Well, now I am well and truly F****d. Because, I never intend to write love in, it just happens. In stories, it just happens, I plan a characters future and then it just sort of sneaks up on me. I suppose that is why it happens in real life.

In truth, the Coryburn Girls has been worked on for a while, and there are many other stories that I have written since my love of writing started. But I discovered something, I have a type. A literary type, I should say. My alter ego or representative somehow has a type, and I suppose it is only natural, because the truest affection of love that these characters feel, who they fall for is someone that I must have imagined since I was young. Someone who was kind and funny and comfortable to be around.

Well, here is where I got myself into trouble, I wrote an ideal for a story, a dream person who I could fall in love with, full of secrets, full of honesty, full of a hidden pain that I understood. And then I did it again for another story, it was the same, if not a similar man, his features were different aesthetically, but his core, what made him who he was, was the same.

Then I forgot about him, these characters, I did a few other projects without that character as exercises, I tried different things, then went back and looked at the characters from what I considered to be afar, and the fondness was still there.

But then reality came along, the real world, the thing I was escaping from all that time. So longer story short, I found him, that character, in the real world. It took a long time to make the connection, but I had written about this kind jerk long before I found him in the real world. It took a couple of months before I realized all of this though, as far as I was concerned I was just dating someone, in a relationship with someone who made me laugh and feel comfortable and safe.

When I realized what I had done, that the fantasy existed, maybe not the story, but that one character, however imperfect the both of them were/are, I think I was more surprised that it could actually happen.

A character I had dreamed up at times when the world was too hard, when it was too painful to be me, in a world I had dreamed of to escape. The thought that a character like that was real, that they could fundamentally exist in the real world still surprises me. I base some characters on people I already know, and this just seemed so impossible.

Its over a year since I met this person, I am astounded every single day that its possible they exist, a person I wrote about before I had ever met them. I can’t tell if I still love the old character or whether I have now changed my perception and imprinted this real person over the idea of them and said, “yes, this is the right energy” for the character. I don’t think it matters.

Every day I am still surprised, good and bad, by what can manifest itself in our lives.

That’s not to say I regret the choices I have made, that I should have denied myself, but it is to say, I can still write and be happy, I don’t have to be escaping from some kind of pain to drift off into the island of another world.

I love them both, character and the real guy. I got to know personality, the real person, before we met and maybe that is what has made the difference and held my attention. Either way, I am grateful for the experience.

Yesterday was one of my inspirations birthday.

Actually this month has the birthdays of two of my biggest inspirations; C at the start of the month and J near the end of the month (yesterday). So I figured the best way to do them some honour was to tell you that these two girls, are the inspiration for the lasting friendships you see when I write.

The close bond I have with C and J, both February girls, is often reflected in the stories I tell. The adventures, the crazy ideas, coincidences all these precious moments we share, is reflected in the close sisterly bond of the characters.

Whether I create a bizarre alter ego for them in a story or I use their core values to base a character, C and J are impossible influences to ignore.

Both of them, I owe so much, they are the girls who believe in me when I can’t believe in myself. They save me from myself. In turn I give them my heart, in turn they live a thousand lives or more in my books, they are immortalized in stories, they inspire the legends. The best, the worst, and all that are yet to come.

They don’t mind when the character deviates and no longer is based so much on them but takes the life of their own and runs with it, I let the characters achieve the impossible, because I know that my friends can do the same.

They are an inspiration for all that is good, all that is positive. I owe C and J massive thanks for putting up with me over the last gosh knows how many years, because without them, I wouldn’t have had the courage to believe in what I was writing. They embrace my imagination and let me rant for hours about an idea as I figure out the problems or change the direction. They are pretty damn epic, in real life and in stories.

So a belated happy birthday blog especially for them is the least they deserve.

Well, that’s the thing, everything is so unclear and it still has so much to do in the story, if you thought that the last you would see of it was book one, that bad boy is coming back in book two in a big big way.

The blood diamond, through history:

Well, the blood diamond was discovered thousands of years before Annabella and Kayetelynn ever see it, it is the first stone to change the biochemistry of its owner. Found in a dank dark cave filled with bats, the original carnivorous evil scratch you to death and give you rabies kind, a young aristocrat and his brothers discovered the blood diamond. With time and dedication the blood diamond changed from a dully shining stone into a glittering shimmering dark secret of nature. Just the average lightest pink tinged diamond.

The brothers, having little concern for the pink diamond, had carelessly given the diamond to their mother, where the transformation from carefree over privileged family to very concerned and frightened became their biggest secret. One night greed and envy grew within the house hold spilling over into an incredible bloodshed. There was a revolt among the brothers and their parents, now grown and old enough to make decisions for themselves the brothers had resented their parents controlling manipulative nature. 

One evening at dinner the oldest brother slit their parents throat taking the blood diamond from their mother’s neck and blaming it for bringing out her parents darkest natures. The eldest brother threw the diamond onto the table still soaked in blood. That is when the brothers discovered the secret of the stone, one that they could now ill afford to tell as it used the spilling of the blood from the darkest of thoughts and actions and turned upon them, creating a curse that would bleed through to their children, their children’s children and then so on through time.

But that doesn’t mean the work ends there. Now I am in the horridly painful task of editing again. But book two will be just as snappy and short.

I am very sure I am not the only person to hate the editing process with vengeance but, it is after all what should be saving some of my very many typos and tired brain mistakes.

The truth is, I really, Realllly hate to edit. But I have to.

And, just for you, here’s another secret; the Coryburn Girls isn’t the only project I am working on at the moment, hopefully there may be another release or two this year. At the moment I am more excited by new ideas then I should let myself be, editing should be the first priority, I know. All the same. Who knows what might happen in this year of ink and paper?

 

Coryburn Girls Skimming the Surface… WoOOOOOOoooo

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SFQUYXY/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_2BJVub172295Z

YAY at last!

It feels like I have been waiting months to say this (and I have) but the new book is out.

Go get it, its Coryburn Girls – Skimming the Surface.

After much editing and a tonne of help, Mr Red, the Coryburn Girls book one is now available!

Here’s the all important link!

 

 

I would just like to take a moment to thank those that inspired and aided this book, from friends to strangers.

 

Did I mention? This is book one! (It is short and sweet so don’t worry its not going to be a gladiator style challenge.)