Goodbye Misty

Misty: 1996-2012

This is my cat Misty, who died on 16 September 2012.

She and her sister, Misha, were born on 1 August 1996. Their mother was a pedigree chocolate point British shorthair who belonged to a colleague of my husband’s. This particular cat, though being very well-bred, obviously fancied a bit of rough as she escaped one night and went out looking for some mongrel action. She must have had herself a good time, because she came back pregnant. She gave birth to a litter of five kittens. One of them was a beautiful British blue – exactly the same colour as her uncle, another pedigree (also owned by Hubby’s colleague). Two of them were black, and the other two were a random tabby colour – possibly an indication of the mongrel tom who fathered the kittens.

We’d just moved from our flat into a maisonette, and since we now had a front door of our own, that could be used for feline egress, we decided the time was right to get a cat. In fact we decided to get two – since we were both out all day, we thought two cats from the same litter would keep each other company. We went to see this new litter of kittens, and we picked two. We had the British blue, which we named Misty, and one of the black kittens, which we called Misha. When they came to us they were about nine weeks old – adorable little bundles of fluff.

Misty & Misha as kittens

Being half pedigree, these cats had been born with generations of the inclination to do nothing but sit around on cushions looking pretty bred into them. They were always rather lazy, even for cats, and both got rather fat as they got older. They were also not exactly at the top of the feline IQ chart – generations of inbreeding tends to make pedigrees rather less bright than moggies. But they both had a very gentle nature, and were very sweet cats.

Misty’s unusual colour always drew attention. Every time we had visitors, they would make a fuss of her and say, “what a beautiful cat.” She got rather big-headed about this after a while. Whenever someone came to see us, she would emerge, and pose in the middle of the room, as if to say, “well? Aren’t you going to tell me how pretty I am?”

Misty & Misha getting comfy in a guitar case

Misty had a thing for boxes. Every time something new came into the house, she was there waiting for us to unpack the box so she could squeeze into it. Even if she was too big and the box too small, she would try to squeeze into it anyway. She was particularly fond of hubby’s guitar cases, which had the added advantage of being felt lined, so more comfortable than regular cardboard boxes.

She liked to sit in the bathroom when I was taking a bath. The first few times she did this, as a kitten, she would sit on the side of the bath with her tale hanging down into the water. The fact that it would be getting wet appeared not to phase her. Once, she tried to jump on me while I was in the bath. I saw her sizing this up for a while, and then she took a flying leap off the side into the water. She hit the water, yowled, turned around in mid-air and shot back out again, before shooting out of the room. This all happened in one movement, and was rather amusing to watch. Suffice to say she never tried to jump in the bath again. She would instead come in and sit on the bath mat while I was bathing.

Misty and Misha spent all their lives together, and right to the end they would curl up and sleep together. But over the last few years I was aware that as cats they were past the expected life span, and would not be with us for much longer.

In the summer I took Misty to the vet, who confirmed that she had lost quite a lot of weight – a kilogram in the last 12 months, specifically. The vet offered tests to find out what was wrong. I declined at the time. Misty seemed quite happy – she was still jumping up and purring. She wasn’t eating as much, but she’d been a very fat cat to begin with, and she didn’t appear to be in pain, or particularly miserable.

Two days before we moved, she came down the stairs vomiting blood, and we had to take her to the emergency vet surgery (it was a Sunday – the usual surgery was closed). She died on the way there. It turned out she had a throat tumour. If we’d have had the tests, we might have found out about the tumour, but it was untreatable, so we could not have done anything about it. All we could have done was wait for her to die. In the end, she died in my arms, which is probably the way she would have wanted to go. Sometimes I feel bad that I didn’t do the tests and find out earlier what was wrong. Partly it was because I think I didn’t really want to know. But the other part is I didn’t think it was fair to subject a 16-year-old cat to tests and treatments that were going to be painful and distressing. In the end she got to spend the last few months of her life at home, in comfort, with the humans she knew and loved. The end, when it came, was sad, but it was all over quite quickly.

In retrospect, I am convinced that Misty knew she was going to die. The night before she’d been unusually active, coming down to talk to us and our guests and visiting favourite spots she hadn’t been to in a while, like the windowsill. I think she was saying goodbye.

