tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72392353200318320102024-03-20T03:00:27.489-07:00Mark Swain - AuthorMark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-75292418859342745762016-08-13T11:36:00.002-07:002016-08-16T13:57:50.749-07:00IRON HORSE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d85c6;">A Taste of the New Book</span><br />
Sometime around October, my new book of short travel stories will come out. To bridge the gap, here is a taste of what is to come. It is a story based upon an experience related to me by someone I met on the road quite a few years ago in Canada. I hope you like it - it's a freebie.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-small;">Iron Horse</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It was back when he was living alone in the shack. A long hard winter had kept him in one place – forced him inside. Inside was
against his nature, as was staying in one place, but he’d have died otherwise. The rusting metal cabinet he’d managed to drag into the shack had got him off the
floor at night, but even with all the junk, the old blankets and newspapers, the cold
managed to work its way through and into his bones.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It had been a still night with not much wind and
he’d slept well until the early hours. Something had woken him. Something out
of the ordinary - not a wild dog or a twister. He stuck his head out from
under the ragged blanket. For a while there was nothing. Pretty quickly his
head started to ache from the cold and he began winding the blanket back around
him, then he heard it. The rumble of a big old motorcycle engine, somewhere out
there in the hills. It was moving slowly, labouring over the rough terrain. Joel sat up. Were they coming for him?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joel had always known it was a risk to camp out in
the shack. Apart from the pipeline, it was the only structure for miles and it
stood near the track. Anyone passing would be drawn to it. A month back when a
water company pick-up had passed, he’d messed up the interior in a panic then
quickly buried himself in the sand like a desert gopher until the intruders had moved
on. The bastards had taken the binoculars he’d left hanging inside. This time
he decided he’d stay put.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“How do?” Said Joel, thrusting out his hand in the
manner of a man who was the proud owner of a property. The biker had parked up
right in front of the makeshift doors. He’d dismounted but left the old motor
turning over.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“What d’ya have, mail for me?” asked Joel, with a
smile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Saw the shack way back, when I cleared that
ridge,” said the old man, gesturing back into the hills.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">He was a sight for sore eyes, Joel thought. Like
something from an old western – some kind of medicine man or fairground
horseman. His long grey hair and beard were dusty from days or weeks riding
through the desert. He wore no crash helmet. In its place a battered old cowboy
hat. He had a cowboy’s bedroll too, strapped to his handlebars. The bike was
probably as old as he was. Both looked in need of a good clean-up and some running
repairs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Nice old bike… once upon a time,” said Joel. “Why
don’t you turn her off so we can talk?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Ah she’s ailing a bit,” he replied, “kickstart
arm’s sheared the spindle. I have to bump her. At my time o’ life that’s a bit
of a challenge. Knees have gone south. Gone in the garbage is the truth of it.
These ones is tai-tanium they told me. Take some getting used to. Ache like an
angry whale in cold weather. I'da been better off with the old uns. This your
place then?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The old man tried to make more of the shack with
his sweeping arm gesture than it really was. A generous thought, which Joel
spotted and was grateful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Yeah, I kind a laid claim on it,” explained Joel,
casually. “Was hiking cross country, heading up to Canada eventually. Clean
air, rivers, fishing, all that. I done my time working in the city and I had enough of
it. I though deserts, you know, they’re always hot. Well not
here they’re not! When the winter set in I couldn’t survive in the tent. That’s
when I came across the shack. I just pitched up behind her for a couple of days,
keeping outa the wind. One night I was so cold I thought I’d die. I went
delirious – right outa my mind. In the morning I woke up in the shack. She
saved me. Saved my life for sure. Go on turn her off, I’ll bump start ya after. I got
some coffee and a camp stove. Just one cup but I’ll drink from the pot. Name’s
Joel. Glad y’stopped by.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The coffee took some time to boil. The old guy
introduced himself as Richard. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“They call me Kit.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“How long you been travelling, Kit?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Travelling most of o’ my life,” said Kit. “No
plans to stop, neither.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Ever had a wife, Kit?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Nope.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Me neither. Girlfriends, lady friends and what
have you but no wives, no thank you!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Oh I’da had a wife if one had a been willing!”
said Kit. “Just never worked out that way. Couldn’t change my roving ways I
suppose. So Ruby there’s the nearest I ever had to a wife.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kit nodded towards the old Harley Davidson,
clicking now and again as she cooled off.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Hah, well she’s a fine old lady, Kit, I’ll say
that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Won her in a fight,” said the old man, chuckling. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“You’re joking now?” said Joel, pouring half the
coffee into a battered tin mug.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“True as I sit here! I was with a bunch of other
guys out west. We were a band I suppose you could say. Troubadours. Bunch of
outlaws on bikes turned up at the bar we’d agreed to play in that night. Sons o' bitches said
it was their local bar and we should git out of town.
The owner he hid behind the bar counter. Customers slipped out the back door. They
was all afraid of these guys. I was fearless back then – a bit stupid was the
truth. Anyhow I asked ‘em who the leader was. A huge barn door of a guy with a
big scar across his mean face stepped forward. I said I’d arm wrestle him and
if I lost we’d leave town. While we sat down and prepared, Little Lonnie our
fiddle player was round the side pulling the electric cables off their bikes.
Meanwhile the owner’s wife had called for the cops. While I was being beaten at
the arm-wrestle by the big ape, Lonnie was under the table cuffing the ape to
the big steel table leg. When the cops came they had to chase him a mile into
the brushwood, dragging the table behind him. Yep, them outlaws went to jail. Bikes
was impounded. Cops told me if nobody else come forward, we could make a claim for
‘em. After a month that’s what we did. Ruby was the best of ‘em. Yep, I had my
eye on her from the start.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Love at first sight then?” said Joel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Yep, that’s the story! She’s an old lady, but
she’s never let me down.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kit drained his coffee.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“I hope y’make it to the border, Joel. I really do. Want my
advice, get y’self a set of trucker's cards and bum lifts by night. Cops'll leave y'lone. Y'ready to bump her?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joel got to his feet. Kit did the same but more
slowly and with a prolonged groan.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Tai-tanium my ass!” </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">People I've Met On The Road should be out – in the first instance as an e-book – by the end of the autumn (2016). Sorry for the wait. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">Check out Mark Swain's other books at:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="background-color: white; color: #6666cc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1" style="background-color: white; color: #6666cc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon .com</a><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">and on this blog (add your e-mail to receive updates)</span></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-89543687940679266372015-06-30T03:47:00.000-07:002015-06-30T09:16:10.183-07:00New Travel Book<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">People I've Met On The Road</span><br />
The title of my new book.<br />
All my life I have carried with me, the memories of interesting people I have met whilst travelling. I have had a wanderlust since I was able to walk. My parents were afraid to leave the garden door open. Turn their back for a moment and I would be over the garden gate and heading for my local garage, pestering the greasy-faced mechanics with questions or watching petrol being put into old Morris Minors. They used to laugh when they saw my distraught mother arriving. My childhood was a rapid (not rapid enough for my liking) acceleration towards when I could escape – get out into the big wide world and travel.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Linocut for new book cover print</span></div>
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Memories</span><br />
I am fortunate enough to be blessed with a very good memory (although unfortunately not for tedious academic work). When I began travelling, I was as much taken with the characters I met as I was by the fascinating places I travelled through. Even as a six year old living in Singapore and Malaysia, I used to wander into kampongs (small villages of thatched or tin-can roofed bamboo huts) and make friends with local children. They taught me noughts & crosses (tick-tack-toe) and card tricks. Later I began hitchhiking and taking trains and buses – initially without my parents knowledge. Despite being in big trouble on each occasion and suffering punishment, I was always eager to tell my family about the people I had met on my illicit trip. My parents worried of course. What kind of weird people might befriend me? Surely one day my luck would run out? And yet, be it through wiliness or good fortune, nothing bad ever befell me. Quite the opposite. People fed me and paid for me to go into cinemas, swimming pools, race circuits or motor museums. People even drove me home or phoned my parents to tell them I was fine (after we had a phone). The more I travelled the more emboldened I became and the more I knew this was where I belonged.<br />
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">A Collection</span><br />
The book is a motley collection of people I have met. Some stories tell of adventures I had with these people, where others simply focus upon their characters and what they may have told me. These little potted histories stretch over a period of around forty years, yet they are as vivid in my mind as they were the week after they happened. And if anyone should suddenly realise that they are one of the characters in the book – I have changed most of the names, for obvious reasons of privacy, since I am unable to contact them – then please do not hesitate to contact me, even if just to say hi.<br />
<a href="mailto:mark.swain58@gmail.com" target="_blank">Mark Swain E-mail</a><br />
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People I've Met On The Road should be out – in the first instance as an e-book – by the end of the summer (2015). Please look out for it at:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1">Mark Swain on Amazon .com</a><br />
<br />
and on this blog (add your e-mail to receive updates)</div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-5448361383505791882015-06-07T04:51:00.000-07:002015-06-07T04:51:19.393-07:00The Building Of A Longboat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Two Authors And A Longboat</span><br />
Back in October 2014 I wrote a blog about accidentally connecting with a fellow author via Twitter - <a href="http://markswain-author.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/two-authors-in-boat.html">Previous Blog</a>. Anthony Howarth and I both write books about adventure / travel. Having read his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2">Boat, People and Me</a>, I was inspired by his ambitious project to lengthen the 9.1m Maurice Griffiths Waterwitch sailing boat, in which he and his wife learned to sail and traversed the Atlantic. When I say lengthen her, I mean by 5m no less, in order to produce a longboat on which they could live, mainly on European inland waterways. Invited to help, I spent a couple of gruelling weeks in October helping to saw "Boat" in half, remove the substantial cast-iron keel, stretch her by 5m and connect the two halves with the beginnings of a new backbone. A little over two weeks ago I returned to help progress the project further.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Longboat Takes Shape (Tony takes lunch)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Progress</span><br />
I did not expect to return to find the Longboat nearly complete. Tony Howarth is one of the most determined, principled and dedicated men I know but he is 77yrs old and he has put his body through a certain amount of abuse in that time. No amount of tenacity or self-belief will allow someone of this age to lift heavy materials day after day, climb ladders or traverse the delicate framework of a boat skeleton without risking serious ill-effects or even disaster. My being involved enables Tony to guide my brawn and enthusiasm using his brains. And with this combination we manage to achieve a great amount. Others in Mortagne boatyard are impressed. They did not believe it was even possible. Tony has become a bit of a folk-hero to them. I have become "The Woodpecker" - dogmatically chipping and hacking away at rotten wood or rock-hard old epoxy each day to remove large chunks of the vessel. I have felt somewhat like a heavy-handed medieval surgeon, ruthlessly hacking away so much of the original body (without anaesthetic) that there is barely anything left beyond the skeleton.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Only deck, deckhead & bulkheads have escaped The Woodpecker's </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">heavy-handed surgery in the original cabin sections</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Boatyard celebrations for those involved in lifting a new flying bridge into place </span></div>
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This last two weeks saw us remove much of the superstructure and fittings from the two cabins at each end of the hollow 5m new extension section, as well as building and fixing into place countless new ribs and stringers to form the shape of the new boat. Finally the Longboat has taken shape and she looks superb – totally like she was meant to be that way in fact. During the lengthy and laborious 12 days of work, Tony and I found ourselves discussing - often sparring - over various political, social and literary issues. Just like last time I felt I came away far wiser, with greater skills and insight and perhaps a little more tolerance. I also learned a lot more about the underlying issues of Tony's "Africar" venture (the first car to be purpose designed for use and local manufacture in 3rd world and developing countries - <a href="http://www.anthonyhowarth.com/blog/2014/02/28/the-future-of-africar/">see website</a>).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Skeletal Beauty - New Ribs</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">It's Not All Work</span><br />
One of the great pleasures of being involved in this project is undoubtedly the time spent in a French boatyard and in the beautiful and historic region of Charente Maritime (north from Bordeaux and south from La Rochelle). While Tony and I work in the boatyard, <i>"People"</i> (in the books) runs their Gite (holiday cottage) business in a beautiful village nearby. There they have a substantial collection of traditional stone houses on a large plot of land, with a swimming pool etc overlooking fields of vibrant sunflowers and vines. <i>People</i> is a great cook. It is a great life but one they have decided to retire from in exchange for slow travel, living aboard the Longboat (<span style="color: #e06666;">anyone interested in their idyllic property and readymade business can contact them at:</span> carolyn@borges-howarth.net) I do hope I too remain this adventurous into my seventies.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I did manage a swim after work - The view from my lovely Gite</span></div>
