Muddling through, again …

Couldn’t get really excited about this morning’s meditation but here it is anyway. It’s much like it is really:

Meditation 172

There’s nothing
in the store today –
all the words are blank.

Somewhere far away,
great men
and great deeds

go about their business,
but here, where I am,
it’s empty and dark

and astonishingly quiet.


Still feeling very low this week, as you can probably tell. This is something of a surprise as it’s not the right time of the month for this kind of thing, but there it is. Everything seems very slow – it’s like walking around whilst carrying a huge and very heavy cloak over my shoulders. Very strange. Still taking the happy pills though and hoping for the best. This morning I was sorting lunch out in the kitchen whilst groaning so Lord H brought me the toy puffin so I could cuddle it, sets its cry off (puffins sound like cows in labour having a very bad time) and groan in unison – so at least I didn’t feel too alone. What a hero.

Talking of heroes, this week’s are Carol for being lovely and wanting to help people (at the moment, I simply want to avoid them so I am more than impressed by this), Chaplaincy Ruth’s son’s teacher, and the lass from Marketing who’s been landed in the deep end and is doing an amazing job in very tricky circumstances.

At lunchtime I walked into town to pay in a cheque and post off the copy of Maloney’s Law to the charity bid winner. Actually I was late back as I didn’t feel at all well, to be honest. Groan. So this afternoon, I’m trying to take it easy but I’m still struggling with making sense of yesterday’s Forum minutes. My interest levels are at an all-time low which isn’t making it any simpler, I must say. It took a Starbucks decaff cappuccino to revive me – even a little.

Tonight, I’ll do a bit more to the Hallsfoot’s Battle edit, if possible. Ooh and I also signed off the final PDF for my story in the upcoming Disasters and Miracles anthology yesterday, so it looks like things are moving there. And I’m looking forward to Who Do You Think You Are? and Ugly Betty on tonight – ideal chilling out/interest material.

Today’s nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Paying a cheque in
3. Posting Maloney
4. Starbucks
5. Editing
6. Preparation for Disasters and Miracles
7. TV.

Anne Brooke - in the spaced-out zone, as ever ...

Rupert’s return and the happy pills

Up early today as Rupert (the car) is at last ready to be collected, hurrah! It’s so nice to have him back, I must say – and the aircon hasn’t been this good for a long long time. Almost tempting not to look for a new car now, but I’m still keen, I must admit. I suspect there might be a bit of a car hunt this weekend. We’ll see how I’m feeling. We’re also attempting to book our September holiday in and around Pompeii, so here’s hoping there’s some good news on that one tonight.

In the meantime, I’m still feeling raw and more than a little overwhelmed from yesterday’s horrendous day – so have taken my supply of happy pills this morning and am hoping from the best … I think I’m having People Overload at the moment. Way too many demands coming from way too many quarters. Oh to be a hermit, eh. There’s a lot to be said for the solitary life – as long as Lord H is in it too.

At work, I’m struggling away with my meetings I’ve arranged for the upcoming year, which appear to have been lost so I suspect I may have to start from scratch. Not much joy there then. Plus I’m trying to avoid getting too stressed out by the traumas of Freshers’ Week planning. I do wish people wouldn’t assume I need a new challenge and the chance to do something different. Actually I don’t. I get plenty of challenges galore in my writing life – I really don’t need them elsewhere. I’d be far happier just doing the old familiar stuff I know and might not get too stressed out by – but that concept appears to be off the menu, alas. UPDATE: Having done something about it myself today (rather than lots of people telling me what I should be doing, as happened yesterday), I feel ever so slightly more in control which is making me feel just a tad better, hurrah. Not a lot though – just a little bit … I do have a hunch that the whole process will be more edgy this year, but we’ll see.

