Posted on July 25, 2012 by authorfredhurr

Do we modern civilized westerners really know what it is to travel along a rocky road?
I have just finished reading a book called The Friar of Carcassonne. It is a terrible tale of religious persecution and the horrors of the Catholic Church Inquisition in 13^th century Languedoc, a region of southern France, and the famed land of the Cathars.
One very common feature of medieval life was that if you wanted to get from Rome to Paris or Paris to Carcassonne, your choices of transport were few. Horse and cart, riding a horse or donkey, or going by Shanks’s pony–in other words, foot-slogging weariness for hundreds of miles. And the highways and byways were either hard, rocky, dusty roads in summer or icy, frozen lanes and quagmires in winter. Both descriptions could be understood to be a rocky road.

Can I seriously liken my journey in becoming a writer to a rocky road experience? Honestly, I don’t think I can. Sitting in a comfortable study, shelves full of reference books to consult with and now in these, our marvelous times, having a window onto everything through the screen of my PC. A good wife to provide cups of coffee and hand-made sandwiches at my request, a safe environment outside should I want a breather, and even a tender mattress to lie upon should I get overworked and need a nap.
What can I say on this subject?
My second thought took me back to a summer morning twenty-five years ago. Slipping out of the English Lakes holiday cottage at five a.m., I was bound for Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain. I had planned the trip many months before, pored over the ordnance survey maps to find the best way up to the summit while avoiding any obvious hazards and dangers en-route. I had planned it well. Made a list of all the equipment I needed, and not just needed for the climb, but also in case of emergency, accident, or injury. I wrote a route map and planned to give a copy to a responsible person who knew where I was going and what time I was expected to return and who also would know what to do in the unlikely event I didn’t come back at the appointed time.
The night before my intrepid adventure, I checked my equipment against the list. I made doubly sure that everything was in good order especially my handy fell walkers compass. Triple checked that I had enough food and drink. Had I packed a whistle to raise the alarm and a camera to record the good bits and a pair of binoculars to see what was up ahead?
It was a great day out. All was well. I got to the summit late morning, and there was no one else about. Most importantly, I got back safely and on time, so thankfully the mountain rescue folks weren’t needed.
For sake of argument, disregard the comfortable study and the peripheral luxuries that often accompany the writer’s life. Consider the following circumstances in comparison. If a writer starts out his or her journey in a lackadaisical fashion, then only failure can be the result. If I had started out on the climb up Scafell Pike without proper planning or management or the right equipment then perhaps I might not have returned. I might have encountered many pitfalls on the way for which I had made no contingency plans and thus suffered the consequences.

To avoid the rocky road, the apprentice writer must plan ahead carefully.
A daily timetable is a very good idea. Work out which part of the day is the most creative and productive for you. Don’t fall for the ‘you must get up at dawn to be a serious writer’ jab. If you are a nocturnal creature, write at night. But remember most bad novels were written just after a good lunch.
If you must, put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door, so you can concentrate while you are being productive.
Make sure your ‘climbing’ materials are all in good working condition and you have all of the necessities.
Here’s a last tip. A trio of guys, Dibell, Scott Card, & Turco, wrote a book called How to Write a Million and it has helped me a lot over my years as a writer. Check it out!
How have you overcome ‘rocky road’ experiences as a writer? In life?

Against the Clouds

The mourners gathered in the street and onlookers held curtains
back or clicked the plastic blinds to see but not to be seen. Others stood
at open doorways watching silently. He must have been a wealthy man. Four
black Mercedes, long limousines and a score of undertakers.

The light faded and the sun obscured by grey clouds and the rain, the rain
fell hard and swift. The clouds rolled by heading south into the land of the
living.

The chief undertaker and elderly man himself, not far from death, black
top-hatted in velvet, walked slowly ahead of the shining cavalcade. In his
right hand he held the black umbrella aloft and in his left hand he swung a
silver topped black Malacca cane. It moved cleverly in the funeral manager's
hand, tapping out a slow rhythm on the wet shining asphalt like a beat on a
muffled drum.