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It is hoped that the Longboat will be in the water by late October this year. I am likely to make a further visit for the next tranche of reconstruction work before then. That is an exciting prospect. It has me thinking about what I might do boat-wise after that. I am already looking at a boat project of my own, involving sailing inland through Europe to Istanbul (as done in 1925 by the great Negley Farson). If anyone has a boat they'd like to give me I'd be happy to hear from them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1B4TVRWAIxWLF0XN0x4_ayTyRGyveVSjS5-aB0n2s2awN_cCYo7Zb2g9BktJvheLOnFeS7qhuL7Ws9JDS3Pu54PB7lhkwbXPgb4CbUCplZ3OrmJ1RNDzYG6PzU1qT14DNfMMtyvgbjg/s1600/BoatP%2526M.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1B4TVRWAIxWLF0XN0x4_ayTyRGyveVSjS5-aB0n2s2awN_cCYo7Zb2g9BktJvheLOnFeS7qhuL7Ws9JDS3Pu54PB7lhkwbXPgb4CbUCplZ3OrmJ1RNDzYG6PzU1qT14DNfMMtyvgbjg/s200/BoatP%2526M.jpeg" width="149" /></a><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">If you would like to read one of the series of Tony Howarth's books, 'Boat, People and Me', go to your local Amazon website or click this link:</span></i><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;" /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2" style="background-color: white; color: #6666cc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px; text-decoration: none;">Boat, People and Me on Amazon</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">UK</span></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2" style="color: #6666cc; text-decoration: none;">Boat People and Me on Amazon.com</a></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.8500003814697px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;" /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhLPmv7wuGJmNkc5BBxh0s7redO3wYb3zhMRjAngE7kXoII4dlNtetKG2K9vBhgxJqx1zBteCoumAFtumRbF9U9yUvc9xh8jr40v0ssm78vZz5yIju_Hn5ZzDXuogJ_P3zdTQE9Vs4Uj4/s1600/Small+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhLPmv7wuGJmNkc5BBxh0s7redO3wYb3zhMRjAngE7kXoII4dlNtetKG2K9vBhgxJqx1zBteCoumAFtumRbF9U9yUvc9xh8jr40v0ssm78vZz5yIju_Hn5ZzDXuogJ_P3zdTQE9Vs4Uj4/s200/Small+cover.jpg" width="127" /></a><span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
If you would like to read the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, you can find this along with his two collections of short stories on Amazon, Smashwords etc. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">In the UK his books can also be found in all Waterstones Bookstores.</span></i></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.com</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Smashwords</span></a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-19776183585551432002014-10-27T09:39:00.001-07:002015-06-08T11:44:34.949-07:00Two Authors In A Boat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Background</span><br />
In 2013 I encountered and 'followed' Anthony Howarth on Twitter. His tweets seemed to centre on his recent book about his and his wife's ocean sailing adventures (<span style="color: #cc0000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2">Boat, People & Me</a></span>), along with his frustrations over various political injustices in the the world. I was drawn to them. There was irony and there were curt, irascible comments smouldering with dark humour, which I returned commented on. We agreed to read each other's recent books (I had recently had <span style="color: #cc0000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Road-Hard-Lessons-Swain-ebook/dp/B008DZO0E6">Long Road, Hard Lessons</a></span> published) and pass honest comments. His story of learning to sail, buying a 30ft yacht in the UK, repairing her then sailing to La <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Coruña</span></span> in Spain was as inspiring to me as it was entertaining. By the end of the book I felt I knew him fairly well. I think Tony felt the same after reading my story of the 10,000 mile cycle journey I made with my teenage son from Ireland to Japan. Hence my belief that it is not really so crazy for the two of us to agree to work together on Tony's current boat project, not having actually met one another, however wildly ambitious the project may seem to others.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Teela Brown - 29ft Waterwytch by Maurice Griffiths built 1959</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Project</span><br />
I think it was in early 2014 that Tony told me he and his wife (the impressive 'People' in his book) were planning to sell their current home and adjoining gites, located between Bordeaux and La Rochelle in France, then extend their old 30ft sailing boat by 5m to form a long 'barge yacht' for living and travelling on Europe's inland waterways. It sounded ambitious. Various sailing friends of mine used words like 'crazy'. Knowing something of Tony's background as an engineer and a car designer, however, I did not doubt his ability to make a good job of it. Moreover I had an overwhelming feeling that this was something I wanted to be involved in. I went ahead and offered Tony my help.<br />
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"He sounds like he might be difficult to work with," said a friend of mine.<br />
"All the cleverest and most interesting people are!" I replied, undaunted.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Tony - The look that says 'Doesn't suffer fools gladly'</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Hesitant Beginnings</span><br />
The only hindrances proved to be financial (as many boat owners will know, such a project can easily run into large sums of money). I did not need or expect to be paid, I reassured him. There was one other problem Tony hadn't told me about. He had recently had one of his shoulder joints replaced and as yet could hardly use that arm. His doctor had warned him off such heavy work. Disappointed, I accepted that this was an immovable object. Since I had a work commitment to go to Asia for a year or so in 2015 it seemed I would not be helping even if the project went ahead after Tony had regained the use of his left arm. However, after about a month had passed I received another e-mail from Tony.<br />
"If you can spare 2 weeks in October, I would appreciate your help. My shoulder movement is much improved."<br />
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Journey Down</span><br />
On October 7th I set off from home in the rain during the early hours. I had taken delivery of a new <br />
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motorcycle 2 weeks before and had been looking forward to using it for the 800km journey down. I was not long out of the tunnel and into France when a predicted storm struck. I was travelling at fairly high speed along the autoroute minding my own business at the time. It was as if a dam had suddenly broken in front of me. In a second nothing was visible except the blurred brake-lights of large trucks and cars. I was already drenched. I closed the throttle and braked gently, hoping nothing was too close behind or that the 4x4 somewhere in front would brake too hard. I waited for visibility to return. It did not. I was riding blind, surrounded by large vehicles in a similar state of uncontrolled momentum. Fortunately none of us made contact before we had managed to slow to around 10mph. Cold and sodden I completed the rest of the journey with gritted teeth, determined to arrive at Tony and People's for dinner. Major challenges already and the boat work had not even begun!</div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Settling In</span><br />
After a hot shower, dry clothes and great dinner I got to know Tony and People and our proposed agenda. The following morning we headed for the boatyard in Mortagne Sur Garonne. It was a pretty place. We drove to the boatyard in one of Tony's 'Africars'. These are cars that Tony designed to be used as affordable daily transport on the roads of Africa, where traditional 4x4 vehicles like Landrovers and Landcruisers still get stuck due to unworkable ground-clearance. They were featured in a five-part Channel 4 series in 1984 when they drove them from the Arctic to the Equator. Unfortunately, due to financial and political barriers at the time, they never went into full production. Experiencing the amazing qualities of these vehicles at first hand was a real privilege, and I really believe there is still time for production to happen.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Africar - a truly amazing vehicle by any standards</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Let The Butchery Begin</span><br />
On our first day at the boatyard, Tony and I began by attacking the two fin-keels. Despite the nuts inside the hull having already been removed by the charmingly French boatyard owner, Claude, the bolts were pinched fast in the damp, swollen hardwood and marine ply. Even having driven the bolts out with great effort, the addition of a magically gravity-defying adhesive sealant named 'Sikoflex' used by Tony when he had extended the keels 15 years before in Florida, ensured that the extremely heavy galvanised steel keels refused to budge. Much chiseling and hammering was required before they were dropped. Following this achievement, day two proceeded with us drilling through the length of the main deep centre keel, then chiseling between the holes. The nuts of the 3ft long keel bolts had also been removed inside, but like the fin keels this huge and heavy sandwich of cast iron, hardwood and lead simply hung there. The eight huge threaded bolts were stuck fast. Pinched tight enough to allow the weight of that keel to sit there with daylight visible through the cut. Moving those long bolts at all proved impossible with normal tools. Perturbed, we took ourselves off to a builders merchants where Tony purchased a number of large steel log-splitting wedges and a 4kg sledge-hammer. This was my kind of tool. Judging by the distance he stood back I think I shocked Tony with my ability to swing it, given my skinny frame. Slowly, a millimetre at a time, the bolts moved. Buckets, of sweat, sparks and 3hrs of animal effort resulted in the driving out of the loosest bolt. It took a further day to remove 3 more before resorting to cutting the remaining bolts off with an angle-grinder. The keel came down with a sudden crash onto the waiting stands. By this time the stalwart Claude had moved the boat into a large covered shed.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Insect-like boatmover transports Teela Brown to a boatshed</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Main keel stubbornly refusing to budge despite wedges and violence</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Finally after cutting through bolts the deadweight keel drops with a crash</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Sawing A Woman In Half</span><br />
The old keel lifted out of the way, Tony proceeded to carefully mark out the cut-line around the centre section of the 'Teela Brown's' hull. The following day, while Tony was away on other business, I ran a jigsaw around the marine-ply sections then finished the surgery with a nice sharp handsaw to cut through stringers, ribs and the agonisingly solid hardwood keel base. I felt nervous, as an apprentice magician might, sawing his first woman in half. Having expressed my reservations over my surgical efforts to Tony by phone, I was mightily relieved to receive his congratulations the following morning when he inspected the work. Soon after this Claude appeared at the open front of the shed with a large tractor pulling a boat-loading trailer. The bow-half of the Teela Brown was gingerly lifted forward with the insect-like square boatlifter and placed onto the trailer. With meticulous accuracy she was then moved forward until exactly 5m was left between the bow-half and the remaining stern. Measurements checked and double checked, both halves were fixed in place with supports, ready for the transformation work to begin.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Tony, I will need a new saw"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The tense separation procedure ends with a couple of attractive cross-sections</span></div>
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Transformation Begins</span><br />
The first thing that became apparent to me, standing back and looking at the two halves of the boat, placed where they were destined to become fixed, was how utterly beautiful she was going to look at her new length. It almost seemed that she had always been intended to be that length. It was reassuring. Not such a crazy idea after all eh?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> The Teela Brown stretched to her future layout position</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(I will not be doing the same with my motorcycle!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Tony explains his plan to a group of amazed boatyard onlookers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Nobody has ever attempted such a thing before," says Claude.</span></div>
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"Now for some more gentle, technical work," I told myself.<br />
But the hard physical work was not yet over. My next job, Tony told me, was to cut out stepped joints at each end of the old keel, ready to receive the 5m longer new keel base. For two days I ate and breathed hardwood chippings and sawdust. Somehow, whatever protective masks and equipment I wore, that stuff found its way into every orifice. So relieved was I when I finally completed this excruciatingly awkward task, that I celebrated by driving out the remaining five long keel bolts that remained stuck fast in the base of the hull. It was cause for celebration and only pure coincidence that we returned to Tony's lovely home that night to find that People had prepared fresh Garonne oysters (the best) for supper.<br />
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Technical Bit</span><br />
In the last few days of my visit, Tony and I prepared three large 6m long planks of iroko hardwood to bridge the gap between where my handsaw had cut through the base of the keel and where those two ends now stood. This was my first experience of using large quantities of epoxy adhesive on a boat hull. It is a messy business, dependent upon good planning and careful application. Tony taught me well. The following morning I was amazed to find that I could stand on the newly fixed wooden bridge and jump up and down with no ill-effects. This left us with two days to prepare the template for the sixteen new ribs to form the skeleton of the new 5m mid-ships section of the boat. To my great delight we actually managed to achieve that and to make the first sections ready to be sandwiched together with epoxy. By the time I left on my motorcycle for England, the transformation had truly begun to take shape, ready for a dramatic re-launch in July 2015.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Two halves of the boat re-joined with small matter of a 5m gap to infill</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sense of hard-won satisfaction written across this man's face</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Sadness Of Leaving</span><br />
I had learned a great deal about boatbuilding during my two intensive weeks of working with Tony and a certain amount about myself I did not already know. I had also learned a lot about Tony. My respect for his knowledge is only matched by my admiration for a somewhat frail one-armed man of 76 who would take on a project like this so calmly. Of course it is nothing compared to what he had to go through with his Africar venture. Tony will now work a week on a week off most of the time to ensure that he allows his shoulder to improve steadily. He will be assisted by his very capable wife. I feel sure that things will continue to progress well until the re-launch. Especially now that People is on the case.<br />
I enjoy challenges, hence my desire to be involved in Tony's dramatic boat transformation project. After two weeks of nice warm weather, I was unsurprised to find myself riding through the tail-end of a hurricane as I headed north. But it was nothing compared to what Tony and I had managed to achieve in two weeks. Clinging on tight as I was buffeted about the debris-covered A10, I thought back on the day that the two halves of the Teela Brown had been separated. A crowd of boatyard onlookers had gathered open mouthed around the newly laid out boat as an audience might around two halves of a saw-wielding magician's pretty assistant in separated halves of a box. What was the plan, they asked?<br />
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"I'm doing it as a present for my wife," said Tony. "We need a bigger boat to live on but she didn't want to give up the one we have lived with for nearly 50,000 nautical miles. Too many memories."<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Tony was once Britain's top magazine photographer, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
but 'selfies' were new to him.</div>
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<i><span style="color: #e06666;">If you would like to read Tony Howarth's book, 'Boat, People and Me', go to your local Amazon website or click this link:</span></i><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2">Boat, People and Me on Amazon</a> <span style="color: blue;">UK</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/BOAT-PEOPLE-ME-First-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00A8NXSL2">Boat People and Me on Amazon.com</a></span><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">If you would like to read the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, you can find this along with his two collections of short stories on Amazon, Smashwords etc. </span></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">In the UK his books can also be found in all Waterstones Bookstores.</span></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.com</span></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Smashwords</span></a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-47434088913306768082014-05-12T04:11:00.002-07:002014-05-12T13:43:59.760-07:00Press Release – English Down The Pub<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">English Down The Pub</span></b> is a new book written for use by both students of English and Teachers of English. It will also be of interest to those wanting to know about modern English culture. What readers will not be anticipating in a book of this type, is <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">comedy</span></b>. The book could be described as 'tongue in cheek', except that its mission is very serious.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">The Language As It Is Spoken</span></b><br />
