#WriterWednesday Dean J. Baker

I have decided that I am going to try to get on here and blog on a more regular basis – famous last words, I hear you cry! But I know I neglect it and my time here is sporadic and hard to follow, so I am going to try (with the best will in the world) to post on a weekly basis. Mondays will be #MusicMonday highlighting a particular band or song that I am currently into. Tuesdays will henceforth be called #TasterTuesday and give excerpts taken from The Dark Sanctuary books and any other works.  And Wednesdays will be #WriterWednesday, giving shout outs to other writers who inspire me, whether they be my all-time faves or new finds and indie writers. I haven’t quite worked out what Thursdays and Fridays will be yet. Bear with me as I fear I am being slightly ambitious to think I’ll blog three days in a row anyway…but its always good to have ambition, right?

This weeks #WriterWednesday is a shout out for Dean J. Baker, a poet I found via wordpress.com and twitter. If you have gauged anything from my posts you will have realised that I have a soft spot for poetry, although I am not particularly skilled in writing it myself. At school I had the biggest writer’s crush on Ted Hughes and I always harbour a fondness for those writers who are able to harness words in a way that I never could.

Dean’s words capture great sensuality, romance, passion, anger, torment, soft sentiments about family and love. They always reel me in and I could literally hit that ‘like’ button over every single poem. Hell, screw that, I need an ‘ADORE’ button.

Below is a taster of what you should expect from Dean…..this is a poem he posted on 20th May:

HORATIO SAYS NOT ME

I’m not falling: that’s too silly
I’m not writing poems for you

I’m not staring at your picture
imagining how you move, hearing

Your voice, softly smooth -
what your scent must bring to mind

How you shine differently now
mornings, and southern nights

No, not me: I did not -
I won’t write this either, finally

Please, please go check out Dean’s work, you can find him hanging out at the following places:

http://deanjbaker.wordpress.com

@deanjbaker on Twitter

http://www.facebook.com/#!/DeanJBakerPoetAuthorComposer Dean’s FB page….I hope this link works as I copied and pasted it like the simpleton I am, but if it doesn’t I’m sure you people with more brain cells than me can find him on FB

Anyway, you get the picture, go look him up and enjoy his wonderful words. Or I’ll set the hounds on you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#TuesdayTaster Excerpt from Lost Creatures

