Between Lost & Found - Chapter 4

The girl sang while she worked. Not any particular song, but just words that she strung together herself like pearls on a necklace. She had always enjoyed singing, but never did so around others, only when she was alone.

Once she had sung in front of the mother at the orphanage. That was the first layer of scars on her little palms. But now, there was no one to berate her, no one to hurt her. So the words flowed out of her mouth like water through a stream, crystal clear and life-giving.

She had decided to try to make herself a house in the grove of fruit trees. At first, she simply lay a pile of sticks against a tree, but she soon figured out that it was not a good idea. Then she tried leaning sticks against each other, forming a triangular shape she could crawl under, but that too did not work very well.

But, as the girl sang and worked, she noticed something peculiar. The trees around her seemed to be bending downwards, for now, she could reach the low hanging fruit. Likewise, the vines and ferns and toadstools that made up the forest she was in had begun to creep around her. 

She paused in her singing a moment and looked around. The short smiling creatures had stuck around, they all crowded around her, some bringing her sticks to add to her house, others bringing her more fruit, but there were other animals too. The deer with the too fine necks had come to watch her, so too had a couple of the stubby mushroom men. Also, there were large turtles with houses on their backs that tiny mice scurried in and out of and birds with long draping feathers that flowed behind them as they flew. And beings made entirely of light. And even a few dogs as black as pitch with eyes that glowed brightly as if they were ignited by flames that seemed oddly familiar.

They all watched her.

She turned back to her pitiful little house and began to sing again, but this time she imagined what she wanted it to look like, she imagined what she wanted the vines and the trees to do. She sang with all of the happiness she felt and, to her delight, the plants obeyed. 

The vines grew up and around the sticks she had collected, holding them in place. The trees bent and twisted together, joining up to the vines and sticks, forming a roof. Soon she had a living house, made entirely of the plants of the forest.

She jumped for joy at the magic she had done. She went inside her little home and lay down on the bed of moss that had been made for her. The ivy vines that flowered with tiny blue stars twinkled with a dim light and it made her green home look like the night sky. Her ceiling was decorated with the multitude of fruits from the tree and the whole thing just made her want to burst with joy.

As she lay on her mossy bed, she thought of the children still left at the orphanage. If only they could see her now. They had been so cruel to her over the years, but surprisingly, she held no anger towards them. They were children just like herself. With no family or home to call their own, having never been shown love, how could anyone expect them to show love themselves?

She sat up, reaching to her ceiling to pick a piece of fruit, one of the purple kind, and as she ate it she wished she could share it with those sad children. The ones that were like herself. The ones that didn’t belong. The sad ones. The lonely and the weak and the unloved. The ones that went through their lives like they were no more than shadows. 

There were no shadows in this place. If the children came here with her they could be happy too.

The girl picked apart the purple skinned fruit, its flesh was creamy-white and had a soft fibrous consistency, similar to sweet bread. She lay her head back down on the pillow and thought about how lucky she was. How brave she was to escape. 

She must have drifted off to sleep for a time. Sleep used to be such a frightening thing, full of unknowns and nightmares and untrustworthies skulking about the orphanage at night. 

Sometimes at the orphanage, children would die in their sleep, the little ones mostly. They would go to bed and just never wake up. 

Some children would cry out and scream in their sleep. Night terrors the sisters called it. The girl even remembered, once or twice or maybe more, children disappearing. They would be in their beds after supper and then when the girl awoke, their beds would be empty. No one would speak of them again as if they had never even existed and the girl had just imagined them.

As she lay in a half sleep, half waking moment, she wondered if that is how the other children felt about her.

Sleep was such an easy thing now, as natural as breathing or eating. She would simply lay down and close her eyes and sleep would come. 

But as she lay on her mossy bed, fruit in hand but almost dropping it to the floor, she thought she must be dreaming, for, in the doorway of her new tree home, she could see the shape of the dragon lady.

But, even though she had seen some strange things in this place, she knew that dragons definitely did not exist. She had to have been dreaming. This creature was too beautiful to be real. 

The girl felt so sleepy. She could barely open her eyes, but every time she managed to open them just a crack the dragon lady with bright green scales and ebony horns curling from the top of her head, her long elegant face and fire hair, was still standing at the door.

Just as she started to think that maybe this was not a dream at all, the girl heard a deep growl and the dragon lady turned and fled, forked tail cracking the air like a whip.

The noise of the growl startled the girl and she sprang up from her mossy bed. If the dragon lady had been real she was gone, but in her place stood a tremendous black dog. It was similar to those that had been watching her work but easily four times the size. 

Even with its head lowered, it still towered over the girl. Its fiery eyes glowed brightly in the dim light of inside and it walked towards the girl slowly.

The girl stumbled backward onto her bed and backed up onto the wall. There was nowhere she could run to. The doorway was completely blocked by the massive bulk of the animal.

All the girl could do was close her eyes and pray that her death would be quick.

First Chapter - Dead Bunnies Make All Eight Of Me Cry

Chapter 1. All eight of me.

It was Uncle David who first decided to take me to therapy.

