Into The Light & The Once And Future King

So I have two Elephant Words stories to talk about in this post because I’m a terribly slack blogger…

First up is Into The Light, which is a short tale about the forbidden love between an angel and a demon who meet one day when Jerusalem is changing hands during one of the crusad

es. They can’t be together, despite their love, and, indeed, the very touch of the angel burns the demon’s skin.

Of course, it’s about a lot more than that, it’s about how one can endure the pain of separation for brief moments spent together when that’s all you have. Why? Because the love that you share makes the pain bearable, and the pain of being utterly without each other would be unbearable.

The relationship that the angel and demon have in this story is the ultimate long distance relationship, a subject which is rather close to my heart.

The picture of the dark corridor with the light pouring in at the end was very inspiring. It led me to think about this meeting place between light and dark, and that’s how I started thinking about an angel and a demon meeting there, with the demon watching the angel walk away, back into the light. That led me to the last line…and from there it was a matter of filling in the story in between.

Secondly, we have The Once And Future King. It was my turn to post the picture this week and, I’m afraid, I’ve been rather preoccupied with all sorts of stuff, and so I almost completely forgot to find a picture. So I headed over to one of my favourite stock photo sites from when I was working as a graphic designer (http://www.sxc.hu) and, for some reason, entered “sword” into the search field, which led me to this rather interesting picture. Fast forward a week to today and, you guessed it, I almost completely forgot that I actually had to write a story about it!

Thankfully, for once, the idea came quickly to me. I’ve always been interested in Arthurian legend, and so the idea of the warrior king returning to Britain to save us in our darkest hour sprang to mind. And then it hit me…what use would he be? If he turned up in the middle of a modern day battlefield, he’d be shot in an instant.

It’s a simple twist, little more than a pun, really, but I had fun writing it and, hopefully, people will enjoy reading it.

The Road Less Travelled - Video Blog!

So, rather than write about this week's Elephant Words story I thought it might be fun to try video blogging for a change. You should probably read the story first, you can read The Road Less Travelled here.

Broken Wings

Take these broken wings
Learn to fly again
Learn to live so free
And when we hear the voices sing
The book of love will open up
And let us in

This week’s Elephant Words story, Broken Wings, was something a little new for me. It’s a first person story that moves from being quite stark and realistic at the start, into a very symbolic and internal piece. 

I’ll admit, I was struggling for what to write. I pretty much knew where I wanted to start, a man alone, waking up, the effects of the vodka having worn off, and his attempts to smother his returning pain with more of the stuff. I think the Russian dolls in the picture sparked something too, as it encouraged me to peel back the layers of this character and examine what was going on underneath.

Beyond that, I really had nothing, and so I decided to take a walk, and as I was walking the story pretty much played itself out in my mind. To be honest, it was partly a way for me to work some stuff out that was going on with me too. I was hurting at the time, but as I went on this strange journey with the character in my story it led me back to what was important, and helped me to realise that it’s where life leads us that’s what really matters, and not necessarily how we get there. At the end of the story we see two people making a fresh start, putting the pain of the past behind them, and understanding that they both have something that is incredibly precious and wonderful – each other’s hearts.

I hope the story manages to be hopeful and uplifting without being overly sentimental.

Little Girl

Okay, I’ll admit it, I took one look at this week’s photo on Elephant Words and thought “cannibals.” I know, I know, I should have looked at it and been inspired to write a story about good, hardy people forging a new life for themselves in a new world, with nothing but their wits and some plain old fashioned gumption to help them. But, instead, I just thought, “Oh my god, they’re going to eat that child!”

So, my story this week, Little Girl, is about a man who leaves Liverpool with his family to start a new life on America’s new frontier. However, he’s ill prepared, the family end up near starving to death, their initial hope for a new start turns to despair and they’re forced to eat the child to survive.

Tragic.

Of course…in my head it went a little differently… In my head, they came from Liverpool and were scousers… For the Americans reading this, a scouser is like a red neck, only with a more annoying accent. I’m sure Liverpool has given the world many great things, like The Beatles…and…um…yeah…there was…no, that was rubbish…and so was Bread, The Liver Birds, Brookside, both Liverpool and Everton FC…and…well…everything else ever to come out of Liverpool. I know, I’m being grossly unfair…but I ended up stuck at University with a scouser who thought I was “brilliant” and insisted on talking to me at length about…something….every time I saw him (who knows what he was actually saying with that accent…probably something about nicking the wheels off a car…).