It is a constant source of frustration for many, that foreign people studying English are taught language that is not authentic. Although it is technically 'correct' English, much of it is a form of English rarely used by real English people – at least not in the last fifty years. This book has been written in order to put that right. It provides the essentials of 'real' English – the colloquial language that you will find being spoken every day by real English people going about their normal lives. The author of this book believes that English Language teachers who are primarily instructing students wishing to speak modern functional English for practical conversational purposes, are doing their students a great disservice by not teaching them the language that the man in the street speaks. This includes giving them a working understanding of English swearwords and what is / is not appropriate – since we know that most English people swear at least socially and often at work too.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Realism and Humour</span></b><br />
The book is structured to deal with common social functions, such as meeting people and making introductions, ordering drinks and food and making conversation. The dialogue is not the stilted or 'wooden' language one normally finds in a textbook, instead it is vibrant in its authenticity and often very humorous as a result. The reader or language learner is treated to such amusing scenarios as 'how to avoid a fight' and 'looking for love'. Since many people go to pubs to meet a prospective partner and most of us have witnessed aggression in drinking venues at some time, this does seem justified. In all scenarios both a formal and informal dialogue are given as examples. Something of the uptightness of the English is revealed in these comparative dialogues. This is culturally useful to language learners of course, but it can be hilarious to any reader and in particular the English themselves. Some of the swearing will be shocking to many English readers, but there is a refreshing honesty about it. Of course it goes without saying that learners need to be taught correct formal speech at the same time as the colloquial. The non-English reader needs to be made aware of just how critical it is to get the level of formality or looseness right with the English. Most English are still, after all, obsessed with what is or is not 'proper'. In order to make things clear, the rule in this book is that where people might swear or use slang in real life this is reflected in the dialogue, along with an explanation of meaning and where its use is appropriate. As a past EFL teacher of many years, the author has found this technique very popular with students in the classroom and has witnessed great upsurges of student enthusiasm as a result. Reading the book, one can certainly see why!<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">There are ways to liven up bored students</span></div>
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As if we had not been treated to enough comedy in this book, in the final chapter we find a choice selection of popular English slang and swearwords. This last section will no doubt prove popular and useful due to its authenticity, but not even the most serious elderly lady or the strictest vicar could fail to fall about laughing at the example dialogues or explanations given about the literal meanings of popular English swearwords.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of www.oldparn.com</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Slang & swearing are endlessly popular with language learners</span></div>
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Despite all of this hilarity the book is very informative, both in its clarity about how the average English man or woman in the street communicates and about the still prevalent pub culture in Britain. Modern trends in public houses are helpfully explained, including the increasing trend for gastro-pubs and the emergence of micro-breweries and micropubs. Naturally the background related to English brewing and beer drinking is explained. This all provides a pleasing and unexpected bonus for those expecting merely to learn about the English language, which has to be a good thing. One can even imagine the book finding its way onto those bookshelves that one can still find in the WCs of the English gentry.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of www.tvrecappersanonymous</span></div>
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Reviewer comments:<br />
<i><span style="color: #990000;">"Consider it a Pythonesque field guide to colloquial English. Invaluable to serious teachers and foreign learners, yet unforgivably hilarious to the rest of us. I ruptured myself laughing." Axel Anders.</span></i><br />
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The book <span style="color: #3d85c6;"><i>English Down The Pub</i></span> is available online only and priced very reasonably at £2.90 / $3.99<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Down-The-Pub-Language-ebook/dp/B00K8BCTV4">Download from Amazon.co.uk</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K8BCTV4">Download from Amazon.com</a><br />
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/437089">Download from Smashwords</a></div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-12407531192213173002014-03-22T05:16:00.000-07:002014-12-02T06:22:40.826-08:00New Book Launch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">The Truth In The Lie</span></b><br />
After what seems like an age spend in the editing stage, <span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Truth In The Lie</span> has finally launched. It has been a frustrating six months but looking at it now, it seems well worth the effort. I am so pleased with the cover. The story behind the cover photo is a fascinating one and will be the subject of a future blog post on its own. The editing of the stories was the work of my very literary eldest daughter, as described in the previous blog. She did a better job than I could ever have imagined. In fact I would say she is a natural.<br />
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The book has been out barely a day and already I am receiving feedback. Some people are fast readers. Thankfully that feedback has been good. As with my last book of short stories, people have commented upon the authenticity of the characters.<br />
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"Is that guy in <i>Red Card</i> based on the footballer you used to know in Ireland?"<br />
"Be honest Mark, the Dottie in <i>Dottie's Diary</i> is based upon my friend Jo, isn't it?"<br />
"I hope the cafe in <i>All In Good Time</i> is not my cafe, Mark. I could lose a lot of customers!"<br />
"Mark, I read your book. Tell me, The story <i>Traffic</i>... how the hell did you know that about me?"<br />
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and most worrying of all –<br />
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"There seem to be several characters based upon you, who are all preoccupied with their mortality."<br />
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For a brief summary of each story, see the previous blog (below).<br />
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To find the book and to discover the characters for yourself you should click the link to Amazon or Smashwords below or in the right-hand margin of this blog.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cover photo by Fumiko Jin - Taken in Hokkaido, Northern Japan. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Story of the photo to follow in a future blog</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/421171">The Truth In The Lie - Smashwords (all e-book formats)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Truth-In-Lie-Excursions-ebook/dp/B00J4YNKAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395489775&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Truth+In+The+Lie+-+Excursions">The Truth In The Lie - Amazon UK (Kindle)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lie-Further-Excursions-Others-ebook/dp/B00J4YNKAK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395489942&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Truth+In+The+Lie+-+Further+Excursions">The Truth In The Lie - Amazon.com (Kindle)</a><br />
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<b>Please note, you can read an e-book without a Kindle or e-book reader. You can download the <span style="color: #cc0000;">Kindle Reader App</span> from Amazon for free, to your Computer, Laptop, Smartphone, tablet or i-Pad. Just google it.</b><br />
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-82614815919080012982013-12-16T16:31:00.000-08:002015-11-30T10:23:05.522-08:00The Tyranny Of Editing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>New Collection Of Short Stories – 'The Truth In The Lie'</b></span><br />
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My new collection of short stories, entitled 'The Truth In The Lie', seems long overdue to me. I thought it would be out long before Christmas but it's dragging its feet – or rather, I am. Some of these stories are new and I'm quite excited about them. Others were written a while ago. Before the last collection (<a href="http://sptreatment.blogspot.com/">Special Treatment & Other Stories</a>) in fact. These are the stories I was not 100% comfortable with when the stories for the last collection was selected. "Better to hold these ones back," I said to myself. They needed more work, and I hoped, as many of us writers do, that the spark that would ignite each of them would come to me if I was patient. Periodically I have re-read them and on occasion ruthlessly edited them – slaying numerous darlings in fact – and around three months ago I felt confident that they were ready. At this point my very literary (despot) eldest daughter came home from working in a retreat in the Spanish pyrenees. She is home for a few months and asked if she could do some paid work for me.<br />
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"You could edit my next book of short stories," I suggested. "It's about ready to go but could do with a final check."<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My Current Editor</span></div>
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The next day she began. Ten days later she presented me with a document with a mass of yellow '<span style="background-color: yellow;">Track Changes</span>' suggestions. I have read through it. Unfortunately she has not been over-zealous. Although there were only one or two typos, she highlighted many areas where stories could be improved. I should be grateful but I must confess to some sense of frustration. It was not what I had been expecting. The publishing date has had to be pushed back to a major extent and that does not make me feel good.<br />
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And there was me thinking I had learned all I needed to know from my first two books! So having one's book edited is painful. Yes I knew that, so how could I have forgotten so easily? With my first book - <a href="http://longroadhardlessons.blogspot.com/">Long Road, Hard Lessons</a> - A non-fiction book about my 10,000mile cycle journey with my teenage son, I endured about two weeks of very defensive arguments with my content editor, who is an old friend. Him being an old friend probably didn't help in many ways. It certainly didn't make him any less brutal with me. In the end, however, I realised that he was right about 95% of what he said, so why not save myself the pain and just accept it, bar any parts where he had misunderstood my intended meaning. The whole point of getting someone else to edit, is that however good we get at editing our own work, we will always need a separate pair of eyes and at least one outside point of view in order to make it as good as it should be. So this time I have not argued with my daughter - at least not yet. I am grateful for the fact that she has taken the job so seriously and made such an effort.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy of www.thechurchofnopeople.com</span></div>
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So whereas this blog should have been telling you that the new book is now available, instead it is telling you that it's <u>not</u>. What I can tell you, I will:<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>Cover</b></span><br />
I have no cover yet, but I'm inclined to go for the same traditional (Penguin classic style) cover as with Special Treatment & Other Stories. I'm not a traditionalist by nature but I can't stand those cheesy (as I see them) airport thriller style covers that look like a graphic design student had a month to kill and needed to impress someone. I like the cover to intrigue the reader about what's inside rather than to get them so excited about the cover, that what's inside can only seem like an anticlimax. Or perhaps I just prefer 'classy' to 'loud'.<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>Story Genre</b></span><br />
The stories are, like the last collection, subtitled 'Excursions Into The Lives Of Others'. They are somewhat voyeuristic in style. The reader may feel they are prying. Things are disclosed or hinted at which we feel perhaps we shouldn't know – some readers may even feel a sense of discomfort. Perhaps some of that discomfort is about the fact that most of us recognise something of ourselves and our own lives in these characters. Scary! But I sense that much of what seems to make people uncomfortable, is their own overwhelming desire to know more.<br />
The title, The Truth In The Lie, was chosen because of the number of times I have been asked whether my stories are based upon truth. It seems obvious to me that every fictional story is based upon truth – personal truths from past experiences or those I have heard of, and 'great truths'. Many so called great truths may never actually have happened, yet they are universal truths of life, understood by all.<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>Story Outlines</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">My Only Friend</span> – <i>An elderly widow in Lisbon is estranged from her son who prefers to live in squalor and idleness since the death of the father he adored.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">A Minor Distraction</span> – <i>A rich American man on a train in Africa tries to tempt a poor young girl into his carriage while stopped at a wilderness station. The tragedy that ensues hardly seems to touch him.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Greta <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A pair of travellers arrive in a rural Hungarian hotel where all is not what it should be. They are shown to their room by a young woman who seems something of an automaton. </i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">All In Good Time <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A woman who runs a cafe is told she is being watched by the security forces. It seems unlikely until one of her staff disappears under strange circumstances.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Masaji <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A father and son attempt to escape from China on foot after their visa runs out. </i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">In The Line Of Fire <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A man in a war zone is attacked and hounded by those he once regarded as friends. They seem unwilling to allow him to leave the area, however.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Never Give Up <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>Exhausted after several days at work, a man begins to experience strange occurrences while driving home through a long road tunnel.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Traffic <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>An art dealer makes his first trip to Africa and almost immediately becomes the victim of not one but two carefully engineered scams – or so it seems. </i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">River Witch <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A young man camps by a river and is shocked to see a naked young woman float past as he lies in bed enjoying the early morning sun. How could he not go after her?</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Red Card <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>Once a promising professional footballer, Pat Carmichael becomes an alcoholic loser after he suffers a crippling injury. Finally after two years of depression he picks himself up.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Drawn To The Light <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>Travelling home on his daily commuter train, David is drawn to something strange he sees in the dark while the train is stopped. What he sees transfixes him.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Dottie’s Diary <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>Two women hill-climbing in Wales take shelter in a stone barn. Soon they are joined by a wealthy local woman who invites them home where they meet her husband. He is familiar to one of them.</i> </div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">Burned On Him <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A rather reserved family meet for a weekend at the parents' house where a revelation by one sister causes an argument and unexpected consequences.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">The ‘F’ Word <o:p></o:p></span>– <i>A conversation overheard on a train with three children, their mother and her friend.</i> </div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Bottle Lady of Luang Prabang</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span>– <i>Surreal happenings when a group of friends meet at their regular breakfast cafe by a busy main road. <span style="color: #cc0000;">"The chink of glass in the early morning traffic haze."</span></i><!--EndFragment--><br />
