A Painful Truth…

This week I must report both sad news, and happy news. I debated making two posts of this and keeping them separate, yet the two subjects collide in an odd manner, due to a shared theme: Death.

I have spent a great deal of my life contemplating death. I have, on several occasions, attempted to end my own life. The last occasion, in the summer of 2011, was so very nearly successful that I have found people have acted differently around me since. Friends, family, it’s like they caught a glimpse of something horrific, something so utterly terrifying that they are almost afraid to look at me in case they see it again.

I did not truly understand this reaction. I understood, in the abstract, the notion that people hate the thought of someone they love taking their own life, because it means they will have to mourn the loss. They will have to grieve. And that will be unpleasant for them. I have often heard it said that the act of suicide is one of the most selfish things a person can do, and I have been told—by more than one friend or relative—that I ‘have’ to keep living because it would be unfair of me to die. It would be selfish of me to inflict the pain of losing me on people for whom I profess I care.

Unquiet MindI have never seen it this way, and have in fact always viewed it from the alternate perspective: I have always found it utterly selfish of my friends and family to expect me to live through times in my life when I have wanted nothing more than to die. Since my diagnosis and the start of proper treatment and medication, as my life has so painfully slowly started to get back on track and I have begun, ever so cautiously, to hope that the worst is behind me, I find myself wishing less and less that I were dead. As I’m sure you can understand, everyone I know seems pleased by this, but I still find it incredibly hard to articulate to anyone ‘in the throws’, as it were, of an episode, exactly why it is a bad idea to try and kill themselves.

After all, it’s rather hypocritical, is it not, for me to sit there and say ‘no matter how bad it gets, you should never resort to that, it’s not an answer’, for I myself HAVE resorted to that, because at the time it felt very much like it WAS the only answer. When I was feeling like that I despised those people around me who told me I couldn’t do the one thing I was absolutely convinced would end my suffering. As a result, I feel useless when confronted by a person in that state of mind, because I know full well there is not one single thing—and I really do mean NOT. ONE. SINGLE. THING—that can be said to make them feel better, and anything you do say is likely to make it worse.

To that end—and here we come to my good news—I began writing a series of books exploring notions such as these, in an effort to provide something tangible to those people who felt like I had, both in the past and often during the time I was writing the first one.

Chasing Azrael is a novel about Death. More specifically, it is a novel about the obsession with Death, and how it can lead people to take their own lives, or spend so much of their time fixating on taking their own lives that they have no real life to speak of anyway. I began this novel in 2010, when I was first diagnosed with rapid cycling, Bipolar Disorder I. For the first time in my life I had a reason for some of the things that had happened to me, the way I had felt at certain times, and the possibility that it might get better. I was, to my horror, to find that it had to get considerably worse before things ultimately began to improve, but as I wrote my book, and tackled issues of plot, and dialogue, and characterisation, I found it was something I could hold onto in times when I was feeling impossibly low.

Chasing AzraelI designed the novel very carefully. It is not a manual for suicide, but rather a warning for those who contemplate it, and for the people in their lives who may—albeit unwittingly—be pushing them towards it through sheer ignorance. For years I had lived with friends and family who could not understand my often utterly irrational behaviour. My relationships with most of my family were strained, and the friends I had one by one fell away, until I was, at one stage, left with absolutely nobody but my brother, to whom I am eternally grateful for always standing by me, giving me a place to stay and a job. When I was diagnosed this changed. People became more understanding. Some of the friends who had abandoned me came back, realising that whatever it was I had done to upset them I had not intended, I had not meant, and more often than not I had not had the slightest amount of control over. The same was true of my family. My mother and sister are now a huge part of my life, something that was simply never the case before, as neither of them could understand me, and I resented them for it. My brother, on the other hand, went the other way. We have grown apart since, partly due to him getting a girlfriend, settling down, and us seeing less and less of each other, but partly also because the mention of my condition unnerves him. It makes him… uncomfortable. You can see it in his face whenever it comes up in conversation. I do not think he is consciously aware of it, but for whatever reason, he won’t talk about it. Almost as if, if he can pretend it’s not there, somehow it will go away and stop bothering his little sister.

This reaction is understandable, but it is not helpful. To a person who has a condition like bipolar, it is necessary for the people in their lives to be as understanding as they can manage to be, to have as much comprehension of their condition as they can, if for no other reason than to keep them from saying things like ‘well, we’re all down sometimes’, when you’ve phoned them from the railings of a very high bridge and are on the verge of jumping. The people in your life need to know what they can and can’t say when you are in the various states that overtake you. They need to know how best to handle you, and when they are really best not handling you at all. Perhaps most importantly though, they need to acknowledge that you have a mental health illness, that this is not your fault, that it doesn’t make you ‘wrong’ in the head, or any less of human being, and that it is no different, not really, to any number of physical condition such as diabetes. One involves changing levels of insulin over which you have no control, the other involves changing brain chemicals over which you are similarly powerless.