Had a much needed walk round campus at lunchtime, as well as a brief pop into the gallery which has a sculpture exhibition on at the moment – nice stuff but nothing really grabbed me. And I’m also still having fun with my CooleReader, so that’s a relief. Oh and there’s some lovely charity news about Maloney’s Law – some hugely wonderful person actually put a bid in during the last nine minutes of the auction so the shame of being the Most Unpopular Author in the Charity World has just about passed me by, phew. So, thank you a thousand times and a signed copy will be winging its way to you, Kind Person, just as soon as I can get it in the post.

This afternoon, I took the minutes for the Project Welcome Forum and then I’m hoping for a relatively quiet evening, please God. I’m bumbling away on the edits to Hallsfoot’s Battle, and it’s going okay at the moment. I’m trying to take it slowly and not worry about it too much. Hmm, I wonder when the happy pills kick in …

Today’s nice things:

1. Getting Rupert back
2. Thinking about a new car
3. Thinking about a holiday
4. Lunchtime walks
5. Maloney’s Law finding a last-minute friend, hurrah!
6. Editing
7. Happy pills.

Anne Brooke - taking everything slowly as she's unable to go very fast

Disasters and Miracles

Here’s this morning’s meditation:

Meditation 171

Every seventh year
let the words

speak through you:
from the gut

to the throat,
from the mouth

to the air,
releasing strange light

that glistens the skin
of all who hear.


I took the courtesy car into work today and managed to get a 3 day temporary pass for it as I don’t really know when I’ll be seeing Rupert again, sigh. UPDATE - looks like I'll be able to pick it up first thing tomorrow, so that's a relief anyway. Meanwhile at work, I’m messing around with meeting papers and diary maintenance. Feels like a very muddled Monday today really.

Mind you, the nice news is that the upcoming Bible Stories Anthology, Disasters and Miracles, now has its family-friendly cover art. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in anything remotely family-friendly, so that’s a new thing for me. Best not get too used to it though …

Thank goodness for reflexology at lunchtime – such a treat. It set me up for a meeting straight afterwards about Freshers’ Week. I’m running one of the information point tables again this year so best gird my proverbial loins up pretty darn soon. It all starts now. The worst thing is there’s a new regime this year (groan …) and I have to come in the Sunday before Freshers’ Week as well – for six hours!!! Lordy, but I can see it’s going to be even more of a nightmare week than usual, deep deep sighing … The very thought of it is making me feel quite tearful, even now.

Tonight, I will pop into see Gladys on my way home, and then I’m anticipating an evening of quiet editing and maybe a spot of TV. You never know. Oh and there’s been yet another rejection of my comic fantasy short story, Creative Accountancy for Beginners, double sigh. And there's about one hour left (at the time of typing) of the Maloney's Law Diabetes Charity auction bid and the sum total of my bids is zero. Ye gods, that's not something I'll be doing again in the future, I can tell you that now!! So, not a first-class day then, all in all. The fed-up factor is about 10. Out of 5. Is the weekend soon???

Today’s nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Cover art for Disasters and Miracles
3. Reflexology
4. Editing
5. TV.

Anne Brooke - hoping the day will be over soon ...

Slow starts and stories

A gloriously slow start to the day today. And Lordy but that doesn't happen often. Didn't actually get up till gone 9am, which is about a three hour lie-in compared to a University day and two to a non-University one, hurrah! Total bliss really. So here's this morning's meditation (which was nearly an afternoon one):

Meditation 170

All those years
and years of travel

and when the destination’s
finally in sight,

just there over the hill,
all you can do

is gaze and gaze
at untouched beauty,

knowing you will never
enter it.


Talking of literary matters, I'm pleased to say that my short story, The Last Morning, is now published at The Foundling Review and two of my earlier meditation poems can be found at Pens On Fire webzine.

It certainly makes up for the two or three rejections (boo! hiss!) I've had this week - I'm storing them up for the moment as I can't raise the energy to resend stuff out while I'm seriously getting into the novel edit for Hallsfoot's Battle. The beginning is actually going fairly smoothly and I'm now as far into it as Chapter Four (which is further than you might think as Ralph's sections of the story don't count as chapters but as part of the Lammas Chronicles, and I've had two of those already). So far my most amusing changes have been to do with Annyeke's house which I appear to have completely redecorated in the two days' gap between the ending of The Gifting and the start of this novel. Hell, no wonder she's tired! I suspect there will be a lot more changes to come, and deeper ones too, however.

