charles barrow's writing

I'm always happy to bump into strange, weird, wonderful sculptures and statues when I'm out walking in the countryside, or through the woods. I happened upon these startled owls the other day - that's their official name, Startled Owls, like Barn Owls or Long Eared Owls. I'll leave it to you to decide wether they fall into the weird or the wonderful category. Photo is the author's own

I am now the proud owner of a new ISBN number, my third. I won't bore you by listing them here. It's an achievement getting an ISBN. Like getting a medal for crossing a finishing line, or a certificate for completing an arduous academic course. I got this ISBN for finally (finally) publishing John Mann - At Day's End. It's been a long time in the making, but it's made. This book completes the All The Days of John Mann trilogy that I accidentally started writing back in 2013; as I said, a long time in the making. You can download a free copy of the book from Smashwords.com (click on the cover image on the right to link to the book's page on that site). I hope you enjoy it. 

I was looking for an excuse to post this photo. How could I post it and make it seem relevant to anything? November. It's the first day of November, it's grey, dreary and very wet outside. A day to hurry down the street, ignoring everything around you in a rush to get home. Autumn is often like this, but it can be warm and sunny and if you slow down and look around then you might spot a mushroom village like this one. Writing. A few posts ago I wrote about Agatha Christie's penchant for poisoning her fictional victims. I was talking about digitalis, in particular, that time but now I'm wondering if the Queen of Murder (a new nickname that probably won't catch on), if Christie ever used mushrooms to kill off a rich old relative and prompt Miss Marple to get snooping.* Sure, some fungi are delicious in a risotto (with parmesan) but others cause the most hideous, lingering deaths. I'm certain she would have known which was which. I've no idea what kind of

John Mann - At Day's End will be available to download very soon, as soon as I upload it to Smashwords in fact. It's the third, and final, book in the John Mann trilogy. And it needs a cover, of course, and working on it provided me with an opportunity to revamp the covers on books 1 and 2. This is their first public outing.  I'm almost happy with them. I think I'm too close to be objective so I'll live with them here for a few days to see if they still sing to me at the weekend. They may, of course, have started to nag and shout by then, but either way I'll have my answer. Photos are the author's own

As mentioned in my last post, I have to leave the flat I’ve lived in for the past seven years, so the past few weeks have been tinged with sadness and, at times, alarm (have you seen the cost of hiring a removal company?). But, of course, there have been moments of excitement too at the thought of all the new experiences I’ll have in the new place. I have found somewhere else to go and, you know what they say, different windows, different horizons? I have also finished writing and editing  John Mann – At Day’s End . Can I get a little fanfare? It’s good to go, just waiting on the cover. This book has been, literally, years in the making (three if memory serves) so it feels especially good to finally be done with it. And it seems apt that it should be finished while I’m still in this flat, where it was born, and where all the hard work on it happened. And now I’ve finished it? I can start looking around for something new to work on, after all, there are a whole lot of different win

I have to move. I've been given notice on the flat I've lived in for seven years, and I have two months to find a new home. This means I'll be having a lot of dealings with my least favourite kind of person, after a dentist, by which I mean an Estate Agent. Just yesterday I had conversations with two of them who couldn't have given fewer fucks about the situation I find myself in. Thank God for the internet, at least in this scenario, because it means I can view properties on-line from the comfort of my, soon to be ex, home without having to converse with any agent at all. I know that one of the concerns about the internet is that it's reducing our ability to socialise and interact with people in the real world, but when that person is an Estate Agent then that can only be a good thing, if you ask me. If only I could get my teeth checked on-line.

I listened to poet Ian McMillan on the radio, offering advice on becoming creative, about making a start on becoming creative. Look out of the train window, he said, go for a walk, write about what you see, what it reminds you of, what childhood memories it stirs. Just make a start, don't worry if it's not perfect, just write something down. Become creative and it puts you on a continuum that extends from William Shakespeare, through Jane Austin, to you. And don't be daunted by that thought but, rather, revel in the possibilities and the potential.

