Author: ChanAtkins

Waiting

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

I’m waiting to die. And so are you. It’s the truth we refuse to see. We don’t talk about it, or think about it. We believe the opposite is true. We say we are going too fast, rushing through time, unable to stop. But sometimes I feel like life is all about waiting. Filling in the gaps. Finding a reason. Using up the time. All ways to pretend you are not just waiting to die.

The only time you are not waiting is when you are first born, when you are tiny and new, and know no words or thoughts. Because like that, you exist in the moment and the moment is now, and does not move on, not in any way that you are able to fathom. As soon as you can talk, you know about time. Not now, later. Hurry up, move. In a minute, later on, tomorrow, next week, soon.

So you start waiting. When you are a child you are waiting to be an adult. Then when you are an adult you are waiting to retire and relax. Waiting to see the rewards of your labour. When you are a teenager you are waiting to be older, waiting to be in charge of your life, to be free.

We’re always waiting. Waiting to fall in love, to meet ‘the one’, to get married, to have kids, to buy a house and fill it with things, to go on holiday, to relax, to escape, to sleep, to wake up. Monday makes you wait for Friday. You wait for the working week to end…come on, come on, hurry up, come sooner. So it comes and you celebrate; Friday night and Saturday, but then already you are waiting for the new week to start, dreading, but waiting all the same.

You try to live in the moment, to appreciate now… but it’s hard when a moment is so small. How can you ignore time? Turn your back on it? Refuse to play the game? Sometimes I try. I close my eyes. Block out the time yet to come. There are small and glorious moments when I succeed. When I am just existing, not waiting, or dying. Simple things like a mug of coffee on the doorstep. The wind in my face, and just standing still somewhere, just motionless, barely breathing. I don’t want to be just dying, yet that is what life is. Like the leaves on the trees, fat and green one day, curling and drying the next. Their time is over. They lived, they waited patiently, they died.

It’s not that it’s boring. We don’t allow that. We try to fill it all up, don’t we? With noise and clutter and bright sparkling things. With work, and pleasure, and weekends, and Christmas, and children, and weariness, and walking, and driving in cars, and loving each other, and getting it all wrong and starting again. We stuff it all in, we pack so much in while we can. We dance through our lives, drinking fine wine and eating good food, and going abroad to become more cultured, and upgrading our phones, and upsizing our homes. We look forward, all of the time. We can’t wait to see what is around the corner. We are waiting for promises to come true and for dreams to be realised. We are waiting to prove ourselves to loved ones, for them to see us as we really are, for it all to be worth it.

No, we’re not stood still. But we are still waiting for it all to be over. We live in timid dread of it all being over. How much time do we spend waiting around? Standing in queues? Waiting for phone calls, for emails? For rejections? For answers? Waiting for things to get better, or for things to get worse. Waiting to be loved, waiting for pain to heal, waiting to be seen and heard and known. We say things will be better in the morning. We tell ourselves we will know the answers when we are older. We will understand things one day. One day, we will feel the one thing that constantly eludes us.

I watch the birds when they are busy in the morning. Unlike the leaves on the trees, they are not so patient. A busying whirlwind of activity and noise. What spurs them on? Simple instinct. The urge to survive. But they can’t look ahead, and they can’t know time. They dart across the lane, from one hedgerow to the next, sing-song spiralling, diving and chattering. They hop about on the grass. They swoop and surge up towards the sky. They know nothing of this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next time, or one day. They only know now. For a moment I watch them and forget to breathe. I focus on now, on being still, and I try to insist that I am not waiting for the day I die to arrive promptly and too soon upon me.

And then I walk on, down the lane, towards home, towards the things that chop up the time of my life into segments of making dinner, and helping with homework, and putting to bed, and rising again in the morning where the inevitable waiting is there, waiting for us.

To Be A Boy Of 7

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Today, like all days, I looked at you and thought what a glorious thing it must be, to be you, a boy of seven. To be you, waking up in the morning with a bright smile upon your face. To go to bed the way you told me you always do; whispering things you are excited about. Counting them off in your fingers, one at a time. To be you, never lost or bored, but full of things to do, full of ideas, moving from one fun thing to the next. Nothing weighs on your shoulders. You heart is full and free.