Tonight, I must ring Mother and try to sound relatively normal (ho ho) and I must also try to glean some manner of television out of this evening's sparse programming. At least we have last week's video of Mock the Week still to watch, plus a fair amount of DVD Spaced episodes, hurrah.

This week's haiku is:

Each word hooks meaning
into my skin; their temple
rises to the skies.

Today's nice thing:

1. A lie-in
2. Poetry
3. Short story and poetry publications
4. The Hallsfoot edit
5. Videos/DVDs
6. Haiku.

Anne Brooke - relishing slowness

Torchwood failures and toilet brushes

Ah, Torchwood. What a very peculiar mix that week was. Such a rollercoaster ride and with such a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. Who would have thought that the kick-ass brilliant episode one could have led to the mixed-up confusion of episode five? Such a shame. Don't get me wrong though. I thought that, taken as a whole, it was an utterly superb and gritty political fantasy drama, and the brilliant Peter Capaldi gave the performance of a lifetime as flawed civil servant, John Frobisher. I also think the scene where he (SPOILER ALERT - just in case!) goes up the stairs of his family home to kill his wife and children, interspersed with the equally wonderful scene of his secretary talking to Lois in prison about how Frobisher used to be might just be the best thing on TV since Rome.

But, to my mind, for all that it simply wasn't Torchwood. It felt as if the scriptwriters had strayed so far from the ethos of the programme that they could easily have taken it out of the Torchwood world, given it a slight shift of structure and it would have worked equally well. And, if that's the case, then I think that all in all it failed. Interestingly, (ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!) when Ianto dies, I felt it had strayed so far from its centre by then that I didn't much care either way whether he lived or not. I also do think that the scriptwriters never really understood how to handle a developing gay couple relationship - throughout the five nights, the dialogue between Jack and Ianto was never consistent and blew hot and cold all the time. It was really very unsatisfactory. And yes I do think Ianto had to die - due to Jack's revealed past history and the fact that he'd taken twelve children to their deaths, creatively speaking Jack needed to suffer too, and that was fine. But, if the series wanted to hang on in some measure to what makes (or rather made) Torchwood special, then there would have been no need to kill Jack's grandson, Steven, at the end. All they had to do to give it a really satisfying ending was to discover that Steven had inherited Jack's resurrection abilities, and allow the boy to come back from the dead. That would have been grand - and opened up a whole new plotline about Jack's developing links with his family, while Gwen develops hers. Instead, they seemed to blow any concept of light or positivity out of the water and left themselves with something of a mess. Again, such a shame.

Anyway, here's today's meditation:

Meditation 169

You won’t find it
in the sky
nor on the other side

of the ocean.

What you seek
is already with you;
it’s a pure scent,

richer than all the perfumes
of earth, poured out
like water, over skin.

Remember.


Other amusements of the day are that when cleaning the loo last night, the loo brush fell off in my hand and landed in the toilet-bowl. Goddammit. I had to get Lord H to come and fish it out and mend it - this sort of thing is a man's job, you know ... Oh, most definitely it is. However, bearing in mind that this week I've had a gear stick come off in my hand, and now a loo-brush, I am loathe to go anywhere near Lord H's good self for the duration of the weekend, just in case. These things often travel in threes, you know. And I have absolutely no idea how I might explain it to the hospital, should I need to ... Hmm, perhaps better safe than sorry.

This morning, I have finished writing up my review of Chris Cleave's novel, The Other Hand (surely no coincidence, bearing in mind the above?...), for Vulpes Libris which will be up on site on 4 August. My review won't be pretty either, that much I can say. The novel also has the worst blurb in the history of time - what on earth are publishers on these days??? The mind boggles indeed ...

