The dark

Strive for the light, always the light.  We live in a society obsessed with the bright, with the light, with the relentlessly positive.  Within this gleaming bright white perfect world there is no room for shadow, for penumbra, for twilight, for darkness. 

For a long time I relentlessly followed the path of the light.  I chanted positive affirmations until I was blue in the face; I knew I couldn't afford the luxury of a negative thought.  I manifested exactly what I needed - or what I thought I needed.  The message is that our lives should be permanently sunny, happy and joyous; all our relationships loving; all our spirits coursing towards the light. We are expected to be super-people, always up, always cheerful, always bright.


Is this natural? Is it realistic? Of course not. Virtually all of us have times when we feel down, depressed, negative. Times when we feel consumed with less than ideal emotions: anger, hate, jealousy, self-pity. If we were to believe some of the self-help gurus, we would seek to expunge such emotions immediately, drowning them in positive affirmations and self-talk. But is this missing the message? Do we do ourselves a disfavor by ignoring the dark and seeking always the light? Do we miss the subtlety of the moon’s shadows by always craving the clear illumination of the sun? By striving for perfection, for the ideal life, for permanent life, we are setting ourselves up for misery and failure. No-one can live perpetually in the bright sunshine. Life is made up of darkness as well as light. Our emotions too run into the shadows: fear, guilt, depression, anger. We cannot put a veneer over these emotions and simply hope they will simply go away. In fact, the more we disown these emotions, the more harm they will do.

We only have to look at nature to see that there exists cruelty, darkness, death. There are times of growth, times of decay. Sometimes day and light and the upward surge of life hold sway; sometimes we are in the grip of night and dark and the death-hush lies over the earth. We are splitting from an essential truth if we seek to live always in the light. After all, in order to have a peak, a mountain, you must have a trough, a valley. How can we truly know happiness if we have never experienced sadness and gloom?

By denying the dark we also lose the chance for genuine self-understanding and growth. There are many lessons to learn amidst the shadows, much wisdom in the gloom. We can and should sacrifice the idea of perfection because none of us is perfect. We all contain within us both good and evil, light and shade. When we turn and face our darkness, our demons of the night, we may find revelations beyond our wildest dreams. For there is dark energy too…

The ancients knew this and knew it well. In the Qabalah, the Tree of Life has a shadow image, a dark reflection. On it are all the sins and temptations known, the arch-demons of the soul. The qabalists realized that you cannot only see the bright side of life, you have to accept the dark as well. Ignoring the dark, pushing it aside, is to give it power over you. In many cultures the gods and goddesses were not just pure and good but complex creations with as many differing moods and attributes as us humans. Many initiation ceremonies demanded the initiate descend into the bowels of the earth or go deep into the forest or out onto the untamed sea to face his or her demons, to conquer fear, to embrace the dark and come out again, transformed, into the light.

I am not saying that affirmations and positive thought are bad things. They are in fact incredibly useful and worthwhile, particularly if you are the kind of person who constantly dwells on the negative. They are also valuable lessons in the first stages of energyworking. But once you have reached a certain level of skill in this work you no longer need to put a gloss on life. You need to face the dark energy, to plumb the depths: only then can you truly scale the heights.

The Gates of Hell

What would they look like, the gates of hell? 
Would they be a split in the earth's crust, an abomination?  A gaping wound, a crevice, a vagina - the place of birth meeting the place of death? 

Or would they be suitably gothic and spooky? Would they swing open and you'd walk down a dusty path with nothing much to see?  Would you walk and walk and walk and walk, with the dust coating your throat and your eyes?  Would you just keep walking, never reaching a destination? 

Or would you see them from a huge distance away... rising up like a sentinel in a barren land of rock and dust? Would you imagine eyes watching you as you approach, your weary feet stumbling over the rocks?  You might want to turn back but you would know it's too late.

Might it be a small, Alice-like, hole. Something insignificant, something almost vulgar? An asshole of an entrance? 

Or, then again, could it be any doorway?  Any worm hole?  Any clicked link on the PC?  Any seemingly innocent door or gate or place?

The thing is, you never know just how close to hell you are at any moment in your life.  Be wary of doors.  Be very wary of invitations.  You never quite know where they are going to lead.....

Inanna

I can't write right now.  Can't do anything much really.  Just exist.  I'm listening to music and crying and crying and crying.  Is that what writers do?  Is that a good thing to do? 

I'm also thinking about the underworld.  I feel a bit like Inanna, the Sumerian goddess. Inanna had the lot really - a kingdom, a husband, children, friends, all good stuff.  She is surrounded by love.  Yet somehow she feels she had to go down, to visit her 'dread sister' Ereshkegal, in the underworld.  She has to transform; she has to scour her soul. 

