I went to a book launch in a library the other day. It was good. The book was an anthology and the people published stood up and read their poems or short stories.

There was one poem that caught my attention and one line in particular that I really liked and the line is “She was hit by a bus she saw coming.”

Throughout the book launch, I sat behind a very pretty girl with a short hair cut. Her hair hung heavily about her neck and I was able, in the boring times, to entertain myself by watching the back of her head.

Below is a poem I made up sitting in the library using the one line I liked:

She was hit by a bus she saw coming

On a morning that shone like another

she was thrown into the road to her death

two children, she was their mother.

The city kept moving

the cars, the buses

after the medics had left

no one knew what all the fuss is

I saw the bus too, it was the 564

I was taking a call, I kept walking,

death can be welcomed or avoided so

watch where you go – a lot of people die talking.

Who knew

what stars could do?

They rained down from the heaven

onto earth

like spears-

like tears

like flashing lives that are gone too soon.

Upon the stairs I sit and watch the moonlit sky

through a window

and I wait

until I hear the rattle

behind me

from the top tread

a star has come and is rolling down to meet me

but be careful

it is still hot.

I am thinking about writing a novella but I am having a very hard time deciding what I want to write about. A novella is harder to write than a novel because you have to say something important, build great characters and resolve their issues but you have to do it in less than forty thousand words.

There is also the fact that the great novellas intimidate me. My favorite novellas include Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ a novella that changed Christmas in the West forever. Of Mice and Men, probably the greatest story about human relationships I have ever read, The Old Man and The Sea for which Hemingway won the Nobel and perhaps the greatest Novella of all time; The Metamorphosis by Kafka. Some call A clockwork Orange a novella but I have never thought of it as such, I classify it as a novel (and for the sake of trivia, it is my favorite novel ever written.)

My tastes run to the shorter works of literature. I have recently read both Slaughterhouse 5 which I loved and War and Peace which I liked.

A novella has to make an impact, it has to be strong and it has to change the way the reader thinks for it to have any impact. A novella is something people can carry in their pockets, they can be taken anywhere making them valuable to the busy reader and a lot of high schools like to teach novellas because the short length can be consumed by the students in a matter of weeks.

At the moment I have my new novel The Bomber back from the editors, so I am busy with my edits. It is going well so far, I am changing a few loose spots and tightening them up so it will look its best when it is released in June 2015, but while doing these edits my mind is racing to what I am going to write next. I think I will attempt the great novella, something that will fit in a pocket but might change the world.

Well it’s Ninth and Hennepin
All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon’s teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill
Like the whole goddamn town’s ready to blow…
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs
And the horses are coming down Violin Road
And Dutch is dead on his feet
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I’m lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
One for every year he’s away, she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There’s nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won’t fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
Til you’re full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen
And I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen it all
Through the yellow windows of the evening train

Michael Yetts went to see Doctor Thorne because one morning he looked out his bedroom window and there was a face looking at him from out a large fern in his garden. The face identified itself as Prince Albert and then began to yell abuse at him. Even after he had closed his window he could still hear the voice and when he eventually called his sister to come into his room and look out the window she could see no face in the fern.

The Doctor’s room was nothing like they looked like in the movies. This one was plastic and cheap looking. There were pictures on the wall but these were all cheap prints of waves crashing into lighthouses and forests covered in fog. Michael instantly hated these pictures and he began to feel a deep regret at having come to see the doctor.

“Hello Michael.” The doctor greeted him and sat down in a chair that was also made of cheap plastic and it groaned, threatening to collapse as he sat down. The Doctor did not seem to notice how cheap and horrible the chair was.

“Hello.”

“Can you tell me what happened to you this morning.”

“What part?”
“Anything you think that is worthwhile telling me.”
“There was no rain.”

“OK.”

