The past few weeks have been very thought-provoking for me.  As I continue writing ‘The Dark Shores’ (second draft) and changing huge chunks of the story here and there, I wonder to myself: why am I even doing such a huge project?  Ok, it will satisfy my fan-base as they’ve been waiting on a sequel to ‘A Wizard’s Tears’ for close to 7 years now, but really, genuinely, why do I do it?  Why does anybody write?  What purpose does it serve?

There have been times I’ve thought about stopping.  I’ve got plenty of other things to fill my time, that’s for sure – there are not enough hours in the day, generally.  Do people really need another fantasy book clogging up their bookshelf?  Well, I suppose that depends on the owner of the bookshelf.  People do like to collect things, and I’m no different – I enjoy looking at my bookcases at home and seeing all the books I’ve read (or yet to read).

Readingis certainly an enjoyable pastime, so maybe that’s all the reasons I need – it’s entertainment.  Entertaining for me to craft something, certainly satisfying to complete a book, and worthwhile to see others reading it (and even better, liking it!)  There’s a lot of genuine ‘good vibes’ about all of that.  So is that why I write? Well, partly.

The other side of it, in my mind, is that I’m trying to say something.  For years it’s tough for the likes of me to get my point of view across, out there in the real world, my ideas on this world and humanity and all that ensues can be pretty off the wall at times, so maybe the only way I’m going to get it out is to put it on paper.  Heck, I’m still learning about life myself…don’t think I’ll ever truly figure it out.  So I write to explore my feelings, and those of others, and to actually make a book mean something.  I always put a theme into my books, some hidden (or, blatantly obvious to some) messages that I hope will strike a chord with the reader, or make the reader think about something new, a way of looking at things they never did before, perhaps.  This is my main reason for writing.

‘TheDark Shores’ is a story all about conscience: what it means to make decisions that can affect everything in your life.  Where does conscience come from?  Why do some of us have strong urges to ‘do the right thing’, and others have a total lack of regard for rules/laws and prefer to just do what they want to do, and to hell with the consequences?  That’s what makes the work interesting, the way I try to put layers in it, challenge my own writing, strive to make things better and bolder than before.  It’s not just a story…but then, to those reading it, it simply will be, and there’s no harm in that.

I’d be interested to get feedback from authors on ‘why they write’; I’m sure we all have different and unique reasons for doing so.  The good thing is that from all this creativity there comes some fascinating stories, and where would we be without a good story, mmm?

Rustle those sweet wings of imperfect beauty:
The nature of them to be unique gives them their delight.
Hover and dazzle before my eyes of tainted, maladjusted sight,
Fill me with colourful passions that dance in purity.

I always sensed your work, even before I could see you:
Nurturing and guiding the plants to your beating hearts.
A magic takes hold, an effervescent sparkle of nature’s parts,
Journeying around my body, stretching to touch your hue.

Birds are singing in the growing trees:
Fleeting winds toss and sway your movements with glee.
Laughing, a sweet noise upon the breeze heading out to sea,
This is where I’m bound, a place setting me free.

Waves and sand meet in a union of splutters and wheezes:
I walk along this shore, ears astounded with this song,
Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, into dreams where I belong,
A destiny, perhaps, a solitude of new hope with the faeries.

Oh yes, in the land of the angels, I do dwell:
Spreading their work like humans who know compassion,
Beating the goodness out of their wings in sensations
That arouse the bond between humanity and idyllic dells.

Let us never forget this concocted landscape:
Of flowing hills, rivers, trees and rock,
Embraced in nature’s forge, this is what has been wrought!
A world worth saving; regeneration never too late.

From ‘A Gathering of Wings’

(c) Craig Gilbert

My first poetry book, ‘Soul Shadows’ was written during a three year period when I suffered from deep depression.  Looking back, I can clearly see the triggers for my depression; redundancy, the end of a long-term relationship, my family moving 400 miles away.  I became profoundly aware of how ‘alone’ I was, and it was the loneliness I found hardest to cope with.  Not just the loneliness that comes from a feeling of physical isolation, but much more the mental loneliness.  There was a bit inside me that felt ‘well, nobody understands me and nobody listens to me’.  Friends and family tried their best to be supportive but nothing they could say to me helped with that feeling inside my head of being completely misunderstood.  Depression was such an enigma, an unknown illness, a strange concoction of mental anxiety, and it was to be feared.

It took a long time, a lot of self discovery and soul searching to recover, but I made it.  It was only when I hit rock bottom that I took the time to analyse every facet of my being and life.  I found my deepest, darkest fears and confronted them, finding ways to release myself from their hold.

