The King’s faith

The sword gleams in his hand

On the battlefield is where he stands

Waiting for the enemy to approach

Only a few feet till they encroach on territory that is not theirs

Time to sort out these bad affairs!

Not long now until they come

The King is determined to strike them dumb

One by one their lives will end

For trespassing here, he will suspend them

Send them back to their lands

Dead and beaten by his hands

A victory will be made today

The King is sure for he did pray

How to kill an artist

There is a broken bridge in the creative heavens

Where creators steal other worlds

Make them their own and change things

Make them straight when they ought to be curled

It’s a tragedy to see it

When a creator can’t create

For they need to take another’s work

To put food on their plates

How proud do they feel when they do it?

Does it feed their soul?

I live in doubt of the truth of that

If I may be so bold?

How hungry is the creator who takes another’s art?

How starved and deranged are they? 

If they could eat another’s heart!

For I have seen it happen

The scope of vicious duels

Of two creators in battle

For one who won’t use their tools

And I have seen the tragedies it causes in their lives

As depression rips them soundly, as though they’re stabbed with knives

They can’t live with what they do and they know it’s wrong and bad

But they can’t help it really and that’s what makes it sad

To kill another artist for the want of fame and gold

It pounds reality into me

And makes my blood run cold

A boy’s unconscious battle

Legs akimbo and arms too, laying on the bed a little boy fast asleep visiting the land of dreams as moonbeams paint the room a silver glow.

His white sheet alive with action slithers like a tentacle around his hips and the boy slowly and sleepily coiled in its clutches; teddy bears fall in line to pull the tentacle away and rescue the boy their friend.

The boy twists in and out and in again getting further and further tangled in the octopods tentacle as he too, grows tentacles to go into battle to save himself as he continues in his slumber – an unconscious battle for freedom done in slow motion in the moonlit sea of silver and blue.

Teddy bears thrashed to the floor all around helpless they lay motionless on the ground. 

When morning comes all is peaceful, the boy well rested springs up from his bed like he had been catapulted kicking his allies across the room knocking them into unconscious sleep for another day.

For tonight, there is a new battle!

Written 3:02am 3rd March 2023

Two fighting octopods

I watch you, like an octopus in bed

Lumpy pillows by your head

Twisting yourself into knots and throws

Snoring away all your woes

Dreaming about all the things you love

A sheet wrapped round your hand like a glove

Chewing away as you sleep

I wonder what you dreamed to eat

What made that smile on your lips

As the sheet wraps around your hips

Two fighting octopods in the bed

I wonder what goes on inside your head?

Fast asleep yet fighting there

Amongst all the sheets and teddy bears

What a battle and such peace

The wonder of you will never cease

I shut the door and leave you to the land of dreams

As the landing is lit by moonbeams

Written 2:45am 3rd March 2023

Mark my words!

Hey my iron heart

How are you doing dear?

You are more precious than metal

And I love you, you hear?

Put the gauntlet back on

Don’t give up the fight

You will win this battle

My dear sweet knight

It’s a battle against time

That is all

When we are together, we will have a ball!

Mark my words and mark them well…

Everything is gonna turn out swell!

A writer’s battle

A maelstrom of words I vomit on the paper

Tempest upon tempest I write as though I’m in some kind of fever

Inspiration to vivre après my demise

This is the way of a writer’s life

Eternally battling the onslaught of locution like some kind of ablution to cleanse my mind

One final word to conclude todays work

For tomorrow I may die

Because life’s a jerk

I will win

I’ve crunched many a bone under foot

Cut many a throat at war

Broken many a neck with my arms

And burned many more

Dirty with the soil and blood of my enemies

Driven by a power to scar and shred my knees

I yearn for immortality

And cry my name out loud

When I bring my broadsword down onto a crowd

Their screams are but music to me

For I fight for my freedom

I fight for me!

Bloodied and reckless, I will crush them all

All the people who seek to see me fall!

I am a warrior, brave and strong

I will cull my enemies, because they were wrong!

