charles barrow's writing

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...

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