could or not write if I couldn’t, and sometimes even just posting something for me or standing in the way of anyone who I couldn’t deal with. She didn’t have to do any of that, I was just a newbie author whose books she had reviewed and liked. But she opened a channel to me and flooded it with positive thoughts. She knows who she is (as I still bore her as much as possible with updates on my life :-) ), but I’m not sure she will want a public thank you (being all British and shy and stuff) so instead, have a look at her blog page and know, if you didn’t before, that’s she’s a wonderful person and the kind of friend you want to have watching your back.

I also have to mention a ‘little’ thing that a well-established much-loved author did that affected me deeply. I don’t usually comment much on Facebook, unless it is something to do with Clio, as I’m really quite introverted. However, when this author was featured in a weekend discussion on a Facebook group I just had to comment as she is also an introvert and I admire the way she handles the public part of her life. That she turned out to be a thoroughly nice person and that she was genuine and kind to me, exactly the type of person I had gotten the impression that she would be, was comforting and reaffirmed that sometimes reality matches up with the imagined image.

I’m mentioning these things because it is important that people know that even the little things they do can be life-changing for someone. I used to think that I couldn’t accept these acts of kindness without paying them back, but I’ve realised that rather than worry about paying it back when I may not be able, I need to pay it forward when I am.

The question that I asked of readers at the end of the last blog post was whether writers should write novels that explored the darkness while in the depths of darkness themselves. What I realised from the responses was that the question was not the right one, or at least it wasn’t the right one for me at that time. I will explore that issue and find the answer as I write the novel. What I know now is that my writing will always be authentic for who I am at the point in time that I write the words. And what I have discovered in my writing is that I am, and always need to be, someone who will search for the positive, the humour, and the light, even when I am in the depths of darkness. So when my eyes can’t see light, I need to wait until my heart can feel it and then the words with become clearer and the darkness will lose some of its power to blind me. In other words, there will always be good and positive people out there and I need to see that the rainbow of light they shine into my life will replace the colours that one person stole from my palette, until I am able to shine brighter for myself and hopefully for others.

When someone has stolen the bright colours from your palette, do you paint with what is left? Does smearing your greys and blacks onto a canvas help anyone, but you?

Before a few months ago, I could access the hurt, the pain, the fear, and I could pour it into fiction, even the worst of all the bad things that happened- watching my mother’s breath being switched off, hearing the silence after and knowing that space would never be filled again, I could put it into a novel, a story about a woman that wasn’t me, despite the obvious similarities. I could put all the bad that has happened, that has been done to me, that I have done, and make my characters do the same, and watch karma pay it all back by the end of the book.

What could be worse than losing your dearest loved ones? Losing yourself? Your belief in love and goodness and karma, in the idea that everything will be all right in the end. I am not an overly religious person despite, or probably because of, having a priest as a father.  I don’t believe in the organisation of faith. I believed that if we figure out what we really want from life, we can paint that into existence. And I did, and still to a certain extent, believe that there must be more than what is visible. I was sitting in a church a few days ago, a stopgap, a quiet place to wait for an interview that could change my future, and I felt the heaviness of silence and asked the question that weighed heaviest on my mind in that moment. “What decision do I make, what path is the right one?” The one that doesn’t lead me to fall off a cliff. Because my previous decisions have left me stranded at the bottom, broken and unable to take more than a few steps in any direction, unsure whether there are more cliff edges to come and where they are.

The unsettling answer I got back very clearly was that there was no pre-ordained path. That I write my life myself in every moment. That I could choose security or adventure. That nothing is written anywhere that says I will not fall off the cliff again. Nothing is written that says I will not feel that betrayal, that hurt, that absolute depth of pain that comes when you place your foot on what appears to be solid ground and out of nowhere there is nothing but an abyss, into which you fall mostly bewildered, until the ground that was solid and firm beneath you is now actually the hard surface against which you smash and break.