It seems Misha knew it, too. We took her on that final journey to the vet, because we knew at that point Misty wasn’t coming back, and we wanted to make sure Misha understood that. Misha has settled into the new house well. I think she’s a bit lonesome, but she’s accepted the fact she’s now the only cat in the household. And the vet says she’s surprisingly healthy for an old fat cat, so hopefully she’ll be with us a bit longer.

I think perhaps moving to a new house immediately afterwards helped all of us. It made a stressful situation even more stressful, but we’re in a new place where there are no memories of Misty. She was with us for 16 years, and I think she had a happy – if lazy – life with us. Losing a pet is always hard, as they become part of the family, but we can remember the happiness they brought us.

Goodbye, Misty. You were a special cat, and I will always remember you.

Crisis of Confidence

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

In the last three years, I’ve had three books published.  I had two unpublished novels doing the rounds when Lyrical Press picked up SUFFER THE CHILDREN, and so DEATH SCENE was already finished when my editor asked me if I had anything else she could take a look at.  And the short stories in SOUL SCREAMS were also written – it was just a case of compiling them.

Since I finished writing DEATH SCENE in 2004 I’ve started four novels.  None of them I’ve managed to finish.  The original sequel to DEATH SCENE was an homage to Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but halfway through the first draft I decided it wasn’t working and I shelved it.  Then I started work on my urban fantasy novel.  I did manage to finish draft 1, but after giving the first half of it to beta readers, I decided that one wasn’t working either and I never finished the second draft.

Then I started working on another Shara Summers book – this one with Shara investigating the case of the defenestrated rock star.  I have managed to get to the end of draft 2, and then I sent it out to beta readers.  Once more the message I’m getting back is that there is so much wrong with this book I should scrap it and start over with a new idea.

I’m also working on a new horror novel.  I am about a third of the way through draft 2 of this one. To be fair, I have not let anyone else read it yet, so I have had no third party comments. But as far as I’m concerned, it still needs a lot of work. So much so that I’m getting discouraged.

Now I’m getting quite depressed. What if my writing really is rubbish and I’m never going to write anything again of publishable quality? What if I’m deluding myself that I can write at all? It’s not as if my published books are selling in huge quantities. I’ve had some very nice comments from a few readers who have really enjoyed one or more of my books, and they’ve all had a handful of good reviews. But the vast majority of readers out there either don’t know about my books or don’t think they’re worth bothering with.

It’s times like this that I think no one who’s sane would choose to be a writer and put themselves through this heartache, and life would be a whole lot simpler if I could not be a writer anymore. The problem is, it’s not that simple. Writing is not something you can turn off when you get bored with it. And I also know that this the ‘down’ phase of the ups and downs of the writer’s life, and it will pass in time.

That doesn’t make me feel any better right now, though, when I just want to finish the damn book. Any damn book…

Sex & Violence

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

I’ve never been a fan of romance novels – even as a teenager I was reading crime and horror. I tend to say I don’t like my violence tainted with romance. In spite of this my amateur sleuth is telling me very clearly she wants a sex life, however, which is taking my stories about her down a route I never actually planned.

However, things are a bit more straightforward with my short story collection. The short stories in SOUL SCREAMS were written over a period of 20 years. I’ve been analysing the ratio of sex to violence in them. There are three stories in which sex occurs, but all the scenes are skated over, which admittedly I tend to do with sex scenes. Hence, there’s nothing very explicit, and if these stories were films none of them would be rated anything over a PG-13, at least as far as the sexual content goes.

It’s a different story when it comes to the violence, however. There are horrible deaths featured in 12 of the 13 stories. Even the one in which nobody dies doesn’t end happily, but I won’t say any more for fear of giving away spoilers.

I’ve done a tally of the manner of deaths in these stories, and this is what we have.

Four car crashes
Three stabbings
Two decapitations
One electrocution
One drowning
One death by fire

I am really not sure what this says about me. I am not, by nature, a violent person. But perhaps this is because I write about my violence, instead of engaging in real-life violence.