A flock of funereal crows circled overhead.

The sleek cars followed the engines whirring silently. The mourners
ensconced on leather seats held hands, and slipped comfort words easily off
their lips to one another. The children dressed in black rode along squeezed
in between the adults feeling small and watching the eyes of living for
clues.

The leading hearse halted at the cross road to let the chief get in out of
the rain.

The driver commented to his colleague 'It's a perfect day for a funeral. I
hate sunny days.'

The last car followed. Not a limousine. An old car, not black, belonging to
a poor relative, it had a little flag on the bonnet flying precariously
against the wind, the magnet just holding fast on the rusting metal.

The limousines sped along the highway gathering speed. The routine of
observing death could not wait.

The route took them away from the clouds, to the dark vale of the north. The
deceased's eyes closed, not wishing to see anymore, headed the way of
passing, now passed away. The coffin always heading forward, not back, there
is no coming back for the dead.

The long line of stately vehicles, the dignified drove on, living souls
contemplating the end of things searched for platitudes to share with the
Minister or God always seeking absolution or instead hiding behind the eyes
of fear.

The cavalcade of black shining cars, the occupants enclosed, trying out just
what it feels like to take the final journey, against the passing clouds.

From stone tablet to e-book

“There’s always room at the top,” said Daniel Webster. But who exactly he was addressing in his famous quote is up for discussion, seeing that he was a thorough-going elitist and excelled at being at the top.
However, it is true that there is always room at the top for those who set their sights on lofty peaks even if they come from lowly beginnings. For example, just look at the history of the Presidents of the USA including the present incumbent in the White House.
And there’s always a demand for talented, gifted writers, with relevant things to say.
These are challenging times for publishers, even perhaps the hardest times ever for traditional publishers. Remarkably it is only one generation ago that books and publishing had not really undergone significant change since the time of Caxton.
We, however, are already living in future-shock!
Nowadays it is fair to ask who or what is a publisher.
In times gone by, the publishing world was dominated by the big boys. The likes of Oxford University Press, Doubleday, Hodder Stoughton, Penguin Books, Faber and Faber, and Thomas Nelson to name but a few.
Now it is more likely to be ‘johndoepublishing.com’.
In the 19th century a whole new era in publishing began. A series of technical developments, in the book trade as in other industries, dramatically raised output and lowered costs. Stereotyping, the iron press, the application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and typesetting, new methods of reproducing illustrations—these inventions, developed through the century and often resisted by the printer, amounted to a revolution in book production.
Today a brave new world technological revolution has transformed the industry. We are on the verge of such dramatic and irreversible change that could effectively mean the demise of the printed, hold-in-your-hand, paper book.
Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, depicted a society where books were systematically burned. In our society we simply don’t need them (printed books that is) anymore. We may see the end of the printed book in our own lifetime. Like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 we may need to search furtively in the backstreets and alleys of proletariat towns to find copies of old decaying books.
Publishing is about to take a leap into the future. The word out on the streets is change or die. Those who are always looking into the past are often blind to the present.
We can now read books on our laptops, iPads, and cell phones. It is so convenient. I can sit on train and carry a thousand books on my Kindle and access, read, interrogate, highlight, or listen to any of them within seconds.
Public libraries will one day no longer have books on shelves; instead, there will be terminals where we can ‘plug’ in and download any and every book ever written into our own personal private mini-chip. No matter what your point of view is, such a prospect is mind-blowingly amazing.
But where does all that leave publishing?
We have gone from the stone tablet to wax impressions, from papyrus to parchment, from paper to the e-book. It is difficult to predict the future of the printed book, but publishing and publishers will remain. They will, I am sure, change to meet the demands and the fashions of the times we live in. The ability to adapt is, after all, the difference between commercial success and bankruptcy.
To end my blog here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Although electronic books, or e-books, had limited success in the early years, and readers were resistant at the outset, the demand for books in this format has grown dramatically, primarily because of the popularity of e-reader devices and as the number of available titles in this format has increased. Another important factor in the increasing popularity of the e-reader is its continuous diversification. Many e-readers now support basic operating systems, which facilitate email and other simple functions. The i-pad is the most obvious example of this trend, but even mobile phones can host e-reading software now.”
I love the touch, the smell, the sound of turning a page in the candlelight when I am reading a real book in bed, but the future is at hand.
In the not too distant future, our children’s children may well ask, “Grandma what was a book?”