<br />
If you would like to purchase 'The Truth In The Lie' (which is now available in print or as an e-book) please click one of the links to the main sales sites, where you can also find other stories by the same author:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1">Mark Swain on Amazon</a><br />
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain">Mark Swain on Smashwords</a></div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-18599247529077469572013-12-02T06:31:00.001-08:002014-05-05T08:38:09.893-07:00The Writer's Desire For Immortality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Something To Be Remembered By</span></b><br />
<br />
Rather like being an actor or a singer, the chances of achieving fame or great wealth as a writer are slim. So allowing for the fact that many of us writers are either idiots, optimists or are blindly happy to delude ourselves, what is the motivation for the remainder?<br />
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<b>Satisfaction</b><br />
Most writers remember that warm feeling we got the first time we saw our name on a book cover or our name at the head of an article in a magazine or newspaper. We probably never before in our lives believed that we would see it, and yet there it is. Even better, is the feeling when we pop into a bookshop in some far away town, city or country and see one of our books on a shelf. It still thrills me when people e-mail, Tweet or Facebook me pictures of my book on some far-away shelf. It is also a physical validation of what has been gained after months and years of hard work, excruciating editing and trying to find a publisher. It is satisfaction well deserved and well earned.<br />
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<b>Gambling</b><br />
As they say, despite the undeniably enormous odds against you, if you don't buy a lottery ticket you can't win the lottery. We know the chances of us striking it big with a bestseller are small, but at least we are in the running. Like the lottery ticket that I never really believe will be a big prize winner, I check my Amazon sales reports just in case there has been a massive jump in sales for some reason. To some extent it makes life more worth living. If we have no hope then life is not worth getting out of bed for.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTz_H49tAMJ-qRxM1T_tLYjntHGnNRgavRncRcGqNDe9dZQcdflw5rcKJQ-nDfX6AELzRSU3NGUHVJPg1WHqIINHMfO7zqwiAsoile8LbbnS7cK-9F3Rf2mNt-kVSKaXHSbTmMaN6ILwE/s1600/lottery-ticket-big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTz_H49tAMJ-qRxM1T_tLYjntHGnNRgavRncRcGqNDe9dZQcdflw5rcKJQ-nDfX6AELzRSU3NGUHVJPg1WHqIINHMfO7zqwiAsoile8LbbnS7cK-9F3Rf2mNt-kVSKaXHSbTmMaN6ILwE/s320/lottery-ticket-big.jpg" height="196" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<b>Self Image</b><br />
Many of us are not happy with the image others have of us and this relates to more than the clothes we wear or our haircut. What we do for a living plays a major part. Some of us cringe when someone we meet socially asks us "So what do you do?" Few of us, I am guessing, are totally satisfied with giving an honest answer. I used to run a risk management company, specialising in workplace safety. Telling someone that, I felt, gave a poor impression of what I was really like. For myself I didn't care that much - in fact it amused me to make it sound as dull as possible and watch people's reaction. But I know I feel more comfortable now, telling people that I write books. I'd be a fool and a liar to deny it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWzSnc33KYWBUSDiwhyphenhyphenLaZ1NI4QdzW8YSQsLhZKyWI6RE72A_pweJZ3LY5nzsvC_i-Ao1yQIb7OuI_2M1_mexMQkCjdBpZ2Z4bZ05tczMN9aeSZvkgNwnKWa_KgptqlFf41GP4VkU-Mr8/s1600/self+esteem.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWzSnc33KYWBUSDiwhyphenhyphenLaZ1NI4QdzW8YSQsLhZKyWI6RE72A_pweJZ3LY5nzsvC_i-Ao1yQIb7OuI_2M1_mexMQkCjdBpZ2Z4bZ05tczMN9aeSZvkgNwnKWa_KgptqlFf41GP4VkU-Mr8/s320/self+esteem.png" height="320" width="317" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy of blog.melschwartz.com</span></div>
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<b>Enjoyment</b><br />
This seems obvious really, but some people (like myself) actually enjoy the process of writing – the observation of life, the invention, the weaving of a story, making characters into real people and thrilling readers with a great ending. I won't say it's better than sex. That would be overstating it and would fall into the category of an unforgivable cliche. Not everyone enjoys writing. Many find the process absolute torture and feel no pleasure until they finish. Even then they fear bad reviews or awkward questions. The image of the tortured writer living in a garret is an attractive one for me, yet I seem unable to experience it for myself, however hard I try.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo courtesy of www.themillions.com</span></div>
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<b>Immortality</b><br />
This leaves the writer's desire for immortality. Death features in so many popular books as well as in paintings, music and in poetry. We are drawn to it, yet I dare say we all fear it in some way or another. Most writers have a desire for fame of some kind. At least they write in order to be recognised by others. Their greatest hope is that they might write something that people will still be reading long after they are dead. I don't need tell you why. Death is so final, isn't it. Wouldn't it be great if we could live on, even if only in the minds of others - and the more 'others' the better really. I lost my father as a teenager. He was only 37 and was seemingly very healthy so it was unexpected. It left me with many regrets about things I should have said to him and and done with him before he died. Perhaps if there is life after death us writers might find ourselves cursing ourselves for what we should and could have written, but didn't? People who know about my regrets over the things I failed to say to my father sometimes ask me for advice when their parents are old or ill. How can they avoid the same pitfalls, they ask, and not be left feeling later that they should and could have said this or that? Here is something I wrote as a reply this week. It might be helpful to share it and to draw a parallel with the need to be sure that we write everything we should while we can – and to make sure that what we write is bloody good! <br />
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Dear Bill,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">How very sad to hear about your father. I have thought hard about your question regarding what you might say to him while you have the chance. I would make these comments:</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">1. When I can't think of anything to say, I have learned that what is usually needed is to ask questions (or keep quiet). </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Ask him what are his strongest memories about the two of you together, perhaps. This might enable him to say things he wants to say but finds difficult. It may open a door. This could be a huge relief to him, and therefore a great satisfaction to you, especially later.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">2. For yourself, remember that many of us hold living friends and family in our hearts and minds. Perhaps they have emigrated or you are both</span></i><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"> t</span></i><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">oo busy to see each other, yet we know they are there. They are real and we draw strength from them being there, however far away. It might be that you never see each other again, in fact, but you know they are still there. Realise then, that the difference between this situation and that person having died and moved on is only one of cold scientific fact. Scientific fact is not what binds you. Love, memories and emotion is what binds you and that will remain beyond death if you allow it to. It is about how we decide to see things. You may or may not wish to share this with your father. Personally I would, but that is a matter of personal choice.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">I wish you well in this Bill, and commend you for your courage and determination to do something valuable, while your father is still here in body. Most shy away from that and regret it later.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Best wishes</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Mark</span></i></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-82361644936546174012013-11-18T03:56:00.001-08:002015-11-09T00:15:32.473-08:00Grown-up Gap Year<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>Why Should Kids Get All The Fun?</b></span><br />
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Many of us parents now find ourselves talking to teenage kids about what they will do on their gap year. So excited was my youngest daughter at 13, to see my son and I set off to cycle across the world, that she immediately began planning her own pre-university adventure. I began to take notice; and there was no doubt about it, the majority of teenagers now seem to see it as an issue of not <b><i>if </i></b>they will have a gap year, but <b><i>when</i></b> - perhaps along with <b><i>who</i></b> will pay for it. For many it comes a close second to completing a university entrance form (UCAS in the UK). I don't begrudge them that. I do believe that a gap year can be a valuable part of a young person's education – learning the stuff they don't teach you in school. Useful stuff like how other people live and how lucky we are to have what we have, learning how to speak other languages or even how to better communicate with people who do speak our own tongue. They can learn a lot. I'm often surprised by how many young people don't know where other countries are in the world or what kinds of people live there. I particularly think it valuable for them to find themselves in situations where they are developing skills for getting out of trouble and learning how to avoid it – learning how to seek out a bargain or the best quality in things with limited funds, or learning the value of a good pair of boots, a comfortable bed and a wholesome meal. Why kids don't learn most of these things at school or at home anymore I don't know, but I won't get going on that one.<br />
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So basically then, a gap year is a great idea, even if you can't get your parents to pay for it and even if it has to involve work. Actually I think it can often be better that way - especially as this means a lot to a future employer. But what about those of us who left school before gap years were thought of? Well in fact there were gap years for the well-off as far back as the turn of the 19th century and even before – it was know as The Grand Tour – but I doubt anyone reading this will be that old. And this was my feeling when my kids started to talk about gap years, "I wouldn't have minded having one of those myself!"<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;">Grown-up Gap Years?</span><br />
So why not? Sure it's great if you can go off and learn about the world before you embark upon your adult life. There's no doubt in my mind that travel or working abroad will make a young person far more employable in the world of work, and far better parents too when the time comes. But that is not to say that this is the only way. There are a great many reasons for taking an extended break from work later on in life. Here are a few:<br />
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1. You didn't get one when you finished school so you feel you missed out, compared to others.<br />
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2. Your experience of the world is limited so you feel unable to share conversations with friends or your own children and grandchildren.<br />
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3. You are bored with the same old living and working environments.<br />
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4. You are stressed after years of work and have seen others getting sick from overwork.<br />
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5. You need fresh impetus in your life - both privately and in your work. A fresh look at things. An extended trip away might help you to find a new direction.<br />
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6. Your job has ended and you don't know what to do next. You need to clear your head – look at things from a distance.<br />
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7. You have retired and you want to catch up on things you've missed out on.<br />
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8. You find yourself single again and want to meet some different people in new environments that might spark unexpected friendships, or even a romance.<br />
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9. You are tired of short, expensive package holidays and want to go overland travelling, like you did when you were young. Backpacking and staying in hostels.<br />
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10. You want to have some adventures before it's too late. Before you are too old or unfit to enjoy it.<br />
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I did not necessarily think I needed an adult gap year. At 42 I had been running my own successful consultancy business for 3 years. Before that I had had several careers and had lived in many other countries. I had taken lots of breaks from work to go overland travelling before my children were born, so I did not feel deprived. But I was working too hard. My eldest daughter was 13. My son was 10yrs old and they were just getting to the age where we could go off on little adventures together – cycling, hiking and camping, mainly. It was after my first cycle / camping trip with my 10yr old son Sam, one freezing English December, that he asked me if I would take a year off work when he finished school.<br />
"What for?" I asked him.<br />
"Well, I wondered if you'd cycle to Japan with me," he replied, nonchalantly.<br />
8 years later we set off. But not before I had gone through a good deal of worry, trying to find someone to run my business while I was away.<br />
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As I have said, I did not need a gap year in the same way that other parents undoubtedly do. Or at least I didn't think I did. But the truth was I was overworked. Stressed. I had begun to focus only on work, with my family-life coming a poor second. I was there to provide for my family, I told myself. Someone had to pay for it all! But what I discovered over the next eight years, while I prepared for that gap year (actually I only started taking it seriously as a prospect about three years before we went), was that my family didn't want me to work so hard. My kids just wanted more time with me. My wife too, I think. She certainly didn't want to see me get a heart attack – and that was probably the way I was heading. So as I said, finding someone to run my business was a tough challenge just in order to escort Sam on a cycle trip from Ireland to Japan, but once we set off I realised something important. I didn't care about not earning so much money for a year. I didn't even care if I came home to find my business had folded - in fact once we set off I was able to see the whole exercise as a potential <b>business exit plan</b>. I had enough money for the trip and an adequate house. Why did I need more? My wife told me I should become a sculptor upon my return, since that is what I loved doing. But the absence of phone calls once we set off; the letters on the mat, bills, toilet cisterns needing mending or light bulbs changing – that was a revelation. I felt free in a way I almost never had. Not as an adult anyway. I felt reborn and I had hardly even been away for three days!<br />
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Why had I not done this before, I asked myself? I think because it never seemed possible. Too expensive. Too much time away. Perhaps it would have seemed irresponsible? My wife had certainly helped by telling me it was okay to do it. Good to do it, in fact. "You're allowed to enjoy it," she said.<br />
But in the main, it happened because my son asked me to do it. Looking back, I can see that otherwise I probably would not have taken a break at all. Most likely I'd have kept driving myself to make my business evermore profitable, until I got sick or had an accident. Then I would have taken a break. Except I would probably never have been able to cycle 10,000 gruelling miles with an 18yr old. Not after a heart attack or cancer. No, I have my son to thank for my health, my peace of mind and the improved life that followed.<br />