Let’s play a game and pretend we are lost. Not yet. When we get there.

Okay, so who will we be?

I’ll just be me, and you’ll be you. But we’re lost in the woods.

I can’t stop smiling when you are around. The light in your big blue eyes, the gaps in your teeth, the smudge of dirt high up on one cheek. They used to be so fat and round, but not so much these days. You are growing up. Becoming a stick boy.

When we get there, you are still holding my hand, and you have forgotten about the game we were going to play. I hold on as long as I can. The dogs are off, and we walk across the two wooden pathways, talking about the summer holidays and how to fill them when they come. When I talk to you, when I tell you things, I feel like there is nothing that won’t excite or please you. It’s just easy.

The days are getting longer, the weather warming up, and the squidgy mud is drying out under our feet. You remember the game and you pretend we have to find things to eat. We can eat leaves and berries. Dandilions and daisies.

I like the way you look at me when you talk. I feel huge, tall, towering over you, this white haired stick boy with dirt on his cheek. Smiling a gap toothed smile as his hand tightens on mine. We follow the stony path while the sky is stretched and blue. Down the hill and still your hand is in mine. You play the game, pretending we know the way home now. We just follow the path back to the house. Then we can have an ice cream sat out on the doorstep. I look into your face and everything is beaming back at me. All the things promised for the summer, building up and swelling inside your chest, the game, our hands, the ice cream, today and tomorrow. You live in each moment with your blue eyes wide. You want to go up the steepest hill. You never stop smiling, not once.

I ask you questions and you say ‘yep!’ and ‘nope!’ At the top of the hill you want to go left while I go right. We’ll meet in the middle further down. Then you shout out ‘3,2,1’ and run down your side of the hill, arms pinwheeling, white hair streaming back from your forehead, ‘whoooooooo’ you go, and I am laughing. You dash down, turn right and come back to my side. It’s in you now. The urge to move. With the sand and stones under your feet, and the wind in your hair, the movement has set you off, set you free. I point out a secret way. That way. Through the trees, where the hills are small but steep. Down, up, down, up, then down. Covered in thick green moss, springy, inviting, this way I tell you, you’ll like this.

You go first. Running again. Your feet pounding, your knees pumping, your little stick arms out to each side. You make it to the end and then start running back. You do it! You do it now! Ahh but I can’t run like you, it’s not the same once you are older…or is it? I take your advice and run like a lunatic. Like a fool, I thunder down one side and up the next, and then I remember how addictive the movement of running is. I am laughing and you are laughing at me. For a tiny fragment of a moment I am like you, I am seven, I am small and strong and on fire with the desire to move and keep moving. I am moving through it all, through everything, leaping over logs and branches, hearing the crack and the rustle, my eyes down, then up, my legs powering me on, my feet wanting to keep it up…Enjoying a ride o nature’s own little rollercoaster. I think I could play here all day. I could play.

But I stop at the end and wait and watch and laugh at you, and here you come, my white haired stick boy, yelling and hooting. Running so fast I am sure you will trip and fall into my arms. But you don’t, you stay up, laughter hitching in your small chest. And after that you keep running.

I have to count the seconds, as you try to get faster and faster. And now you are running ahead of me, always ahead and out of my reach. Little stick boy, white head bobbing quickly away from me. I watch you getting smaller. I think about how much more hand holding there is to come, and a little bit of me breaks open and what leaks out can’t be scratched back. I want to keep you and hold you, but parenthood is always letting go. I want to be you and join you, but your growing is too fast, your moments too brief. I am left behind.