“That is important.”
“Why?”
“I went on the internet, I looked up the national weather thingo, you know the government has the weather website?”
“The bureau of meteorology?”
“Yes, that’s it. They said we should have rain this morning, from six to nine. I woke up and the sky was blue and the sun was coming up clear.”
“Why did that worry you?”
“The government tells me that it’s going to rain, so I decided the night before not to go for my morning walk.”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment.
“They ruined my walk, on purpose.” Michael went on.

“Your sister mentioned something about a fern, a face and voices.”

“Yes. That was a hallucination. I know that. I don’t need you to tell me.”
“Good. What happened, can you tell me?”
“I looked down into a large bird’s nest fern I have been growing under my window and there was a face. An ugly little spiteful face, a man, he had a big mouth and little eyes and he said he was Prince Albert and then he started swearing at me. He told me all this bad stuff while using really bad language. He said I was useless and of no good to anyone.”
“I know you have been on medication, have you been taking it?”
“I stopped.”
“Why?”
“When ever I take the medication, I’m not joking…” Michael looked the Doctor in the eye, “When ever I take it, bees start to follow me.”
The Doctor was quiet for a moment. “What do the bees do to you?”
“They are bees, they follow me, sometimes they settle on me and I have to brush them aside and when they get inside I have to take them out.”
“Do they sting you?”
“No, I think it’s the smell of the medication I take, I think it smells of the hive.”
“Do you like bees?”
“They’re fine. They’re hard workers and everything, perhaps they’re a bit stupid.”
“Why do you think that?”
“They do all the hard work for some Queen, they never get a holiday, they can’t fly in the rain.” Michael stopped and watched the Doctor writing in his black book. “Hang on, forget that last part. They can’t help it if they can’t fly in the rain.”

I love Shakespeare’s plays. They are amazing. I hope to one day see all of them on stage.

I am not so enamoured with his sonnets. However I thought I might share one that stands out to me.

Sonnet 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired:

But then begins a joinery in my head

To work my mind when body’s work’s expired;

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see;

Save that my soul’s imaginary sight

Presents thy Shadow to my sightless view,

Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

The internet is crazy. People can heap abuse anonymously, share opinions, ideas, nudes everything that was hard in information sharing and communications in the past centuries is now easy.

There is a deep morality in the internet however. If someone is doing something wrong, if they are engaging in criminal activity, these things can be brought to community attention much faster and with much impact. For example in a small takeaway restaurant not far from me, two young men were ordering a meal. The restaurant has video cameras which record all areas of the store and although this is brought to the people’s attention via warning signs the young men ignored it. In a petty act, an act of major stupidity, while the staff members had their backs turned the men took a donation tin from the counter and stole it. The donation tin was for sick children and contained, it would turn out seventy-two dollars.

When the staff realised the tin had been stolen they called the police and reviewed the footage. The young men could be clearly seen, however neither the staff or the police could identify them. So the cafe put the footage on facebook and youtube and within six minutes people began to leave comments identifying the young men. They were both eighteen years old and lived only two blocks from the takeaway store.

Their names were listed, their addresses were put on the net as well as abuse and the identification of their girlfriends and even that they were unemployed and drug users.

The police raided the homes and found the cash tin as well as drugs and the men were arrested. The internet provided me with this information as well as the face that one of the men’s girlfriends had left him.

There was also the case of a murder in my neighborhood. Within a few days of the murder and the suspects arrest, I was able to access the accused persons Facebook, find their names, photos and address. They are a husband and wife who beat to death a seventy year old man and stole thirty thousand dollars from his bank account.

The internet may be in a stage that may be described as ‘the wild west’ but it is powerful and wide reaching. People can damage businesses with negative reviews , they can humiliate a person by broadcasting personal photos or information and the internet can ever reach powerful celebrities or politicians.

It is an amazing tool, it is a world changing phenomenon and I am addicted to it.

I have recently been trying to build a platform here to promote my book but it is hard. I am not skilled and I struggle to attracted attention but there is something so fulfilling to communicate with people from around the world. I have discovered I have things in common with people who are from completely different cultures, I can make friends with people from countries I had no idea about and I can enjoy hours of videos about kittens. It is the future.