I will win and I will be victorious

And the party when I do will be uproarious

I am a warrior, through and true

And I will not hesitate to run you through!

My themes & project AD

Here are the main themes I love to write about and I know it has been published in another post before, but I thought it would be good to have it as a post all on its lonesome as a sort of reference post.

My first favourite theme to write about are vampires and their perspective on life and existence, their lifestyle, the drama that goes on in their societies etc.

My secondary favourite literary choice is stereotypical fantasy stories based on dragons, battle and magic! 

My third one is anthropomorphic animals or seeing things from an animal’s perspective and explaining their lives through adventure or almost journalistic storytelling. 

My fourth favourite theme are anything pertaining to childhood wonder, Christmas and Easter stories, Santa, The Easter Bunny, nursery rhyme worlds, toys coming to life, that sort of thing.

My fifth favourite theme to write is stories about inventors and gadget creators in a post-apocalyptic world or perhaps even a steampunk world!

My sixth choices are giants or little people and how they see the world around them and what their stories are. 

My seventh favourite theme is stories about descent into madness or haunting memories or even haunted places, ghosts of both the mind and the ethereal.

The eighth theme is anything with regards to circus performers, carnivals, fairgrounds, fortune tellers and clowns.

The ninth favourite theme to write about is stereotypical war between gods and the underworld and the battle of control over mortality and or power, I especially like gas lighting stories or stories from a twisted perspective.

The tenth theme is stories about magical water/sea creatures or sea life, such as pirates, mermaids, kelpies and sea monsters or travellers of the sea.

Many of my stories will contain at least one of the above in order to keep me interested in writing them, sometimes they may have more than one theme going on for example; my project AD has five of the above themes in it.

There is a small vampire scene in it, with anthropomorphic animals in a post-apocalyptic, steampunk world that experiences a huge gaslight to their existence and in one characters case a descent into madness and a fight for reality and a real battle as well – along with this there are inventors of gadgets and a new way of life for everyone involved in the story!

It’s a project I am really excited about and this particular project has saved my creative life – because without it I very nearly gave up writing altogether.  It is rare for me to have more than two themes in any story, so when I get one that has this many themes in it – it really gets my heart singing!

Thanks for reading!

Spirit & energy

It is vitally important to always make sure you have your own personal space in your home, so you have a chance to heal and a place to make a sanctuary; it is important to fiercely guard this space and for twelve years I had to fight to find mine and it was genuinely a battle.

It has only really been two months now, since this space has been truly mine in every sense of the word; a place that I can decorate and design to my will, a place where I can relax and sleep and even sometimes write on the quiet days.

This house has a lot of negative energy running through it, which is what you can expect when you have a polluted stream running right under your house and this stream is drying up.

I have never been happy in this house, because I felt this house made me sick and it wasn’t until two years into my ill-health that Paul told me about the stream under the house; had I of known before I moved in with him, I wouldn’t have moved in with him, not in this house.

Why?

Because living on water like that is not good for a witch, or so my family has told me as there are some ancestry from Salem, the Howe’s, my ancestors were the ones who got away.  Living on water can do two things to a proper blood born witch; make you sick because it affects your energy at a consistent pace and can affect your spell crafting abilities negatively whilst overloading your instinct for fortune telling and clairvoyance.  That is of course, if you are not a sea or a water based witch, those are different.  Yes my Chinese astrological element is water, but this is not a good place for me to live.  I can live by water, as long as I am not on top of it and as long as it is not constantly flowing beneath me.

This is a shame because I have always liked the idea of long holidays on barges and cruises, I know for a fact I used to love going rowing in the summer with my dad and cousins and I don’t suffer from seasickness.

I am a non-practising witch these days, I only do crystal healing, fortune readings, clairvoyant stuff and I still feed the faeries and the house spirits, hug trees and that sort of thing – but I don’t actively do spells anymore, as I believe it negatively affects the balance of the universe.  I do believe however in cosmic ordering and that the cosmos knows how to balance things better than we do, in my opinion, cosmic ordering or wish-craft is far superior to witchcraft.  It’s gentler, it’s balanced and it is not forcing anything and you build a relationship with the source that is deep and loving and protective and always knows best!