To that end, I also wanted my books to provide people who didn’t have any kind of mental health problems with a deeper understanding of what it is like to live with such conditions. It’s a tall order, but I would like nothing more than for someone with no history of depression to pick up my book, read it, and come away not only having (hopefully) enjoyed a good story, but also with the feeling that they know, at least a little, what it is like to live with being depressed, to such an extent that you regularly consider ending your own life, and that to you, that is not an abhorrent or selfish act to contemplate, it is the light at the end of a tunnel full of horrors, the glimmer of hope in an otherwise desolate landscape. I want them to come away understanding why to people like me, it isn’t the ones who commits suicide who appears selfish, but the ones who repeatedly keep a person from dying. In short, I want to pick my readers up, take them to the very brink of insanity, then yank them back to the world of the living, a place where yes, they can acknowledge how bad it gets, yes, they can understand the impulse to do it, the need to have it over, but they can also see that there is a way back from that place.

I want the people who have stood on that bridge to know there is a way down.

And I want the people who have been on the other end of the phone while they were up there to know that once they are down, they can find a way to have a life again.

Life Asked DeathIt’s a long time since I have actively contemplated killing myself. I had a slightly dicey few weeks around October-December last year when I recognised how I was feeling and I knew it was possible I’d get that impulse again. I handed my MEDs over to my mother who has had them under lock and key ever since.

You are probably wondering how on earth I can possibly class this as ‘happy’ news, and if this is the good, what the hell is the sad?

Well, the happy news is that Chasing Azrael is soon to be released on the world. As of the 26th of April it will be available in paperback and Kindle formats, from Amazon and a host of other retailers, as well as directly from myself. For those of you who read this blog regularly and enjoy my writing, I hope that you will pick up a copy, but more than that, I hope that you will let me know what you think of it. I am still writing the remaining books in the series, and I want to ensure the rest—one in particular, which is very personal to me—really achieve the effect I have in mind.

And this of course leads me to the sad news. I have begun to understand over the last week or so why it is my friends and family have had that look about them since my last suicide attempt so very nearly worked. On the 5th of January I lost a very dear friend. To say that her death was unexpected would be redefining the word to mean something infinitely stronger than its current denotation. She was young; she was healthy; she has three teenage children. I was speaking to her on January 1st. We were thanking each other for our respective Christmas cards and talking about AuthorCon, a convention of independently published authors which is taking place in Manchester, on April 26th, and at which I will be launching my book. Lindsey, also a writer, had booked a table and was planning to come up, along with another friend of ours (again, another writer, you can see a trend here…), so that it would be the three of us signing books at the convention. I was incredibly excited about this, not only because it was my book launch but because it meant meeting Lindsey in the flesh. The latter was pleasing because despite her being a very good friend, we never actually met. We knew each other only via an online writing group of which we are both members.

She went out for a walk with her family later that day, came home, began complaining of back pains, and was rushed to hospital. Despite an operation that appeared to be successful, she was placed in a medically induced coma. She never woke up. I cannot adequately describe the utter shock, and horror, that I felt when I was told. I have lost people before, but only elderly relatives, people who had been ill for prolonged periods of time and whose death was, while still terribly painful, not unexpected and in some ways a relief, as you knew it was inevitable, and hated seeing them in that amount of pain.

Now I know what horror it was my friends and family glimpsed, that last time I tried to die.

Now I understand why people say it’s selfish.

DominosIt’s not because they enjoy seeing you in pain, not because they think it’s better that you suffer than they do, it’s the sheer fallout of it. The impact one death has is as a fall of a well-placed domino; one goes down, the rest soon follow. I do not know Lindsey’s family, although they have been in my thoughts a lot these past days. I do however know a lot of her online friends, many of whom were in our writing group, and many of whom are currently feeling as lost and broken as I am over the whole thing. The shock is bad enough. The loss when you have actually managed to process it is unbearable.

The issue that I have here is that I only ever knew Lindsey online. I found myself sending her an invitation via Facebook yesterday, because for a few moments I forgot. It was second nature to me, to include her in the things I do. I hit the invite button and immediately felt a fresh wave of grief, as if being told for the first time all over again. There is an oddness to the internet. Her profile is still there, so in many respects she has the appearance of still being there, as much as she ever was previously. It takes a minute to recall that she is no longer on the other end of this infinite thing we call ‘Internet’.