I broke my ankle about ten years ago during a simple soccer training session. Training that I had been doing for years, every week, twice a week. Until that day when I took a step forward to stop the ball with my right foot and my left foot got lost, leaving me with only a round moving object to provide balance. Before that, I belonged to a world where a fracture was a theoretical concept. I was brave, I thought proudly, I would make any tackle, put my head in the way, save a goal from going in against my team, but this wasn’t a heroic goal-saving ‘worthy’ moment, this was an innocent, ‘whistle as you walk’ ordinary moment. When my ankle fractured, when all everyone on the training pitch could hear was the sound of bone breaking, ligaments tearing, muscles ripping, as a foot swung in ways it was never designed to do, in that ordinary moment, something more fractured, more than just a tibia and a fibula. Belief in the physical fractured. The belief that nothing so bad, so painful, so awful, could happen to your body in those ordinary moments of life. Not when you were not prepared. And certainly not when you were careful. Not when there was no use, no purpose for the pain.

Before my ankle fractured, I used to dance freely, with rhythm. I used to be able to pick up any sport and play it pretty well almost immediately, which I’m sure was annoying to others, but it gave me a sense of confidence, in my world, in my body. The broken ankle was patched up and bolstered with a titanium plate which is strong I have no doubt, but now I do have doubt in my bones, my muscles, my ligaments, my body. I dance awkwardly now. With fear. I still have rhythm, an inbuilt memory of the movements, but no grace, no confidence, no laughter in those movements.

When everything, and I mean everything, went wrong a few years ago, it was slow coming. I could see the cliff edge approaching, could prepare my mind and body, could distance myself and watch as loss after loss buffeted me. And after, I could collect the pieces and even on that lonely beach at the bottom of the cliff, I could still marvel at the spark off a rock, the glint of light off the waves, something to brighten my moments and possibly a laugh or a smile to brighten the moments of others. I wrote my novels and included the darkness, but also the light because I still had an open heart, a childlike innocence because I believed that there was a purpose, a light, a love waiting for me. That for someone somewhere I would be enough, more than enough, that we would blend the colours that would make our lives shine truer and deeper, that there would be someone I wouldn’t lose and who would not want to lose me.

But instead something happened a few months ago. My mind was fractured. There are no visible bruises and only I heard the sound of breaking. It was not the heartbreak to which I have grown accustomed at the end of relationships. Not the well-worn track that I know and can adjust my gait, my movements, my expectations. I loved someone who I believed with everything inside me to be my soulmate, who used the dreams I showed her to portray herself as everything I wanted in my life, who made me believe that everything I had wished for could come true. Maybe I was a fool to believe, maybe I was vulnerable clinging on to the wreckage on that beach, fighting against being drawn out into the sea, of drowning. I had built a life raft from the pieces of my life and she offered me a safe haven designed to protect us. When I discovered that it was all fiction, that she did not even exist except in that fiction, something snapped in my mind. A mind walking along in the innocent belief in the ‘ordinary’ truth, that things are what they are, suddenly had no ground beneath it.

And now, my mind cannot dance anymore. It is awkward and shy, without grace, without confidence. It peeps out, makes a half-hearted attempt, and then crawls back inside. There are no visible scars, no crutches, no few months of ‘keep the weight off’. There is no Plaster of Paris cast to be signed. There is only the grind of bone against bone as I hold the ends together to get through the day. Making sure not to let others see the break because in my world, where even before reality was twisted in on itself I would not show vulnerability, a fractured mind leaves me more vulnerable than a fractured ankle. And is less acceptable.

As a writer of fiction, I could escape into stories. I could connect with others without being too vulnerable because, ‘they are fictional characters in pain, not me’. And, until a few months ago, I have always been able to use bright colours to lighten the darkness in some little way and hopefully even bring a smile. When readers connected to share their wonder at the concept of a vision painter, at the pleasure in the thought of being able to paint a life with happiness, I felt the same wonder and pleasure again. That even through pain and darkness, my words could reach others and we could share hope. I was pleased that despite the obvious negatives in the novels, what had connected and lifted spirits and remained even for a brief moment, were the positives.

Now, all I can do is post up pictures on Facebook of Clio, my saving grace, the main reason that I can smile. I can hide my fractured mind behind that smile and we could go on existing like that. I’ve been working on my next novel, though I haven’t written anything for the last few weeks, wary of adding more negative than positive, more shadows, making another dent in innocence, adding falsehoods to a world already brimming in them. I know that my writing is not that important in any grand scheme of things, but it is to me. It is important to me that my words have integrity whether they are in the guise of a medical thriller, a romance, or a fantasy of magical realism. It is important to me that when someone reads my words, they do not feel worse after, do not have to endure the grinning companion of hopelessness that stamps out any flicker before it can become the flame that might burn bright and leave me destroyed, or might light the way.

