Belonging to Night - A Labour of Love / Obsession

Though I now have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, this was the result of my third attempt at university.  

The first came way back in 1999.  Having made something of a buggered pig's anus of my A-Levels (my best result was an E), I had no clue what to do.  So, when Sheffield Hallam University offered me an HND in Property Management, I shrugged my shoulders and accepted.

It was crap: dry lectures in property law and building maintenance, that came to a head early in the second semester when four hours of a wet Wednesday morning were dedicated to rising damp, culminating in a documentary about the whole thing being bollocks.

A lecture, a tutorial, a lecture and another tutorial, between 9am and 1pm on a Wednesday morning, to tell us about something that doesn't exist!

It was Religious Studies all over again.

Suffice to say I quit.

The thing is university is fun: away from home for the first time; decent sized loan and maintenance grant and bank overdraft to play with; new people, new experiences, new opportunities to get royally obliterated in new pubs and new clubs.  As much as I couldn't bring myself to continue with the course, I was loath to give up the lifestyle.

The problem was, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so off I was sent by the Job Centre to a careers advisor who, after a brief chat, recommended something in research.  He did suggest a few jobs to get me started, but I was far more interested in the Foundation Year in Science and Mathematics offered by SHU.

Alas, interested as I am in physics, and passable as I am at maths, I always sucked at chemistry and biology.

Suffice to say I failed.

However, it was at this time that I started writing.  It was mainly just a hobby; a way of killing time during my second semester, when I should have been revising biology.  But after 6 months and a few failed exams, I'd completed half a novel and realised I'd really rather enjoyed myself doing it.

Another 8 months and a lot of rewriting later, and I'd finished my first novel!

And several months after that, it was published!!

Unfortunately, it turned out the publisher in question would publish literally anything - as evidenced by the utter bilge they'd accepted from me - and leave it entirely to the author to promote and sell the work.

I realised that, if I wanted to do this properly, it would help to know what I was doing, so off to college I went.  With a lot more focus, and a few more years behind me, I passed quite comfortably, made it to university once again, and finally came out at the end of it all with a 2:1 (my dissertation was pants).

During all this, and in the time since, I've been drawn to a number of different projects, none of which have gotten much further than a chapter or two.  To this day, Belonging to Night remains the only thing I've ever completed (that wasn't a university assignment), and the thing I've gone back to again and again in an attempt to finally get it right.

Different perspectives, different tenses, different styles, even different formats:   How ever I've approached it, I've hit a roadblock or become fatigued.  I've even started on a prequel/spin-off.

But then, every time I've set it aside, I've inevitably been drawn back to it.

This is the latest in a pathetically long line of attempts at the intro:

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Southampton, NY. December 20th

Gotta love a good funeral.  Where else is such a show put on by such a mass of sycophants?  Neutralised by their common dress; heads all bowed in faux solemnity, no matter their opinion of the deceased.  They mostly huddle in packs beneath a sea of black umbrellas: lawyers; business associates; business rivals; various investigators from various organisations.  All ashen-faced and dull-eyed; their thinning hair wintering at the edges, dappled in snow or shellacked black like a seabird in an oil slick.

The priest projects his sermon with all the self-assured elan of a lounge singer delivering his climactic crowd-pleaser: ‘This one’s for you!  Why not sing along with the ‘Amens’?’

Even the bereaved are not to be believed.  We might look the part, but there isn’t a mourner in attendance who imagines he’s leaving behind a grieving family.

Only his PA is shedding genuine tears, though I suspect they’re on account of her dearly departed pay check.

‘GABRIEL CALLAGHAN III’ reads his gaudy plaque.  I hate that numeral: it makes me feel like the next model on a production line.  My grandfather wore it like a medal; said it gave him a sense of peerage: ‘Honouring the Gabriel Callaghans that have come before us.’  Says it all that he wouldn’t share the name with his son.

“What’s with the priest?” He stumbles just a little over his ministrations, but like a true professional, is back in full flow before the gasps are done.  Josephine turns a glare to the corner of my eye, but there’s no venom in it.

“You know your grandfather,” she says beneath her breath.  “He loved the pomp and ceremony.”

For her benefit I lower my voice.  “Well he’d better hurry up.  He’s making me hungry.”

“Behave yourself, Gabriel.”