This afternoon however, things are looking up as Lord H and I are off to Glyndebourne once more to see Falstaff. I must admit to not usually being a fan of anything to do with Falstaff at all - I've always found him an immensely irritating and dull character, but hey it's Verdi and it's an experience. So I am endeavouring to keep an open mind. And the company, the food and the setting will be lovely for sure.

Oh, and the good news is that Lord H has found out how to open my strange PDF files on the CoolerReader. Apparently the Adobe Digital Editions downloads are not actual PDFs at all, but envelopes containing PDFs. When downloaded, they put the envelope in one file and the actual PDF in another. Yes, I know, it's not intuitive at all, is it? And the instructions are sadly minimal. Anyway now I have found them on my computer, I have copied them to the eReader and it's all working fine, hurrah. Hell, I can even bookmark the dang pages and find them again - what joy! Lord H and I are now the experts, sad to say ...

Today's nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Getting the loo brush mended
3. Not having even to think about Cleave's dreadful novel for a while
4. Glyndebourne
5. Getting to grips with my CooleReader.

Anne Brooke - frightened to touch anything at all today

Vulpes Libris review, golf and a CoolerReader nightmare

I'm pleased to say that my review of John Wray's novel, Lowboy is now up at Vulpes Libris reviews. Something of a mixed bag, to my mind - but I appreciate that even saying that, and making the suggestion I do, is going against every other single reviewer in the known universe. Ah well, I never did follow the crowd ...

And here's this morning's meditation (I think I may have got the numbers muddled in the past, but this is now right. Possibly ...):

Meditation 168

A bitter root, a
barren waste:
salt, sulphur, emptiness.

The pain has always
been written.
Travel secretly

to the desert
and feel the sand
sting your feet

while the light
beckons you on.


And Marian and I managed to have a good golf game - well, compared to last week anyway - so that was something of a surprise. I didn't even go in any bunkers (well, gosh!) though I did manage to hit a tree dead centre which brought the ball right back to where it had been lying only a couple of seconds earlier. Trick shots, eh - how I love 'em.

I've also managed - at last! - to start the actual editing of Hallsfoot's Battle. Having the notes from The Gifting is proving very useful already. I feel it might well change rather more than anticipated by the time I reach the end again. But that's probably a good thing. Talking of books, I am really, seriously struggling with the CoolerReader machine. I did manage to download and read a short story onto it this morning, which was fine. But since then I've bought two more books at different venues which I can't seem to see at all on the reader. Though they appear to exist on the computer and I can even see them in the machine's menu when I plug it in, but I can't get them on the machine itself. I suspect that my reading options might be limited to PDFs, and it doesn't seem to take any notice of Adobe Digital editions (which I thought was a PDF by any other name, but apparently isn't, sigh ...) even though I've downloaded the software and tried to get it to talk to the CoolerReader twice. It's very very frustrating. So it looks like I can't read any of the books on the CoolerBooks site as they all seem to be Adobe Digital and that's no good to man nor beast. They're supposed to offer books in a special CoolerReader format, but for the life of me I have no idea how to find them - it's not very well organised at all. On top of that, I sent a help message to them yesterday, but no-one's replied. I am rapidly becoming extremely disenchanted with the whole thing, really. It surely can't be that hard for them to make it easier for the customer!! But obviously not, deep deep sigh ...

Thank goodness for this afternoon's Alexander Technique lesson - just what I needed to straighten out and just chill a little. And I definitely needed that after discovering that the garage have at last got the aircon unit delivered today - but sadly it's not the right one. So nothing will happen now until at least Monday. Head - meets desk - stays there. Mind you, while the garage was on, I remembered to ask them how to open the courtesy car windows and there's a button under the radio at the front which does it. Not very intuitive then ... Lordy, but really it's astonishing I'm not climbing the walls and chewing at the curtains already. Maybe I would be but I'm just too damn tired, to be honest. Haven't been sleeping well and have been waking too early in a state of extreme tension (Lord knows why) every day for a week - am desperately hoping for a lie-in tomorrow. Now that would be nice.