But writers will always be needed…
Won’t they?
And of course there will always be room at the e-Top.
What is your view of the changing publishing industry?

Some brief thoughts on marriage

This blog comes from someone who fails miserably most of the time at ensuring a trouble-free relationship for my spouse.  Flowers and chocolates as gifts to say ‘I’m sorry’ are pretty transparent these days, even when the chocolate delicacies come in a cute little box tied with ribbons and cost £1 a sweet.

Is forgiveness infinite just like Jesus said or does patience of the spouse finally run out when you find yourselves in an emotional cul-de-sac?

It would be miraculous to have a spouse who has the patience of a saint; but alas we are after all human aren’t we?

In the area of conflict resolution marriages are like battlefields where both sides believe they are in the right and the other is wrong.  But those who resolve serious conflicts know that there is always a middle ground, a place where opposing parties can meet, shake hands and finally begin to appreciate the other party’s viewpoint.

That’s where reconciliation, peace and love begin to happen albeit slowly at times.

For Christians, Jesus is a mediator and peace maker. He doesn’t just deal with the superficial issues but gets right down deep into our souls where the hurt is, where misunderstanding is rife, where disagreement is often allowed to fester into something bigger.

How do we book an appointment with Jesus? We ask, we pray. His diary is always open to us and there’s no charge.

Queen's Diamond Jubilee - a lesson in humility

It is a common enough assertion in society that immigrants do the jobs that most of us are unwilling to perform even when we ourselves are destitute and unemployed. Speaking to an Anglican priest yesterday he mentioned a part of the priestly vestments that in these times is rarely worn. A small insignificant part of the priest’s apparel that might easily go unnoticed. Yet sometimes the smallest thing has the greatest meaning.

The ‘maniple’ is an embroidered piece of silk worn over the left arm and resembles a hand towel. The maniple is there to remind the priest that he is a servant of God. That underneath the rich robes and gowns the priest is first and foremost a servant to all.    In the Bible we read in the gospel of John chapter 13 that because there was no servant at the Passover meal Jesus himself took up the towel and a bowl of water to wash his disciples’ feet. A menial task performed by the Son of God who was prepared to humble himself at every opportunity to fulfil the Father’s will.

In 1967 the Roman Catholic Church gave an instruction that ‘The maniple is no longer required.’ Do we also carry within our hearts an instruction that the wash cloth is no longer required? 

It is on this day all those in Great Britain and the Commonwealth group of nations celebrate and give thanks to God for Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth for her servant heart towards her subjects over the past sixty years.