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Incidentally, I did not come home to find my business had folded. I found my new business partner had increased business by 45%. He told me he was happy continuing to run it, largely without me. As a result I sat down to with my son to write a book about our experience (more about the trip and the book on my <a href="http://longroadhardlessons.blogspot.com/">cycle travel blog</a>) which subsequently became an Amazon bestseller. I never imagined myself becoming a writer or giving motivational talks to businesspeople, but I can see now that this was my destiny. It's a life that fits me well, but I would probably never have achieved it if I had resisted taking those ten months off work to go with my son on his gap year. You will be unsurprised to hear that the trip did wonders for our father-son relationship (an issue covered in the book).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Video of us cycling through 'The High Range of Travancore,' Munar, India. Click arrow.</span></div>
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My adult gap year was an adventurous trip, covering 10,000miles from the west coast of Ireland, across Europe, through Turkey, Iran, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China and Korea and finally ending in Tokyo. Of course not all gap year trips need to be this way. I had an older friend in Japan who I taught English to when I was 25. He was a senior manager of a major Japanese trading company – an important and well paid job, but one he found rather mundane. Outside of work he had an interest in wild flowers and also watercolour painting. When he retired, he took a trip to a number of countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and China – seeking out unusual indigenous wild flowers and painting them. This eventually brought him to the attention of an international botanical society who asked him to submit some of his watercolours. Over time it led to his becoming an honorary fellow of the society, giving talks all over the world. He had never imagined he could do such a thing. Unfortunately he died a couple of years ago. He told me he felt fulfilled by his post-retirement activities but wished he might have taken that first trip when he was a little younger. Who knows how that might have changed his life?<br />
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To find out more about my adult gap year and the resulting book, "<a href="http://longroadhardlessons.blogspot.com/">Long Road Hard Lessons</a>," can I suggest you have a look at the other posts on the <a href="http://longroadhardlessons.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">travel blog</a> (as well as on this Author blog), where you will find links to my books on Amazon etc. Thanks for reading – and please remember to make the most of your life.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">For the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, you can find this along with his two collections of short stories on Amazon, Smashwords etc. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">In the UK his books can also be found in all Waterstones Bookstores.</span></i></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.com</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Smashwords</span></a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-78424243775355905712013-10-14T05:13:00.001-07:002013-10-14T05:20:19.876-07:00Stories On My Doorstep<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Dustbin Men - More Short Story Inspiration</b></span><br />
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Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about memory and how sounds, smells and images can spark them. The post was called '<a href="http://markswain-author.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-spark-that-ignites-memory.html" target="_blank">The Spark That Ignites The Memory</a>' and a lot of people commented on it. Several readers were particularly taken with the example of the milkman and the sound that sparks the memory of what was once a trademark sound of early morning in Great Britain. 'The chink of bottles somewhere in the early morning traffic haze,' as I put it in one of my early flash stories. One of these readers was my cousin. She commented that it would be nice if I wrote something about Dustbin Men. I told her she had won this week's 'Request a Blog-post Competition,' and that I would write it this week. So here it is:<br />
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Although milk delivery has severely declined in Great Britain since I was a boy, household waste collection to the doorstep is still currently alive and well. Recycling has perhaps made the job more complicated and outsourcing perhaps has made it more of a casual labour affair, but they are still there in one form or another, making a racket in the street. I find it reassuring – heartwarming in fact. These doorstep public services provide a sense of community that is in danger of disappearing. The daily visit of the postman or post-lady is a longed-for pick-me-up for many elderly and lonely people. Their one chance to see a friendly face every morning and to exchange a few words. Yes a few words.<br />
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I am not a lonely person. Neither am I old, but I often exchange a few words with our post-lady. Her name is Mandy. She has the happiest face and the cheeriest of dispositions. She's very energetic and wears shorts in summer – a little distracting for some customers, but only in a positive sense. Once or twice I have got her to slow down and chat on the doorstep for a couple of minutes. I asked her about her job.<br />
"I had a friend when I was younger who got a job as a postman," I said. "It was less money than he'd been earning on a factory production line, he told me, but he didn't care. He absolutely loved it. He loved chatting to old ladies and popping in for cups of tea and biscuits. Their stories and their news. He loved helping people out – reaching things off a kitchen shelf for them or opening a stiff jar, and he loved being finished early when other people were only just at work."<br />
<br />
"Oh those days have long gone," Mandy said. "They time us now, you know. We can't stop and chat, and as for going in for tea – forget it! It would be impossible. Once we've finished our round we have to go to the sorting office and work the rest of our shift there."<br />
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I told her I thought this was very sad. Not just for her. The community was biggest the loser. Especially the old and lonely or people struggling with problems and nobody to tell. In the past the Postie was the person who would notice a vulnerable person with a problem and alert a neighbour, their family or Social Services. I am in no doubt, a valuable service has been lost; not to mention the loss of job satisfaction and the people who left the job because of that change. How unbelievably stupid of us to allow this to happen.<br />
<br />
In an effort to salvage something from these lost times perhaps, I often use scenarios surrounding these public service workers as inspiration for short stories. I only need to think of a postman delivering mail to spark memories and very soon I have a story. You can find a story featuring a post-lady in my book "<a href="http://sptreatment.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Special Treatment and Other Stories</a>." It's called Topolino and is about a man paralysed by a construction site fall, who is constantly trying to chat-up his pretty post lady, and yes, the post-lady is inspired by Mandy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy of www.thedailymail.co.uk</span></div>
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Dustbin men never had time to call in for a cup of tea in my recollection. They were always in a rush. But they were a part of that same community of essential workers. In the past, like postmen, someone might have remained a dustman all their working life – Eliza's father in the film version of My Fair Lady, comes to mind. They would have been known by most of the local people on their round. They were public servants, doing a job that most of us would not be prepared to do and for that they were afforded a certain amount of respect. These days the job tends to be done by contract workers; often recent immigrants who can't find other work and who leave when they find a more pleasant job. Local people don't know who they are. Invariably they are just people to complain about for leaving a mess. For these reasons they mostly have little pride in their work. My cousin has a vivid memory of the dustmen of old, and it is a memory shared by me.<br />
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I lived in various places around the world as a child and would come home to the seaside town of Folkestone in Kent for holidays. It was my father's home town so many of my relatives lived there. One Christmas in heavy snow, I was playing at my cousin Pamela's house. I was around ten years old and she seven, I think. I was a bit of an adventurer (troublemaker). We asked her mum (my aunt) if we could go out to play in the snow. We put on gloves, coats and boots and went into the garden. A snowball fight began. Pamela was tough and determined for a little girl but I felt unkind using her for target practice. I was looking around for something else to aim at when we noticed the dustcart coming along Brockman Road. Quickly I encouraged Pam to help make an arsenal of snowballs and line them up behind the wall. By the time the dustcart reached her house we must have had thirty or more. As the dustmen slithered about on the icy pavements with the old-fashioned metal dustbins on their shoulders, they were suddenly assailed by well aimed snowballs, causing one or two of them to drop their bins, spilling all manner of disgusting garbage over themselves and the street. It didn't take the dustmen long to work out what was happening. Leaving their work, they formed a small attack force and rushed the garden, flushing us out from behind the wall.<br />
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Climbing over the back wall and escaping into a neighbour's garden, the two of us frantically set about making more snowballs.<br />
"If we go through to the front of this house, we'll be able to surprise them when they come into that next street," I said.<br />
Hearing the large dustcart rounding the corner, we poked our heads above the front hedge. There they were with their heavy leather jerkins, (most binmen wore them) bins on shoulders, faces red with the cold and a previous pelting. We waited until the right moment, when they were in close range. All of a sudden the men were startled by the animal screams of two small children armed with a dozen hard packed snowballs, pelting them for all they were worth then scarpering to safety over the back wall. The dustmen re-grouped and began to give chase, hurling their own snowballs in reply and calling out after us.<br />
"We'll get yer, you little buggers!"<br />
Women came out of the houses to see what was going on.<br />
"Make them clean up the bloomin' mess too when you catch 'em!" shouted one of the women.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of lonniebruhn.com</span></div>
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All along the street and into several neighbouring streets these guerrilla tactics were followed. The dustmen suffered badly but never gave up. They were a match for us and hungry for the fight. Chaos reigned and bins in vulnerable areas were left unemptied. Customers became angry and joined the dustmen in trying to catch us, sure that we must be part of a large gang of troublesome youths.<br />
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"Maybe we should go home now?" said Pamela, cold and becoming fearful of the consequences.<br />
"What! Just when we have them on the run – you must be joking?" I insisted.<br />
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Pamela was easily encouraged to continue. However, I should have got followed her instincts and got out while the going was good. As the battle progressed, the dustmen's tactics improved and they began to anticipate our sorties. Soon we found <i>ourselves</i> being the ones bombarded with snowballs and before long we accepted that we should retreat and live to fight another day. Arriving breathless and battered into my aunt's kitchen she asked what had been happening. Fortunately my aunt had a good sense of fun, especially where children were concerned.<br />
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"We attacked the dustmen with snowballs," we said.<br />
"Right the way down to Victoria Grove," I said. "They were fighting back but we beat them, just Pam and me!"<br />
My aunt smiled, before attempting a more serious face.<br />
"But you'll get me into terrible trouble, you little monkeys! Those men have a job to do. If people's bins don't get emptied on time, who's doorstep are they going to come complaining to? You'd better get out of those clothes before the policemen arrive, otherwise they'll know it was you!"<br />
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She seemed serious. Quickly we got out of the wet clothes, boots and coats and went to play in the living room. It was about twenty minutes later when we heard the dustcart coming back along the road. Sure that they would not now recognise us, Pam and I went out into the garden to watch them sweep up what they had dropped during the initial attack. They recognised us immediately.<br />
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"Hah, we won in the end didn't we, you little buggers," they laughed.<br />
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We stood there open mouthed. Astounded to see them waving kindly to us from the back of the dustcart as they drove off.<br />
Ah, they don't make dustmen like that anymore!<br />
<br />
The book 'Special Treatment & Other Stories', including the Kinglake Short Story Prizewinning title story, is available via amazon.<br />
Link: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Special-Treatment-Other-Stories-Swain-ebook/dp/B00BRKN36K">amazon.co.uk</a><br />
Link: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Special-Treatment-Other-Stories-Swain-ebook/dp/B00BRKN36K">amazon.com</a> </div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-31967348453622209452013-10-07T05:35:00.000-07:002015-06-08T12:23:33.761-07:00The Travelling Storyteller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">On The Road Again </span><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">– A Message To My Children</span></b><br />
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I knew a boy who was from birth, lured by a life on the open road. Some of his first memories (at around 3 years old) were of sitting at his bedroom window looking out at the big wide world and planning his escape from the confines of home. Some days his mother would see him in the garden with his fingers clinging to the fence, looking. I hear she came out once and asked him what he was looking at.<br />
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"When will I be big enough to go, Mummy?" he asked her.<br />
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It was not that he was unhappy with his family. He loved them, and they him. In fact I think it was feeling so secure about home and family that gave him the confidence that he could leave it. And it was not long before he did. Much to his parents' horror, some months before his fourth birthday he set out. He had worked out how to get over the tall side gate to the house. Heart racing with excitement, he headed off up the hill with a chocolate spread sandwich and an piece of cheese wrapped in a handkerchief on a stick, just like the one he had seen in a storybook. He was not sure where he was going – just out there. After about a mile he had the idea of visiting his grandmother to tell her about the adventure upon which he was embarking. She had a great sense of adventure too and would surely not tell him off. She was pleased to see him and after about half an hour, was careful not to let him see her telephone his mother. Just as he was saying that he needed to continue on his travels, his mother arrived in a frantic state. The boy's journey was cut short and he was severely warned about the dangers of being out on his own along busy main roads at only three years old. The mother, of course, did not understand that her son was completely safe and capable. He had been planning the trip for some time.<br />
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As time progressed, the boy continued to escape - small sojourns that were a practice for the big escape. The gate having been extended in height, he resorted to crawling under the hedge. There was no holding him. The parents wondered what kind of child they had produced. Soon the boy discovered atlases, maps and children's encyclopaedias. He began listening intently to radio and television programs, learning about places he could travel to. Lying awake thinking about them at night. More thought was given to the things he needed with him and he packed a secret running-away bag. A small duffle bag. It had a front zip pocket, into which he put the odd few coins he found lying around the house. Generally when he ran away, his mother had a good idea where to look. He would usually call into the corner shop, where he was popular with the three elderly sisters who ran the place. His mother would call there first to confirm his route and time of escape. Then she would try the swings and slide at the park. If he was not there she would try his grandmother's house and after that a petrol station and car repair depot on the outskirts of town, on the London road. This was about two miles away. At three or four it was usually as far as he could get in the time before she noticed him missing from his bedroom or the garden and caught up with him. Being unable to drive in those days, this provided his mother with a good deal of exercise as well as worry. No amount of warnings would deter him. Even when told of a little girl of eight along the road, who had been killed by a lorry when sent to the greengrocers by her father, he felt not the slightest hesitation about escaping again. It was his destiny.<br />
