charles barrow's writing

So. Snow. We woke up this morning and the world outside was blanketed in it. When I say 'we' I mean us on the the south coast of England. If you don't live in the UK you may not fully appreciate the enormity of us Brits waking to find that snow has fallen in the night. In essence it means the country grinds to a halt. It's like a public holiday, but without any warning, or the themed special offers stacked high in the supermarket. It only takes a smattering of the stuff and our trains stop running (although they're on strike anyway at the moment), and our postal workers can't get through to deliver the letters (although they're on strike at the moment too), the roads become impassable (the gritter lorries can't get out of the depot because of the icy conditions), and everyone generally thinks "Fuck it, let's just take the day off work and head to a local hill with a tea tray toboggan." Just don't end up in A&E folks because I actual

November's theme, on BookTube and the like, is Non-Fiction. Non-Fiction November. It's got a nice ring to it. However, I always have a non-fiction book on the go (currently Wintering by Katherine May) so I decided to stay alliterative but go off piste and, indeed, go 'no nonsense' by reading two of the biggest books on my shelves. I'll admit that I do suffer a bit from Big Book Fear (it's a real thing) so these books represent a real challenge for me. The two big beasts in question are; Ducks, Newburyport (2019) by Lucy Ellmann, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexandre Dumas. These are real chunky tomes. Ducks is 987 pages long, Cristo is 872. And they couldn't be more different in style. Ducks is set in C21st America, its style is  ultra modern  stream-of-consciousness,  and its USP is that it's written in one, very long, sentence (in reality it's about 8 sentences) but the author frequently uses the phrase 'The fact that..' where o

 #Victober continued So I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, as my attempt to get involved in this year's Victober. And you'll know if you read my last entry that this wasn't the recommended book, for the group read. In fact, I've not followed any of the rules, as laid down, so far, but I'm not too bothered tbh. I really enjoyed Jane Eyre, it's stayed with me for the past few weeks. Funny isn't it? You finally get around to reading these classics and you realise why they've lasted the course and have the reputation that they do. And why millions love them. Well, that's probably true for Jane Eyre, but not for all the classics, though I'm sure you'd find an advocate for any that you cared to name, if you searched hard enough. Anyway, back to Victober. I still had two weeks left of the month and felt I should continue in the vein that I started; by not recognising any of the rules - read a book by a British author, written during the reign of

As mentioned in early September, October is all about Victorian literature. In a theme tagged #VicTober on Youtube, where I first learned of it, readers are encouraged to read books written during the Victorian period - 1819-1901 if you wanna get pedantic. Furthermore it has to be by an English writer. BookTubers are reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as a group read, but I decided to skip over that as I read a Hardy recently (Under The Greenwood Tree), and had my heart set on reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte instead. I thought I must have read this book before, at school maybe, but no. I didn't recognise large swathes of the story. I definitely knew that I'd seen a film or TV adaptation because I remembered a crucial, very cinematic, plot point that comes right near the end. Anyways, I enjoyed it. It was slow going at times, as classic novels can be. Some of the language is overly flowery - why use one word when you can use ten. Some of the religious and

This post is an update, a follow-on from my last entry.  So I've spent the month of September focussing on the reading of short stories. Short stories aren't my usual go-to choice of reading material. I don't know why, I think I may be secretly prejudiced against them, which I'll have to spend some time (in therapy) unpacking. I have read some great ones in the past, but I just don't reach for them when I need something to read. That may change now, however, following this exercise. My intention this month was to read as many as I could. I aimed to read 20, because I didn't want to overcommit myself, so I was surprised when I just totted up my list and found I'd read 47, and I'm secretly delighted about that. I also wanted to read widely; work by lots of different authors, some I'd never read before, and in different genres, some I don't usually favour. That kind of happened, but the collections I had in my possession tended to focus on dead, whi

It's Short Story September- at least it is in my house. I'm getting into the idea of themed reading weeks/months. I'm already geared up for VicTober (Victorian October) next month - I came across the idea on Youtube, where several Booktubers are already talking about it. But more about VicTober in October. This month I'll be diving into these collections. I also have further collections on my Kindle, Murakami's Men Without Women, and Bolu Babalola's Love in Colour particularly peak my interest. I always love the idea of a short story, but don't very often find myself reading one. And since I'm increasingly drawn to writing some more short fiction, I figure I ought to read a whole variety from different genres and time periods, genders, ethnicities and sexualities. These below, skew white and male, though the ebooks balance things out a little, and I intend to visit the library to find a more diverse range of authors that I don't currently have any wo