Blog of First Pages - A Ghostly Encounter

BURY ST. EDMUNDS

In the year of 1908

It was twelve months or more since I had left my tutoring post at the University of Cambridge. You may recall that I recorded in my journal the extraordinary events that befell me during a short vacation at Caister-on-Sea in the east of England. The experience of coming face-to-face with the supernatural had for many months quite an unsettling effect upon my mind. As a fundamental materialis,t I had comfortably reasoned away in the closet of my mind any belief in the hereafter, gods, ghosts and ghouls of any size or shape. The existence of a nether world which was inhabited by immaterial beings was to me absurd. To what purpose would these elements exist? So much nonsense is written about these things and sometimes even by meritorious professors who, during the day expounded on science, human history and rational philosophy and by night seemed to lose their wits and descend into sheer nonsense.
Look at Arthur Conan Doyle whose fictional hero Sherlock Holmes, unremittingly champions the high skills of forensic science, and robustly dismisses all kinds of sentimental notions and pseudo-magical deceptions; yet Doyle the creator of this arch-realist maintains in his private aspirations, a belief in Spiritualism, albeit after the untimely death of his wife Louisa which occurred only a short time ago. I can accept that the loss of a dearly beloved can lead one into the realms of misguided beliefs in heaven and life after death, because it is surely an assured way to assuage the pain and anguish of death, and the stark truth of human mortality. I read with sympathetic contempt of these situations that drive intelligent men into the mire and mists of worlds whose main currency is hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo and whose chosen language is utter gibberish. Why even the established Church of England entertains such spurious utterances, glossolalia, a babbling tongue in a non-existent language as the dictionary rightly defines it.

Since writing this first page Fred has completed over 15,000 words of this epic ghost story set in Edwardian Bury St. Edmunds. The first story 'Borders in the Mists' is available on Kinde for just 77p here http://tinyurl.com/7yap7lf

Dragon Story Part 2

“Well I believe you mate because I had a similar experience when I was young!”
The third guy said nothing but just smiled.
“Tell us about it.”
“It was just as you said except I kept feeding it all kinds of stuff. I even spent my pocket money and went down to the butchers every Saturday morning and bought a bagful of cheap red meat. I was scared of it so I used to open the door a crack and throw it in to the dragon. Outside I could hear it eating the raw meat really hungrily and in seconds there was silence and I knew it had eaten the lot.”
“What did you do next? Did you tell your Dad like I did?”
“No I was scared to. I didn’t know who scared me most my Dad or the dragon. I wanted to tell my friends about it and all the grief it was causing me but I just couldn’t bring myself to speak about it.”
“Do you still have it then?” said the guy who’d killed his dragon.
“No fear! One night I was in bed and I heard a mighty crash from the basement. I got up and ran downstairs. My Mum and Dad were there already and my Dad had a baseball bat in his hand.”
“Stay back my Dad said to me and Mum, I think there’s a burglar in the basement!”
“As he said this the basement door was broken into pieces and the dragon’s head looked out straight at us. Then a flame of fire came from its mouth and nostrils and the baseball bat in my Dad’s hands got burned up in a flash and all the hair on my dad’s head was singed off.”
“Blimey!”
“My Dad shouted run…run for your lives!”
“We turned and fled and didn’t stop until we were across the street from our house.”
Then disaster struck. The whole house seemed to shake and great billows of fire came out the chimney and windows then the walls of the house toppled and the dragon appeared in the middle of the debris. The dragon looked at us and I began to shake in my carpet slippers, I thought we were all going to die. But the dragon flapped its’ huge wings and flew off and I never saw it again. By the time the Fire Service arrived the house was nothing more than a smoking pile of cinders. My Mum started to cry and Dad looked shell-shocked and I felt really bad.”
“That’s worse than my dragon. At least we still had our house.”
The other guy looked at both
of them and just shook his head sadly.
“What about you? Did you have a dragon when you were a kid?” They both asked.
“As a matter of fact I did” he said quietly.
“What happened tell us please?”
“Well my tale is like yours but different as well.”
The other two guys sat waiting to hear his story.
“Like you both I went into my Dad’s old shed and found a tiny little dragon in one of the plastic pots. It was tiny and could barely open its eyes. It had probably just been born!
I picked it up and carefully held it in the palm of my hand. It was no bigger that a small bird’s egg. I looked at it for a while and even though it was cute I knew that if I let it grow it would become a menace to me and my family. Like what happened to you guys.”
“What did you do with it then?”
“I simply closed my hand over it and crushed it. When I opened my hand I could see it was dead. I took it in the garden and got a spade and buried it just by the compost heap. That was the last time I saw it.”

If you enjoyed this story you will enjoy Fred's ghost story set in Edwardian England 'Borders in the Mists' available on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/7sfcvur