Back in the cabin I bolted the door behind me and padded into the other room. In the darkened cabin, shadows engulfed me and even though I knew the bogeyman hiding under the trapdoor, I didn’t fancy making the journey down the precarious ladder in the pitch blackness. On the kitchen side, was a small candle in a white pottery holder and a box of matches. I watched as the tiny flame danced into life and I left it burning on the side for a moment, whilst I lifted the hatch door once again and then made my way down the ladder, trying to hold on carefully with one hand whilst holding the candle in the other. Placing the candle on the floor, I went back up and pulled the hatch door shut grimacing slightly at the thought of enclosing myself in an underground room with a vampire. Although when I went back down, the vampire himself was nowhere to be seen.
I frowned as I stared at the thin mattress and blanket in the corner but saw that Michael was not there. Hearing a noise I whirled around and saw the curtain, trailing across the floor behind me leading behind the ladder to the opposite side of the room.
There, crouched low in the corner, with his arms outstretched as if he were clutching at the walls to stop himself from falling, was Michael. His back was pressed straight up against the corner and his eyes flashed wildly. His teeth were clenched and his breath came out in a painful panting sound. I took a step towards him and he shifted quickly as if trying to press himself into the wall even further.
“Don’t!” he spat “Don’t come near me!”
“What?” I said feeling confused “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he hissed “What’s wrong? I have just risked daylight, not once, but twice and you ask me what’s wrong?”
“Michael, look I know you were scared out there but….”
“Don’t even think to tell me how I am feeling! Ever! Because you have no bloody idea!” he said louder this time and I recoiled from the venom in his tone.
“Okay, I’m sorry, alright?”
“You’re always bloody sorry aren’t you? I’m sorry for being a burden. I’m sorry for constantly running away and getting into trouble. I’m sorry for running my mouth off and having an opinion of something I know nothing about!” he said it all in a whining voice and I felt my anger ignite.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I snapped “I helped you get out of there and now you’re having a go at me?”
“I didn’t need your help! I told you that!” he shouted and stood up.
I couldn’t help but feel that there was something in his stance that made me think he was going to pounce at me. He looked all wound up tight, like a spring waiting to uncoil and fly across the room.
“I told you I would stay there. I told you I would meet you here, but no, you had to do everything your own way as usual! God forbid that you ever do anything that I ask! I asked you not to come looking for me. In fact I distinctly remember forbidding you to come there and what did you do? I should have known! And look what happened, you almost got yourself killed. Again! What is it with you, huh? Do you have some kind of morbid death wish? Do you get a kick out of it? Do you enjoy the pain, Sarah? Is that it?”
“That’s a stupid thing to say! You think I enjoyed this?” I scoffed, furious at his words and pointing the wound on my neck that still throbbed painfully “you think I wanted this to happen?”
“Well what the hell did you expect would happen? You walk freely into a vampire den, where every vampire in that place was desperate to take you and you expected to walk out unharmed? Why the hell did you think I told you not to go near there?” he was shouting now, his face patterned with hot rage.
“Oh you’re just great at telling me what to do, aren’t you Michael? It’s all I ever hear! Don’t do this, don’t do that. I’m tired of it! You spend half your time ordering me about and half your time lying through your teeth. Why should I listen to anything you say?”
“If I lie, it’s only to protect you,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Bullshit!” I cried “you lie to protect yourself! You lie because you don’t want me to know the truth about you.”
“Which is what exactly?”
“That you don’t do anything unless it benefits you. This whole thing has been orchestrated to suit you! The way you have watched over me all these years; looking out for me because my father asked you to. You did it for you, Michael! You didn’t do it because you cared for me; you did it because you thought my father would tell you what you wanted to know.”
“What do you want me to say?” he sniped back sarcastically “you want me to say that I did it out of love? You have read too many bloody novels! You’re a human!”
“Well sorry I disgust you so much! But thanks to you my father is gone now, so there’s no one here to order you to stay with me!”
“What did you say?” he said, his face going dark and taking a step forward.
“Well seeing as I am just a vile human, you won’t want to hang around me anymore will you?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Thanks to you my father is gone. Thanks to me? Explain to me about the part where you think that was my fault?”
I glared at him now, feeling the fury burning through my veins and unable to keep a lock on my mouth. “Well you did it, didn’t you? You were the one that ended it,” I shot at him accusatorily.
His mouth dropped open in shock and then his cheek muscles twitched.
“I didn’t kill him,” his voice was low and he clenched his fists together tightly.
“Didn’t you? Funny because I could have sworn it was you I saw taking that final bite. How did that feel? Bet you were glad to get rid of the old bastard, weren’t you? Bet you thought all your Christmases had come at once!” I smiled at him cruelly.
“You think I enjoyed that?” he stared at me incredulously.
“Oh come on, Michael! The man who has pulled your strings all these years? Ordered you to do his bidding time and time again? You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy finishing him off! Just a little bit even?”
“Shut up,” he snarled.
“See? The truth hurts doesn’t it? I know you, Michael. I know you better than you think I do and I know there was some part of you that wanted him gone.”
“You need to shut up now,” he growled.
“Why? What are you going to do, huh? Are you going to open my vein like she did? Finish what she started? Go on, you can take down a whole family in one night. That’s got to be a real win for you, right? A den leader and his sensor daughter! Go on why don’t you add another sensor to your list, Michael?”
“What are you talking about?”
“One you told me!” I spat “one sensor! And yet apparently it’s three. See, yet another lie that seemed to fall so easily from your lips. You really have a talent for it.”
“And you really have a talent for going for the jugular better than any vampire I know,” he snapped, shaking his head.
“Maybe I learned it from you?”
“Maybe you just inherited it from that bitch of a mother of yours?”
Now it was his turn to smile cruelly only he seemed to do it so much better than I could. I felt like he had reached across and punched me square in the gut.
“Take that back,” I said staring directly into his eyes.
“Why? She was a bitch. Even you can’t deny that. You hated her. I reckon you must have thought Bourne did you a really big favour that night.”
“I did not!” I gasped.
“But you did hate her, didn’t you?” he smirked, stepping forward “come on, Sarah, admit it! She thought you were a freak, of course you hated her!”
“Stop it,” I whispered.
“Just think: no more awkward silences. No more hate-filled looks. No more having to avoid her. No more having to be scared of her. I bet you breathed a sigh of relief when she was ripped from this world?”
“Stop it!” I shouted “stop it!”
“You were right,”he laughed, turning away “the truth really does hurt.”
For a few seconds I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I stood there, staring at his back, clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to suppress the most awful scream that was building inside my throat. With a cry of rage, I flew at him, ready to hammer down blow after blow on his smug face but with a quicker-than-the-eye move, he spun and caught my wrists before I could hit him and he charged forward, pushing me backwards until my back hit the wall and he pinned me against it, with his face dark and full of rage. I tried to kick out with my legs but he held my lower body still with his own and bared his teeth at me.
“You want to fight me, Sarah?” he said in a low, dangerous voice “you really want to fight me?”
“I’m not scared of you, vampire!” I spat, raising my chin in defiance.
“You should be, sensor,” he warned “maybe I should never have let things get this far. I always knew having a human in my life was…wrong…twisted even. And yet, for some reason I condoned it. I condoned it because I thought that maybe you were the key. But I think I was wrong about that. I’m starting to wonder if all this is really worth the hassle. I’m starting to think I’d rather go an eternity without knowing, than spend another night with you.”
“That would be completely fine with me!”
We glared at each other; the vampire and the sensor; both covered in the proof of our recent ordeals. The blood from the wound above his eye was still smeared across his cheekbone and he bore the marks of beatings he had taken at the hands of my father’s people. His hair fell across his right eye and covered a blackened eye socket. I still wore the faded bruises from my time in the Exodus cells, and I could still feel the bite marks on my thighs where Alex had attacked me. However all of these marks seemed to pale in comparison to the burning where Dominique had sunk her teeth into my neck. As I stood there now, feeling such overwhelming rage, my neck throbbed in agony and I thought that if Michael let me go, I would probably sink to my knees in pain. But, held against the wall and struggling to move, it actually felt like the pain was feeding my anger. The more it burned, the more I burned. The more I burned, the more I wanted to hurt him. And he definitely looked like he wanted to hurt me. His face was flushed with rage and his eyes blazed wildly as he ran them over my face.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, he released my wrists and stepped back, holding his head in his hands. I could feel my breath leave me in short sharp gasps and I rubbed the skin on my wrists where he had held me so tightly. Letting out a strangled cry, he jumped forward, grabbing me again and pinning me in the same position and when he lowered his head towards mine, I closed my eyes fearing the worst and hoping to God that it wouldn’t hurt but knowing that it most definitely would.

