A Bog-Standard Blog Entry

Hello all. Things have been quiet lately. Too quiet for my liking. I’ve been dying, in a sense. Dying as in getting older, and slowing down. Don’t worry (or clap), it’s not terminal. Just something we all go through when approaching our late thirties, I assume. Still, it’s no excuse. There’s never any excuse for not writing (apart from maybe having no fingers). Anyway, I’ve been to a writing class tonight, and because I’ve not attended that particular group for absolutely ages, it seems to have had the desired effect. I’m now determined to compile and self-publish a book of shorts I’ve been working on for the last two years or so. It wouldn’t have occurred to me otherwise. They would have gone on sitting there on my flash pens if not for tonight’s class. I’d say hard drive, but baby, I ain’t got no hard drive. My computer crashed. Is there any bigger hindrance to a so-called writer? I lost heaps of work, because when it comes to backing things up, I’m about as efficient at that as I am at doing the dishes, or changing the bed linen, or paying the bills…which is not to say that I never do it, but that, if truth be told, there’s sufficient room for improvement. So, a goal. I’ll give myself a month to accomplish it. I’ve had no goals lately, nothing to aim for. It’s been pure limbo. Then again, without a hard drive, I’ve only had the pleasure of the television. The best thing I’ve watched lately was the Michael Jackson night on Channel 5. I have to admit I was enthralled. I used to think he wasn’t guilty but now I think he was. The plain fact is that none of us will ever know. It’s a shame how he went from being the one and only Michael Jackson who everyone loved into ‘Wacko Jacko’ with a load of question marks hanging over him. Quite sad, really. What I’ll remember him for is wearing an umbrella indoors, wearing his PJs to the courtroom, and dangling his baby out of a hotel window. Not to mention his dance moves in those pop videos of his. The whole sex charges fiasco is something his genuine fans wish never happened. It’s a slur on the genius of his legacy. Apart from that I’ve just had books to entertain me. I usually revolve between Herbert, Koontz and King, because they’re reliable. I find it a risk reading a new writer because some of them are bad. They start off promising but fade. I’m with Ian McEwan at the moment. His style is of the utmost but his content is dodgy. He’s the kind of writer who gets shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and crap like that. So anyways, just thought I’d drop by. I’ll be back in a month with my new book of shorts (it’s going to be called SHORTS), so you can hold me to my writing goals. We do need goals, no matter how pathetically small. They get us through the day.

And It Was All A Dream

The strangest thing happened. I was lying in bed and sleeping and oversleeping and then sleeping some more, half-dosing for most of it so not really sleeping at all. I could concentrate on the radio for much of it, and was aware of the author Dennis Lehane doing a charity event in my local public library. He was reading the entirety of his novel Shutter Island in one sitting, live on air. I followed much of the story during my snoozing, kind of dreaming along with it, and replicating scenes from the movie in my mind’s eye. I became immersed in Martin Scorcese’s cinematography. I really wanted to drag myself up and roll on down to the library, this was a fantastic and unheard of opportunity, but my medication had other plans. I simply could not summon up the will to get out of the pit! I was too groggy from my pills. Finally, after many hours, I managed to get up and shower. It was time to get into my special-occasion yellow dress (which I’d never worn before), and make the trip to the library. I was astonished by the set-up. As expected, it was a sell-out (I made a generous donation). The town’s press was there, a flood of photographers and journalists, with a tightly-knotted bunch of excited fans. There were illuminated waxworks of Ben Kingsley and Leonardo Dicaprio, a simple but spectacular touch, with the author sat up on a candlelit pedestal, calmly reading from his famous paperback. I’d made it just in time for the ending, my favourite part, and was ever-so-pleased that I’d made the trip. I never would have forgiven myself if I’d missed this. When it was over I stayed until the very end, until after all the autographs, handshakes, and signings. Then I approached him and told him how much I had fallen for the main character, Teddy Daniels. I said that to be so monumentally fucked-up was actually an endearing trait in a person, that denial is a very important aspect of life. We deny our own deaths every single day, I added. I even told Dennis that I myself had been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic, something I very rarely disclose to anyone. I spilled my nervous heart out to him, unexpectedly. I have no idea why. Maybe because he looked so winsome and perfect while reading out his beautiful story.

I noticed a flicker in his eye, and a stutter in his breath. Something told me that he had taken quite a shine to me. Maybe I imagined it. Anyway, I left the venue with ideas of romance on my mind. I was sure something had clicked between us. My hero had not let me down. I climbed out of my dress and back into bed a very happy girl. Then I drifted off back into my slumber as if nothing had happened. When I next woke, my dress was still hung up in my closet with the label on as if I had never donned it. The whole thing felt like a dream, but I wasn’t sure. I honestly didn’t know. It was so real. It was so vivid. I rang the library and they said they didn’t know what I was talking about, they had had no author readings for two months. I searched online and found the same result – no history at all of Dennis Lehane doing a charity event whatsoever. Dumbfounding. So I messaged him on Twitter. He emailed me his cell number straightaway, asking me to call him immediately. I did so. And the next minute I was talking to my favourite writer in person – in reality, in the flesh, in the actual living world.

You were the cute girl in the yellow dress, he said. I blushed. Cute! But the thing is, no reading event had ever taken place…he’d dreamed the same whole thing himself! He had dreamed he had a single session reading of his book Shutter Island at a strange library in a strange town, and I, somehow, had met him in his own dream, in our own connected dream. We, as people, had never met. Or had we?

                                                                                                                

 © Zombie Publications 2017