Existing now without my palette of bright colours is gloomy enough, should I put that out there into the world and darken what can already be a shadowed canvas? Should I stop writing and connecting with others now, when I need it most? Or, should I just put on my big-girl pants and invent a Happy-Ever-After, because dammit, I’m a writer?

I feel the need for answers from outside my own fractured mind. I want to know from authors – do you put your novels on hold at times like these, until the story that pushes to be written can offer something more than what life at that current moment holds for you? From readers – do you wish to be drawn into the darkness in the same way you were captured previously by the story?

Clio: Ok so, Day 54 and the..

I put down my pen and she glances at me and stops.
Me: Day 54? What happened to Days 1-53?
She waves a little white paw in the air.
Clio: You’re the writer, you fill them in. It feels like Day 54 to me. Should I continue or are you going to interrupt me at every stage?
Me: You know, a small subset of people think it I am weird to love animals as much as humans? Why do you look puzzled?
Clio: You are weird.
I pick up the pen and make a gesture towards her.
Clio: So, as I was saying, Day 54 and my human accompanied me on a brisk walk down the lovely country lane – Yes, what is it?
Me: Could we at least refer to me as something more complimentary?
Clio: You have a problem with the truth? You’re human, you’re my only subject, ipso facto, you’re ‘my human’.
Me: I didn’t know you knew Latin?
Clio: What did I say about interruptions? We must hurry, if this works on the same principle as my 7 dog years to your 1 human year then I have just 7 minutes of inspiration per day.
Me: You think that’s funny?
Clio: I crack myself up. Now, where were we?
I look back at the notepad.
Me: I should have left you down the bog country lane.
Clio: You wouldn’t!!
Me: We’ll see. Go on.
Clio: My subject...my human, no? What would you like then? Especially since you were so kind as to come up with a pretty decent title for me. Though why on earth you picked such a long one is beyond me. I would have been satisfied with something short and sweet like ‘Her Royal Highness, Princess Clio’.
Me: I wanted to give a sense of your authority.
(Under my breath): And limit its scope.
Clio: Did you say something?
Me: No.
Clio: I like it. ‘Her Royal Highness, Princess Clio of Cloogantoverville’. It will be difficult to emblazon across a jacket but it is fitting. Why tack on the ‘Ville’ at the end of the name?
Me: Don’t know really. Wanted to have an Irish and American feel to it.
Clio: Right. Well, I’d like to shorten it in everyday conversation to ‘HRH Princess Clio the Pretty’.
Me: Ok, HRH, what’s next?
Clio: I was thinking that since these are my musings on you and my life here, I would start by letting you tell readers how pretty I am and maybe a few details about my good nature and gentle character as well as my very regal bearing.
Me: Well, I do write fiction. Should I include the fact that I had to wash poop off your big fluffy backside this morning? You know, I now get why my dad looks at me sadly and shakes his head and says ‘You used to have such potential.’
Clio: My backside is not big!! Besides I like my hair.
Me: You should have a gold medallion to hang around your neck. You could pass as a Greek guy then, with all that chest hair.
Clio: Would you like me to talk about the time Freda wanted to call the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on you?
Me: I knew you were behind that!
Clio: Well, you have to admit the haircut you gave Hamish was cruel.
Me: You try shaving a wriggling dog with one of those hand power razor things.
Clio: You didn’t think of stopping after the first few jagged swathes of hair were gone off his back?
Me: (muttering) It was an expensive razor thing. Hey, it might still be in the cupboard somewhere.
Clio: You bring that thing near me and you will be eating through a feeding tube too.
I retreat to doodling in the notepad.
Me: are you nervous about your surgery on Friday?
Clio: What, with the specialist flying in from Israel just for me? And a top vet surgeon in Dublin?
Me: Right. So it is just me.
Clio: You worry about everything. I’ve come through seven surgeries on my mouth and I’ve got this feeding tube stuck in my neck, do you see me complaining?
Me: Yup.
Clio: When?
Me: What do you call running from the towel and rubbing your wet self into every cushion in the house?
Clio: A royal protest. Besides you shouldn’t have cream-coloured fabric covers. Pink is much more my colour.
Me: I’m getting a headache. Your seven minutes of daily inspiration are surely over by now?
Clio: You’re getting old.
Me: Hey! Eight in dog years is older than I am now. You think maybe we should retire the ‘Princess’ thing now? Maybe call you Milady Dowager or something?
Long silence.
Me: I’m going to pay for that, aren’t I?
Clio: Human, you have no idea how much...