I’ve been to heaps of shrinks, tried so many different treatments and medications in my thirty-six years. Some work for a while, pushing the shadows aside for a time. But they always come back.

The drugs are just like sticking a band aid over the wound of a severed limb. The ones that do ‘work,’ leave me numb. I can’t function. I can’t hold a conversation or a job or a memory. I’m a tree without leaves in the autumn – I’m alive, but not.

‘I’m taking you to see a really nice lady, okay Suzie Q?’ Uncle David said to me as he took me by the hand.

I was seven.

By that time, I had been caught sleepwalking or been brought home by Jason (the young fella whose yard Violet seemed to prefer) so many times. It affected my aunt and uncle so badly that sometimes no one in the house slept but me.

He kept smiling at me the entire drive to the kiddie shrink. But his eyes weren’t smiling. Even as a small child I could see his worry. I took out my little black feather and stroked it against my face.

The doctor’s office was fake cheerful. It had partitions of kid’s paintings and cute little murals on the walls, a corner with used toys for us to play with and bright yellow curtains with happy little clowns performing all over them. But I could see through it. Under all the bright colours, it was just like the foster home. Sterile and shadowy.

Uncle David walked in to the office with me. I held onto his hand. I didn’t want him to go, but something in me just knew that the doctor was going to say that he had to.

The doctor stood at the door, holding it open for us as we passed through. She was very tall for a woman, taller than my uncle and wiry. Her office smelled like cleaning products and stale jellybeans. She had several bean bags in a corner and a bookshelf full of colourful figurines. They were all different shapes and sizes. There was music playing in the background, I recognised the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep.

‘Hello, Mr O’Brien, my name is Dr Kerry Sonson.’ The doctor held out her hand to shake my uncle’s. He took it and she shook his hand with vigour, placing her other hand over the top of his. ‘And this must be little Suzie,’ she said, knelling down to me. ‘You can call me Kerry, okay?’

She stood back up and said quietly to my uncle, ‘It’s … necessary for the guardian to leave the room in my treatments. I apologise if this is not suitable for you, but … it’s the way I work.’

Uncle David nodded and smiled weakly. He bent down to me. He looked into my eyes, like he was searching for something. ‘I’ll just be out here, okay Suzie Q?’ He held my hand tightly.

Dr Kerry bent down too. ‘I have some toys over here that I want to show you. Would you like to come have a look?’ She held out her hand to me.

I turned away from her and flung myself into my uncle’s arms. He laughed nervously.

‘It’s okay, Suzie Q. I’ll just be on the other side of that door. I promise I’m not leaving you. Okay?’ He started to pry me off his body. Pushing me away from him hesitantly. The doctor took me gently by the hand and began to lead me towards the big bookshelf full of toys and I watched as my uncle stood up and exited the room, never taking his eyes off me.

I looked up at the seemingly giant bookcase. Figurines filling every shelf, all set out and evenly spaced. ‘Suzie, I would like you to pick out some toys to play with? Pick as many as you want. If you can’t reach one that you want, just tell me and I will get it down for you,’ said the doctor.

I picked out several toys, mostly from the top three shelves that I couldn’t reach. Dr Kerry showed me over to a sandbox that was on the opposite side of her room. She climbed into the sand, first flicking off her modest heels and placing her stockinged toes in the white sand.

‘Take off your shoes and come in, Suzie,’ she said holding a hand out to me. I looked at the sandpit. My mum had never let me go in them. She had always told me they were dirty.

I slipped off my shoes. I looked at the doctor’s outstretched hand and took it, stepping into the sand with the caution of someone stepping into a pit of fire.

‘Do you not like the sand, Suzie?’ the doctor asked.

‘Mum always told me that sandpits are dirty. She said cats … poop in them,’ I said, whispering the last bit.

The doctor laughed a kind, light-hearted chuckle. ‘I can promise you that no cats have pooped in this sandpit,’ she said.

I sat down in the sand and dumped all my toys onto its surface. ‘What do you want to play?’ I asked.

‘I want you to play whatever you want to play,’ she said.

I looked down at my choices and started to play. Making the toys interact with one another.

After a while, the doctor spoke. ‘Who’s this, under here?’ she said, pointing to a toy buried under the sand.

‘My mum,’ I said and continued to play.

‘And who are these three?’ she asked, pointing to some toys that sat atop a castle I had made.

‘Em and Aunt Miriam and Uncle David,’ I said, not straying from my play.

‘And these guys over here?’ she asked, pointing to a circle of toys.

‘That’s me,’ I said.

‘Okay, and this one?’ she singled out one of the toys in the circle.

‘That one’s me too,’ I said.

‘I thought you said that this one was you?’ she asked, pointing to the first.

‘They’re all me,’ I said.

I had begun sleep walking when I was six years old.

I still remember the first time they found me. I sat in a chair in the Police station, with no memory of what had happened previously, swinging my legs above the ground and clutching my pillow. There was a young man standing in front of me talking to an officer. The officer nodded seriously and wrote everything down. The young man had found me and brought me there.

I heard the slip slap of thongs on running feet. ‘Suzie!’ Uncle David had yelled.