I write about the things I fear. The things I have trouble dealing with. Clearly violent death is something that terrifies me. It’s no coincidence that car crashes appear at the top of this list. I have a pathological fear of dying in a car crash – it’s something I have recurring nightmares about. I have to consciously not think about this every time I set off to drive somewhere, because if I let myself think about it I’d never get in the car. Fire is another fear, to the point that I’m suprised it doesn’t feature higher on the list.

Readers of SOUL SCREAMS might quite understandably come to the conclusion that I’m not a fan of the happy ending. But like most of us, I go through life looking for happiness. When I find it, I want to hold onto it. That’s why it never ends up in my stories. I write about pain and misery and death because I am trying to exorcise these things, as far as it is possible (death, unfortunately, we can never eradicate from human existence, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with). I make my characters very miserable. But ultimately, they are characters. I don’t want to share that happy ending with fictional people. When I find it, I’d rather keep it for real life.

And that, I think, is why I’d rather write about violence than sex.

Ups & Downs

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

The statistics say that one in four people has some kind of mental illness. I have a feeling that if you just include writers in the equation, the figure would be a lot higher than that.

It’s not too surprising, really, if you think about it. What other profession has your emotions riding high and low more often than a roller coaster? Actors, artists and musicians ride the same roller coaster, but it’s unique to the more creative vocations.

When a WIP is going well, I am jubilant. This is the best thing I’ve ever written. I finish it off, send it out for critique, and it gets soundly ripped to shreds. Then all of a sudden it becomes a piece of crap, and how could I ever have thought what I was writing was any good? If it’s had a particularly harsh flaying, I might go crawling into a corner thinking I’m a completely rubbish writer and I should stop pretending I’m a writer and focus on the day job instead.

However, maybe I get through all that, and eventually the book gets accepted somewhere. Celebrations ensue. But then after it gets published, the royalty statements arrive and it’s not selling. Or there aren’t any reviews. Since a lot of online reviewers will only publish favourable reviews, not getting reviews is amost as bad as getting an unfavourable review – since I then start to assume no reviews means everyone hates the book. And I’m depressed again.

Then suddenly something appears online, out of the blue, from someone saying how much they enjoyed reading my work, and I’m riding high once more.

Sometimes I feel I’m on the brink of something really exciting. Life-changing exciting. Other times I feel as a writer I’m making barely a ripple in an enormous pond, and really no one will notice or care if I remove myself completely.

Even the most well-balanced person can’t help but be affected by all these constant ups and downs. No wonder so many writers feel like they’re going a bit mad.

But. Here’s the thing. We’re all on the same roller coaster. Every single writer I know, without exception, from the beginner writer to the one with several best-selling novels under their belt, goes through the same ups and downs.

All you can do when the ride gets rough is hold on tight and wait for the calmer bit to come along. Because it invariably will, and when it does, you are reminded why it’s all worth it.

Can We Start Again, Please?

2012 has not got off to a good start. My NetBook dying on New Years’ Day was the first bad portent. A sore throat the following day was the next.

This had turned into a cough by the time I went back to work. If like me you have asthma, coughs are never good. They take ages to go, and often turn into something far nastier.

After two weeks of struggling along and coughing like a plague victim, I went to see the doctor, who decided I had a chest infection. She prescribed antibiotics and signed me off work for the rest of the week. This was on Monday of this week. So I have spent the majority of this week cocooned on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. And playing Dragon Age, my latest video game obsession, which was the only thing I found I could concentrate on and at least it distracted me from thinking about how rubbish I was feeling.

I am not a good patient. I hate being ill. I hated the fact I was coughing so hard, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus on anything, and I had to put ordinary activities on hold. The antibiotics, although helping clear up the infection, have side effects, the most annoying of which is stomach pains. I also developed a constant niggling ache in my lower back, which I suspect is caused by straining some muscle or other through coughing too hard.

Now we are at the weekend, I have to say I am feeling a lot better. I am no longer waking up in the night having coughing fits. The back pain seems to be easing. If I eat something with the antibiotics – even if it’s just a couple of biscuits – the stomach pains aren’t as bad. The coughing is still there, but not as frequent, or as violent, as it was.

