I seem to be running low on cash and have begun wondering where exactly I slipped up in my cunning plan to relocate and start afresh in a new country. Who would have thought that employment, contacts or a sensible career strategy would have been so necessary to make it work? Surely just turning up and waiting for opportunities to come knocking is a reasonable alternative? After all, it’s always worked out so well in the past…

Perhaps it’s partly to do with the fact that the term ‘career strategy’ fills me with a sense of nausea, not unlike the words ‘merchant banker,’ or ‘leveraging your personal brand to facilitate an ongoing financial remuneration paradigm.’

Maybe I can drum up a few quid with a bit of genre fiction, and solve my ongoing lack of a financial remuneration paradigm. Maybe.

Looking around at what’s popular recently, I’ve narrowed my options down to writing a story about a girl wizard who grows up and falls for a charming but rather kinky vampire, with whom she must join forces to save the kingdom from a horde of zombie dragons. And have lots of mild S&M sex.

The working title for my opus is:

‘Sally Hotter: twilight of the fifty thrones of the flying dead.’

It may need some work..

Of course even if nothing comes of it, and my masterpiece never sees the light of day (or extensive litigation) I might still be able to make a few shekels by writing something vaguely readable. Of course ‘vaguely readable’ is terribly subjective: we all have our own ideas about what we find a gripping read (The popular mechanics guide to vices?) and what is likely to put us to sleep in a trice. I’ve no idea why anyone would sleep in a trice, I personally prefer a bed, but each to their own.

My usual tastes in literature are pretty broad, and range from science and popular psychology titles to various genres of fiction – sci-fi, classics, modern classics, humour and of course the ever popular bee-keeping erotica.

I’m a fairly recent convert to crime thrillers, but I’ve yet to dip my toe into the waters of popular bonkbusters like the fifty shades series, or the young adult genre of lusty vampires and werewolves fiction. I can certainly see the attraction: who doesn’t want to be transported from their often mundane existence into a world of wealth, glamour and kinkiness. Or one filled with smoldering super-humans and immortals, exploring their wildest passions and ripping each other’s throats out.

It certainly offers more thrills than writing about a trip to the seaside, where the protagonist sips instant coffee behind a windbreak on a stony beach, while gales whip up the Atlantic spray and gulls swoop from blackened skies to steal her last morsel of cornish pasty as she wonders: could she have made the final of X Factor and gone on to international stardom if she’d kept up the belly-dancing lessons?

But of course in the hands of a master storyteller, even the latter could offer so much more to satisfy the soul than the superficial but empty bestsellers. The question is, do readers really care? Should we? Does one write to please the critics? To win awards and be discussed on late night culture shows? Or do we simply wish to tell stories, entertain a few folks and make a bob or two before we shuffle off this mortal coil?

These are some of the questions that swoop at me out of the darkness, as I toss and turn at night, plagued with half-recollected nightmares of zombie chicken invasions and a dancing wildebeest with a rocket launcher and a cunning plan to conquer the world. Or at least the World of Leather store in Acton.

I guess all we can do is to write what we write, put it out there and let others decide if it’s good. If some hotshot studio bigwigs want to make it into a long-running TV-series with extensive merchandising and spin-off movies, cartoons and a range of stylish tech and leisure wear, all well and good.

So, I shall begin the task of bringing my creation into the world. I must summon up the dark elemental forces, perform the ancient rituals that will help to breathe life into a strange and possibly readable new literary behemoth.

Or I could just pop to the library cafe for a cappuccino and a biscotti. I’m sure some wizard ideas will come to me eventually.

 
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