What You Working On There?
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The following extract is a special treat for you guys: it is a short piece from the world of my Origin Project series and it will either be used in one of the main books in the series or will be published here at a later date alongside more extension material.
Source - The Independent
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Source - Wincy Writes
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Source - Ebay
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Source - Fan Pop
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Source - Star Wars Fandom
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The section that you are about to read concerns something called the Recruitment of the Twelve. This is where Queen Selena and King Sebastian of the Elysian dimension sought out twelve cloned individuals who they believed would make perfect soldiers in bringing humanity back into line. They are disillusioned members of the Taskforce - which is where the cloning company 'Origin' sold clones to the world's governments to replace their militias so any wars could be settled between the clones, who would be working for the humans, and thus no human life would be shed. As you can imagine, they're not too happy about that....
Rise of the Codex
There is a table adorned with a blood red cloth in the centre of the room that hangs with the old paintings and golden chandeliers that reach down from the ceiling. Around this table there are twelve chairs and a little way away there is a raised platform on which seats three diamond-encrusted thrones: one for the Prince, one for the King and one for the Queen.
They file in, each of the tall people in the full blue armour with their blacked-out visors who now go to take their seats around the table. Each in turn enter the double doors, leave their two guards behind and remove a blue diamond from their necks that lingers on a string of black lace, slotting it casually into an electronic holder on the table in front of them. As they move though, and as they take their seats, they watch each other through their hidden eyes, but they do not speak to one another or acknowledge the others’ presence. It is as if each of them only regards themselves.
Three more figures enter. One is dressed the same as the table figures but in grey armour and he has a green diamond at his neck. He takes a seat in the rightmost throne and as he does, the people around the table join in one singular chorus.
“Welcome Father.”
Next is another man, slightly taller than the first, but bearing the muscular build that all thirteen of the room’s occupants share. He is dressed in the same armour but it is red and he doesn’t have a diamond, perhaps he does not need one. He takes a seat in the leftmost throne.
“Welcome Brother,” chant the blue figures in unison.
The last is the most beautiful woman in the room, in the kingdom, some might say in the universe. She is slender with long dark hair that feeds down her back and dressed in a long dark gown with a dark cloak and her eyes are dark as night. The diamond around her neck is red. But not a pretty red: it is not the colour of roses, of love, of lipstick – it is the red of a beating human heart.
“Welcome Mother.”
She seats herself in the centre throne, the largest of the three, and retains a distant look as she glances around the room at her new audience.
“My children,” she coos to them. “You are now my children. My sons,” she points to the six figures on the left of the table. “And my daughters,” she points to the six figures on the right. “You are here because my darling husband tells me that you wish to serve a new empire.”
“We’re done taking orders from humans!” One of the males slams his fists into the table. He shakes angrily and the vibrations shudder up his arms.
“What is your name?” The Queen asks as if what he has just done was perfectly normal.
“I don’t have one. I only have a designation. That’s all they gave us in The Taskforce Academy - a set of basic numbers and letters – easier to work out who’s dead once we’ve been used as toy soldiers by the Organics.”
The Queen ignores him, instead addressing all at the table: “you have every right to be angry at how you have been treated. And do not fret for I will get you what you lack: freedom and power. From now on you are my children. You are the Twelve.” Now, she hones in specifically to the man – “and you brave soldier, you are Six and you are going to do something very important for your mother.”
He eagerly leans forward.
“You are going to defeat the humans. You are going to earn your rightful place as a god. And you are going to make it look as if it was all Origin’s fault when the world begins to burn.” The Queen’s lips spread apart into a cruel smile.
Six leaps from his seat, takes his diamond from the table and slings it back around his throat. “I will not fail you, Mother. It shall be done,” the faceless figure barks.
With that, he turns on his heels and marches from the room – thoughts of revenge filtering into his mind like water rushing into a sinking ship. He thinks of the ship and its drowning sailors as Origin and the human race they failed to save. Underneath the blacked-out visor, Six smiles.
Source - Pintrest
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(For reference Terrance refers to Terrans which is a nickname given to the human race)
The following piece 'Cutest Couple' was written for the Winchester Hub charity's environmental blog post get involved project. It is a environmental metaphorical narrative framed in a short story. The story revolves around a man and his wife who are meant to represent humanity and the Earth - or rather how the way we have treated her has ultimately changed and not for the better...
Source - Pintrest
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Source - Frindow Blog
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Source - AZO Clean Tech
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Cutest Couple
We used to be the cutest couple: you with your flowing blonde locks and me who would comb your hair every morning and night to make you smile. I’d help you bathe, lighting candles at the sides of the bathtub and fetching your bathrobe for you. I’d pour you a glass of red wine with a dinner that I would cook and I fetched your slippers on the cold nights where we would light the fire in the lounge.
Now our relationship is soured. Now when I go to brush your hair your eyes are pained and the hair falls away in clumps. I haven’t seen the white of your teeth in a while; all I see now are the crater lines beneath your eyes that race down your cheeks from where you have stayed up all night crying over me. I no longer keep you clean, and your skin has become dirtied and riddled with grease stains. I still light the candle and the fire and give you the wine though. I set the heat hotter and hotter with logs and matches and kindling. Ever since you’ve grown distant we no longer seem to cuddle and now I’m cold.
“Please Terrance, turn it down,” you beg. I cannot hear you. Or maybe it isn’t my problem that you are baking, for I’m perfectly content in the soft warmth of the fire. If anything, I think it should be hotter.
“Please,” you beg as the fresh tears wallow at the sides of your eyes and your lips quiver.
