I write most days, or work at something – researching, editing, social media – associated with my writing. It’s what I do. Without it, a great void in my life would open up, and I’m not sure how I’d fill it. Writing fulfils me, stretches my mind, exercises the right side of my brain and, I guess, keeps me sane.
I’m not sure about this right brain, left brain stuff – I wrote on that subject on this blog a few weeks back, but I do know I intend to write for as long as I can, maybe until the end of time (that’s my time, I mean). All I need is a functioning brain, my eyesight, my hands, and a spot where I can write in peace. I’m grateful I have all of those at the moment.
Recently, I started work on a new novel – A life turned (working title). How a man’s troubled past and his unusual relationships with his parents impacted his life.
Here’s the beginning:
- I can never be sure when my indifference to my mother started. When I’m irrational, I blame it on my birth: a bad forceps delivery, I’m told, that left me with birthmarks for the rest of my life, or so my vanity tells me. It wasn’t Mum’s fault, of that I’m sure, but somewhere, lodged deep in the temporal lobe of my brain is a negative, irrational memory that kicks in whenever I think of her. It’s not that I don’t love her, or that I think she doesn’t love me, only that from when I could first remember, she wasn’t much around. She’d dress me, give me breakfast, then rush out of the small apartment we lived in to go to work at the local supermarket, leaving me in the care of Sally, who I’ll always remember as being kind and fun. Mum came home to give me my tea, tuck me up in bed and dash back to the supermarket, where she’d fill shelves while I slept, watched over by a babysitter.
- There were days with only bread and water to eat and drink, days when it was so bitterly cold, we walked around our flat wearing coats, scarves, gloves and with several layers underneath and your breath almost froze in front of you. ‘It doesn’t work,’ Mum would say when I asked why we had no heating. Later, I realised we were poor, and she didn’t have enough money to turn the heating on…
For the 1st chapter go to: A life turned.
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My recent publications
Life in four stories
All proceeds go to the INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS (ICRC) to help the most vulnerable communities fight COVID – 19.
Four shorts: two about life, love, and death; one a poignant and disturbing memory that dangles a question unanswered; and one a wild fantasy – plus the first chapter of my latest book, Otto and Frankie.
By buying this book you are helping fund ICRC in its valuable work.
Thank you.
My latest novel, Otto and Frankie, is about a dying man’s fight against injustice, his wife’s unusual affair, and the love from his long-lost daughter.
Otto and his daughter Frankie could not be more different. He’s rich, an acclaimed author, human rights activist, and lives in England. She lives in New York, just about survives from one pay cheque to the next and hasn’t seen or spoken to her father for twenty years. Dutifully reunited by his impending death, she’s amazed to find him a kind and noble man who, while grappling with his wife’s bizarre affair, champions for the world’s forgotten and dispossessed to his last. After Otto’s death, Frankie’s admiration for her father leads her into a dangerous and life changing pursuit.
Nick Wastnage 