I had sent my third novel, Casting Shadows, to my beta readers and I was just about to celebrate when she whispered in my ear, “I was just thinking that you could have them do -”
So I smacked her.
Not hard. After all, she was responsible for setting me off on my novel and had helped me through the months of writing.
But now, I'm wondering whether imaginary jail would have pen and paper...
Because I already miss the characters. In some shape or form, good or evil, characters have been whispering words into my mind for what seems like forever. Well, a year and a half. And while I am grateful for the (relative) peace and quiet in my brain at the moment, I miss them. Their problems, fears, hopes, dreams, messes..
So I wrote a short story. And plan to add it to three more short stories to make a little collection. Thankfully, I only managed to write one. I'm realising my brain really does need a break.
But that dratted muse did actually plant the seed of a good idea for a fourth book. Maybe if I ignore it for a while, it will take root unseen and unnoticed and when I'm ready, the little sprouting will push its way back into the front of my mind.
I know it is probably considered kidnapping to bind and gag a muse and put it in a cupboard and I really don't want to get into any (more) trouble with the mind police so I have restrained myself from doing that to her. But I can see her eyeing me warily as she sulks on the couch. She's just got to learn that you can only push a writer so far before they write you into an unpleasant situation.
So, tread carefully my imaginary muse, I may not be writing just now but I can still plot.....

In anticipation of the launch of my third novel Casting Shadows – The Further Misadventures of a Vision Painter, I am running a promotion on my other two novels. This promo runs for a limited time so if you haven’t already got the first in the series, this is your chance to catch up.
You can get the first novel in the series, Falling Colours - The Misadventures of a Vision Painter, at the reduced price of
$2.99 on Amazon.com and
£1.92 on Amazon.co.uk
You can also get Falling Colours on Smashwords for $2.99 by entering the Coupon Code: JR73J

While you’re there, check out the new cover for my first novel, Heart Stopper. And get it for
$2.99 on Amazon.com and £1.92 on Amazon.co.uk
You can also get Heart Stopper on Smashwords for $2.99 by entering the Coupon Code: AP69B

I have friends who look with envy at my solitary state at Christmas. They complain about having to face the holidays with family. And as everyone knows, you put Christmas decorations, Christmas cheer, add in a few Christmas relatives, heat with Christmas emotions, throw in a Christmas turkey and baste gently for a day and you have a recipe for a dish that could leave a stink for the rest of the year.

So my friends or workmates say goodbye as they pack up their bags or tidy up their desks, bemoaning their upcoming stress with envious asides to me about my luck at not having to face it all. And in a way, they are right. I don't have to deal with Christmas if I don't want to. I can stay in my house, shut off the TV, pull the curtains, and pretend that the week is just like any other week of the year. Which it is. And that is the problem.

In my adult years, I've always grumbled about Christmas because it is the time of the year when everyone leaves to go home. And as the non-religion-practicing child of a Christian priest, I experienced every Christmas Day in the same way that the ill child of the town doctor probably views an annual flu epidemic. So I have to admit to underlying mixed emotions about Christmas. But I still don't understand why there is a specific period set aside when people make that extra effort to be nice to each other. And why they then stress about it.

When people complain to me about the stress of Christmas I have to wonder why they do everything on that one day of the year that they would avoid on other days of the year. If they don't particularly like turkey on any ordinary day why make it at Christmas, douse it with gravy, stuff it to bursting to make it palatable and then invite relatives they wouldn't want in their home at any other time to partake in this self-described misery. And then complain and envy the turkey-less zone on the other side of the fence.

I get invitations to go to the homes of my friends and I appreciate that immensely. More than I appreciate the laments of envy. But, if I face my truth, I have to admit that what I want is to stay home for Christmas and more importantly to 'be' home. If I had my perfect Christmas, love, laughter and the doggies (which would actually be my perfect day any day of the year), I probably wouldn't remember to invite those who were on their own, but I'd appreciate what I had enough to never tell them that I envied what they had.