Little stick boy running down the track, zig-zagging past the daffodils, legs brushing the new nettles, hair bouncing, running faster and faster and further from me. Do you like being seven? Yep, but I can’t wait to be eight.10750337_880996085252991_634165168261834774_o

SOUNDTRACK!! The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

I am about to relaunch my novel The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, which is a book about two complex characters and their attempts to control and escape each other. But it is also a book about music. About how songs can become the soundtrack to your life, filling your head and your heart through times of joy and darkness. I’m sure you all have your own soundtrack. Here is Danny’s;

The Stone Roses – Made of Stone

Guns ‘N’ Roses – November Rain

Guns ‘N’ Roses – Breakdown

The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored

The Stone Roses – She Bangs The Drums

The Clash – Lost In The Supermarket

The Stone Roses – I Am The Resurrection

Nirvana – Breed

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

The Smiths – How Soon Is Now

The Doors – Strange Days

The Doors – Riders On The Storm

The Smiths – Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

Neil Young – Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Tom Waits – I Don’t Wanna’ Grow Up

The Doors – Break On Through

The Clash – Guns Of Brixton

The Manic Street Preachers – Masses Against The Classes

Radiohead – Bones

Soul Asylum – Runaway Train

The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Radiohead – Creep

Nirvana – About A Girl

Nirvana – Negative Creep

Primal Scream – Loaded

Primal Scream – Come Together

Nirvana – Lithium

Donovan – Catch The Wind

Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s A Gonna’ Fall

The Smiths – Please Let me Get What I Want

Nirvana – Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

Nirvana – All Apologies

Nirvana – Love Buzz

Nirvana – Pennyroyal Tea

Nirvana – Dumb

Beck – Loser

Oasis – Supersonic

Nirvana – Something In The Way

The Smiths – The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

The Stone Roses – Shoot You Down

The Doors – When The Music’s Over

Oasis – Cigarettes and Alcohol

Oasis – Rock And Roll Star

Oasis – Slide Away

The Smiths – That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

The Doors – Break On Through

Oasis – Up In The Sky

Sonic Youth – Sugar Cane

Blur – For Tomorrow

Nirvana – Come As You Are

Suede – Animal Nitrate

The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Primal Scream – Movin’ On Up

The Smiths – Panic

Primal Scream – Cry Myself Blind

The Rolling Stones – Ruby Tuesday

Radiohead – Planet Telex

Ash – Girl From Mars

The Stone Roses – Breaking Into Heaven

The Charlatans – The Only One I Know

Radiohead – Bulletproof

Massive Attack – Safe From Harm

Leftfield – Original

The Stone Roses – Ten Storey Love Song

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On

The Clash – The Call Up

Oasis – Live Forever

Oasis – Wonderwall

Oasis – Champagne Supernova

Oasis – Roll With It

Johnny Cash – Walk The Line

The Smiths – I Know It’s Over

The Stone Roses – Good Times

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain

The Story Of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – by Chantelle Atkins (that’s me.)

So, why the relaunch? Why have I updated this book again? Why go back to it again? What’s the big deal about this book? I’m sure that if I were signed to an agent or had a big publishing deal, they would tell me I was mad to pursue this book the way I am. It’s a non-starter, they would say, or something like that. True, it is my worst seller. The Mess of Me has taken far less time and stress out of my life, and yet is consistently the one people choose to read. This Is Nowhere has only been out a few months, but is proving popular so far. Reviewers say it is my most mature work to date, which always makes me want to laugh. Mature? Me?

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side is anything but mature. But then, it wouldn’t be. I first wrote it when I was twelve years old. So yeah, it’s been with me a long old time. For some reason, I just can’t shake it off. Hence the relaunch, new cover, etc. If you are still with me, I will try to explain why…

I was 12 years old in 1990. My parents had recently got divorced, and the thought of them attracting new partners was something that prayed constantly on my mind. I was a shy twelve year old, a bit strange, and fiercely proud of it. I never wanted to fit in, or be cool or popular. I was fine being me. I mostly wanted to be left alone to read and to write. I was attracted to horror, both in literature and in movies. Stephen King was my favourite author at this time, and The Lost Boys my favourite film. You can probably see where my head was at. And yes I dressed in black. A lot.