Writing was an invaluable tool in my recovery.  I started jotting down how I felt, how I really felt, and suddenly there it was, on the page staring back at me…my very first poem, ‘Fragile’.  Suddenly I had expressed just how vulnerable I was feeling, in words and self-understanding that had previously eluded me. The words of my poem showed me that I was feeling just as many people feel from time to time, and now those feelings seemed more normal, more human.  I was no different to millions of others. This connection, then, this link to other people in the human race, gave some comfort, that I wasn’t truly alone.

And so I wrote some more, and some more, and at my worst moments, the times when I thought it would be easier just to end it all, I wrote.  My first poetry book, Soul Shadows, was born. I find it an uncomfortable book to read in one sitting. There is so much emotion and pain contained in its pages; the poems became containers for all the disturbing thoughts that besieged me. When I read lines now like ‘Dark is the cosmos…’, ‘I am lost in the dark’ and ‘There’s a spirit here, struggling to get out from the dark’, I can really sense the struggle I was having, to see any light or hope in my life, at the time when I was writing a particular poem.

I then made the decision to publish Soul Shadows, although what possessed me to do so at such a time remains a mystery, perhaps I wanted everyone to read it and finally understand how I felt.  To my surprise, people wrote reviews complimenting its honesty, telling me that they felt some resonance, some relatable emotion in themselves that they could link the poems to, and that they were comforted to see someone else in a similar position to theirs. That, then, was its greatest accomplishment.  I had, inadvertently, brought people together through my poetry.

I would dearly like other people who are suffering depression to seek out their soul, and to dump their own ‘soul shadows’ onto paper, in the hope that it helps them in the same way that it did me.

I have come to think of depression as a part of our journey through life which should not be feared; it is a state of mind, and people can and do change their minds daily. There are always new days, new moments of transition, new wonders to discover, internally and externally. Embrace life, for that is all we have.

And so, I feel the time is right to release the book again, to benefit a charity that I wish I had found when I was depressed.  The Maytree Respite Centre, ‘a sanctuary for the suicidal’ (http://www.maytree.org.uk/) recently saved someone close to me, and I am donating money raised from sales of Soul Shadows to support their work.   All copies of Soul Shadows sold through this site will be signed, and contain a bonus poem (one of hope) inside the back cover. 100% of all profit from sales will be donated to Maytree.

You can choose the basic price of £6.99, or if you would like to donate more, there are the £11.99 or the £16.99 buttons below (adding £5 or £10 donation to the book price).  

Thanks for your support!

Doodle credit: Helen Harrop

Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover) - £6.99
Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover + £5 extra donation) - £11.99
Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover + £10 extra donation) - £16.99

We take a walk
through this magnificence;
a concoction of moving dreams,
a landscape of hills and fluttering butterflies.
We’re journeying through the sublime,
a place where sounds scintillate the ear
and make my inner rhythm rise.
We’re roaming free and with no purpose
than to gaze at the starry skies
that glisten with the glow of perfection.
We’re wandering through grass fields,
with mounds, and can hear the voices
of those who dwelled here once:
and yet they are still alive,
surging through us with their own
precious energy, a mutable,
touchable, inexplicable life!
We’re following the spirits
that urge us on with their whisperings,
in this other realm; we feel no fear,
just the endless sparkles of wisdom
that have been here for as long as time itself.

(c) Craig Gilbert

Take from A Gathering Of Wings

Kindred spirits run through the vibrant grass,
Barefoot and giddy with their inner karma:
Like children, at times, laughter echoing into the past,
Minds usurped by incandescence of ardour.

Maps of the world are hand-crafted and drawn,
A place so vast becomes finite and real:
Childs leave homes to have careers all their own,
In this world are billions of souls, stars to feel.

The crow flies, winking at the land below in gliding majesty.

The sun transforms the sky with swirls of colour,
Silhoutted trees pervade the delirious background:
Shimmering portals of fire and power,
We can but stand, rapt and in awe, at what we’ve found.

Across the oceans, deserts and savage terrain,
People shelter together in community and tenacity:
The elements provide a show, not just ruinous pain,
Inhospitable, maybe, but mere trials to human fantasy.

The eagle flexes its mighty wings, golden in the rising sun.

Adventure has taken us to the places beyond our homes,
The far reaching corners have statues to amaze:
I am constantly startled by how big we’ve become,
Small pieces of consciousness rising to infinity’s gaze.

The moon is lovely tonight, glowing in reflected might,
I see the wisps of cloud gently tease its edges:
Hand aloft, I reach out and gather the sight,
Small moon, in my hands, I caress its ancient blemishes.

The owl blinks, and the eerie quiet of night shifts.

