Mab of Dream

I've just typed up another three chapters of 'Priestess' for Witchgrove, taking us to Chapter Sixteen uploaded now. I'm considering starting Chapter Seventeen now, because it's taking us to the Vicarage, but I really should do something else, seeing as I've been typing it up for the past six and a half hours.

Last week, Phoenix asked me if he could serialize it in an off-line magazine that he's creating. I said no, because it's shit. He didn't agree and the upshot was that he's going to rewrite it so it's not shit, then run it past me to see if I'll feel happier about it going out then. I offered 'Saving Anna' in it's place, but he seems set on 'Priestess'.

For those who have only just come across this blog, 'Priestess' is semi-autobiographical, though I've taken so many liberties with reality in it! LOL The strange thing is that I seem to have fictionalized the incidental bits, while leaving the major events more or less as they happened. I've squeezed a cast of thousands into a handful of people. With some, you can see the over-riding influence - John is mostly Eric, for example; while Lainie seems to be a mixture of Kate, Helen and Karen, but with Kate coming to the fore the further on it goes. There's even a bit of Nav in there situation-wise, as I never lived with Kate. While Michael is still such a composite of people that most of the lads in our gang, 1994-1996, could lay claim to him. I've got Tina narrowed down to five people now.

There are still odd paragraphs where the writer takes over and cringes; but on the whole, it's nowhere near as bad as the early chapters, where I'd happily rewrite the whole thing. There are a few points of continuity that I've had to alter, as the section sequences jump around from night to day and back again. The whole point of typing it up stemmed from a Witchgrove conversation where we were talking about what it was like to first totter onto the Pagan path. It occurred to me then that I had it all in a novel written more or less at the time. I don't know if I'd have offered it into the mix if I'd known how bad the writing was, but it's nearly up there now. I'm probably overdue a little dent in my pride! LOL

It's still weird typing it up. I'll go for a couple of hours either quite astounded at how different I am now to how I was during the time that Mara respresents; then suddenly there will be a comment and I'll get a stab of emotion over it. Gone is the faint maternal feeling that I have for her and it's patently obvious to me that I am Mara, just grown a bit. I'll feel the old outrage, only now I can handle it, or I'd just wipe the floor with the cause of it, whereas then I was too newly out of madness. That's one thing as I'm not sure comes across in the book, Mara is fragile as Hell, mentally. There's no real context for that in here, because it starts during the road back, without having the breakdown as a prologue. I think that that would be a better prologue than those included already. In the context of the story, there's no need to know about the fire incident for a start.

I wonder how far those reading this are looking at me now and thinking, 'Ah! I can see you, Mara...' *grin* I'll never be able to get away with anything ever again. LOL

yours
Mab
xxxxx