Today's nice things:

1. The Vulpes Libris review
2. Poetry
3. Golf
4. Starting the Hallsfoot edits
5. Alexander Technique
6. Finding the car's window buttons.

Anne Brooke - wondering if there might still be time for a nap, oh please God yes ...

A 5+ star review for The Bones of Summer!

Well, gosh and double gosh. The lovely Jen at Well Read Books has given me a 5+ star review for The Bones of Summer at Jessewave Reviews, which you can click on there and which I also produce below:

“This is my first full marks review and to be honest I'm a little nervous as to whether what I'm going to write now will actually do this book justice. It was that good. So good, in fact, that I may run out of superlatives. So good, that my mind disappeared into 'book world' and I spent every single spare moment reading. So good, that even when I had to do pesky real life things like cooking I was still thinking about the book, wondering what was going to happen next or mulling over the characters, their merits and their flaws. At the beginning of The Bones of Summer everything is going well for Craig. He's happy with where he lives and is good friends with the two women he shares a house with. He likes his modelling job, even if he's not been able to get on as an actor. Best of all, is that he gets a phone call from a guy he met a couple of months ago, Paul, who wants to get together and maybe start something. Things are on the up for Craig and he's happy to go with it and forget all about the terrible things that happened to him when he ran away from his Devon home seven years before. Unfortunately for Craig, life has a way of kicking you in the teeth when you least expect it. Just after his first date (and night) with Paul, he receives a letter from an old neighbour and friend in Devon telling him that his father is missing. This starts off a chain of events which forces Craig to return to Devon and his past and confront all that he was attempting to forget. Paul is a Private Detective and offers to help Craig investigate his past. This then impacts on their tentative relationship. There are two main themes running through this book. The first, and most obvious theme is that of facing up to your past. Craig ran away from his abusive Father at the age of seventeen and has spent the intervening years trying to avoid thinking of his childhood and the events which led to him leaving. The past, as they say, has a way of catching up with you and I found it admirable in Craig that he faces up to that once he realises that he can't stay in hiding forever. His reaction to going back to Devon was a mixture of heartbreaking and confusing for the reader. Craig himself has large gaps in his memory and often reacts to his surroundings in a very emotional way that even he can't understand, let alone explain to Paul. It takes time and a painful stripping away of the layers before Craig is even able to discover what happened. The reader is taken along with that emotional rollercoaster and I found that I had to be very patient and wait, like Craig does, before I got answers to the many questions that I had as I was reading. Paul too has a past. He has suffered tragedy and betrayal in his life which you would think would make him the ideal person to help Craig through this difficult time. However, things are never that simple which leads to the second theme: That of secrets and lies. Both men have secrets from each other. In one sense this is understandable; they have just met each other and are starting a tentative journey on the road to love. Neither one of them want to share their past with each other yet. Craig doesn't want to scare Paul off and Paul has his own reasons to which we are not privy. It did annoy me that Paul often accuses Craig of lying to him, when, rather hypocritically, he never comes wholly clean about his own past. In fact, I found myself getting cross with Paul quite a lot throughout the book. On one hand he offers to help Craig and even spends a lot of time supporting him through this terrible time; but on the other hand he uses quite brutal methods to force Craig to open up and speak about his past. Methods such as the use of emotional blackmail by withdrawing his approval or acting coldly towards him or blowing hot and cold so that Craig is confused as to where he stands in their relationship. I wasn't sure I liked Paul, but that didn't mean he wasn't a terrific character. He was - as is any character who draws such a response from me. If you are thinking that this sounds like a very angst filled book, then you will be right. Emotions run high throughout the novel. Both men are strong characters who are dealing in their own way with distressing things that have happened to them. Sometimes they break down in tears; sometimes they clash horribly and say dreadful things to each other; sometimes they make love fiercely in order to forget; sometimes they close up and suffer in silence. These were complex men and I was never really sure how they would react at any time. It was this unpredictability that had me on the edge of my seat throughout the book. What a thrilling ride! Having said that, the book wasn't all doom and gloom and what saved it from being too heavy going was the internal voice of Craig. He had a typical British self-depreciating sense of humour and a ready wit, which brought out humour in the direst of circumstances. An example of this was his self-created list of 'rules for gay men'. But he’d better not forget Gay Rule Number One: At least find out a name and a job before you do the business. Craig also has a great optimism about him. He always tries to focus on the good, even if he does worry about the bad things which are happening to him. This idealistic cheerfulness was appealing and coupled with Craig's sarcastic humour often gets him into trouble, but did help to lighten the feel of the book. I've only touched the surface of what was so great about this book. It wasn't just the realistic characterisation that made this book a fantastic read. The settings were so ordinary, so domestic, such as kitchens, bedrooms, an office, a club, and yet terrible things happened in those settings so that their mere ordinariness added to the chill down the spine. The plotting was tight, with each clue, each answer, being revealed slowly until a breathtaking, frantic, thrilling conclusion. Have I waxed lyrical enough about this book? I don't think I can. All I can do is recommend that you read The Bones of Summer. Actually, this goes beyond recommendation to a plea - if you like mystery; if you like character driven books; if you like reading compulsively, unable to part with the story for even a short time; then you must read this book.”