And that thought got me wondering. If my entire friendship with Lindsey can take place across the vast void of cyberspace, can it not somehow continue across the void that now exists between this world, the ‘living’ worlds, and wherever it is she has gone?

I am not a religious person, but I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what happens to a person after they die. Chasing Azrael can be described in many ways. It’s urban fantasy; a supernatural mystery; gothic literature, but at the heart it is one very simple thing: it’s a ghost story.

Not Finished

Throughout the book I explore why people die, as well as what happens to them afterwards. I have often wondered what, had I been successful in any of my attempts, would have happened to me after. Would I truly have felt any better? Would the bipolar be gone once I no longer had a physical brain with that pesky chemical imbalance? If I no longer had bipolar, would my personality alter drastically, or would I still possess all the same flaws I currently have, because the bipolar did not cause them, but merely amplified them, the repeated trauma experienced as a result of my mood swings affecting the person I was to the point that, even if you took the bipolar away, and I no longer had that awful pendulum in my head, I would still be as I had become as a result of my experiences. It’s easy to blame it all on the bipolar, but one must also take responsibility for one’s own actions, one’s own faults, and acknowledge that while you may not have developed them were it not for the bipolar, once you have them, and are aware of them, it is your responsibly to control them wherever possible.

This week I have found myself thinking about Lindsey, and whether or not she is ‘out there’ somewhere, in a world such as the ghostly world I have imagined for my novels. I wonder if she can see how much she is missed, and how much she is loved, and I wonder if that would make it easier or harder for her. I am still working on the final edits of the novel, and I have to say that having so recently suffered the loss of a friend I find myself looking at it with new eyes.

Lindsey was a great writer, a wonderful friend, and a great help to me at a time when I was very much alone and my life was a complete mess. She read several drafts of my novel, offering comments and help on each, and was supposed to be present on the day it was launched. I will miss her terribly, and although I look forward to the release of my novel, I know the day will be tinged with grief no matter my excitement, because someone who should have been there, won’t be.

Or will she?

I realises this has been a much longer post than usual, and I thank those of you who have taken the time to read to the end. I would also like to leave you with a final thought for consideration:

Death can only be an answer if you fully understand the question, and it is difficult to understand anything fully when you are in the midst of a depressive episode.

Moreover, death may not be the end you think it is, and if it isn’t, if you wake in some new world to find you’re just as broken in that one as you were in this one, what will you do then?

There will be nothing to do but stare down at the ones you left behind, and watch them all fall after you.

Extraordinary Retribution – Erec Stebbins Blog Tour

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Welcome to the Extraordinary Retribution tour!

Find out all the information on Erec Stebbins’ new political thriller that readers are calling ‘dark’ and ‘engrossing’, plus enter the tour giveaway for the chance to win yourself a signed copy of this chilling novel.

Unknown-315What they say:

‘Sometimes evil is not born of madness, but madness of evil.

A rogue CIA agent partners with the brother of a slain colleague to uncover a conspiracy deep in the intelligence community. But a shadow follows them: a killer bent on a revenge so terrible, it is only matched by the crimes committed against him. In the end, no one escapes unscathed, no beliefs will go unchallenged, and no wrong will escape the terrible, final, and extraordinary retribution.’ 

My Review

In my mind a good book should be a form of escape. Some offer the warm and comforting confines of a friend’s arms, a love affair or a dream realised. Others offer a tumultuous journey of adrenalin, shady characters and murder. Erec Stebbins’ latest novel is without doubt a fine example of the latter category and my advice to you would be to approach with energy, focus and the desire to be thrilled, shocked and enlightened.

You can always tell when an author has given everything to his novel and Stebbins’ work is surely a testament to this. His characters are fully developed and believable, his dialogue quickly entraps you in this world of intrigue and the pace will sweep you along without any hope of letting you leave before the final page has been read. Personally I think Extraordinary Retribution is best experienced in hardback or paperback (as long as you can grip it in your hands and experience the whip of the page as it turns!) but whatever format you choose, this should definitely be on your ‘to read’ list for 2014.

Click Here To Buy This Book – UK

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Author Bio
:

Erec Stebbins is a biomedical researcher who writes political and international thrillers, science fiction, narrated storybooks, and more.

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Checking Inn – Emily Harper Launch Day Tour

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 Welcome to the Launch Day Tour for Emily Harper’s new novel Checking Inn!

 The book is officially released today so why not start celebrating the upcoming festivities with a fantastic new read nestled in your stocking . . .