Frankly I’m tired of being ill, and I am keen to get back into the usual routine. I’m going back to work on Monday. I aim to do some writing this weekend. I’d even like to get back to going to the gym.

I would like to write off the entire month of January, as I got nothing accomplished during it. Well, I made quite a lot of progress in Dragon Age, and even managed to score a couple of trophies. But I’m not sure that counts.

Christmas Past

This time of year, I like listening to the Salvation Army Band, which is possibly a surprising statement from a confirmed atheist. But I haven’t always been so. When I was a child, my parents belonged to the Salvation Army. I was sent to Sunday School, and taught to believe in God.

My earliest Christmas memories are from when my parents were still together. We lived in a little town in Lancashire, in a bungalow which had had the attic converted into another floor. My sister and I both had bedrooms in the attic rooms. My parents slept in the downstairs bedroom. On Christmas Eve, my sister and I put our pillow cases (no stockings for us – we had pillow cases) in our parents’ room. I once asked my mother why the pillow cases had to go in their room. She said she wanted to watch us open our presents. I never questioned this at the time – I still had an unshakeable belief in Santa Claus.  I suppose I was a gullible child – I believed whatever anyone told me, because it never occurred to me they could be lying.  So when all the grown-ups were telling me that Santa was real, I accepted this without question – after all, why would they be telling me this if it wasn’t true?

Anyway, Christmas morning my sister and I would gallop down the stairs and charge into our parents’ room to see what presents had been left for us. The excitement of seeing that pillow case stuffed with presents has been unmatched by any thrill in adult life.

My dad used to play trombone in the Salvation Army band, and in the run-up to Christmas we would go and watch him play in the shopping precinct, all bundled up in winter coats and mittens, which were attached by a piece of wool running down the arms of my coat and along the back, so I couldn’t lose one of them.

Whenever I watch the Salvation Army band play at Christmas time, I remember those early Christmases, when my parents were still together, and Christmas was all about new toys, singing carols, marzipan and Baby Jesus. And then I feel very sad, because life was simpler then and I can’t go back there.

It happens to us all, of course. We have to grow up, and when we do life gets more complicated. My parents divorced; both of them married new partners; we moved to Canada and I had to leave everything I was familiar with behind; I found out there was no Santa, and therefore no magic; I stopped believing in God; I started called Christmas ‘Xmas’ because I realised it had all become hugely commercialised and I no longer believed it had anything to do with the birth of Christ.

But music has the power to tap into our emotions on a very primal level, and I cry when I listen to the Salvation Army band because it takes me right back to the little girl I was, and can never be again.

Thinking about the subject of this post made me realise that the shine began to come off Christmas for me the year my parents divorced, and subsequent events tarnished it even further. I know, logically, it’s not possible for me – or for any of us – to go back to the innocence and simplicity of childhood.  So I listen to the Salvation Army band when I hear it playing Christmas songs, and even though doing so always makes me cry, it still takes me back to a happier time and place.

Appropriate Music

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

Most writers seem to listen to music of some kind when they write. I prefer silence. I think this probably stems back to my teenage years. I spent a lot of time then holed up in my room, either doing homework or writing, and for both I needed quiet to concentrate.

However, when I have my early-morning writing sessions in Starbucks there is usually music playing. Generally, if it’s not very interesting music, I tune it out. If it’s music I know and like, I find myself listening to it, which makes it harder to concentrate on the writing.

At the moment when I sit in Starbucks I’m getting bombarded by Xmas songs. All well and good, but I’m writing a horror novel. Festive cheer is hardly encouraging the right mood.

Last week, sitting in Starbucks, I was working on a particularly difficult funeral scene, for one of the young victims of my supernatural monster. There are some key conversations that have to happen at the funeral to demonstrate the strain on the relationships between the main characters. I’m finding these scenes hard enough to write at the best of times. With cheesy Christmas pop songs going on in the background, it was even harder.

But then ‘Hallelujah’ came on. This has become a Xmas song simply because it was released by the X Factor winner a few years ago and hence was guaranteed to become the Xmas Number One. Whoever decided ‘Hallelujah’ was an appropriate choice for a Xmas song clearly hasn’t listened to the lyrics. It’s a beautiful song, but very depressing. And violent. However, it seemed aptly fitting for my downbeat funeral scene, and proved to be an inspiring song to write to.