Copyright (c) Lindsey Clarke 2012

Size Doesn’t Matter. Honest.

So, apparently 16th May was National Flash Fiction Day. Did you know? A twitter friend of mine sent me this great article by David Gaffney in The Guardian http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/14/how-to-write-flash-fiction?cat=books&type=article please go check it out for some useful hints and tips about flash fiction.
This led to a conversation about how I admire anyone who has the ability to keep their writing so focused that they can churn out micro-fiction limited to a 150 word limit. To me, this just seems impossible. Maybe I just talk too much, but I’ve always found it difficult to stick to a required word limit. As a child in lower school, my teacher would ask us to write a story four pages long and ten pages later I would still be writing.
This has never really changed throughout my life. University assignments were to me, a form of water torture. I could never stick to the word limit. The difficulty never lay in researching the subject matter, forming a convincing argument and being able to back up my theory with concrete proof. It was always the word limit. I’d get to the end of the assignment and realise I had gone way over the required word count and then have to spend ages editing and trying to work out what section I had to cut and how I could get my word count back on target.
The only course in which that was never an issue was the women in contemporary poetry module, which was also a creative writing course. There was seemingly never any need for a word count when writing poetry. Maybe poetry enabled me to tame my urge to keep writing until my fingers bled. Maybe it somehow helped me to remain more focused and succinct. I don’t know.
I like to think that now I write novels, I am not endlessly babbling and waffling on for pages and pages. I like to think that I’m still focused despite the fact Dark Sanctuary is over 140,000 words. To some, that might seem like an obscene amount of words. Until I wrote Dark Sanctuary I never knew what might be an acceptable word count. After all, when you read a book by one of your favourite authors, you don’t get to the last page and see the word count printed out loud and proud. And I don’t ever buy a paperback based on how many pages it has. I buy a book because the blurb has reeled me in. Size doesn’t matter. Or does it?
It seems in some corners, it does. In fact, some people seem quite hung up on size. Is it too long? Is it too short? Are people really put off by a higher word count?
I’ve edited Dark Sanctuary a number of times. The cost of getting it professionally edited made me get hung up on the word count. The longer the word count, the more expensive it was going to be to get it edited. So from a practical and financial point of view, I toyed with the idea of being more brutal with my editing; taking out large sections just to get the book to a more acceptable, and affordable size. Maybe I’m slightly precious with my writing, but ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Taking out certain sections for the sake of an acceptable final word count seemed like going against the grain.
I’m more than happy to take out something if it doesn’t work but I’m not happy to cut for cuttings sake or to please anyone who prefers their novels to be under 80,000 words. All I can say to those readers is if that is the length of novel that you want, then it’s probably best not to come a-knocking on Sarah’s door as her story doesn’t conform to standard word counts. She talks, I write and we will be done when we’re done and not before.