 

What they say:

‘Kate Foster runs the Summerside Inn (and her life) by well-organized checklists.

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000032_00025]Make sure the caterers don’t serve devil’s food cake to the Christian Women’s Alliance– check.

Tell my mother that having a séance to get rid of any unwanted spirits in the kitchen during dinnertime is not okay- check.

Send a friendly reminder to all staff that the pens are colour coded for everyone’s enjoyment, and therefore it is not a good idea to put them all in one jar in order to “spice things up” as was anonymously suggested– check.

But, when an acclaimed hotel critic dies at the Inn, just before she’s about to publish a scathing review that would ruin the business, Kate’s life and checklists are thrown into disarray. And it doesn’t help matters that the detective assigned to the case is messy, unorganized, and too charming for his own good. Now Kate has to prove her innocence and save her Inn, or else the only thing that she’ll be organizing is the prison’s next bake sale.’

Click Here To Buy This Book – UK

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emily-harper-head-shotAuthor Bio: 

Emily Harper has a passion for writing humorous romance stories where the heroine is not your typical damsel in distress.  Throughout her novels you will find love, laughter, and the unexpected!

Originally from England,  she currently lives in Canada with her wonderful husband, beautiful daughter, mischievous son,  and a very naughty dog.

Emily is also the author of the funny and charming novel White Lies, which has proven to be a huge hit with fans. The book will even be appearing on The Marilyn Denis Show as a giveaway next month! For more information on the book please visit Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

Ways to stalk  follow Emily

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Praise for Emily

‘The story bounces along, sweeping the reader up along with it, and has a feel-good factor that makes it both unputdownable and downright fantastic’

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Vintage Book Review: “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells (1895)

“The Time Machine” (1895) was written at the latter end of the Victorian age, a time during which great scientific discoveries and leaps in progress were made. The concept of time travel was most likely fueled  by the discovery of, and the advances of, electrical energy, which then would have prompted an imagining of unparalleled potential, if harnessed effectively – in this case, the potential to travel through time.

H.G. Wells was then, and is known today, as a keen science fiction author, having touched upon the subject of science fiction many times before. The Time Machine tells the tale of a keen scientist who claims, to a room full of scarcely-believing friends, that he has just returned from a journey into the distant future, where many erstwhile unbelievable things he has experienced and seen, w ho then begins to recount his adventure.

Told from a third-person perspective, the narrator is relaying the time traveler’s tale, who jump started his time machine to embark upon a distinctly uncomfortable, but incredible, journey through the fabric of space and time, to end up in the year 802, 701 AD, a time when the the “society” of Earth has become virtually unrecognizable.

The first “people” he encounters are the “Eloi”, a race of barely-human people who have evolved over time to become impossibly ethereal and delicate, both physically and mentally, the implication being that they signify the “elite” society of the contemporary age, who have evolved to a point where intellect and strong feeling are no longer conducive to their surviving. The time traveler soon forges a bond with a female Eloi called Weena, a relationship which is hinted as being potentially romantic, but the “woman” is far too childlike and simple for this  to legitimately be the case.

He observes the Eloi, and their way of life, with a relatively dispassionate, but intellectually keen, narrative voice. However before long his time machine is mysteriously stolen by a dark and primitive underground-dwelling race called the Morlocks, who abhor sunlight and have evolved from the working class of the contemporary age to become what they now are. Worse, it turns out that every so often, they emerge during the night to feed on the Eloi, who in turn live in fear of them constantly.

This could be construed quite easily as the reverse of the upper class looking down upon, and suppressing, the working class, whom they deem to be inferior and exist only to serve the elite. The sheer extent of the division between the two races of people has resulted in both evolving to become extreme examples of “predator” and “prey”, in a brutal and inevitable “return to nature”.

After one night raid, in which the forest catches fire, engulfing Weena along with many of the Eloi (as is the implication), the time traveler casts himself into his time machine, just in time, to propel himself even further into the future, almost to the “end of time”, when the Sun is dying and on Earth there is a permanent sunset/sunrise, and there is virtually no trace of recognizable life.

There is a strong influence of a “Dying Earth Subgenre”, in which the ultimate end of the world, and of civilization, would inevitably form in the minds of the more imaginative and forward-thinking people of the age. Most remarkable here is the prompting of a mental projection into a future in which civilization, and society, disappear completely, and where humanity has left little to no trace.

After marveling at the unique glimpse of the future granted to him alone, the time traveler eventually manages to return to the late nineteenth century from where he came, just a few hours before his initial departure, and in good time to tell his friends of his adventure, once more.