If you’re not familiar with the song, I include the Bon Jovi version here. This is admittedly not the best version – there are many – but this one’s not bad, and I do enjoy looking at Jon Bon…

Bon Jovi – Hallelujah

The Angst Of The Writer

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

I was re-reading some of my old short stories the other day.  During the 1990s, I had reasonable success in getting some of them published.  The small press was booming in the UK in those days, and there were a lot of markets for short horror fiction.  Most of them were ‘semi pro’ magazines – paying half a pence a word if you were lucky, and a free copy of the magazine if you weren’t.  But still, if you were a horror writer there were a lot of places to submit your work.

A lot of the stories I had published were early works – things I wrote in my late teens and early twenties. Only when I look back in retrospect do I realise how horribly depressing they were.

The thing is, though, I’ve always used writing as a way of working through my issues. And I guess I’ve had a lot of issues. Certain themes recurred frequently in my writing: betrayal; loss; loneliness; isolation; a fatalistic outlook that we’re all doomed to die miserable and alone. A lot of my early horror is more about psychological despair than a Big Bad – and it almost always ends with someone dying in pain and alone.

There are times when I sink into what feels like a deep dark pit, often for no apparent reason, and I wallow there a while. Sometimes it’s days, sometimes it’s weeks. During these times I get out of bed and carry on with my life but I often feel like I’m just going through the motions. And I try to avoid blogging at these times, because no one likes a whinger and it’s not fair to inflict my misery on everyone else. The thing is, though, these feelings always pass, usually disappearing as quickly as they come. So I just ride it out and listen to Muse very loudly on my MP3 player until I feel like I’ve crawled out of the pit.

Sometimes I think writing is my salvation, because I’ve always used it to try and deal with these feelings. My grandmother, disapproving of what I wrote, used to ask me why I couldn’t write any “happy” stories. I replied that there was no point. Happy feelings I want to hold onto. It’s the feelings of misery and despair I try to exorcise, and that’s why they end up in my stories.

The writing has kept me sane. If I didn’t have it to help me work through these feelings of despair, I probably would have thrown myself under a bus years ago. On the other hand, if I didn’t have these angsty periods I probably wouldn’t be a writer, since just about all writers I know also experience these feelings, to a greater or lesser degree.

Is it better to have the angst and be a writer, or be completely sane and not be? That’s an impossible question to answer, because I’ve never known life as anything other than an angsty writer.

On a slightly more positive note, I think I’ve worked through many of my issues, and that might be why I don’t write such depressing short stories anymore. There’s still plenty of death and despair in my writing, but my recently-published novels have at least featured some semblance of a happy ending in the sense that the main characters work through their issues and move on. It’s one thing to be angsty when you’re 18. It’s another to still be angsty at 40. There are some lessons about life that should have been learned by the time you enter your fourth decade, and one of them is that there are some things you just have to let go.

Riot

I wasn’t going to talk about the UK riots. I try to keep politics out of my blog. But it’s so occupied my life this week there’s nothing else to blog about.

Monday night I was late home, as I went to the Million Monkeys writing session after work. The sense of growing unease was palpable, as the rioting around London became more widespread as the evening wore on, but fortunately my train and the area where I live was unaffected, and I arrived home unscathed about 9pm. I was glued to the TV till 1am that night, watching news footage of the city I know and love burning.

I don’t know how old I was when I learned the lesson that taking something that didn’t belong to you is stealing, and Stealing Is Wrong, but I’m pretty sure I had a firm understanding of it by the time I started school. I’d also been told that wilfully damaging property was wrong. As for setting fires – well, I guess some people find this fun, but I was always terrified of fire. I’m even terrified of the aftermath of fire. The sight of London burning, and the after images, of smoking gutted buildings that used to be shops I’ve visited, will be with me for a very long time.

