What is my authentic self as an author?
What are my passions and experiences which seem to flow into my work effortlessly?
Basically, what makes this author, this author?
It’s not unknown if you have been following me for some time now that vampires are a huge passion of mine and that once they were all absorbing and my main if not ultimate focus?
They are still in my mind but is now swept away into a corner and regarded with a sense of guilty pleasure nowadays, which is a shame.
But other than my vampires who am I as an author?
I like anthropomorphic animals (human like animals) and animation movies which have animals as main characters or heroes; to me I can’t get enough of movies like that! I love reading books on the perspectives of animals, such as The Animals of Farthing Wood, Fluke, Charlotte’s Web, that sort of thing.
Being shamanic off and on throughout my life, I regard myself as having an unusually deep understanding for both nature and animals and anything primal really and yes, that does make me a Walt Disney fan.
I am a deeply spiritual person too with very philosophical ideas – this can be seen in some of my work but not all of it.
I do believe in miracles and magic, I believe in soul connections and spirits, so this belief of mine goes into my work a lot.
My work can be very profound and intense; it’s what I’ve seen in past reviews on my blog, in emails and from other people who were fortunate enough to get snippets from me in private. Because I tend to throw in my philosophical thoughts, my spiritual education and I forget that sometimes for some people, they’re not ready for that kind of depth yet. It’s a part of me, it’s a part of who I am and mostly I don’t realise I do it.
That’s my magic, that’s unique to me and when you follow your authentic path in your own writing, you will discover things about yourself you never knew too, it’s a kind of therapy a kind of gas-lighting oneself.
I love dragons and monsters, I like seeing them as misunderstood creatures, creatures that aren’t bad at all and in fact could be rather helpful but have their boundaries and they expect respect.
I like characters that are inventive and quirky, a little strange, maybe forgetful and definitely misunderstood by societies they live in, because they reflect who I am. I am proud to say I am an air-head with little understanding of logic, that has an interest in science though not a brain to really fully grasp it and a memory of sieve – put all of this into a pot steaming with spirituality, creativity and free love and you’ve got me… a messy soup.
I am a mixture of Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Carl from Van Helsing 2004, Miss Bat from Worst Witch, Miss Trelawney from Harry Potter, Lucille Ball, Wendy Froud, Bjork and Bob Ross! You get the message… I’m a mess!
I love writing lengthy descriptions of natural scenes and observations including as many if not all of the five senses all at once.
I have a deep sense of decay of both mind and matter, I understand the damaging effects of humanity on the Earth and I write plenty of dystopic sceneries in some of my stories. I love the idea of nature taking back the world, after humans sought to destroy it!
I love characters like Poison Ivy, Pocahuntas and The Lorax for this.
I have a deep sense of survival in me, from both being raised semi-feral in a North London garden with a violent family and because I have a Girl Guides attitude of “Be prepared” and a deeply seated understand of impermanence – that you can often see survival as a theme in a lot of my stories.
This is why I love characters such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, the TV series The Tribe, Rambo and so forth.
Because I have experienced severe mental health issues over the years and lived with several people who have far worse issues than I do (I have never needed to be medicated for example, like they have) I can fully understand what it means to live in an asylum and how the public treats people who have a history of that environment. I also understand and have witnessed several times people literally descending into madness to the point of both murder and suicide. Yes I have seen a person killed in front of me that is something I’ve kept to myself until now.
I have also witnessed several people trying to take their own lives, dying of a stroke right before my eyes and other horrible things.
Experiences which are hard to write, but can’t be wrote properly unless you’ve truly experienced it. I am not saying try to experience that sort of thing, goodness no! But you can understand how an author’s authentic self can further their writing by putting in their life experiences into it!
Characters such as Jack Torrance from the shining, John Kramer from Jigsaw, Janet Frame from Angels at my table are reflective of very similar people I have known as well as several characters from the movie The Crow. I’ve known very edgy, scary people who don’t hide the aspect of who they truly are to anybody! A few of these people have been put into isolation by the authorities but there are others that have evaded this somehow!
In my experience it is the weak ones that get caught and dealt with, the really nasty buggers never are!
Injustice is another thing that crops up in my stories from time to time based on this.
I am afraid to say some readers may find some of my darker materials frustrating as justice are rarely served in a fair way; I tend to take people to a very primal place.
Some of my characters are kooky, childish and fun, but should really be responsible as they are adults but they struggle with that reality – therefore I like characters such as Mr and Mrs Luxury from the blue bird, God from Dogma, Brennan and Dale from Step Brothers and Sarah Sanderson from Hocus Pocus.
I have a passion for characters with big egos and sarcastic humour so I am often drawn to personalities which are played by actors such as Alan Rickman, Tim Curry, Glen Close and Robert Downey Jr. Those characters seem to be fighting against the odds with a pack of brainless lucky heroes who are out to ruin their plans or gas-light them in some way in my stories.
Comedy is becoming more prominent in my stories as time is going by as I am no longer hiding my sense of humour from the world; this is a transition that is not welcoming from Paul. He prefers my more serious stuff, but that’s not being authentic to myself!
There is even comedy in my darker stories and horror these days, lightly thrown in.
I was given an article to mull over by Paul the other week about how dark humour is an early sign of dementia; I am not paying any attention to that!
Societal changes and upheaval are a theme in several of my stories, hence my love for dystopia.
I dislike romance, so that is at a minimum – but there are some saucy scenes now and again in my adult works, in fact I have been known to write full on erotica in a past blog as short stories, but I deleted them after a while and that blog – I also did it here for a short time too, in the early years of my blog as I was told I was too graphic and should really have it as a subscribers content.
That is something I am thinking about doing actually, subscribers short stories of both my erotic works and vampires, as well as a subscriber incentive of giving 50% off the purchase of poetry anthology E-books I am planning to publish by the end of summer.
I love certain sports and you can see which I am into by the books I write, I love wrestling and combat sports in general so there are plenty of fight scenes in my stories as well as ancient warfare. I am very keen in ancient warfare history and gaming. I know a lot of the terminologies and so there is little research needed for me when I write those scenes because it’s a passion of mine.
I am not afraid of killing off characters but I am not a maniacal character serial killer like George R.R Martin, but not far off it either!
Death sells as good as sex in my opinion.
I like hard-core no nonsense and dominant characters that don’t like a lot of fuss, so there is at least one in every story. My favourite character is a wild hermit woman from the Dragon project I am writing; a sort of mix of Miss Trunchball meets Nanny McPhee and Tarzan! Again, crazily based on people I’ve known, as I have said before… I’ve known some strange people in my time and exaggeration can go a long way, especially when story writing!
So you see a lot of my ideas wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for life experience and a knack for exaggeration for entertainment value.
Though I keep my non-fiction as honest as possible, I can use that experience and exaggerate it for fiction!
This is how we writers do things; it’s how we give you the books we write.
Or those who have actually given their work to an agent to get published, that is!
I’m not far off to be honest.
I won’t give you a deadline or update until I send my work to an agent, but for now – let’s just say, I think it’s going to be sooner than you think – a lot sooner!
So there you have it – my experiences, my passions and my work and why it is uniquely mine and why you will struggle to try and copy it! You are not me and even if you were to go off and research the character references and include the subjects I’ve mentioned in this blog – you won’t ever reflect me, but only I can be purely me and only you can be purely you!
Thanks for reading!
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