I've been dipping into AirBorne over the last few days. It's a massive free airshow in the skies over Eastbourne that's been running for the past four days. Luckily for me, I live only a ten minute walk to the seafront, where the whole spectacle takes place. I had some family come down to stay, and we made a day of it on the beach with a picnic both yesterday and on Friday, and I wondered down again today to catch some highlights. The variety of aircraft and talent on display was incredible. We'd no sooner finished applauding the stunt pilot, when the paragliders leapt from a plane and coasted down to land on the beach in front of us. We'd only just waved off the wing-walkers (hats off to those insanely brave women), when we had to jamb our fingers into our ears to stop from being deafened by the Typhoon jet. The Battle of Britain Memorial flight, brought a Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire jet into view, and a tear to the eye. There was a Chinook helicopter, and a co

My summer tbr* shelf.  I set these books aside in June *to be read over the summer. I will often do this, choose a handful of books to be read in the coming months, and I am often spectacularly unsuccessful at sticking with my choices. Earmarking, or, bookmarking, if you will, five books to read in succession, patently ignores the fact that there are shops out in the world dedicated to selling me more books. And it also assumes that I have the willpower to avoid buying said books, and opening one of them instead of one from my existing, carefully curated, selection. What I'm trying to say is that there is very little chance I will actually read through this selection over the summer, and that there will be other titles, not pictured, that I will choose to read (on a whim) instead. This is the quandary of every reader. There are too many books in the world, all vying for our time and attention. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Also, despite knowing all of the above, in the

I've been thinking about re-designing my ebook covers, so I've been checking out book covers generally, seeing what's in vogue, what's not, and found these two inexplicably similar examples. One book is a novel, so fiction, the other is nonfiction, both with different authors & publishers. But surely the same designer, right? Same diver, in the same trunks, on the same board. Almost the same colour sky, and white & blue font colours. Weird. Too much of a co-incidence, surely. If these are done by two different designers perhaps one of them can claim/blame zeitgeist. I like that the diver is poised and ready in the first image, and just starting his fall in the second. A moment in time, captured nicely. I'd pick up both of these titles in a bookshop, judging them on their covers alone.

I've been pirated. I've had one of my books - The Stolen Days of John Mann - stolen (oh the irony). A website that calls itself an on-line library, has been recruiting 'editors' whose task it is to upload ebooks that will then be available to download from the site. The 'library' doesn't seem to much care where their 'editors' are sourcing their uploads from. Obviously self-published authors are an easy target for this kind of scam because we have no big publishing house behind us to threaten legal action if the uploads aren't removed. Users subscribe to the site and pay a membership fee for access to all the 'free' content. So the website's creators are receiving payment for content that they don't own, and the authors and creators of said content get nothing, no royalties at all.  I found out about this this morning from @BookSpotlight on Twitter. They tweeted about it as several authors had contacted them to highlight what was

Okay so the last couple of weeks have been tough ones for me - mental health wise. I was motoring along quite well, beforehand, and then I hit a brick wall. It's really not uncommon that this is the way it happens, which I suppose makes it a pattern for me. There was no particular big event, or inciting incident if you will, that tipped me over into depression, just a drip, drip of small things that added to the pool of worries and anxieties (if they aren't the same thing), and suddenly I can't get off the sofa. I'm single, so it's easy not to have to get up, get dressed, leave the flat. There is no-one to chivvy me along. I don't work at the moment so I have nowhere to get to by 9am, and no one to call me for missing my shift. And I recently moved to a town where almost no one knows me, just a couple of folk I say hello to in the communal hallways of the building where I live. So it's really easy for me to just not participate in the day. I'm in a kind