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So at some point in the year 1990, with my own family kind of disintegrating in the background, I read a lot of Stephen King and watched The Lost Boys about a hundred times. I can still recall the moment the idea for the book started to grow inside my head. You know the bit right at the end of the film, where the character of Sam realises that his mother is dating the head vampire? That was it. His mother was dating a monster. A real life monster. And all along he had known the guy was rotten, and no one had believed him. Except his friends. It got me thinking about my own situation; what if one of my parents was to start seeing someone I didn’t like? Someone I abhorred? Someone who was a monster? At the time we did not have a computer, but I did have my very own electric word processor which I had saved up for with my own money. I adored it and was nothing but a slave to it. Every day was the same; home from school, up to room, Guns N Roses on, banging at the keys until my fingers ached. It was the first time I found a story that I couldn’t let go. Up until then I had written stories about animals. Lost dogs and stray kittens. That kind of thing. I used to illustrate them myself, hole punch them and tie them with string. Very cute. But I was getting too old for all of that cute stuff. I was nearly thirteen for fucks sake, I liked heavy metal! I wore black and hated the cool kids at school. My dad didn’t want to know, and my mum talked about other men. Great. Fantastic. So I wrote about it. I poured everything into this one story, this one story I could not let go. I could not escape it. It followed me to bed and kept me awake. It possessed my waking hours and distracted me constantly from this other thing called ‘real life.’ I wrote it in pencil on lined paper. I tapped away at my word processor and printed it all off. It was huge. Magnificent. Glorious. I was totally and utterly addicted to it. I was fucked up in so many ways but did I care? No. I was a fucking writer!

So, anyway. At the time the book had no title. The lead character was called Sam, not Danny. (I changed it to Danny when I rewrote it in 2011 because my husband is called Sam!) But I wrote it. I was 12 years old, weirder than you can know, and I wrote it. I took it to school and showed my English teacher and I got a merit for it. This was a cool little certificate you had to go up in assembly to collect. Probably still have that somewhere!

I wrote it and I loved it. I lived and breathed it. Every night when I went to bed the characters were talking in my head, telling me things, forcing the story to grow and change. I even drew all of the characters. In my mind the main character of Danny was a cute cross between Corey Haim and Kurt Cobain. But then that was it. I had written my book, and now it was time to write more. But the important thing was, this book was the first proper book I ever wrote, and the first time I really believed I was a writer. I left it alone for a while. When I was 16 I picked it up again. Why? Because they were still there, damn it. All those characters, arguing and jostling inside my head, vying for my attention and my time. I was older now! I could make it better! In fact, I was hideously embarrassed when I read it through. Ooh the cliches! The showing rather than telling! Of course, at 16, I was a highly accomplished writer. Well, no, maybe not. At age 19 I attacked it again. Dragged it out and hit the old word processor once more. So you can see how it refused to leave me alone. During these later years I was obsessed with music in a big, big way. I was just like Danny in the  book. Veering between the current trend of grunge (I can still vividly recall where I was, what I was wearing, what I was drinking, doing, etc when I heard on the radio that Kurt Cobain had died) and old stuff like Bob Dylan, The Clash, The Smiths, The Beach Boys… Of course Danny would be a music fan just like me. And it is true that his journey through music is exactly mine. From Guns N Roses to Nirvana, to The Stone Roses, and through everything else that ever mattered and meant something, onwards and upwards to the inevitable spiralling and joyous salvation that was Britpop.

Britpop

Ahh it was a glorious thing. You see grunge was one thing, and britpop almost the opposite. Kurt Cobain died, and all seemed lost. And then the Gallaghers hit the scene growling and snarling and swaggering, telling us we had to be ourselves, telling us to shine. Apologies to anyone who may not be British. But it really was an important time to be a music fan, and a teenager.

I weaved music into the book throughout the years it took me to write. The more I rewrote this book, the more of me I poured into it. It was and is, essentially a horror story born of my Stephen King and Lost Boys obsession. It has graphic and uncomfortable scenes of violence and abuse. (In fact I cut some of the scenes from the version I wrote when I was 12 for being too gratutitous!) It has blood and guts and gore and fear. It has anger and hate and obsession and control. But I wanted it to be more than that, and that is where the musical soundtrack came in. There needed to be hope and there are three things that deliver it in the book.

Danny’s friends. Well, I mean Michael really. God, I love him! Wonderful doe eyed Michael. The bad boy in town with the jailbird brother and boozing parents. He and Danny were kindred spirits from the start. And from the start he knew that Danny was in trouble and wanted to help him. And then there is Anthony; Michael’s brother and in many ways Danny’s saviour. He and Michael never gave up, even when it seemed like all was lost.