Spurred it seems, the priest hastens to a close - “…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” - and our token mourners chorus the ‘Amen’.

Josephine steps forward with the urn; heeled boots gliding over the thickening snow.  She stops at the edge of the grounds overlooking the ocean, whispers a few words and casts her brother to the breeze.  

For a moment, we all pay our silent respects, until a small voice derails my train of thought.  “Weren’t you going to put that on the plaque?”

Zara is at my hip, staring reverently at the ground.  “Something like that,” I reply.

“So, what happened?”

“Your mother said it wasn’t appropriate.  I suppose she was right.

“Bite me.”  The last I growl at a nearby lawyer with the audacity to shush us.

“So, you’re saving it for the wake?” she asks as the lawyer tries to further merge into the monochrome crowd.

“You think a change of scenery would make it any more appropriate?”

“The alcohol might.”

She has a point…

Beyond The Horizon

I love me some fantasy and sci-fi: whether it be myths, magic and dragons, or lasers, spaceships and aliens, the scale and scope of the genres have always appealed to me.

Though, as much as I've always been a fan of both, as a young'n', it was fantasy I was keenest on.  It was without limits; from beardy old men slinging lightning at each other, to mountain-sized, sentient beasts soaring through the sky, dousing vast armies with their fiery breath.

Despite being a slow reader (to this day), I read The Hobbit in a few days; The Lord of the Rings in a few weeks.  I longed to one-day write my own epic adventure, encompassing all of the classic tropes, and developed a story of such scale as to make Tolkein say, 'Sorry, you've lost me.'

In more recent years, however, I've leaned more towards science fiction.  Not necessarily in terms of reading material - I've frankly struggled to find anything that has hooked me for any length of time (beyond Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect novels) - but in terms of the genre as a whole.

For one, I like adventures: characters going on a long journey, filled with danger and intrigue, exotic beasts in exotic locales.  The problem is, while I believe sci-fi has far greater scope for such stories (you've the entire universe to play with, after all), I've always found good adventures easier to find in the pages of fantasy.  Perhaps the tertiary, rather than universal, setting makes such stories easier to write.

Regardless, the second - and perhaps more important - appeal of the sci-fi genre is the possibilities (imagined though they may be) it represents.

The thing is, we know dragons don't exist.  We know there are no such things as fairies, or sorcerers, or witches seeing future events in bubbling cauldrons of rat-tail and bat-wing broth.

Space, however, is out there.  Full of alien worlds, and varied solar systems, and structures so immense, it would take several lifetimes to get from one end to the other, even if we could reach the speed of light.  

And who knows what exits on those worlds?  The odds of life such as ours evolving are billions to one, but there are trillions of worlds out there in our galaxy alone.  The odds of us being alone in the universe are infinitely greater.

Unfortunately, the pages of science fiction are where such things must remain for the time-being.  We can't travel beyond (or anywhere near) the speed of light.  We can't enter hyperspace or create wormholes.  We can't even take a good look at the planets in our neighbouring systems (not yet, at least).  But while it's frustrating to have no way of finding out what's truly out there, there's still excitement to be found in the possibilities.

To that end, I've made a few attempts at writing my own sci-fi story, so far without much success.  This is the beginning (and, so far, the entirety) of the latest attempt:

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In millennia past, man was hesitant to sail to the horizon for fear of falling from the edge of the world, into the gaping maw of some unseen beast.  Distant lands were new worlds filled with exotic, savage peoples and alien species, ancient and terrible.

But the horizon was reached, and those new worlds explored, and the Earth grew small.

And so to the moon; that mystical body so near in the heavens, yet beyond our reach.  We thought ourselves edging ever closer - scaling mountains, taking to the air, skirting the atmosphere and finally entering the void beyond - only to realise it would take one giant leap to bridge that great distance.

But the moon was reached, and the footprint of mankind planted forever on its surface.

We sent probes to our neighbours: Mars and Venus.  Our eyes reached out as far as Ceres; the moons of Saturn and Jupiter; the Kuiper Belt and the dwarf worlds of Pluto, Haumea; beyond the very borders of our solar system.

But our gaze reached far beyond our grasp.  As far as we could send our legacy out into the cosmos, we remained bound: multiplying and spreading to every corner until the land was choked; our resources failing.  And the Earth grew small.