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It may also have been destiny that protected this little boy from the perils of the road. Some would say it was simply good luck. He himself believed it was due to his careful attention to detail. He remained convinced throughout his early years that a small child could learn to be as effective as an adult at getting about safely. Nothing his parents did or said would deter him from this view or from continuing to escape from home and in the end they came to accept it as something they could not change. They bore it as an affliction, you see; regarding themselves as parents with a problem child. A 'disturbed' child, perhaps.<br />
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Eventually, after continuing to cause havoc and worry within his family, the boy reached adulthood. Free to make his own choices in life, he took time away from higher education, and then from work, to hitch-hike around his native England, before venturing further afield into Europe and then on to India and North Africa. Years of his life were spent in happy wandering through new and fascinating countries, meeting local people and sleeping under hedgerows, on beaches or in haystacks. He loved this life and put study and career ideas to one side for a number of years, in order to travel further. People he met on his travels and his friends and family back in England alike, loved to hear the stories he told of his adventures. They told him how they envied him his life, but could not bring themselves to join him on the road, for they were busy climbing the ladder.<br />
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Although the young man loved his wandering life, he knew deep inside that one day he might meet someone who would make him want to give it up, and one day that event came about. Returning from the Orient with a beautiful young woman, the young man soon channelled his sense of adventure into life with a young family, albeit taking his family during his children's early years to live in some of the countries that he had previously come to know during his travels. His children seem to delight in the stories he told them at bedtime or on long car journeys.<br />
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In middle-age, drawing upon his experience of life and people, the young man set up a business that became a big success. He became wealthy and comfortable, although he never forgot the simple things he felt were most valuable in life. As the man's children grew, they developed a similar longing for the adventure of travel. As teenagers they sometimes asked him to take them on wandering journeys on the road, but he was too busy with work. At the same time he began to find his life cluttered with possessions and responsibilities. Fortunately, however, his wife valued him for his free spirit and encouraged him to take time away from work to go wandering with his son. For a year they travelled overland together to the Orient, telling stories and drinking-in the variety of cultures and landscapes. The man realised that this was the true purpose of his life. The sense of destiny he had felt as a small boy flooded back and when they returned home he put commerce to one side. Travel, wandering, sleeping out under the stars and storytelling became his purpose again.<br />
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And so it was that a sense of happiness and calm became the true reward of this man's life. His life had followed a long and eventful circular journey, rather in the same way that his physical wanderings had. He had set out full of enthusiasm with a singular focus. He had encountered obstacles along the way, causing him to divert in another direction. But he had learned from mistakes. He had overcome difficulties that had made him stronger and wiser, and eventually he had come to reap the rewards of his efforts. Now that his children had grown-up, he was encouraged by his wife to take her on wandering journeys with him and to write down the stories that previously had lived only in his head. Sometimes his adult children joined them. No longer did he feel he needed to choose between a life with his family and a life on the road.<br />
And the stories? The stories came forth from his mind like a river in full flood. Stories he had been telling for years as well as new stories, gathered from the memories of his life and the people he had met along the way. People were moved by the stories, and he was happy. Happy to be back out there, on the road again.<br />
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Hold on tight to your dreams.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Picture courtesy of www.nocaptionneeded</span></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-66139949601038700232013-09-23T04:52:00.002-07:002015-07-02T02:33:42.382-07:00The Spark That Ignites The Memory<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;">'Seldom have I heard a train pass by in the night and not wished I was on it.'</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">Flash!</span><br />
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This is an opening sentence of a book I love. Or rather it is not. At the start of Paul Theroux's 'The Great Indian Railway Bazar' he writes:<br />
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<span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">'Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">have seldom</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"> heard a </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">train</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"> go by and not wished I was on it.'</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">I have adapted it in my mind to better fit what unlocks my own memories. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">I lived away from my native England a lot as a child – Singapore (where I was born), Malaysia, Germany – and used to return to Folkestone in Kent for holidays to stay with my grandparents. They were the happiest of times. My grandparents lived close to the main railway line to London. I am old enough to remember steam trains. I used to stand on the footbridge and wave at the engine drivers as they sped under me. At night I would lie in the front bedroom, listening for the telltale rumble as another train gathered speed from the distant station, and I'd lie there picturing it beneath the bridge – the driver at the controls, the passengers still sorting out luggage on the racks or unfolding their newspapers. Looking out at the lights and the goings-on in the windows of houses as they passed. I strained my ears listening to the sound of the clacking wheels as it rushed on through the night into the distance. Reading Paul Theroux's opening words for the first time (and every time since), caused a kind of spark in my mind, followed by the unlocking of all these memories. I was back there. The sound of the trains. The smell of the smoke from the steam trains. The smell of those old station waiting rooms. The smell of my grandparents' house and the fruit-bowl in the living-room. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">Not all writers can achieve this on-cue. At least not with a wide audience. It is what I look for in a writer and it is also, of course, what I strive to achieve myself as a writer. In order to achieve it one probably needs a good understanding of people. Empathy. We also need to read widely in order to see how other writers do it and we need to be aware of what excites these sparks in other readers. I find social media very useful in this respect. Twitter is particularly helpful, because of the 140 character limitation. Often I tweet a single sentence from one of my books or from a short story. I can fairly reliably gauge what sparks peoples imagination and unlocks their memories the most, by the number of favourites and retweets I get (allowing for possible influences of time). This way I am constantly building up and adapting an arsenal of incendiary words and phrases, or subject matter, that I know have power.</span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"> Some last, where others are dependent upon what is happening in the world at the time, but it is a great way to train yourself and to stay sharp.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">The sentence that regularly receives the most notice when I post on Twitter is:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">'The chink of bottles, somewhere in the early morning traffic haze'</span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">This seems to have that special power to cause sparks in people's minds and to unlock memories. I think we must all have been there. Stepping out into the street in the relative hush of the early morning. In this case there is activity - hence the haze caused by commuter traffic fumes, perhaps a low level hum - but there is an absence of sound clutter. The stillness is very apparent to us. Then, all of a sudden in this void there is a sharp sound. Not loud, but very noticeable. It is immediately recognisable as the chink of two bottles as they bang together. Our imagination lights up. We picture a milkman, perhaps, walking hurriedly from his milk-float (cart / van) to a terrace of houses, carrying a rack containing six cold, white bottles covered in condensation. The curtains in the houses are still drawn. A cat sitting on the step of number 8 darts out of the milkman's way. He is whistling a happy tune as he steps across a low fence to the next house. He'll be in trouble if he's seen. He has been asked by the lady at number 10 not to do that. Her mesembryanthemums are getting damaged. Why don't Blue Tits peck the tops off milk bottles to drink the cream anymore? Why doesn't milk taste like it used to? Why did granddad's porridge always taste better than your mum's and who was that boy you knew who used to faint at the breakfast table and once fell face first into his bowl of cornflakes?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">The fact is that the chink you heard could have been caused by a marble being rolled by two boys at a coke bottle while they waited for the school bus. It could have been a lady putting glass jars into a recycle bin or a wino waking up in a shop doorway and knocking over his empty cider bottle. But our minds and memories are acutely tuned. There are minute differences. Knowing this is important for a writer who wants to unlock people's memories. Not that sparking a host of different memories is necessarily a problem. I notice this now when I am reading. I learn from it. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">N.B. The real life situation that inspired this piece of flash fiction (see previous post - Show Don't Tell) was set at a street cafe in Luang Prabang, Laos. An old vagrant lady was collecting discarded bottles for money. She actually lived in a kitchen cabinet on some waste ground by the road and used to blow cigarette smoke out through the plug-hole in the sink. But that doesn't matter. It has the power to unlock memories and I don't mind if those are different to the ones I experienced. The story is covered in full in the book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Road-Hard-Lessons-Relationship/dp/095720020X" target="_blank">Long Road Hard Lessons</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">So who does it best and how do they achieve it?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">Understanding people and being observant, I think. Having a good breadth of life experience also helps, but most of all I think it is about empathy. How much a writer notices the feelings we share. As someone who loves to read short stories, I am bound to say that I feel it is often best achieved by great short story writers. Less is more. These writers are adept and focussing on what are the key elements. The concentrated bits of information that expand inside the minds of readers like one of those dried Chinese flowers in a cup of tea, when the hot water is poured in.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"> There is no space for lengthy explanations. The writer must transport the reader with a single sentence or even a word. A flash, as a memory is unlocked and proceeds to unfold, and unfold. And with that perfect principle in mind, I will say no more. I will simply take the books of two great writers at random from the shelf behind me and give you the opening sentence of each. In each case, so little opens up so much in our head.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><b>The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck </b>(one of the best exponents of 'less is more')</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">'To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.'</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><b>Wildlife by Richard Ford</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">'In the fall of 1960, when I was sixteen and my father was for a time not working, my mother met a man named Warren Miller and fell in love with him.'</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i>If you would like to read the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, </i></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrPRF8ZzZnzpanIFo5T8euSbrMSpWLuUozs1VF6SQC6GvqaH_cKQ5mJlNvOk7NOP_ffuju43ntgqK0jiSEV5yU88pgTjIBkPclrHB1EXXD7oLbdSchODfTPVYOHKXYxt0L1MFnrcn8QY/s1600/Small+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrPRF8ZzZnzpanIFo5T8euSbrMSpWLuUozs1VF6SQC6GvqaH_cKQ5mJlNvOk7NOP_ffuju43ntgqK0jiSEV5yU88pgTjIBkPclrHB1EXXD7oLbdSchODfTPVYOHKXYxt0L1MFnrcn8QY/s1600/Small+cover.jpg" /></a></i></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i>you can find this along with his two collections of short stories on Amazon, Smashwords etc.</i></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i>In the UK you can also find his books in all branches of Waterstones Bookshops.</i></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.com</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Smashwords</span></a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-24037307320554963952013-09-09T08:34:00.000-07:002013-09-09T08:34:05.959-07:00Story Inspiration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">"Without making things up, life can be very dull and predictable."</span></b><br />
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People often ask writers where their inspiration for stories comes from. In my case it can be hard to remember. They often arrive by strange and circuitous routes. With others it's more obvious. Some are more clearly autobiographical, or are based upon events that people know I would be aware of. With many though, people seem to be completely baffled as to how I might have come up with them.<br />
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As I have said before, I believe that when you are a story writer it helps to be a bit of a fantasist, and even something of a liar. I have to confess to both, although these days I am known more for tactless divulgence of truths than of lies. But I lied a lot as a child. Probably because real life (whatever that is) was not interesting enough without it. I was a very naughty boy.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Without making things up, life can be very dull and predictable (for everyone), so I take an active role in doing something about it.</span></b><br />
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So how does this manifest itself? Well I suppose in place of telling lies for some sort of gain, or more often to avoid getting the blame for something, these days it tends to take the form of my throwing in some half-truths - or even blatant untruths - into a situation. I see it as being a little like adding spice or salt to the cooking (rarely sugar). In exactly that way I quickly see how things would be improved with a little of this, or a dash of that. Sometimes I'm wrong. Or sometimes it has a different effect to what I expect. Often it encourages a change of direction - wakes other people from sleepwalking through life. Of course at times I completely blow it and just piss people off - but not often (hah!). But it is this habit that I use as a tool for story writing - with the main difference being that the story creation is conducted in my head.<br />
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I can be in the middle of a conversation. Any kind of conversation. It could be with friends, with a my family, perhaps in a formal meeting, I might even be in a shop, or at the bank dealing with some mundane transaction or talking to a traffic warden. All situations have potential for my injecting a diversion into the proceedings and creating some sort of surprising outcome. Very often it is not a situation or conversation I am involved in. I merely witness or overhear it. Sometimes I am immediately struck by the possible deviation or imagined back-story, whereas on other occasions the idea comes to me as I remember the event later - particularly if I am relating it to someone else. And it is the latter circumstances that I find most fruitful. Probably since when I relate a real story to someone, I often feel it is not interesting enough without some embellishment - some poetic license. It is at this point that my wife or children always tell people not to take what I say too literally. They know me too well. It does amuse me when the recipient sometimes asks them not to discourage me. They prefer to hear my embellished version, it would seem.<br />
