charles barrow's writing

It's snowing outside. Us Brits get very animated about even a light dusting of snow. Either we rush out into the garden to desperately scrape together enough of the stuff to build an undersized snow person, or we declare a national emergency, and panic buy pasta, and bog roll. Three inches of snow and the trains stop running, a five inch blanket and the electricity supply fails, and we call family to tell them how much we love them before saying our final goodbyes. I submitted a short story for publication, a piece of micro fiction. I just wanted to highlight that fact. It's important that I remind myself that I am achieving things in lockdown, that I'm still moving towards my goals. Just more slowly than hoped because there's an avalanche of snow up to my ankles out there people, give me a break. Photo is the author's own  

My mum and dad both worked at Warner Brother's film studios, in Teddington (UK), when they were teenagers. It's where they met, in fact. It was something of a family tradition, working there, as both had either aunts, an uncle, a mother or a sister all employed in one capacity or another at the studio. While my mum worked in the offices, as a gofer, my dad was an errand boy, cycling around the studio lot delivering messages. But family legend has it that he did have one brush with the glamorous side of film production when he was promoted to the role of clapperboard boy on a James Mason film, Candlelight in Algeria (1944). Apparently, my dad harboured ambitions to work his way up to cameraman eventually, but the Luftwaffe put paid to those dreams when the studio was badly damaged in a V2 rocket attack in July of '44. Damn Hitler to hell for millions of reasons, but I feel really bad for my dad that he had to watch that dream of his go up in smoke. Curious to see the movie t...

This, really, is a reminder to myself that I shouldn't give up on things so easily. I've just picked up a book that I gave up on reading previously, and I'm really enjoying it. The book was a smash hit, bestseller back in the early 90s. It was the title that everyone was reading that year, and it was a critical success as well as a commercial one. Of course, I jumped on that bandwagon, and I bought it, and I dove right in, and... I hit a brick wall. It doesn't happen often that I give up on a book, but it does happen sometimes, and it happened with this one. I struggled, so I closed the book, and put it down. But, here's the thing, the author did his job on me. The echo of the book never left me, even after decades. The flavour of it lingered. I don't know whether it was the characters, or the atmosphere, or the insights into a different culture that fascinated me, or a mixture of all of those things, but it put a hook deep into me and I never managed to shake i...

 I went walking through Kipling's Garden in Rottingdean (East Sussex) recently, I'd been looking forward to going for a long while, and it proved to be both a winning and a disappointing experience. Winning, you say? Yes. The garden is quite large and sub-divided into several smaller 'rooms' with different planting, and features, in each. And I was able to wander down brick paths from one room to another, in a haphazard way, enjoying the cobblestone walls, and the peep-hole windows, and the shrubs that were still blooming in November, one with a gorgeous scent, and small pale pink flowers, that I guessed was a Daphne but I couldn't be certain. Disappointed? Yes. Although the garden did originally belong to Kipling when he lived in the nearby house, it didn't look anything like the garden that I walked through, which was transformed into it's current layout/design by a subsequent owner. Hmmm. I wanted to imagine Rudyard wandering through it, and pausing to si...

Reviewing my reading list from last autumn, I see that it consisted entirely of Stephen King books, great stuff, but this year's bookshelf is far more varied genre-wise, and far more diverse author-wise. A mix of ethnicities, genders and sexualities. This selection is far more representative of who and what I've been reading this year. I often look to see which authors are being nominated for prizes, and try to read the books that win them. I also take note of what Barack Obama reads, he recommends some good stuff. I've just seen a long range weather forecast for the UK, and they are warning of a long cold winter ahead. From a curl up and read point of view that is nothing but good news. Photo is the author's own.

 Pleased to share the news that I had a drabble published yesterday at 101words.org Do please have a read, and leave a comment, or Tweet, or share. Many thanks. 'Pain lances through her chest, stealing her breath. Foolish to be exerting herself like this, but damn the doctor’s orders.'  Read More Here

Here is the first drabble I wrote. I think I might have mentioned, in an earlier post, that I wrote it to send to a website that was calling for competition entries. They set the gene as SciFi, and the theme as Inventions . I spent a lot of time on this, a new writing form for me, honing and editing until I was happy. I had a lot of fun with it, and when it was finished I emailed it off, meeting the given deadline, and was very pleased with myself for having had the discipline to complete the given task. Listen, I know some people can knock out a great drabble in five minutes flat, but that's not how I work. I write, I edit, I leave well alone for a few days, I return to write, I re-edit, then ignore for a week, then return etc etc. I'd still be working on it now if the deadline hadn't forced me to send it out. Anyway, there was no happy ending to this story. I logged on, on the day following the competition deadline, only to find that the website hadn't changed, the la...