As she descends, she passes through seven gates and, at each gate, she loses a piece of jewellery or an item of clothing.  Each gate could be seen as one of the chakras, so I suppose you could say that the giving up might correspond with opening, or laying bare, each chakra.  Are they the trappings of our egos, our personas, the masks we wear?  Do we hide from our primal fears and dodge our true selves?  How scared are we to be stripped bare, to reveal our most inner being?  How scared are we?  How scared am I?

Finally she/I stands, naked, before Ereshkigal.  Ereshkigal, her sister, her shadow, kills her with a glance and Inanna is beaten and hung from a meat-hook like a slab of meat.  And so Inanna hangs...

And so I hang... 
And so I hang...
And so I hang...
And so I hang...
And so I hang...

Tanit - the sequel starts

Well, I gave it a shot.  I started Tanit, the sequel to Samael, at the beginning of November to tie in with NaNoWriMo.  I really hoped I could get 50K words under my belt by the end of the month.  But it didn't pan out. 
I found that having to write to order in quite such a formulaic way just didn't suit me.  But it did give me a kickstart and the book is coming on pretty well. 
This time the focus moves to London.  Gen is back living at home with her dad and stepmum and trying to fit into school after the events of the summer.  She's feeling pretty low. 

Everyone around her seems to be doing great. Her mother and Vivienne are all loved up and have returned to Texas. Zeke has a record contract and is flying.  Star is living her deam as part of a strange alternative circus, The Circus of the Macabre. 
Meanwhile Gen has hit rock bottom.  She's lost her man, lost her mojo and now she may be losing her home.  To make matters worse, there's a creepy guy following her and some crazy idiots are trying to break into hell.  The dead are coming back to life and an ancient (and madly unhinged) goddess is regaining power.
Zeke reckons it's time to call in the cavalry but, oops, the archangels seem to be deserting their posts in droves.
This time it isn't just Shadowcombe in danger - it's a whole city.  While everyone else seems hell-bent on leaving the abyss, Gen has no choice.  She has to find Samael.  She has to find a way back in. 

If I had a book trailer....

If I had a trailer for Samael, this would be the soundtrack.....  It's Kitty Jay by Seth Lakeman and it's the music I had running through my head the whole time I was writing Samael. 
There is tons of music in the book but the lilting and then crazed fiddle is at its core.  It's not 'folky' folk music, I promise - and if you haven't heard Lakeman before, do check it out.
Gen hears a violin playing in the attic when she first comes to Borthwelm.  A strange, sad, yearning melody.  But, of course, when she gets up there, the playing stops.
The sound chases her in her dreams and becomes linked intrinsically with Samael. 

However Samael isn't the only one who can play a mean fiddle and, in a key scene in the book, he 'duels' with Zeke at Zeke's gig...playing the classic country song The Devil went down to Georgia 

But there's loads of other music too. Some is really well-known, like The Kaiser Chiefs, The Killers and the wonderful Marianne Faithfull.  Other tracks are maybe less familiar. 
I absolutely adore this - Deus ibi est (actually this version would make a pretty reasonable trailer too!).

Do you think YA books should come with a soundtrack? 
If you write, do you listen to music while you write? 
What are YOUR 'heart and soul' tracks? 

Where I write

I am endlessly fascinated by where writers write.  If I see a supplement or magazine feature about an author I will pore over the pics, trying to read the titles on the spines of the books; I'll check to see what kind of computer they use; what kind of desk, chair...  Do they have a view or face a wall?  I dunno, I'm just intrigued by the whole process of writing so it's of interest.

I am hugely lucky.  I have a positively ginormous study.  It was the old dining room of the house and I've had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves fitted on two walls.  Instead of a desk I use a large kitchen table - because I like to draw as well as write.  There's a squashy sofa in the window alcove with more bookshelves either side. 

I like to surround myself with things that inspire me, that intrigue me, that spark off stories and thought processes.  So I have a few tarot packs (from my extensive collection) around me, runes and the I Ching.  I listen to music when I write - my soundtrack for Samael is extensive and I keep an old-fashioned beatbox on my table as I still like physical CDs (unlike Gen with her iPod).  I burn candles when I write too - my absolute favourite is Aromatherapy Associates Relax.
Scent is hugely important too - and those Jo Malone bottles in the bottom left are to remind me of how my characters smell!

But, when it came to writing Samael, I didn't actually do it at this desk or even in this room that often.  The whole book was scribbled longhand into a series of black Moleskine notebooks (three, to be precise).  I wrote it all over the place - in bed, in the car, on the beach, in numerous cafes, curled up on the sofa, in the garden.  The first chapter was written on the train as I returned from lunch with my agent in London.
Each chunk would be typed up here though...and the edits will happen here too.

btw, for those who have asked, Samael is finished (well, first draft at least).  It's now gone out to editors so hopefully I'll have some good news for you soon. 

The Ones That Survived

Why oh why did I burn my Samael paintings?  I do regret it.  I had a vast bonfire and most of my paintings went onto the pyre. 

These are a few which, for some bizarre reason, escaped the flames.  As you will see, Gen is a much better painter than I am!