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When I was in Italy recently, I saw a number of those little old Fiat 500's. Topolino's, they're called. They have become collectable. A few years ago I wrote a story about a London builder. A Cockney roofer, in fact, who had been contracted to do a few weeks work re-roofing a restaurant somewhere in rural Italy. The work coincided with the start of the hunting season and he was the unfortunate victim of a shooting accident, where some local hunters had fired celebratory shots through the ceiling of the restaurant. The Cockney roofer was wounded and then fell from the roof. Being out in the sticks he was driven to hospital, in a life-threatening condition, by someone in a Topolino. I won't tell you the full story but you can imagine the scene. He was a large man. Anyway, people I knew were at a loss to see how I might have come up with the story unless it was true. In fact the origin of the story was merely having once seen an elderly lady trying to fit her daughter and her large suitcase into one of these cars outside Charing Cross Station. Eventually the sunroof had been opened and they had driven off with the daughter's legs sticking out the top. As it was it did not make much of a story, but the fiasco remained in my mind. It was a few years before I had the idea for a story about a man injured at work who is encouraged to make a compensation claim by an Indian telesales lady. I often get those calls "Hello Mr Swain, have you had an accident in the last six years?"<br />
Combining the two elements was a useful fit - rather like one of those children's toys where you can add interchangeable body parts to create a monster doll. The car made Italy an obvious choice of location for the story. As it happens, on my recent visit I saw one of these little Fiat 500's converted into an iced cream van. It was comical but it seemed to work and was very popular. It gave me inspiration for a new story. Not about a Topolino iced cream van. A hearse seemed more interesting...<br />
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The story 'Topolino' can be found in the book 'Special Treatment & Other Stories'. Special Treatment won the Kinglake Prize for Modern Short Stories in 2010. The book is available on Amazon. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Special-Treatment-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00BRKN36K" target="_blank">Amazon.com link</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Special-Treatment-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00BRKN36K" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk link</a></div>
Otherwise go to your local Amazon website and enter the title 'Special Treatment & Other Stories'<br />
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-33876025440841579382013-07-28T05:32:00.000-07:002015-08-30T07:00:47.033-07:00Travel Broadens The Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d85c6;">"There's A Story In That"</span><br />
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If you're a reader or a writer, you must know the experience. You're travelling or on holiday somewhere, sitting at a cafe in a small village square. A group of locals are sitting opposite and begin a heated debate about something. The tempo rises. All of a sudden one man jumps to his feet and begins remonstrating with the others, making hand gestures you may not know but which you can guess the meaning of. You don't know the language well but you don't need to. You can guess what is being said. Not that you will be right – but you don't need to be right. Your version of what is being said could well be more interesting than the real one. Perhaps you are in Corsica and you know the reputation for family feuds and murders. The swarthy man has been accused of not avenging the murder of his cousin, Alberto. He has shamed the family. The sister says she is ashamed to be his sister. The swarthy man accuses her of having had an affaire with said dead cousin. Now the mother is on her feet. "Is this true?"<br />
"No of course not, he would say anything to divert attention from his own guilt. He's a lying dog."<br />
"It's true enough," says another woman, "Alberto promised he'd marry me but she wanted to keep him for herself – her bit on the side!"<br />
"Don't you speak about my sister like that, you lying bitch!" says the swarthy man, "I'll kill you!"<br />
"Yes you would, you bastard," replies the woman, "like you killed your cousin because you were jealous. It's well know that you were infatuated with your ugly sister. You wanted to keep her pure, like a princess, you weirdo!"<br />
The argument continues with various members of the cast restraining each other until finally they are buying more drinks, hugging and celebrating their love for one another. You turn to your partner and say, "God, there's a story in that!"<br />
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Of course, many such opportunities are lost. I always used to try to keep a notebook with me to avoid forgetting, but often found myself without one. Nowadays, I nearly always have my i-phone with me so can add it to my 'Story Ideas' within Notes. Sometimes I don't find these notes until a year later, by which time the story has changed in my head. If they were the notes of a police constable that would be a problem, whereas with a writer of fiction it is a positive advantage.<br />
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Most of my short stories these days come from this kind of situation. When I first began writing short stories, I had a lifetime of remembered experiences to work with - an early life living in countries not of my own culture - but those mines have probably already given up most of their greatest riches. These days I need to find inspiration from elsewhere, and cafe tables are a good source. I have other favourites. The residents' lounge of an old people's home, where people are desperate to tell someone their story. Transport cafes where truck drivers and commercial travellers regale each other with tall tales of the road. The unemployment benefit office waiting room. Police stations. Railway carriages and buses – these are especially fruitful on market days in rural areas, where gossip among passengers is rife. Park benches where old people and winos congregate. Bars late at night are superb places for story inspiration. A weathered man, hung over a metal counter with a pained expressions of regret. What is his story? An ageing women with badly applied make-up, relentlessly stirring a cup of coffee. Does she have a family? Why is she alone? Sometimes I find a way to strike up a conversation with such people, but it's not necessary. Imagination can fill the gaps. Fiction is stranger than truth, as they say.<br />
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"Might one ask what you're writing about?" croaks the woman opposite.<br />
It is 2am at an all night cafe in Pigalle, a seedy red-light quarter of Paris. The lines around her painted lips suggest her voice is the result of a lifetime's dependency upon the Gauloise cigarettes I can see in her cheap plastic handbag. She looks poor but she's drinking a cocktail with all the paraphernalia in it – fruit, mint, twizzle stick, parasol. She was probably beautiful once. Now her hair is growing thin from years of peroxide abuse.<br />
"Of course. They are just notes I make when I have ideas."<br />
"Ah bien sure, cheri," she replies, taking my hand gently, "but what sort of ideas? Ideas for what? Are you a policeman – a detective hunting for a murderer, perhaps? Or do you make movies maybe?"<br />
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She smiles as she strokes my hand. Her teeth do not do her any favours.<br />
"I write stories."<br />
"Ooh," she replies, as if with a relish for something mysterious, "detective stories? Des histoire erotique peut etre?"<br />
"Excursions into the lives of others," I reply. I translate it to be sure she has understood.<br />
"Yes I understand," she says. "I have been on many such excursions. I have looked through the windows of so many souls, good and bad. Bad mostly.... Paff, no no it is not true! I have loved many men you see. Women too. They are my constant companions, and yet I remain alone. I have come to prefer it that way. Or perhaps I have no choice – it is my destiny. Tant pis. I share their journey for a while and then we part. It is my life, voila!"<br />
"Why do they leave?" I ask, "Or why do you leave?"<br />
"They die. These days anyway, mostly they die. It is my destiny, and theirs. But they die happy. I no longer have the power to attract young men like you."<br />
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She laughs and looks deep into my eyes. Incredible eyes she has. The eyes of a girl.<br />
"So what do you seek in life...I'm sorry, I don't know your name."<br />
"Marielle," she replies. "Enchante."<br />
She performs a kind of childish seated curtsey, which is mor sad than endearing. I tell her my name – except not my real name, of course.<br />
"What are you seeking at this stage of your life, Marielle?"<br />
"The same as always," she says, looking up from her cocktail. "I don't seek wealth, fame or a big house. Just someone who will hold me all night."<br />
"But is that so hard to find?"<br />
"Ah, you would be surprised, cheri!" she laughs. "Men want to jump on your bones and then go. They promise not to – many promise not to. They probably can't help it. Maybe I am hard to love, I suppose? And then the women? There is always a man somewhere who they left behind. They hate them, but when they call they will go."<br />
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I thank her for her conversation and go to pay. I try to pay for her drink too but the bearded woman at the counter simply tut-tuts and waves her finger. Despite my desire to close the door gently it closes with a harsh bang. I shudder and get as far as the corner before my conscience gets the better of me. As with her, perhaps destiny drove me back, or a desire to be able to help someone less fortunate than myself. It would cost me nothing to brighten her life just for one night. Arriving at the bar I hesitate before opening the door. Through the condensation on the window, I see her stroking the hand of an elderly gentleman. Her long fingers removing his gloves, the same grey toothed smile. Turning to walk away I catch the eye of the woman at the counter. Again that wagging finger.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRgF2HztkNjn9lazpUxWMVIwQShgJ2Bm4yvNZhm3w65wnfjb4VocOis7DTWXZxwxaQtA3aJbZi3uPolIN80aEv77tQnl70K8QiHUTzXxtOd02YI_ZBzcRCsH2zzEmwcwoYyGFbTyVDTwk/s1600/Truth-in-the-Lie_Front_Web_S.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; color: #010726; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRgF2HztkNjn9lazpUxWMVIwQShgJ2Bm4yvNZhm3w65wnfjb4VocOis7DTWXZxwxaQtA3aJbZi3uPolIN80aEv77tQnl70K8QiHUTzXxtOd02YI_ZBzcRCsH2zzEmwcwoYyGFbTyVDTwk/s320/Truth-in-the-Lie_Front_Web_S.jpg" width="207" /></a><span style="color: #6fa8dc; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;">If you would like to read the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, or his collections of short stories (including the prizewinning "Special Treatment"), you can find them on Amazon, Smashwords etc. Click the link:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.com</span></a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"></span><b style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Please note, you can read an e-book without a Kindle or e-book reader. You can download the <span style="color: #cc0000;">Kindle Reader App</span> from Amazon for free, to your Computer, Laptop, Smartphone, tablet or i-Pad. Just <span style="color: blue;">google</span> it.</b></div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-57709991261010381532013-07-08T01:14:00.000-07:002013-07-31T09:32:47.940-07:00Stories From Real Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>"How Much of the Story is True?"</b></span><br />
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People often ask me this question. I am told this is because my characters are very vivid – that they are so defined and individual that they simply must be real. I'm told that the situations in my short stories are so out of the ordinary that they are not something a writer could just invent. But this is not true of course.<br />
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There is always an element of truth in everything a writer produces. There has to be – we draw our inspiration from what we know in life. One or two of the short stories I have written over the years are very close to the truth – stories where I didn't have to change much from the event and characters that inspired it – but this is not the norm. In my case, a situation arrises – something someone says or does or something I see on the news for example – that sparks my imagination.<br />
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A French friend once told me,<br />
"My brother's not that happy in his life. He's married a North African woman with a big family who all live nearby. In their culture they expect the whole extended family to share what they have. It sounds nice but they used to borrow his nice car and it would always come back damaged. It tortured him."<br />
I thought about this brother – a rather obsessional man of habit – and how a man like him might try to resolve this situation. I imagined him arguing with his wife but realising how she would always see it according to her culture – he was being mean. I imagined what he might do to deal with this borrowing expectation – how a man of his nature might develop strategies and adopt strangely complex systems to make it harder for the family to borrow his things, but without demonstrating a lack of generosity. Before long I had weaved a detailed character in my head and a whole set of bizarre behaviours he might adopt. I imagined him with a valuable classic car he had painstakingly saved for as a younger man – his efforts over years to restore it. I imagined him marrying this beautiful exotic creature and then discovering the family culture thing. He would be desperate not to lose her but tortured by the possible damage to his cherished car. He thinks of selling it but can't bear to part with it. He could say it had been stolen perhaps? He begins by saying it's not insured for others to drive, of course, but these are North Africans. Eventually, in a state of mania, he resorts to taking a part (the rotor arm) out of the car so that it won't work. This means he can't drive it either, but it is a price worth paying, he feels.<br />
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I wrote down the story and developed it. It seemed like it had legs, as they say. I built up the characters of the man, his wife, her family, the man's work colleagues etc. I described their apartment and the car – it was a Porsche 365 Roadster. The story was set in the UK and the woman became Afro-caribbean. When a few years later the story was published in a book of short stories, I sent a copy to my French friend. Later I asked him how he liked the stories. I waited for him to remark on the character based upon his brother, which he did not. I asked him which of the stories he liked best and he said he loved the one about the guy with the Porsche. I told him this was unsurprising since it was based upon what he had told me about his brother. He was confused. Nothing in the story seemed to him to relate to his brother, he said. I mentioned the car and the cultural issues with his wife's family. He saw the link but insisted it was such a different story that his brother's life was unrecognisable in it.<br />
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The above example is typical. Generally it is unlikely that anyone is going to accuse me of making public their closely guarded secrets to my readers. My wife worries about this a lot, I have to say. But the characters and situations are too much changed. They absorb characteristics of other people I have known or heard about. The circumstances and backstory changes. The environment changes and so does the main story – all embellished with things I remember from my past, from films, from television programs and even from other books. Yes, I have a good memory!<br />
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You might find it interesting to know, that my French friend told his brother what the man in the story did to avoid having his precious possessions borrowed. His brother tried it out, with some success. I'm very happy to have acted as his therapist in this case.<br />
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By the way, for those who are wondering, the story in question is named <i>For The Love of Marsha. </i> It is one of the stories in the book, <i>Special Treatment and Other Stories.</i><br />
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The blog about this book and the <a href="http://sptreatment.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">link to its listing on Amazon is here</a><br />
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-60556367002474032442013-06-10T02:58:00.000-07:002015-08-18T13:27:03.875-07:00Show Don't Tell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiqdWF2ALhFMVCsN8psl_JncP-xY_Z7AavJEnoCdlm1hx-l29yRLJVD7z979J9vCw3JkpoIE2GwwvGb0KXTtE7zh2jmMa_htf4PSUQYhj2l1ttVDg_Ap5RidoXBNPW-CklpjJOtf3Y-R4/s1600/HEMMINGWAY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiqdWF2ALhFMVCsN8psl_JncP-xY_Z7AavJEnoCdlm1hx-l29yRLJVD7z979J9vCw3JkpoIE2GwwvGb0KXTtE7zh2jmMa_htf4PSUQYhj2l1ttVDg_Ap5RidoXBNPW-CklpjJOtf3Y-R4/s1600/HEMMINGWAY.jpg" /></a><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">In Praise of Shorter Stories</span></b><br />
<br />