Politicians argued over who had the rights to what, and answered contrary opinions with soldiers, tanks and bombs.  The people lamented their leaders; argued with their leaders; elected new leaders; ultimately ignored their leaders when new faces walked the exact same path as the old.

The people became insular; caring for themselves and their own, and dealing with the fallout of their leaders’ action and inaction only when it encroached on their own lives.

And without warning, the Earth was far too big.  Many died quickly.  Many more died over time.  The few who remained were disparate: alone and scared.  The horizon was a world away, and there was no way of knowing what lay beyond.

But the heart of man cannot survive stagnant and alone.  Necessity, as well as curiosity, sought the horizon once more.  People lived.  People gathered.  People grew.  Fallen leaders remained buried and forgotten, and the people rose anew, as one.

The road was long and difficult, but never without purpose.  

We sailed to the horizon and we rediscovered distant lands, and the Earth grew small again.

We rebuilt on the ashes of the past, and looked again to the heavens: to the Moon; to Mars.  And further.  We built, and we explored.  We colonized, and we explored.  How ever far the next horizon - how ever difficult the path - we ventured without pause.

And we learned.

And we grew.

And on our diminishing homeworld, The Horizon was built.

Those who desired to, stayed.  The solar system was theirs and we knew, at last, it was in good hands.

The rest of us boarded The Horizon to follow the path of Voyager.

How ever far - how ever difficult - we are bound for the horizon, and The Horizon is now our home.

An intro

I'm not entirely sure to what, yet.  This is more of a tone setter...

I straddle a rickety chair by the window, blowing Cuban smoke into the dense night air, listening to the languid jazz humming from a pub down the road.  The singer’s voice is warm honey down my spine, though her limp-wristed pianist lacks the heft to back her up.

The hotel room is a gaudy affair: all white-wood furniture trimmed with over-polished brass.  A lazy ceiling fan swirls crisp air around the lounging form in the middle of the bed.  The whore’s shallow breath is drowned out by her heavy pulse.  She stares at me with vacant, emerald eyes.  Thick, red hair; child-baring hips; freckles; skin a shade less pallid than my own: What more could an old Irish boy ask for?

My sister once told me I should admire them for the lives they lead despite their brevity.  And I do, I suppose.  The spectre of death looms large over the precious few decades they have, yet still they carry on.  I just wish they’d make better use of what little time they have.

“Take you, for example.  You’re young.  You’re beautiful.  You have, what, five, maybe six decades to play with?  If you’re lucky.  And what are you doing with it?  Opening your legs for any fucker with a fat purse to stick his prick in you for five minutes, slap you around for ten, then stagger home under the illusion of satisfaction to his wife and spawn.”

The fan stills.  Her heart stops.  Cuban musk hangs in the air like a heady mist.  In an instant, to her offended eyes, I’m on top of her: her thick hair curled in my fingers; her wrists pinned.

“Your species,” I tell her.  “You piss away your lives on monotonous ventures, for a handful of paper you’ve been told is important, so you can hand it over to some other feckless shite to hand back a bottle of booze, or an illicit iconograph to help you forget your pathetic, mundane existence.”

She struggles, and I tighten my grip.  Anger flares in her emerald eyes, but it’s tinged with fear.  Yes, I admire her.  I admire her spirit; her passion; her sense of self-preservation.

And I’m disgusted by her wasted potential.

“I’ve seen exceptions, of course: those who’ll put aside their pride for a morsel, or will fight to their end for the life a stranger.  Great minds and great people doing great work for the betterment of you all.  Squandered, because some areshole told you some benevolent ghost says it should be otherwise.”

“What are you?”  The question is choked out through barely suppressed tears; her throat dry with rising panic.

I smile, with a flash of fang.  “You shouldn’t ask questions to which you don’t want an answer.”
That strong heart of hers is now defening.  I feel her pulse run up my arm, filling my chest and pounding behind my eyes.  The fiery hair, pale skin, freckles, emerald eyes: all lost to me now.  There’s only the quickening of blood; the life surging through her; the desperation to survive!  She’s more alive now than she will ever be.

Two hundred thousand million of them in the world: take one away and what changes?  Her family will grieve, and move on.  Her Madame will briefly lament, then replace her.  Her ‘colleagues’ will continue under the same veil of fear that clouds their lowly existence.

I should really stop feeding on whores; they make me maudlin.