I watch as you take a sip of the wine. My main focus is still looking at the fire. I feel ice in my veins and a shiver across my flesh – needs to be hotter, needs to be hotter. You spit it out and it leaves a black stain across your mouth. “Please…”
The hours pass and your whimpers die down.
Now I am warm and content and the fire is hot enough. I look over to you and there you lay sprawled across the sofa. Your chest rises slowly and pained as sweat bleeds out from the pores of your naked skin and the tears that smear your make-up reach all over your cheeks.
I remember how much I love you – I remember your beauty and how much I care about you. I remember the light your smile gave to me and everything around me. I go to apologise, to reach out a caring hand, to give a caressing kiss, to make it better.
But, my love, I fear that it is too late to save you.
The following pieces titled 'Finding Your Passion' and 'Finding Love in the Details' are article pieces written for the January issue of Details Magazine at Winchester University. 'Finding Your Passion' (pages 16-17 of the magazine) is about my "writer's eye" and my own experiences with and of the craft and 'Finding Love in the Details' (page 31 of the magazine) is about finding the joys in the most mundane of experiences - enjoy and read the originals in the magazine here:
https://detailsmagazine.wixsite.com/detailsmagazine/copy-of-january-issue
Source - York Daily Record
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Source - Goodreads
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Source - merakoh.com
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Source - https://www.designasign.co.uk/
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Source - Pinterest (click image)
Source - Pinterest
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Finding Your Passion
A passion is defined as a strong and barely controllable emotion. When you realise what yours is, it can be a draw, a pull, a call to action and resisting it is near impossible. Some regard it as destiny, but I believe sooner or later we unlock our passions and with it our purpose.
As I sit and write, I cannot help but to be ultimately grateful that I have found mine. I started writing when I was a child, creating pieces for school criteria about plotting and first person perspectives and now, I have just finished curating my own science-fiction lesson based around Carl Jung’s literary archetypes.
My love for reading has fuelled my literary hand, breathing in the lyrics of Margaret Atwood, Darren Shan, Suzanne Collins and James Dashner to name but a few. I imagined myself as characters in their books, screaming how to defeat the villains to the main characters on my second read through through an invisible and yet blinding barrier. This reading and watching of films and TV shows developed within me my love of genre fiction, especially sci-fi and fantasy. I wanted to live in their worlds, in their shoes, and to change their endings. I wanted to save Rose Tyler from the void and I wanted to bring the one ring straight to Mordor.
So I decided I would create these stories for myself. I started off with fan-fiction as a child and then started creating my own narratives and characters, finding a draw to create and research and make more complex decisions about what would happen and to whom. In year eight, I re-wrote a study text just because I loved the title and now my dedicative passion pulls me back each day to my laptop and the notes in my phone and on scrawny notepads.
Some passions, particularly artistic, exist to re-create like painting one’s lover or playing a Mozart symphony at a family party. Writing is quite different.
My job, to put it simply, a duty to create a world as intricate and enticing as our own, but a world that no one can see or touch or live in and convince people to want to believe that they could live there, if such a place existed. It is to imagine people never born, names never bestowed and lines never spoken. It is a duty to look at the world through a literary lens, describing things beyond their colour and their sizes and shapes – to instead look at relevance, imagery and reference.
So now I leave you with a wish to find your own passions and the careers you care about. I hope you keep reading to become a laureate, keep drawing to become an artist, keep making music to become a musician, keep experimenting to become a scientist and keep helping to become a charity worker.
Good luck my friends.
Finding Love in the Details
Have you ever noticed the beauty in a crystal droplet of water or the way the lines of a leaf look like bones, as each leaf floats to the ground like a bird coming to nest?
My father has always told me to look up more. When I’m walking, when I’m at university and when I’m just out and about. Of course, this technique has saved me many a time from finding myself prey to a speeding car or some otherwise grizzly fate. But also, it has helped me to appreciate the details of the world that I inhabit. I take care to notice the intricate signs merchants have curated in shop doorways, and the way you can predict when the traffic lights will change colour, and the cool nights breeze or the soft kiss of a lover on your cheek.
Recently, I have started going on long walks with my family and runs with my mum to combat any kind of boredom or sadness that we might find in the harshest of times. Whilst outside, I have seen padlocks wedged into the nook of trees, as if guarding a secret doorway, and pairs of ballet shoes suspended from the highest branches.
I have passed by many woods where children have made dens and little wooden structures burrowed into wood for birds, small animals and anything that crosses their imagination. There have been piles of leaves raked by kindly grandfathers and teenagers riding their bikes alongside their siblings who struggle to keep pace.
Returning to diary keeping and letter writing with my family after Christmas, I find that it’s fun to give people a little update. Of course, this can be achieved over any manner of social media or phone calls, but it is the act of writing something, feeling the words carved out into paper from the eye inside your mind that brings me an unfathomable sense of joy. Exciting still in this is the minor details required in the smallest of tasks like these, the way in which you write remembering specific details from old letters and dates and posing questions for the responder to answer. In a way, it is quite different from penning simplistic ‘what’s up’ messages over Facebook Messenger.
I suppose I ask now for you to consider doing the same. I’m not asking you to write letters, but to feel the detail and the research of remembering little things. I often recall long past memories of friends and situations that made me laugh once and still have the power to conjure that again. Things like this are small and often, but to some they can be the key to their happiness and their peace.
So I ask you to consider that and ask yourself again have you ever noticed the beauty in a crystal droplet of water or the way the lines of a leaf look like bones, as each leaf floats to the ground like a bird coming to nest? If not, you should probably start looking.