The footage of the looting disheartened me. People were blatantly strolling into wrecked shops and helping themselves to whatever they wanted. Are people no longer learning these inherent lessons of childhood? Or do they just not care? Because there was a third lesson here that was being ignored. Just because everyone else is doing something doesn’t make it right, or mean that you have to join in.

At that point, I lost faith in humanity. If we’re all behaving this way, then we’ve learned nothing over thousands of years of evolution and we don’t deserve to survive as a species. Let’s destroy ourselves now and save the universe further inconvenience.

But then the news of the riot clean up crew began to circulate. Armies of people sporting brooms and plastic bags congregated at the riot sites, organising themselves via the same social networks that the rioters used. They called themselves the Riot Wombles. They picked up rubbish, they scrubbed, they swept, they repaired broken windows. Other volunteers brought them cups of tea, with police riot shields being used as makeshift tea trays. Shelters opened for the people who’d lost their homes in the fires. People donated food and clothes to those who’d lost everything.

Then I read Jen Campbell’s blog post here. Reading this inspired in me a shred of hope that perhaps humanity could be redeemed after all.

If you’re on Twitter, or Facebook, go look up ‘Operation Cup of Tea’. This is such a quintessentially British anti-riot campaign, encouraging people across the land to protest by staying home and drinking tea. Don’t go looting; stay home and have a cuppa instead.

Life seems to be getting back to normal now. The British seem to be very good at the art of carrying on, regardless. London was bombed in the Blitz of the second world war. It was hit by terrorism during the IRA campaign, and again by a different terrorist group in 2005. Each time it recovered. The same spirit is prevailing now.

Sick Leave

When I was a kid, I was never allowed to shirk school unless I was really sick. The definition of “really sick” was “not able to get out of bed”.

So, on the days when I decided I was too sick to go to school, I was obliged to stay in bed for the rest of the day. In those days I didn’t even have a TV in my room, let alone a games console. Staying in bed got rather boring rather quickly, and generally I decided I was well enough to go back to school the following day.

Of course, I was lucky enough not to be a sickly child. Apart from the usual childhood illnesses and the occasional bad cold, I didn’t really get sick.

This mindset has stayed with me into adulthood. I feel guilty about calling in to work sick. Generally, if I wake up feeling rotten, I will attempt to crawl into the shower anyway. If I’m feeling sort of OK after that, I’ll struggle into work. And then, I figure since I’m at work, I may as well stay there, since I got that far.

Generally I don’t have a lot of time off sick. Until the time I had bronchitis, three years ago, and was signed off work for nearly a month, I’d averaged maybe three days off sick a year.

However, times change. I’m no doctor, but I’m convinced the viruses are changing, too. Once upon a time you got a cold virus, you felt rotten for a couple of days and might be sniffly for a week, but unless you had flu you could generally go about your day. Not so anymore. I think as we develop these anti-bacterial agents that kill 99% of all germs, the 1% that survive evolve to become tougher.

I’ve just returned to work today after a virus that floored me for a week. It started as all viruses do – sore throat, sneezing, cough, stuffed up nose, foggy head. This kicked in the weekend before last, and I was off work on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I went into work, as I thought I felt a bit better. By the time I got there, it was evident I didn’t. I came home at lunch time, and ended up off sick the rest of the week. I spent my week wrapped up in a duvet on the sofa. Only the SyFy channel’s daily dose of “Buffy” and my significant “to be read” pile kept me sane. I couldn’t even spend the time at home writing – my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool and I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

Today I feel rather better so went back to work. I’m still coughing and blowing my nose constantly. However, I’ve spoken to quite a lot of people who’ve had this virus this winter, and it seems these symptoms hang on for rather a long time. Viruses spread quickly amongst commuters – no doubt it’s down to being packed in to tube carriages like sardines.

You’d think, in the 21st century, modern medicine advances would have developed a cure for the cold virus in all its mutations. But it seems not. You can waste a lot of money on cold remedies, but ultimately all that can be done with a virus is to rest and keep warm. And drink fluids.

Well, I did all that for a week, and I think maybe my antibodies are winning the war. But there’s still a few guerilla germs hanging on in there. I’m consuming Echinacea pills and vast quantities of Vitamin C in an attempt to beat off the stragglers. Begone, germs. Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?