Since gaining my new space and doing my little cleansing rituals and a little bit of Feng Shui (only a little) I have noticed something about my particular space that I have never felt whilst living in this house and that is a lightness, a clean energy, a vibrancy developing here.

The other members of my household, Paul and Henry have noticed this energy too and try to spend more time in my space than their own, but I quickly rush them out after twenty minutes, because this is my space and I can’t lose it again.

I am relying a lot on crystal energy for this space.  I do a cleansing ritual every time someone comes into my space with anything negative; it’s become almost an obsession.  But you have no idea how quickly the energy darkens and becomes depressive if I am not consistently on top of it.

All I do is use my quartz crystal to make a protective star in the room, circle me thrice and if necessary open the window for half an hour.

This is my bedroom and it is not shared by anyone, this is my space and I love it.

My room has become known in the family as the rainbow room, because my crystals make about fifty little prisms all over the walls when they are poked to swing in the window and when those rainbows light up the room, the energy is so soothing and beautiful, I can’t get rid of anyone who comes in until they fade.

My clairvoyance and my instinctive abilities are increasing exponentially, where I am becoming unsurprised by events happening in my life now.  But I am also driven with excitement by something I can sense, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

All I know is my world is about to turn upside down and become completely unrecognisable soon, but I understand that it’s all positive and good and I will be ecstatically happy for a very long time after this event.  What this event might be?  I am unsure really, but it indicates a new person coming into my life that will just drastically change everything and heal me emotionally and help me become strong and vibrant again.

My spirits are sometimes mischievous but never harmful or toxic, whenever I ask who this person is? They laugh at me and told me, I will not be able to speak when I see them, I won’t believe it’s true and I may be tempted to run away from them when they approach me.

They also said that this person will be the best thing to ever happen in my life!

They told me that we will work together in a similar or same career, that together we will be a power couple that people will look at us as Emperor and Empress because our ideas coming together are so spectacular that the world will literally be in awe of us.  Which sounds exciting – I wondered if it is another writer or someone along those lines, Paul guesses I might fall in love with the agent I get.  Who knows?

They said that our creativity will be a huge legacy for literally generations to come!  We will not be forgotten, it’s that kind of big energy.

They also told me that my new prospective partner will be ecstatic because they knew their intuition was right about me, that they are happy that they can change into doing something they’ve been wanting to do a lot for the past few years, but circumstances have meant they had to go in another direction they weren’t as passionate in, but just generally liked a bit.

I was told he will love how playful I am, how changeable I am, how pliable I can be in most situations and ultimately he will see me as a very inspiring person and he will get on my case about not using my abilities to the best that I can.  He will be very pushy about my talents, all of them and I won’t be able to hide any from him or the world, he won’t allow it.

He will push me into the world and have a “have fun” attitude and will stick around waiting to push me back if I try to wander away from what I am supposed to be doing.

He sounds impossible, but supportive, cheeky and fun.

He will challenge me on every level to be the best that I can be for myself, he won’t let me belittle myself or make do, he will always make me strive to take better things.  Apparently there is a couple of things which will frustrate the both of us being together… for him, it is my idea of moderation and accepting less than I really want and my apparent, needless frugality.  He is apparently here to teach me how to grasp abundance, but according to my spirits, he is fighting a losing battle as I am just so naturally happy and grateful for whatever I have and I never overdo things for myself.

I overdo things for others, but it is hard for me to digest and accept doing it for myself.

He will also have a challenging time with my insecurities, but after as little as two years he would have the victory he was vying for regarding that!  This is what the spirits promised, I laughed as two years is too short a time for that!

But they are determined that he knows me more than I do!

As for my reaction to him, apparently he will know how to push all of my buttons for any reaction he desires and this will sometimes scare me, because he will challenge me a lot!  He will not do anything to harm me, or make me feel bad in anyway, but he will scare me by putting me into situations and teaching me how to cope with them and have fun, because in his opinion I have missed out a lot in life and he is determined I won’t miss out on anything else!