I wonder what next for my world and my kind,
We have power to harness the cosmic voids:
Set off into space on endless journeys, worlds to find,
Growing into beings of light, flesh removed, and blood?

When I sit here, my reverie oozing and mind distant,
I am reminded of things our species has made:
The call of the ancient tongues lurks deep and persistent,
A way of keeping us, enduring, without fade.

The hawk squawks, sending shivers down our spines.

That’s all it takes.
A whisper, a feeling of unrest,
To make us realise:
After all this, we are still human.

(c) Craig Gilbert

From ‘A Gathering of Wings’

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…first up, I felt it was time to write a small article on e-books.  Currently I have four of my books available as e-books via Amazon Kindle, and these are certainly selling more than their paperback counterparts, something that would have been unheard of a year or two ago. So, are e-books the future of publishing? Are those old paperbacks resigned to remain on a dusty shelf somewhere, or fall into the regions of car boots and charity shops?

Books in the high street seem to almost have disappeared.  There are only a handful of independent bookshops these days, and even Waterstones and WH Smith in theUKseem to have reduced stocks, and are more inclined to promote celebrity biographies, cookery books, travel guides, cards etc. rather than works of fiction.  Even then it’s mainly the bestsellers, or trends at the time (like the Twilight series spawning hundreds of teenage vampire novels).

Certainly, in the realm of the fantasy genre, my local Waterstones has a small section compared to bookshops in my youth, and most of these are the well known authors, and I wonder if publishing firms are staying with the authors they know will sell.  Trying to get published mainstream as a new author is all but impossible these days, even with an agent.  There also seems to be more books and new authors out there these days, writing away, but that I believe is because it’s now easier to publish your work yourself.  Looking at the new books on Kindle on Amazon each month, hundreds of new titles appear.  E-books is now an easy and viable option to get that manuscript off the hard drive and into people’s e-book devices, at minimal cost.

I still do not own an e-book reader, and enjoy reading an actual book. However, I know many people who do own a Kindle, who love to read on the train, or on holiday, and find using a screen to flick through text just as good as reading on paper.

It still remains unclear what will happen to the published paperback, but I do feel that if authors don’t embrace technology, then they will lose out on a lot of sales and marketing opportunities, and they will also miss out on getting their work to readers, which, after all, is the overall aim of the author (and if it isn’t, well, what is the point?)

I’d be very interested to hear from other authors on what they feel about e-books. For my part, I’ll embrace this way to promote my work, but I’ll still be producing my own books as paperbacks.  I’m still hesitant to let them go for good!

Let me try and catch you in my palms,
capture that essence of your charms,
so I can harness that source of flame,
make the whole reason become clear again:
yet you can delight without my touch -
a portent for rebirth, your wings say much.

And as I watch your colours fade,
into the morning’s dew, the dappled shade,
I will smile, and remember that while you exist,
in this universe, or indeed, the next,
there is always a place for untainted beauty,
for innocence kissing the land in perfect melody.

(c) Craig Gilbert

Taken from the poetry book A Gathering Of Wings

goes his best friend, energy limitless,

ignoring whistles and sharp cries

because of brown rabbits;

tongue lolling, chest panting,

I can see who is in control

on this walk, but note:

the sea slams into the shore

like foamy bubble-bath,

and tiny mammals are far

from the mind,

when so much excitement can come

from frolics in the water.

It appears that he is not enjoying

this trip, where the wind hits his face

and spray soaks his tired eyes;

his throat hoarse from shouting

to his runaway canine.

He glances over to me,

where I’m walking towards,

and shrugs in apparent apology.

I smile and nod in greeting,

Not needing his plight,

just enjoying the view

of carefree life, bounding out of sight.

(c) Craig Gilbert

Taken from the new poetry book A Gathering of Wings

It’s taken 3 years to write, but, finally, A Gathering of Wings is complete and will be released as a paperback on February 12th 2012 (printers permitting).  It’s been a labour of love (and angst) and been a real challenge to write.  I’m thrilled to see it finished in its final form, and am proud of the achievement of it.  I really hope people will find it different, and that those not normally into poetry will give it a try, because at its heart is a story of a journey, and a pretty astounding journey at that.

The book is available to pre-order on the bookshop page on this site.  It will shortly be also available as an e-book on Kindle Amazon, and available to buy at Amazon/Waterstones websites as a paperback. 

To celebrate the launch of the book, I’ve updated this website, as you can see (if you’ve been regular here).  I hope the straight-forward look will be to people’s liking.  The site should also make adding comments for you all much easier, as I greatly appreciate any feedback on my work.

Thanks, as always, for the support and for reading.