Lucy. The love interest. Of course! Theirs is a hit and miss relationship for most of the book. He likes her but thinks she is above him. She adores him but he seems to push her away at every turn.

And then, the music. The music! Because music provides hope when the rest of life refuses to. When I was a teenager, when I was lost and confused, sad or angry, music was there for me. Like Danny, I used to lie on my bedroom floor with the speakers on either side of my head. I used to try to locate and pinpoint every drumbeat, every spiralling guitar riff, every change of note or vocal, every arrangement or chord, whatever it was, whatever the magical unknown thing was that made me shiver from my head to my toes. The spine tingle. You know it. How does music do that?? Just like Danny, I lived for it. That, and the lyrics. I used to write them on my bedroom wall and on my floorboards. I sometimes wonder if whoever has lived in that house since then, still comes across them sometimes when redecorating! I hope so. I wrote them all, all the words that touched and inspired or comforted me through those times. Music really can save you, you know.

So then followed what I think of as the lost years. The years of very little writing. The years of University degrees, moving out, jobs and children. But still, every night without fail, Danny and his friends came into my head at night. I would rewrite the story again and again, adding scenes, taking some away. I knew these people so well. They spoke to me and acted out their dramas before I fell asleep. I never thought I would get the time to write again, and I certainly never believed in myself enough to make the time. Until my youngest child was due to start school and I can’t explain what happened. I read a book, started reading more again, listening to music again, finding me  again. You never really notice how much of you gets lost while child rearing and working, but it happens. You forget what you loved. You forget what once made you you.

I picked up a pen and a pad of paper. I was too afraid to type anything into the computer, can you believe that? It was such a fragile and private thing. Me, the writer. No way. No chance. But no one would know, would they? It wouldn’t hurt just to see… So the pen hit the paper just like in the old days and somehow there it was, just like before. Danny’s story. The Boy… His gruesome step-father, his estranged mother, the best friends in the world ever and music….

Once I started writing in the summer of 2011, I could not stop. My pen flew over the pages. It was like a dirty secret to start with! I used to stuff the notepad under the bed or under the sofa if I was disturbed! I didn’t know why I was doing it you see. Why? After all these years? For what purpose? Then a good friend, in fact the only friend I had ever shared writing with asked me to show it to her. I switched to the laptop, started again, and sent her chapter after chapter.

And on it went. I wrote it all in third person. And then changed it all to first! I wrote it all from Danny’s point of view, and then changed it to both his and Howard’s. I started this wordpress blog and started posting chapters on here and sharing them to Facebook and Twitter. That was a brave move I can tell you. And for the longest time I was just talking to myself, my words lost and floating in cyberspace. And then a couple of Facebook friends started reading it, and asking for more. They said they had the story in their heads all of the time, and needed to know more!

Eventually I started sending it out to agents and publishers, along with The Mess Of Me which was written very quickly in this period of time. Obviously you know the rest. I put my books with an independent ebook publisher who were then called Autharium and are now called Indie. I have not looked back. When the story was over, it wasn’t over. I wrote a sequel called This Is The Day which is out now.

So, why the relaunch? After so much time, so much rewriting, why not leave it be? Well, it’s hard to say. Or rather, it would take me a long time, and hopefully this blog post has gone some way to explain it. I love this book and I felt like it deserved more time and attention. Another edit. A new front cover. The two parts merged back into the one long book it was originally intended to be. Yes, it is ridiculously long. I hold my hands up. I don’t deny it. I have broken all of the rules! Long, no obvious target market (fans of horror/drama who also like grunge and Britpop? Anyone??) I know it and I admit it and I am fine with it. Because I had to write this book. I had to write it and I had to rewrite it one last glorious time. I don’t care if no one reads it. Really, I don’t. This book is for me. It’s my indulgence. This is the book I wanted to read and couldn’t find. This is the book with all of my fears and hopes and dreams steamrollered into one gory blood thirsty tale. These are the characters I wished I knew in real life. They will be in my head forever. This is the book I would have always regretted not writing. So it is my worst seller and I have now spent way more money on it than I ever hope to get back! Fuck it. It was worth it.

This book, more than any of the others, this book, is me.