My lesson to him apparently is improving spiritual connection and emotional healing as well as filling the void.  Oh and apparently although he is known to be a little eccentric already by people who know him, apparently us being together will make him stand out as being even more outrageous, because we’ll do it as a couple together!  We are apparently two peas in a pod!

The spirits said we are the couple that get the most invites to places, simply because we liven things up with our presence and vibrancy.

To be perfectly honest, it has to be a dream and this can’t really happen for me.  Because in my opinion, I am past it; I am forty years old, I am not very attractive, I can’t see how all of this is going to happen in such a short space of time.  I have got myself into a homebody rut, so how am I going to meet this guy, huh?

Is he going to just turn up on my doorstep?  I don’t think so!

But OK… email me first?

Thanks for reading.

Big Magic of Roger Zelazny

I have never picked up a book by Roger Zelazny before last week, I wished I had years ago, The Chronicles of Amber is amazing and it is a great learning curve for any writer who wants to learn how to write descriptive battle scenes cohesively.

I at least, learned a new word through this book “parried” which is something I find useful since I am a fantasy and adventure author myself!

I have never found a book that wrote battle and fight scenes as good as this before, I highly recommend it to any author who wishes to write adventure or war stories!

I can see why Neil Gaiman has been inspired by this author, I can see a little bit of Stardust in the book, but I can also see that J.K Rowling might have been influenced by him too, the tarot cards for instance.

Though both might be exactly like me that it seems rather a strange fluke that some parts of these chronicles are so much alike to two of my novels, one finished and the other part finished.  In fact one of them is so much alike to this story, I have to make a few adjustments, because it could almost be a direct copy and what is rather strange about it is that the main character in my novel is called Amber.

I know in the chronicles Amber is a place, rather than a person’s name, but you get my drift? 

It’s weird, I have never read these novels before, nor heard many reviews about it, yet one of my novels is so alike it’s amazing and I have only got one hundred and ten pages into the first novel at the moment, what else will I discover about the chronicles in the next nine books?

This really makes me believe in Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept that ideas are alive, that they have souls and they find people who will bring them to life – you’ll find more about this in her book “Big Magic”, it’s a highly recommended read.

Are the Amber chronicles truly finished?  If ideas are alive and have a soul of their own, then they must have chosen me to continue their story a little – that’s scary and this is why I have to change so much!  Because I honestly was completely unaware about these chronicles until I picked up the book a couple of weeks ago!

Though I loved the story I was writing and though Paul kept pushing me to send it away to an agent, there was something nagging me in my instincts not to send it out, because there was something I needed do or something I needed to learn first.  It’s very strange.

I picked this book up because a friend online who knew a small amount about my plot grew concerned I was copying too much of one of her favourite novels from Roger Zelazny, I told her I have never heard of him nor the chronicles and that was true – I am so grateful to have such kind friends who tell me these things!  Imagine if I had published this book?

It has been an eye opening experience.

I actually though some of my story seemed reminiscent of Highlander by Gregory Widen and perhaps a little bit like the stories of Merlin and Edmund Spenser’s fairy queen with a little bit of time travelling thrown in, but I thought it was original enough. 

It might still be original enough, but I am not sure, hence why I won’t delete what I have done to the story, but I will copy my story and adjust things and keep all of the drafts, so one day, when I make friends I can trust with sharing unpublished works, I will show them and ask them which draft they prefer and see just how much of the Amber chronicles are really in them. 

Because I am a nervous creature and I hate coming across as a fraud, so it’s important to me to try and be unique; see the try there, it’s virtually impossible to be unique anyway as everything has been done, but ultimately it hasn’t been done by me.  So maybe, just maybe my work is far enough removed not to cause eyebrows to become raised?

This isn’t the first time a piece of work has been very close to my own and I found out after I wrote them and I doubt it will be the last.

Happy reading!