Perhaps it is in the very fact that the entire tale is told as a “tale within a tale”, by a listener to the time traveler’s story, which shows that his tale is not doubted at all by at least one person, so fully and intricately has he related the experience. Given that time travel is still an endeavor which humanity is striving towards in the present day, and may still remain within the realms of “science fiction”, “The Time Machine” still manages to retain the same sense of speculative possibility today – over a century into the future – as it did at the time of writing.

 

COMRADE FOX: Low-living in Revolutionary Russia (The Life and Times of Archibald Brinsley Fox) by Stewart Hennessey

“I never gave a monkeys for Marxism or Monarchism or Liberalism or Conservatism or Socialism or any ism. I’ve always been leery of anyone brandishing an ism – an excuse to howl at the moon if you ask me. And they’re all moralists too, always got it in for someone else, usually someone like me.” – Archibald Brinsley Fox.
Written in the style of a diary, ‘Low-Living in Revolutionary Russia’ is Archie Fox’s story of his time spent in Revolutionary Russia. He spent his time cosying up to Lenin, trying to seduce his mistress and hunting for a Faberge egg, but all that is just the surface level of this book. He marks the difference between bolsheviks and Mensheviks, describes the call to arms in Petrograd and even prisoners of war going on strike. With a large collection of well researched endnotes adding to the story, this is one for those with an interest in The October Revolution and those with a liking for adventure and intrigue.

Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of historical novels, although I always feel like I should be, but Archie Fox’s adventures are genuinely captivating; so much so that I found myself reaching for the endnotes to learn more. Archie is headstrong, with loose morals and yet you can’t help but like him. You might not want to spend any time in his company, but as a character in a book he offers the perfect balance of intrigue and despicable behaviour. Simply put, it’s a love-hate scenario.

The writing style is what really makes this novel captivating, as it has an upbeat rhythm which ensures that you can’t stop reading. Combine that with Fox’s escapades and you very quickly become swept along with the story and forget that it is rooted in historical accuracy; until the name Lenin pops up. Hearing about a man trying to seduce Lenin’s mistress catches your interest like nothing else. It simply isn’t the type of thing you learn at school or college and for anyone who doesn’t have a firm knowledge of revolutionary Russia, this is one of the most effective ways of learning about it.

I imagine that this could be a book to divide the audience, as those who are particularly sensitive to political correctness might not see the humour in it, but in my experience anything that doesn’t beg to be accepted by the masses is usually worth a read and a little controversy never did anyone any harm.

Woeful and Roses by M.K. Aston: A Review

Collections of short stories are a difficult thing to get right without coming across as pretentious and trying to bridge the gap between poetry and novels, but I’m happy to say that M. K. Aston has certainly cured my usual aversion to them. Each story offers a different take on the ‘twist’, which is a style that I have always loved although, once again, they are difficult to get right. As a reader it is like a form of abuse, eagerly awaiting the twist and knowing that it is going to shock and appall you, but wanting it anyway; Aston delivers this beautifully.

Each story is quite different and some even feel like they are written by a completely different author, but what they all have in common is that final twist and the subtle study of human nature. This is a subject that I could read an unlimited amount of books on, because it is so varied and so captivating and through the different styles of writing Aston really taps into this, offering a very realistic collection of stories.

Woeful and Roses opens with a story that sweeps you off your feet and into your imagination from the word go. Written through the eyes of an elderly man who we can all relate to – although we might not admit to it – End of the Line offers a realistic portrayal of the inner workings of the mind and the final, jaw-dropping twist at the end prepares readers for this style of writing. Simply put, don’t take the narrative for granted; all is not what it seems.

As with any short story collection there are always some I love and some I could take or leave. Portrait of an Angel is definitely the former and utterly heartbreaking. Although there were some seemingly unnecessary details that didn’t really add anything to the story, ultimately it all adds to the build-up and this is a very difficult thing to create. There were also some moments in other stories where the style didn’t match the rest of the story, but these were such small details that they don’t affect the overall telling of the story. I couldn’t pinpoint my absolute favourite story as they all offer so much, but Finders Weepers, Déjà Clue and Greetings from Saint Christopher were the three that truly resonated with me because they tapped into realistic fears and were told in such a personable manner.

The overall style of the book is difficult to pin down as some stories, such as Queasy Like Sunday Morning are quite different to the others, but this story in particular offered a nice break from the more serious or heartbreaking narratives and that is really needed in this type of collection. It is always difficult to review this type of book without giving away too much and ruining it for future readers. Suffice to say: it is well worth a read, but prepare for some wide-eyed-hand-over-mouth moments!