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago, while I was walking on the seafront. It was a sunny Easter Day, the sea was calm, and that blue sailed boat was coasting along lazily, tacking parallel with the shore. I'm really pleased with the picture, the outlook I mean. There is something tropical about the sea when it's viewed through trees and shrubs, it's as if I'm on a desert island watching the boat warily - is it rescue, or is it peril? The whole idea puts me immediately, and firmly, in Robinson Crusoe territory. The 'romance' of being stranded on an island, living on my wits, eating coconut and herring, sleeping in a hammock, wearing a grass skirt (that's got to be itchy, right?). And then....and then one day I spot a footprint in the sand. I'm not alone.  I've never actually read the book, so all of my experience of the story comes from the 1964 TV version, that had the most glorious theme tune, and a handsome Crusoe. It was escapist kids televisi

Well, happy to report that the short story I wrote about in the February posting entitled Emergence, got chosen for publication in a Sussex Wildlife Trust anthology of writing to celebrate spring. The anthology is called Emergence. If you'd like to read it you can do just that via this link  Sussex Wildlife Trust It was a very quick turnaround. The submission deadline was February 28th and I received the email to say the anthology had been published on Friday 15th April. Very speedy then, as these things go. It's always good news to get something published. Except your own Obituary, maybe. I've been trying to work on building a portfolio of published writing, in a variety of places, and it's been slow going I'll admit. This is the fourth thing I've had accepted for publication, so I'm happy about it. It's done wonders for my confidence, and my state of mind, when I struggle sometimes to believe that I'm any good at writing at all. I intend to focus m

This is a marker post. A post that is just marking time until I can think of something useful to say. I'm struggling at the moment to achieve much of anything. The days and weeks have been rolling past and I don't have anything of value to show for them. There are legitimate excuses, of course. But they are only because of the same issues that are affecting everyone. Two year pandemic, slow recovery overtipped by rampant inflation and galloping fuel prices. In the doldrums as the job search falters, no responses, no luck, no glimmer of interest from any employer. I'm doing my best to find and stick to a routine that's a positive response to all this. I do write my journal every morning, and then I take a crack at the Wordle word of the day. And then I go walking because...well, just because. 

A short story I had high hopes of getting published just got rejected. It was a kindly rejection, as these things go - I was let down far more lightly than I have been in the past by some people who professed to love me - but it was still 'No thanks. Nah.' Happy to say I'm not crushed this time, which is growth of sorts. I think this is because I have another story nearing completion, for an anthology of writings about Spring. This short story, at its heart, is full of optimism then, like the season itself, so maybe my mood is just aligned with that, and has somewhat bullet proofed me against disappointments. The submission rules dictate a 150 word limit for the story. With some judicious editing (read merciless) of the first couple of drafts I'm currently resting at 149 words. A joyous position to be in because when you have so few words to play with, so few bricks with which to build a three dimensional world, having one to spare is like finding a £20 note in your jac

I've been enthralled by Green Planet, David Attenborough's latest triumph, currently being screened by the BBC. The production values are just gorgeous, as we've come to expect from these films, but the stories behind the plants that we get up-close and personal with are just extraordinary. I've been watching it on my own but, at least twice in every program, I've asked the TV (and any other piece of furniture that might be listening) 'How the actual Dickens does the plant know to do that?' If it wouldn't alarm my elderly neighbours, I'd be shouting the question. What has been prompting this? Well, here's an example, we've seen a type of grass in Africa that needs its seed to be buried in the soil swiftly, in order to avoid it lying on the ground for any length of time in the extreme heat. So, it disguises its seeds as antelope dung in the hopes that the local dung beetles will roll the seeds away and bury them...at the perfect depth needed f

I recently discovered a series of books called Everyman's Pocket Classics. Each volume is filled with short stories from a variety of well known authors (current to classic), and is arranged around a theme. Love Stories, Bedtime Stories, Christmas Stories, Cat, Erotic, Dog, Detective, Ghost, Wedding, Motherhood, the list goes on and on. They are handsome books with colourful covers, a stripy spine, and a built-in bookmark. They are hardbacks, but being 'Pocket' editions they come in at the size of a paperback. I like them a lot. My favourite theme is the one that focuses on cities, hence the volumes you see below - yes I realise that Russia is a country. F urther titles include  Berlin, Prague, Florence, and Rome. I've been picking up my copies in second-hand bookshops and paying only a few £££s for each one, which is great value. I love the city of London, it's somewhere I'll be visiting again very soon. I've enjoyed some great stays in Paris, and would lov