“She has a knife?” – Excerpt from Book 3 of The Dark Sanctuary Series

The train rocked through the tunnel and as much as I wanted to get off this hellish tin can, I dreaded reaching the station and having to flee for my life with this vampire practically on top of me all the way to the surface. She was still struggling with her breath and as the train pulled into the station and juddered to a halt, she let go of the rail too soon and stumbled and someone standing near her caught her before she fell to the floor. I heard her hiss and she pulled back violently, which only encouraged indignant curses from the man who had kindly tried to help her. I saw my chance and fled through the doors, hearing her howl of rage behind me when she realised I had gone.
I pushed my way through the people heading towards the escalator, muttering my apologies as I rushed forward. Halfway up I heard shouts behind me and saw the girl doing the same, only she was trying to push past someone who was walking up on the left, causing the people around her to cry out in alarm for fear she send them all flying down to the bottom. Her perseverance was terrifying and strangely hypnotising. She was like this whirling fanged dervish, hell bent on nothing but her prey and knocking out everything and everyone in her path and I suddenly felt as if I were moving in slow motion, unable to move as she spun towards me. Suddenly the escalator flattened out beneath me and I turned sharply, realising that I was at the top. In a panicked spurt, I charged towards the escalator reaching into my jeans pocket to grab my Oyster card and swiped it across the scanner. The barriers swished open and I ran through, only to get tugged backwards as my bag got caught between the barriers and I let out an anguished cry as I pulled and yanked frantically on the strap.
I glanced up to see the girl appearing at the top of the escalator, grinning as she saw me still stuck at the barrier. With one final desperate tug, I managed to free my bag but pulled it so hard that I tumbled backwards onto the floor, sending my bag flying and it’s contents spilling out onto the floor. I watched in horror as my lip gloss, iPod, purse and book flew across the ticket hall, followed closely by the penknife which spun and hit someone’s foot, only to skid off in the opposite direction. Scrambling to my feet, I chased after the penknife, finally managing to grab it as it hit the wall and rebounded. A woman standing studying the tube map, looked down just as I picked it up.
“Oh my god, is that a knife?” she cried out, just loud enough for others around us to hear.
“Someone has a knife?” I heard another voice shriek.
“She has a knife!” the first woman said again, louder now and full of alarm.
I looked around in panic, seeing shocked faces staring at me; faces full of fear at this girl scrabbling through the ticket hall with a knife in her hand. A rusty penknife mind you, but a knife all the same. I heard shouts and cries all around me and I wanted to shout and cry back at them.
You’re scared of me? There’s a bloody vampire in here and you’re frightened of me?
The vampire in question found herself stuck in a crowd of people gathering at the ticket turnstiles, some walking through unaware of what was happening and some hesitating when they saw activity buzzing around a rather jittery looking girl who was holding a knife in one hand and an empty bag in the other. I was vaguely aware of people moving now, backing away from me as I were some crazed asylum escapee running rampage through the underground with nothing but a rusty penknife that probably had more chance of giving you tetanus, than slicing open your skin. But of course they didn’t know that. To them; a knife was a knife.
I felt rooted to the spot, unable to get my feet moving as I heard the word knife echoing around the hall like Chinese Whispers as people began to realise that someone here had one.
“Someone has a knife?”
“That girl, that girl……..”
“Over there……the redhead…….”
I heard the crackle of a CB radio and snapped my head to one side just in time to see a member of staff talking into it, no doubt alerting security or the police to the fact they had a crazed monstrous red head brandishing a knife in the ticket hall. It was the impetus I needed to get my feet moving. In an act that would later knot my gut in utter shame when I thought about it, I flicked open the penknife and held it out in front of me, noting the way my hand shook as I waved it around, warning off those closest to me. I hard shrieks and shouts for me to stop as I turned on my heels and catapulted myself towards the exit.
My feet clattered against the steps as I bombed up into the subway above and having done this journey so many times before, albeit without security personnel and a hungry vampire on my heels, I automatically took the tunnel I needed and sped through until I reached the staircase that would take me up into the noise of Hyde Park Corner. A the bottom of the staircase I turned, feeling a shot of nausea sweep through me and saw that the vampire was still there and I knew this chase was far from over. Looking up I could see that the sun no longer lit up the sky in an undiluted dazzling glare and the evening was well and truly settling in. With an ear-splitting scream from my legs and lungs, I grabbed onto the hand rail and pulled myself up the stairs, knowing that I would find no refuge with the daylight that had now cruelly deserted me and I would have to keep running from this ghost of a vampire girl that continued to haunt my every step.