Ernest Hemingway famously said,<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;">"If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDN3eXenojGZKnoON7WvvKYEfhPzWoFFBwGoc6eNSPlCUcQS01CMboB5ryW82iT1vU1xCKDpussKiR2b0wh8vwQ6NtOy6dQwzb91RGKsVr0bziraVYFVnniHAnI119lzmTeh9-Qj1OpWk/s1600/RaymondCarver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDN3eXenojGZKnoON7WvvKYEfhPzWoFFBwGoc6eNSPlCUcQS01CMboB5ryW82iT1vU1xCKDpussKiR2b0wh8vwQ6NtOy6dQwzb91RGKsVr0bziraVYFVnniHAnI119lzmTeh9-Qj1OpWk/s320/RaymondCarver.jpg" width="216" /></a>It has been pointed out by others, that 'showing' takes more words than 'telling'. I disagree. Poetry manages to convey so much in so few words. By employing certain powerful words that trigger emotions and memories in the reader / listener, the writer can open up a myriad of thought and feelings that do not need to be written down. It is the reason we enjoy quotations so much. To convey the sentiment of an entire tome within<br />
a few well chosen words. Powerful. I try hard to remember this principle in my own writing process. It is far from easy. Firstly you tend to slip back into 'telling' without realising it. It's less effort. With dedication and a certain amount of luck (feeling right at the time), I might spot my errors of 'too much telling' during my editing process and improve them. The great Raymond Carver wrote a wonderfully straightforward essay on this subject entitled, unsurprisingly, '<a href="http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Colleges/College%20of%20Humanities%20and%20Social%20Sciences/EMS/Readings/139.105/Primary/On%20Writing%20-%20Raymond%20Carver.pdf" target="_blank">On Writing</a>.'<br />
<br />
Generally I get most pleasure from reading short stories. Chekov, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford are my particular favourites although I have many more. Many novelists also write excellent short stories, or have done in the past. Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, John Updike, Norman Mailer are just a few. I read a Margaret Atwood short story recently that I especially liked. Steinbeck and Orwell in particular, seem to me to write novels in the condensed style common to short story writers. It is often thought of as characteristic of American writing and Steinbeck appears to utilise the 'show don't tell' principle very effectively. In his great novella, The Pearl, Steinbeck manages to convey so much of the emotions, the cultural background, the sense of family that is fundamental to the motivations of the characters, without actually telling us in words. It is the 'less is more' rule demonstrated at its finest. Steinbeck plants a seed with an image, a perfectly chosen simple word or two and the reader's imagination does the rest. The Pearl is only 90 pages long but those are some of the most powerful 90 pages I have ever read. Incidentally it has been pointed out to me that some of Hemingway's prose runs into some lengthy drawn out passages of agonising detail. I confess I do not like all his work and I think he could have learned a lot from the likes of Steinbeck. Perhaps his impulsively bullish character made up for it in charm, however.<br />
<br />
Often when I write a short story, I end up editing it into several versions of differing length. Initially I did this in order to enter my stories into writing competitions, which usually require stories limited to a maximum number of words. It took me a little time to discover that readers always seem to get most from the shortest versions. Stories I have refined and refined, condensing them down to an essence. Sometimes these are short enough to be called what have come to be named 'Flash Stories.' In this form, the story seems to more effectively capture people's imagination. Some readers, I find, have interpreted the story differently to others. This is bound to happen with the 'show, don't tell' technique, where people are using their own background experiences to fill in the gaps. Some writers might balk at this. They want their readers to understand exactly what is in <i>their</i> (the writer's) mind. This is not a problem I suffer from. I am happy for my stories to be a trigger that opens up a number of slightly different stories in each reader's mind.<br />
<br />
I accept that the experience of readers preferring my shortest stories could be peculiar to me, but I do not think it likely. Raymond Carver in his essay, On Writing, talks about how when he was at university, all American writers were trained in this way - a process of continuous condensing and reducing. Checkov and many others also believed this process to be necessary in training writers. Most people find it very enlightening. I certainly do. I would encourage all fiction (even non-fiction) writers, therefore, to try it. I think we should all periodically repeat it as an exercise throughout our lives. Take a piece you have written – a story, an essay or an article perhaps – and condense it. Set yourself a word number as a target. Once you have achieved this, try producing a shorter version, perhaps a third shorter than the last. Continue until you have something of about 140 words, then show it to someone who knows the full length story well, and see what the result is.<br />
<br />
Of course an example is perhaps the best means of explanation. Here is an example of a flash story that began life as a short story of around 4,000 words. It has been published at two different lengths but this shorter version tends to receive the most praise:<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>The Bottle Lady of Luang Prabang</b>. By Mark Swain. From the book '<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Truth-In-Lie/dp/0957200234" target="_blank">The Truth In The Lie</a>'</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: xx-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Days pass slowly, most beginning with breakfast at our
street café. Lethargic and oppressed by the heat of the day, we take our usual
table outside on the street, amusing ourselves with small goings on, exercising
our powers of observation and hypothesis. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Today our attention is drawn by
the chink of glass from somewhere in the early morning traffic haze. Across the
road we see a haggard old woman with a handcart, collecting bottles and sorting
them on a small patch of waste ground adjacent to a hotel. A kitchen cupboard
lays dumped there. I propose she lives in it. Comic, the others think, until
she climbs inside and slides the door shut. We stare, waiting, but she stays
put. Our focus shifts to our breakfast. Feu – clear soup with a basket of
English country garden to throw into it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Some time later a policeman
arrives. He knocks on the old lady’s door. Abruptly it slides open.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Look, he’s going to move her
on,” I say. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But no, handing her a coffee
and a cigarette he passes the time of day and departs, tipping his hat. We
pay-up and leave. Normally we might have put forward theories about her – she
is his mother, or an informant perhaps, keeping a watch over the neighbourhood.
But not today. Today we are unsettled. Quietly we pay and leave. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-indent: 14.2pt;">No decision is made to cross
the street, yet we do so without hesitation. Passing her camp we notice a
strange phenomenon. Smoke exuding from the plughole of the sink. A silvery
plume rising in the still air. An ethereal, swirling rope, climbing to the
heavens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Reluctant,
ill-fitting legs carry us back to our guesthouse, our minds still entwined in
the rising smoke. Incredulity has left us silent – spellbound.</span><!--EndFragment-->
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<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkc4bO2v3GbEe2T3CmlcuE05WvFqCG1tv1C_cP8DR6QCDyZC1wFAKU8uocjk53OaQ0FWIUJbk72lK9s-v2Wwqb1hr2DYrKheWuYLV_Qka7bA29czmdvUUd-U5nV7ldVYWu2saVVQiiOY/s1600/P1010511.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkc4bO2v3GbEe2T3CmlcuE05WvFqCG1tv1C_cP8DR6QCDyZC1wFAKU8uocjk53OaQ0FWIUJbk72lK9s-v2Wwqb1hr2DYrKheWuYLV_Qka7bA29czmdvUUd-U5nV7ldVYWu2saVVQiiOY/s400/P1010511.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZkA_9qETzqKxi2rlO44KX-6kNLzoC43duq-Us7MObSdKR45GRDP83BX6A82D59_ZRRZnwJL7tEggexv_S1PAysuBEkS_on8P9rca_pr2dbqxquCnyfZzAGrdMNpG0VqhZKsvGLOjseY/s1600/Truth-in-the-Lie_Front_Web_S.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZkA_9qETzqKxi2rlO44KX-6kNLzoC43duq-Us7MObSdKR45GRDP83BX6A82D59_ZRRZnwJL7tEggexv_S1PAysuBEkS_on8P9rca_pr2dbqxquCnyfZzAGrdMNpG0VqhZKsvGLOjseY/s320/Truth-in-the-Lie_Front_Web_S.jpg" width="207" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>In 2008/9 Mark Swain cycled from Ireland to Tokyo, a journey of 10,000 miles, with his 18 year old </i></span></span><i style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;">son Sam. If you would like to read their bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons', you can find this, along with his </i><i style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">two collections of short stories - including THE TRUTH IN THE LIE</span></i><i style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;">, on Amazon, Smashwords etc. </i><br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #010726; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
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<div style="line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">In the UK his books can also be found in all Waterstones Bookstores.</span></i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;">Mark Swain on Amazon<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.com</span></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Amazon UK</span></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain" style="color: #7479d0; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Swain on Smashwords</span></a></div>
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</div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-78872629349801555832013-04-20T08:51:00.001-07:002015-08-12T07:59:46.429-07:00A Good Excuse to Hang Around in Sleazy Bars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Once, after reading a biography about George Orwell, I took myself off to Paris. In the book there were references to the real names of places in his book 'Down and Out in Paris and London.' The hotel where he worked as a dishwasher (Hotel Lotti next to the Place de Vendome). The street where he pawned his shirt collars (in Belleville). The cafe where he often went for breakfast. This was back in the 1980's so I didn't have the luxury of the internet. I had loved Down & Out so much when I read it in the early 70's and I really felt I knew the places he mentioned in the book - many with changed names - so it almost felt like I was going there to rediscover these places from my own past. I spent a week roaming around the back streets of various parts of Paris, feeling a little like a detective. None of these places had plaques up saying 'George Orwell pawned his shirt collars here' or 'was sacked from here' or anything. This was original research, or at least it felt like it. By the end of that week, my feet were sore but I flet like I'd recaptured my youth.<br />
<br />
A number of years went by before I attempted to do this again. I was recounting the story at dinner with friends one evening. Later my wife asked me if I'd take her to these places. I said I would sometime, but that I'd rather do something new. How about another Orwell - Homage to Catalonia. Soon after we found ourselves in Las Ramblas in Barcelona, trying to persuade someone to let us get out onto the rooftops of the old post office building, from where Orwell had fought a gun battle with Franco's troops in the streets below. We sat under the palm trees, eating a simple lunch of tortilla with pan con tomate, as he might have in the Placa Real and we took a bus out into the hills where he spent weeks dodging bullets in the cold winter after the partisans' retreat from outside Valladolid. It was thrilling.<br />
<br />
Since that time I have had a trip to Amsterdam seeking out bars and cafes that feature in Camus' 'The Fall' and to Oran to experience the same author's world of 'The Outsider' (or The Stranger). All have turned what might have been a reasonably pleasurable holiday into something of intense interest and pleasure. It has given the locations real meaning for me and memories that are indelibly burned into my memory. Why don't you give it a try sometime? It's so much easier now with the internet. Of course some people will think it strange. A friend of mine said it was a poor excuse for hanging around in sleazy bars. "Who needs an excuse?" I replied.<br />
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N.B. Fired by this obsession, in my own writing I often remember to mention the names of cafes, bars and places I hope readers might be inspired to visit. You'll find plenty in 'Long Road, Hard Lessons,' of course, but also in 'Special Treatment'. If the name is disguised, the disguise is usually very thin.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Others on my hit list for the near future are:</span><br />
<br />
Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood (Berlin)<br />
Rock Springs - Richard Ford (Montana)<br />
A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean (Livingstone, Montana)<br />
As I Walked Out One Mid-summer Morning - Laurie Lee (Spain)<br />
Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row & Sweet Thursday - John Steinbeck (Monterey & Salinas Valley)<br />
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (Edinburgh - does 'the worst toilet in the world' really exist?)<br />
The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell (Alexandria)<br />
The Pearl - John Steinbeck (Northern Mexico)<br />
A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh-Fermor (a walk from Hook of Holland to Constantinople)<br />
Sailing Through Europe - Negley Farson (Towns & cities along the River Danube)<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy theguardian.co.uk</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to read stories by the author, or the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons," click on these links or in the right hand margin of this blog.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Swain/e/B008DRKT2G/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Mark Swain on Amazon</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MarkSwain">Mark Swain on Smashwords</a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-55674463269253705962013-03-09T06:59:00.002-08:002013-05-29T01:14:40.490-07:00Special Treatment & Other Stories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;">SPECIAL TREATMENT - and other stories</span></div>
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Mark Swain describes these 12 short stories as <i>excursions into the lives of others</i>. In
each story we find ourselves transported – thoroughly absorbed. We are there. Some
places we think we recognise, while others are unfamiliar, even mysterious.
There are dark corners, but most of all there is humour – poignant and frequently
ironic. The locations are illuminated for us. Vivid images; the atmospheres;
the smells and sounds. But it is the characters we are drawn to: A divorcee
hairdresser who dotes on her son. A resentful victim of a construction-site
accident. An elderly man victimised by political activists. A boy’s summer job.
Lovers. Adventurers. Workers. Travellers. Prisoners. They open their lives to
us. We are let into their secrets. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">There is an authenticity to Mark Swain’s
characters that can leave the reader feeling almost like a voyeur. We are
privileged. We know them; care about their plight; laugh and cry with them. We can
certainly never forget them.</span><!--EndFragment-->
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Special-Treatment-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00BRKN36K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363088731&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Buy from Amazon</a></div>
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Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239235320031832010.post-2175059262952862852013-03-04T03:30:00.000-08:002013-03-18T07:39:05.949-07:00A Compulsive Liar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #38761d;">These days, Mark Swain spends much of his time writing:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><i>"Ideas just keep coming," </i>he says.<i> "I think it's probably due to the intense variety of my early life – well most of it actually. I was born in Singapore while my father was in the RAF. I spent most of my early childhood in exotic locations. I can still smell the magic of those places now. Then I was in Europe as a teenager. Germany and France for a lot of it but I went to boarding school in England. I went to Art College, I joined the Army for a brief spell of adventure, did a variety of jobs, set up businesses, then worked on a cruise ship travelling the world (QE2), before going to work in Japan as an English teacher. I had a wild time and travelled a lot in between. Then I set up a business in Barcelona before returning to Canterbury in the UK where I've stayed while my 3 children grew up. I put my business in the hands of my business partner for a year and cycled to Japan with my son. He runs it now - and very well, I'm happy to say. I've made my own luck. I'm starting to feel the desire to spend my time more in places like India, Morocco and Japan now the children are grown-up. All that variety when I was younger has given me an infinite amount of material to build stories with. Although my first book was non-fiction, it's fiction I feel most at home with. I was a chameleon and a compulsive liar as a kid. Ask my poor mother!"</i></span></div>
Mark Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17777878797576856411noreply@blogger.com0