Double gosh and enormous thank yous from me, Jen - I'm so glad you enjoyed it so much! Actually, astonishingly glad, bearing in mind the traumas of the day and the fact that I struggle so hard to get a book published at all! It's so lovely when readers like it. Thank you.

Keeping to literary matters, here's today's meditation:

Meditation 168

A litany of disasters
opens out:
famine, disease, war,

pain, exile, oppression,
murder, cannibalism, death.
But on this day

of quietness and warmth
the voice of the past

seems far away.

This morning, I caught up with yesterday's episode of Torchwood - the shock! the awful revelation! What on earth did Jack think he was doing??!? Words fail me. I can't wait for tonight ... I've also picked up a free courtesy car from the garage as poor Rupert is going to be sick until at least the weekend. The trauma of driving a courtesy car was bad enough (Lord but I hate change), but when I attempted to get it into reverse in order to park it at home, the damn gear stick came off in my hand and the cars queueing up to wait for me to sort myself out had to wait a while longer as I struggled to get the damn thing back in. Really, it doesn't bode well ... Not only that, but I can't work out how to open the windows so when getting and giving back my car park ticket in Guildford this afternoon, I had to leap out of the car, sort out the barrier machine and then leap back into the car and drive through at a rate of knots before the pole came down again. I also had trouble getting into 2nd gear as the pesky thing tends to go straight from 1st to 4th, which makes roundabouts interesting, to say the least. And Guildford has some damn complex roundabouts. Really, it's astonishing I'm alive at all ...

Thank goodness for a girly lunch and a free glass of wine (thank the Lord for food vouchers) with Robin this afternoon. Lovely to see her, and the support while I burbled on for ten minutes from the off about cars and stress and gear sticks is hugely appreciated. Thank you, Robin. After lunch, we wandered around Guildford and I have bought a very nice green summer cardigan with my Viyella voucher - it must be a voucher day indeed.

Back home, I have finally finished typing up my notes for The Gifting and now need to go through them and highlight the things I specially need to bear in mind for the proper Hallsfoot's Battle edit. And, in the meantime and sadly, I am now one of only two authors who have no bids, for Maloney's Law at the Diabetes Charity auction. Ah, the shame is mounting, you know and only four days left, woe is me.

Lastly, you'll be pleased to know that after nearly 24 hours (24 hours!!!), my Cool-er Reader has finally charged itself up and I must now work out how to load ebooks onto it and how to read them. The mystery thickens, Carruthers ...

Today's nice things:

1. A lovely 5+ review for The Bones of Summer, hurrah!
2. Poetry
3. Torchwood
4. Lunch & shopping with Robin
5. Finishing the pre-edits
6. A charged-up Cool-er Reader - at last!

Anne Brooke - having a veritable rollercoaster day