Copyright (c) Lindsey Clarke 2012

Excerpt from Book 3 of The Dark Sanctuary Series

Gathering my things together, I headed quickly towards one of the exits and practically jogged towards the station to catch the tube back to Hyde Park Corner. My head still felt fuzzy from the wine and I jostled through the late night shoppers to reach the entrance to Oxford Circus before cantering down the steps into the ticket hall. I walked the escalator, something I never do as always have this fear of tripping and falling to the bottom, and somehow managed to accomplish it without breaking my neck despite the booze-filled haze in which I was in. By the time I reached the platform, a train was already there and the sharp beeping noise told me it was about to leave and I pushed myself through the closing doors, throwing myself down onto the nearest seat with both a sigh of relief and a cry of help from my lungs.
Closing my eyes, I felt a woozy infusion creeping across my temples and into my shoulder blades and for a moment I confused the sensation with the effects of the wine. It was only when I realised my skin was prickling with alarm did my eyes open wide and I felt my heart beating with a fear I hadn’t felt in over three months. The carriage was quite busy in the way that the central London tubes were always busy and I swept my eyes along the rows of people. It wasn’t long before I saw her.
Sitting just on the other side of the main door on the opposite side of the carriage was a young vampire girl. She couldn’t have been more than about eighteen in human years although who knows how old she actually was. The girl had straggly, dark bobbed hair and wore skinny jeans, a black t-shirt that was clearly crumpled and her white lace-up pumps were smudged with dirt. She was thin, noticeably too thin and her pallor was pale and washed-out. Your average vampire could err on the slightly pale side, but they were never as deathly white as the stories would make us believe. They aren’t the undead. They live and breath just as you or I but their heart rate is slower and their body and skin temperature just peaks below our average. These slight differences were embellished by myth-makers and story tellers until we reached the twisted vampire depiction that we know today; the undead monster, the white-skinned night creature, the coffin-dweller. But actually, it is the fact these differences between human and vampire are so slight that they are able to mix and live amongst us with relative ease and without fear of detection. For the most part, it is only sensors like myself who can pick one out from the crowd.
And it was I that picked this vampire out from the crowded carriage and being the lucky soul that I am, she had already picked me out too. Her eyes look feverishly hungry and one hand gripped the rail near her until her knuckles seemed like they might burst through the thin skin that covered them. She was sitting bolt upright in her seat, perched almost on the edge as if she were getting ready to depart the train. Only I knew she didn’t have any intention of leaving now she had seen me.

Copyright (c) Lindsey Clarke 2012

#musicmonday Jack White – Blunderbuss

I don’t really feel I have much to say this week, which some would say is a good thing, so I shall let a finer human being than me do most of the talking.

