A beginning: birth.
Breathing – deep heaving breaths. Sounds, lights, words – sensations on skin and time that passes so quickly too quickly to feel.
Less than a year ago – less! – I met some wonderful people at a writer’s conference in York (the old, English one). I had never been to anything writerly before – never thought of myself as a writer, despite doing plenty of writing – but I realised that they were people like me, who had day jobs and troubles and worries and hair and noses, who sat up late at night thinking of strange worlds within worlds, who tried to find the words to turn those ideas into visions and music and rhythm, trying desperately to communicate them with the world outside. Who couldn’t stop even if they wanted to.
And words – heard, understood, learned. Spoken, written, read.
And from there, I found that there was a nice, welcoming community of them: people who have unexpectedly random thoughts, but don’t dismiss them as silly, childish things, but embrace them for what they are – gateways to new worlds and words of wonder. And they dream – big dreams and small dreams, dreams of daggers and the sea, of dragons and swords and dancers and swans. And they write – they create worlds from their dreams for others to luxuriate in.
Smiles and tears, grazed knees and broken hearts, joy and sadness and years pass by.
So they – we – decided to turn these dreams and words into a book – “A Seeming Glass: a Collection of Reflected Tales”. On the 7th August, it will be available as both an ebook (all the usual formats) and a physical tactile touchable booky book.
And I’m proud and delighted to say that two of my short stories are included: The Straw Man and The Salmon of Knowledge.
I could tell you all about it here, but that would deprive you of the more-than-slightly-excellent website, where you can find a bunch of information about the Random Writers (that’s us), the book, links to where to buy it when it comes out and some cool, free stuff.
What do I mean by cool, free stuff? Well, over the next few weeks, the website will host a series of blogs by each of the writers, talking about how we got involved and why we picked the stories we picked. As a bonus, there will also be a quick bit of fiction, exclusive to the website, fleshing out or adding some context and flavour to the stories included in the anthology.
The first batch of extra stuff is up there now – and it’s mine! Pop over and have a look/read (yes, one of the paragraphs above is in there too, but the rest of it is new, I promise!) and then put a reminder in your calendar for the 7th August.
Actually, pop over regularly, as there’ll be something new going up every week, if not more frequently, and it’s all really good stuff, if I may say so myself.
Enjoy it, bask in the reflection and don’t get lost in the glass, because not everything is as it seems.
Martin J Gilbert's blog of writing and thinking 