I looked up to see him running towards me, dodging the rows of seats in the police waiting room. ‘Uncle David!’ I had never been so happy to see him in my entire life. I jumped off the chair and ran to him, hugging his legs.

The young man and the police officer looked at Uncle David with surprise and both walked over to him. The policeman was the first to talk. ‘Is this your niece?’

‘Yes, we woke up this morning and she was just gone.’ He bent down to me and looked me over. At this point I got scared. What if he was angry with me? ‘Are you okay? Where did you go?’

I started to cry and just hugged him again. I didn’t want him to be mad with me. And I honestly didn’t know where I had gone.

The young man stepped forward and cleared his throat. ‘She was asleep in my front yard this morning. My name’s Jason, by the way,’ he said, holding out his hand for Uncle David to shake. Uncle David looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing, shaking his hand anyway. ‘I woke her up to see where she had come from and at first she seemed fine. She told me her name was Violet and she had stopped to sleep under my tree, told me that she liked the funny mushrooms that were growing under it.’

Uncle David looked at me, waiting for an explanation.

‘I asked her if she had touched or eaten the mushrooms,’ Jason said, turning to the policeman. ‘Because they’re those poisonous red ones with the white spots, and she went strange, kinda off in her own world. Then she started freaking out, not knowing where she was or how she got there. Told me her name was Suzie Hugo. So I brought her here, I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Where are the girl’s parents, Mr..?’ asked the policeman.

‘David O’Brien,’ he said as he picked me up. He turned me away from the officer and whispered. ‘I’m her guardian. Her mother’s dead. Come on, Suzie, let’s get you home.’

Uncle David walked out of the station and put me in the car. He watched me in the rear-view mirror as we drove around looking for Aunt Miriam and Emily. I stared out the window and said nothing. Later that day he bought a chain to fit to the front door.

Read the rest of Dead Bunnies. Also available for free on Wattpad. 

Please remember to feed an author, give a review!

Sorry for the lazy blog,

Hugs 

AMC xxx

How to write a book - Routine

Writing a book is hard. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! 

I know that it is an artistic process and you want your muse to guide you and the energy has to be right or whatever ... But I think the best thing I ever did was establish a routine. A strict one.

Photos from Pixabay

It's no good wanting to have your muse guide you if that moody little being doesn't know where you are going to be and when!


Time

First thing to do is decide when your best creative flow comes. Do you work best first thing in the morning? Are you a night owl? Are you better suited to lunch-time breaks at a coffee house? Find a time during the day that works and stick to it. 

I work best first thing in the morning, when everyone is still asleep. I can sit there in my PJs at 4am and happily type away.

How long?

In the beginning I suggest setting realistic goals. If you have a day job or kids, I would suggest a time limit. Try out small ones at first. I started with 30 minutes and now I have worked up to almost 3 hours.

You could also go for a word count goal. Once again, start low. Go for a couple hundred words or less in the very beginning and work your way up. If you find that you are able to pump out the words like a machine (go you!) then up your word count. But keep it reasonable otherwise you may find that you just can't keep up with it.

What days?

Every day.

Without fail. 

Sometimes it is hard to stick to your routine in times of high stress or sickness, but try to do something. Anything. Even if you cut back, you have to keep doing something. Stephen King famously says that he used to tell interviews that he writes every day except his birthday and Christmas day, but this was a lie. He writes everyday. Just like you should!

But what about ...

So, your novel is about a thirteenth century plumber with the bad habit of skinning people alive and this requires a lot of research? Research is not writing.

You have a blog and social media to keep up with? Neither of those is writing, in the sense of what we are talking about anyway. 

I know have set in place that each day I have time set aside for other "writing" commitments, like blogging, social media, research, cover design, editing, etc. 

So, if you have similar commitments then maybe you can do what I have done.

Monday is set aside for Blogging. Tuesday is for writing my book reviews. Wednesday is the day that I blitz the crap out of social media and set up what I am going to post for the next week. Thursday is when I do Market research and plan marketing strategies. Friday is when I work on editing or cover designs that need doing. I work on these until I am done or 6.00am rolls around. Then it is straight back to writing till 7.30am.

If you don't have anything like these commitments then don't worry about it. Just focus on writing.

If you do, I find setting an alarm in my phone reminding me what I have to work on is the best thing to keeping to my schedule. 

But I don't have the time!

I remember when I used to drag myself out of bed at 7.30-8.00 every morning and just start getting the kids ready. I used to rush around the whole day and then crawl into bed and realise I didn't get to write again that day. 

You have to make the decision. How much do you want to write? How much do you need to write? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to write every day?

In the beginning, I decide I was willing to sacrifice 30 minutes. So I started waking up half hour earlier. I would set my alarm for 7.00am instead of 7.30am.

Bam! I just made time! Look out world.

It is that easy. If you want something you have to make room for it.

Writer's Block

Writer's block is one of those myths, along with the muse. You have to tell these mythical creatures that you are the boss. 

When Writer's Block hits the best thing to do is to write! Write gosh darn it, write! 

 "stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.” - Stephen King

So, go get writing!

Hugs, AMC xxx