Grafting on

Woe is me! Have you ever been to that little corner of your imagination that is only yours? That no one else has ever invaded? That is where I am now. All I want is to be by myslef, thinking of the qualities of space-time and measuring out the hours as they tick by. Fate opens new doors, but so far I have been offered no exit from my misery. Would that it should come! Like a glamorous lady in a long, lilac satin robe, or maybe like a new puppy dog. Sometimes it feels like life is just falling apart, that nothing can be done to escape the dread and the angst. I set out with a promise to my fans and friends, to avoid comma sprinkling and opaque argot. To provide only top notch high quality writing. That is a promise I have stuck to and adhered to through thick and thin, for better or worst. But I refuse to kindle my book. I shall post it online on the blog. My blog has taken over 850 hits since it went online, so the interst is there, even if converntional minds turn me down or fail to see my skills. My aunt always told me I had the gift for writing, that words shape themselves on my fingers. Like a whoosh they enter my head, crash, boom, bang, and the page is written. People ask me. I say I'm driven to it really. You have to get that paragraph down, you have to slog away at it until it is just right. Yes, we crave recognition, we desire to see our words in print between two hard covers. Yes, we want to give autographs and clear up readers' doubts. We want to formuleight new characters and plots. But the basic drive is within oneself, not an external force. Whether heathen, Muslim, Christian or Jew, we want readers to like our texts. That's where it's at I suppose, but the internal drive is a force so great, so unstoppable, so unputdownable. Words fly from my fingers. When I look back I say that it can't have bene me who wrote this, but it was. It's a force beyond reckoning and yet you have to reckon with it because it is a force to be reckoned with. A rodomontade of thought, a plethora of heart and a dollop of graft. I will not give up. But it hurts so much just right now, oh woe is me!

I've been had!

In December 2008, upon completion of my book, nice people came to our house and said they had contacts with a New York publisher that conisdered all sorts of manuscripts. My husband paid them $19000 of which $6000 was to be paid to me as an advance on the sales of my book. My hefty cashier's check arrived in January 2009. At least I wasn't out of pocket, since I'd been paid an advance, but what I have suffered since then is something no one should be subjected to. After a delay of two years, without so much as a wiff of my book , they have now asked me for a further $8000 to cover unexpected expenses. This means I would be down by two thousand bucks. Although my husband is a wealthy American industrialist, he says that when you add it up I've been had because of the math. And he refuses to pay anymore. The Northern Sky was already set in the early 90s and another delay will make it dated. So tkae my advice and look before you leap. Sitting in my living room that day, my book was published before my eyes, before disappearing beyond the horizon of broken dreams and dashed hopes. It's an ill wind, and you can dance till the cows come home, but don't shoot from the hip if you're toting a loaded gun. This only adds to my frustration because I never had kids and it was the first commandment really when the Lord said Go froth and multiply, and I've never done it. I sat in the bistro for hours and days on end, writing, struggling with a subordinate clause and other things that I don't even know what they're called. The internet is rife with con artists and it's hard to believe that I wasted two years and all the time before that on my magnis opus. The whole business makes me sick. But you gotta larn your lesson, sometimes the hard way. Now I'm caught somewhere in time, this being one of my worst moments. I had so much promise as a writer. All my teachers at school said I had the gift. I started writing short stories in my English tests when I was a little kid and my parents, my aunt and my friends aol said I should become a writer and I did. But to think that it has all turned to dust, all gone up in smoke, all water down the drain, money down the toilet. Norbert says I can kindle my book but it's not really the same thing, I mean you can't just casually throw a kindle on the coffee table and say, oh, that's my book, look its even got my picture on the back cover! and all you friends go Woww, that's write, tell us about it and they listen in shock and awe as you recount the writing process, just like Bernard Miller who wrote Tropic of Caprirorn his first book in Paris. Enraptured, that's how people get when you start to tell thema bout the creative process, all caught up in the story. It's like being Leonardo Davinci and people come to watch you paint, only with words. Words spring from my fingertips with the greatest of ease, it's a gift. The way you formuleight a character, the way he takes shape in your hands and puts words in your mouth. But I don't want to get ahead o my self or be melodramatic because nothing can come of that, maybe my pain will inspire me to right more and better next time and find a publisher with a shred of honesty, a speck of decency, a fleck of nobility. The Shetland Islands are far away and ther my hopes turned to dust, faded in time, rotted like an old apple core in the California sun or a banana on a desert beach, maggots eating away at its crust. I am heart broken and wrenched. My trust has been misused by many people. Tonight as I brood over my Robert Mondavi Pinot Noar, draining the goblet to the dregs, I will reflect on my past life. Time heals old wounds, but there arr some you don't wanna heal too soon. Revel in your pain, rejoice in your suffering, yearn in your angst and anguish as you toil with your anxiety. mark my words, sometimes 'tis better thus...

So where do I go from here? It's a long road ahead, a long, winding, sinuous path that leads down to ruin and destruction or to glory and trumpets. Heart rendering anguish or joy bringing fame and fortune, glory for all to see bared in teh sunlight, or an infernal nightmare of artistic tortuousness. Few can see what lies ahead, and most of them get it wrong anyway. Yet the signs were ther for all to sea, for I was given more than one warning but failed to harken unto the voices in my head, for voices they were. Never in my life have I been driven to give up, although many a carrot was dangled on a stick undermy nose or before my blind eyes. As the English parlamentarians say, the eyes have it. But mine were blind, blind as a bat in a dark cave, for warnings were shown to me by the dozen, multifold by the truckload even, if I may go so far.

Crushed to dust, gone in a puff of smoke, gone with the wind! As Shakespeare said "twix'd my sheets they have done my office' for it was in my very home, my home! that these people took me in, promising that which they could not give even if it were theirs in the first place though it was not. And so I lye in solitude and loneliness, with the company of my thoughts but feeling let down and unable to be assuaged or commiserated or compensated. Yes, I was drawn in, attracted by the traps of fame and desire for recognition and greater horded wealth, although it was not to be because of my avarice and greed. Could this be the case, that I deserved it all after all. The Lord works in strange ways. Only time will tell.