I admire and envy those who have the family, love, and laughter, as part of their everyday lives and for whom Christmas is the time to add the icing to the cake but with no stress about how the cake looks, just that it is sweeter, richer and the cake is held tighter together. I admire those who don't complain about the layers of unnecessary icing they're slapping onto their cake to someone who hasn't yet got the right cake.

If you had the choice of recipe and unlimited access to the ingredients to make a truly happy day, why choose a recipe that called for unnecessary ingredients, gave you indigestion, and swore you off having that dish again for at least another 364 days?

Don't envy me because I have the recipe but no access yet to all the necessary ingredients. When the missing ingredients arrive, I hope to make that dish every day and not just over the Christmas. Then, the only extra ingredient I'll add over the holidays is more time just to savor the experience.

What is the working title of your book?

Where did the idea come from for the book?

What genre does your book fall under?

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

If you are an author and you want to participate in the blog hop, please contact Clare.

Hamish Seamus Samuel 1995 - 2012

In September 1995, we went to pick Hamish up for the first time. There was the largest most orange moon I'd ever seen, hanging low in the sky… I've always thought of it since as Hamish's moon… We had been told there was an Alsatian pup found in a coal shed. Suzanne really wanted an Alsatian. Anyway, this little runt of a dog runs out, and onto the back of the couch and then proceeds to pee on her. She was not impressed but I couldn't go and see a dog and then refuse it.. so I begged her to give it one night. We brought him home and he slept in a huge cardboard box filled with blankets at the foot of the bed. Jesse had already claimed the bed and Suzanne was of the opinion that two dogs on the bed was too much and we might not keep him anyway and hey, why not train him to sleep off the bed...

Well, poor Hamish whined and Suzanne ended up sleeping all night across the foot of the bed holding his paw. That was the last time he didn't sleep wherever he wanted :-)

Hamish lived a long happy life following me from room to room and from country to country for almost 18 years. He was with me from the time I was 28 through my 30s and halfway through my 40s. He was my constant companion and comrade and his true love was Jesse. He was a playful eejit with Jesse and they still rollicked like pups together at the ripe old age of 16. Jesse was the Queen of the house and poor Hamish was never allowed to be King, he was named the Royal Consort. 
He kept going after Jesse died in Oct 2010 but he couldn't bring himself to rollick as much with Clio as he had with his queen. He was content to keep an eye on us and constantly patrol the house (I never thought I'd miss the incessant sound of dog nails on laminate floors) and the grounds (even in the pouring rain). He enjoyed his morning run and bark at Zeus next door even at 17.5 years (like 180 or something in human years). 
He stoically put up with being taken to Dublin 5 times over 2 months for injections to try and treat the oral melanoma that came out of nowhere and in the end beat even his enduring body. He then accompanied Clio and me when she went through 5 surgeries in a month in Dublin. He sat quietly through most things including when I forgot to put on the handbrake in the camper when I stopped at a service station for fuel and it rolled forward while I tried desperately to unlock the door. Hamish was still sitting on the bed facing the back, probably wondering why I was suddenly driving so slowly.
Hamish is one of the reasons I believe dogs are precious gifts to us. His physical presence at my side for 17 years and 2 months has been a gift of pure love and loyalty. When weakness in his legs made him unable to patrol as he had been doing until two days ago, I had to make the decision yesterday and the vet and nurse kindly came to the house last night to help him pass. For the first time, he showed yesterday that he was ready to go. And, as usual, he shared this with a calm and happy strength.
Hamish passed in my arms at 10.15pm last night at the time of the Samhain solar eclipse and the new moon. I don't really know much about eclipses and dark moons but I believe Hamish's moon was winking at us.

Falling Colours - The Misadventures of a Vision Painter has been published to Amazon and Smashwords!

Description:

Kiran is a vision painter. The only vision painter working in Ireland. Her practice isn’t doing too well and she works as a waitress in a struggling restaurant in Connemara. Everything changes when she meets a woman.

And makes a tiny wee mistake.

May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

Heart Stopper published on Amazon and Smashwords