Jack White; he of the black tousled hair, pale-skin and musical genius in his fingertips.

My husband bought himself the new album Blunderbuss for his birthday, left it in my car on the very same day and lets jut say I have acquired it. Well, possession is nine-tenths of the law, or something along those lines. 

Anyway, I’ve listened to Blunderbuss on repeat ever since. I can’t say I was ever a huge fan of The White Stripes. Yes, I loved their music but was never gung-ho crazy about them as I am about other bands. But I just can’t stop listening to this album. Probably out-and-out fave is Love Interruption…..I love the imagery in that song, the idea that you need to feel something when you are in love, something that borders on pain and violence -  ‘I want love to roll me over slowly, stick a knife inside me and twist it all around’. Maybe I’m a secret sado-masochist, I don’t know.

With one listen I fell in love. Another poetical musician that has hooked me with incredible words and piano-mastery.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it…..Jack will do all the talking…..go listen……

Phil Collins, hoodies and commuting.

I see all manner of things to and from work everyday. I work about thirty miles away from my home and I spend two-three hours in the car per day, travelling the motorway, high streets and residential areas, so it’s fair to say I see my fair share of sights.

From dog walkers, to mothers taking their children to school, to the bored faces of other commuters; I pass by so many different people. And I’m a people watcher so I pick up all sorts of ideas about new characters on my way. From the way people dress, to their actions, to their language and the way they talk, I drink it all in and if I’m lucky I will spot someone who might make it to the page in some version or another.

I see drivers do crazy and dangerous things that make me gasp out loud or curse them whilst doing the shaky fist action (note: I’m good at this and have mastered it down to a fine art). I see so many weird and wonderful things: from the man who wears a carrier bag over his hat during the rain (I like this, to some it seems like madness, because surely you wear a hat to stop your head getting wet, but how do you stop your hat from getting wet? Think about it); to the jogger who must be in his seventies at least who wears the biggest headphones I’ve ever seen and jogs as if he might keel over, but never does; to the full-on six foot transvestite who walks down Rayners Lane without a care and reminds of the bra-stealing trani from Run, Fat Boy, Run. Yes, I definitely see some weird, wonderful, crazy, dangerous and downright scary things.

But none quite so weird and scary as today.

Driving down Luton Road, heading towards junction 11 of the M1, my attention was caught in my rear view mirror by the sight of a car switiching lanes very quickly and cutting in just behind me. Nothing weird or scary about that, I hear you say and you would be right, except the driver had no face. He was wearing a cream hoodie and no matter how much I strained and squinted to see the face under the hood, there was none. Just a vast black emptiness. Oddly the driver kept slowing down and then speeding up again, but it didn’t matter how close his car got to mine, I still couldn’t see a face. It was 8.45am so it wasn’t dark outside, I could see perfectly clearly but something about this hoodie spooked me. Eventually he sped past me under the motorway bridge, and did a u-turn and sped the other way. Curioser and curiouser.

Okay, so the cynical ones among you are probably thinking, yeah right. Maybe he just had a really small head which was shadowed into darkness by a giant hood. Maybe I need my eye sight testing again. Maybe. But it did get me thinking about what it means to see a hooded figure and how great it would be to get that into a story.

Doing a quick search on the internet, most articles and posts seem to discuss what it means to see a hooded figure either in your dreams or upon waking. Often the appearance of a dark hooded figure is coupled with sleep-paralysis. But generally, the internet seems to say that seeing a hooded figure is never a good thing. One person even said that it means that you are being harassed by a demon because you have either dabbled in the occult or pornography and are therefore going to Hell in a thousand tiny pieces, so that Satan can feast on your body a million times over whilst forcing you to listen to the back catalogue of Genesis. Okay, so this internet source didn’t say that, but you get the picture. If it’s not Genesis, it’s bound to be something equally evil.

My friend Nadia seems quite alarmed by my story and says she is going to pray for me. I guess she knows about the occult and pornography thing too. Damn.

Anyway, whether I am doomed or not, I like the idea of getting this into a story and I’m thinking I’ll give it a modern twist and stick to a hoodie-wearing faceless demon. Only I better do it before the Devil comes with his Genesis LP’s. Because that would be scary.