I can so never go to Liverpool after writing that…

So, originally, “Little Girl” was going to be called “They Do Do That Down There Though Don’t They” and was going to read something like this.

“’Ere, Ken, we ain’t got no food, like!”

“Calm down, ma, calm down, we can always nick us some of dat dere food like.”

“Nick some? From where? Dere ain’t no shops or nothin’ like, where yous gonna nick some food from, like?”

“Well, like, I know, we could always, like, eat the baybi.”

“Eat the baybi? Eat the baybi?!”

“Calm, down, calm down, it’s what dey do down in dat dere London, like.”

“Dey do do dat down dere dough, don’t dey?”

“Dey do do dat down dere. Now drink yer milk.”

“Milk? Yuck.”

“It’s what Ian Rush drinks…”

I really wish it was yesterday and I could just claim this post was an April Fools Day prank…

Between The Lines

For once, this week, I didn’t have any real struggle to come up with something, This week’s picture immediately reminded me of the Mr Big song “Alive and Kickin’” and I knew I wanted to do something along the lines of a girl writing a goodbye letter to her mother as she ran away with her boyfriend.

So, before I go on, pop over to Elephant Words and read Between The Lines.

It was as I started to think about what the girl would write that I realised that there was a lot more going on here. Reading between the lines there was a lot not being said, and this made me ponder how often what we write is very different to what we actually mean.

So I struck upon the idea of writing two letters. One would be the actual letter that the girl was sending to her mother, and the other would be the letter that she’d write if she was truly being 100% honest and saying what was on her mind.

Yes, I know, the actual situation is really a hideous cliché, but it served well enough for the experiment. I’m not sure that I really pulled it off though. I think, perhaps, I should have spent more time on it, made it more originally, and perhaps more subtle. I don’t know.

I’m afraid I’ve found myself going back to one of my greatest frustrations in life with this story – why do girls date @$$holes? It’s something I doubt I’ll ever fully understand.

Rebel Without A Clue

Typically, just as I decide to use this blog to explore the thinking behind what I'm writing, both in my comics and on Elephant Words, I'm the Monday man at EW, and have almost no time to actually put any thought at all into what I'm writing there!

This week's story was particulalry hard to write, partly because the pic' went up very late Sunday night due to some technical problems, and partly due to the fact that I haven't really been in the frame of mind to write as I was assaulted by my ex-wife's boyfriend last night. But, yeah, let's not go into that, eh?

So, let's at least try and talk about my Elephant Words story this week - Rebel Without A Clue. The pic' either is, or looks incredibly like, the observatory from the film Rebel Without A Cause. It's been a looooong time since I saw the film, so I could be completely wrong there, but that was the immediate association that sprung to mind. I remember thinking the film was excellent, but, I also seem to recall watching it with my grandparents, while my gran struggled to decide who were the goodies and who were the baddies. Bless her. I guess it's hard for someone who sees everything in black and white to appreciate a film which is all about shades of grey.

I've always been amused by the subtle pun version of the film's title, Rebel Without A Clue, which, I think, might have been used in a song or something...I don't know...heh... But my mind immediately turned to those damn middle class emo kids who are depressed about having nothing to be depressed about. Who resent their parents for giving them a stable, loving home, because, you know, it's preventing them from being properly troubled and angst ridden like their ultimate idol, Kurt Cobain. I think for most of my generation, who were teenagers when Cobain was alive, and Nirvana were at their height...the idolisation of Kurt Cobain by today's youth is a complete mystery.

And that's about it, really, that's as much thought as went into writing it. The ending was a bit tricky, I knew I wanted to riff off the classic line from the film "What are you rebelling against?" "What have you got?" but finding the right way to do that wasn't easy. Originally I just had the kid stare blankly at his mum, lost for words, but I didn't feel that was satisfying. So, instead I went for the vague, noncommital, "Just...stuff..." which, for me, kinds of sums up the vague, unfocused rebellion of a generation that seems to think that dressing the same as all of their friends is rebelling.

Kids, stop watching Death Note and watch some James Dean movies, you might learn a thing or two about rebellion...