Isle of Wight Pride today #iownmydestiny photo is the author's own

I recently watched actors Aidan Turner and Toni Collette on the Graham Norton show, and they both mentioned how often they checked the time to see it was 11:11. They both said that it happened more often than would seem likely, and had no explanation as to why it should happen with this combination of numbers more than any other. It was fascinating to hear other people talk about this so publicly, on television, because the same thing has been happening to me for years. It happened again this morning, which prompted me to post this. I have puzzled in the past, why and how it should be that I so often glance at my watch or a clock at this exact time but I've never figured out why. After watching the Norton show, I decided to Google 11:11 and quickly wished I hadn't - Global Shopping Festival, Uri Geller's theory of 11 parallel universes, a message from the angels, and many more bizarre theories. I've decided that from now on, when it happens again, I will just accept

I was out walking and the sight of this beautifully elegant stand of foxgloves stopped me dead in my tracks. Not literally, luckily, but it could have done. Every part of the foxglove plant is poisonous. A fatal dose would stop your heart in, well, a heartbeat. Handy to know if you want to bump someone off, in a story of course. Look no further for evidence than crime queen Agatha Christie who used this method to kill victims in several of her stories. Elegant but deadly, then. The foxgloves too. Photo is the author's own

I've got reservations. Not the type that'll get me into a swanky hotel, but reservations about my story, as a trilogy, and more specifically the endings of each story. And it's daft, but I worry that neither Parts 1 nor 2 have a proper ending - and don't even ask about my fears for the ending that I've crafted for Part 3. With a cool head, I realise that endings in parts 1 and 2 of trilogies are, by their very nature, open, otherwise how would the story continue? So, I suppose, my worries are more about whether the endings, though open, are satisfying. I believe that I've ended each one in a good place, plot wise. Something has been achieved, the task that has occupied the characters has been completed (a monster slain, if you like), while another path has opened up before them. And this is how it should be, isn't it? An ending, of sorts, and then a continuation. It's not an easy line to walk in a satisfactory way, but I think I've done it well eno

I'm still editing my story. It's been a long road, littered with many perils - too many characters? Not enough action? No tension? Unsatisfactory ending? I've wrestled with them all. But chief amongst my headaches at the moment are capital letters. City, city, Government, government, Abbey, abbey, Sergeant, sergeant. I thought I knew these rules but suddenly I've become unsure and have lost my way. I can't tell you how many times I've changed some of these examples from lower, to upper, and then back to lower again. I've googled and feel none the wiser, I bought a book on punctuation, I've studied other novels, but I never seem to find the exact right example in the exact right context. I've almost decided to use lower case in every single instance, figuring that there will still be mistakes, but fewer on average. After all, this system never hurt k.d. lang or ee cummings. I could do worse than follow their example.

I just spent an hour in my local library. I usually read novels but I went in to find a short story to read. Any short story. I want to study short story writing, good and bad. Finding time, making time, to sit in a library and read is a surprisingly hard thing to do for some reason. I could of course take books out to read at home but this exercise is about sitting in my local library and reading whichever story I pick out from the rather small selection of volumes that my local library stocks. Perhaps short stories aren't very popular amongst borrowers so the library doesn't stock many titles or, conversely, maybe they are incredibly popular and all out on loan. It's an enjoyable project. I have read a Dickensian whodunnit (Edward Marston), a pulp fiction mystery (Micky Spillane), a sci-fi classic (Ray Bradbury) and a couple of dreadful horror stories - as in horror stories that were dreadfully bad and so I will leave the authors anonymous. There have al

Eleven months away. There were personal reasons, and big events. A change of heart, and then staying true. A lot of hard work and an easing back. Questioning if I was still on the right track, and very many rail journeys. A year in a life in the blink of an eye. Now, where were we? Photo is the author's own.