Back to Your Woods

 

Rejection is one of the hardest things to take.

Look who I’m telling!

But when it comes in the form of knocking back something you have put your heart and your very soul into, everything that you believe, all that you know to be true, it makes that stone wall all the harder to bounce off.

And pick yourself up from.

It would appear that the aftermath of Dragons Pen is more profound than I first imagined.

It made me question why I write crime fiction, why I write undercover stories, why in fact I write at all.

No-one’s making me do it.

There’s no gun to my head making sure I put my fingers on the keyboard.

Certainly no hot bullet ready to splatter my brains all over this nice wall behind me if I don’t write something once they are there.

Hmm perhaps there is a reason I write crime after all.

Apart from the obvious, of course.

But they weren’t the first stories I ever read, and certainly not the first stories I ever wrote.

It began in the darkness.

In the woods.

It’s hard to remember exactly which came first, being read the Grimm stories, or being taken to the cinema to see Bambi.

Both had a profound effect.

Both were about fear.

It is no surprise that I went on from these stories to reading the works of Herbert, Barker, King and Poe.

All tied to the unknown.

All exploring the depths of darkness, both theirs and mine.

And after the rejection of my crime stories for not being ‘crime’ enough, perhaps it is time to revisit my roots.

And go back to the dark woods.

The undercover stories do of course touch upon the darkness that its officers go through in order to complete their assignments.

They deal with the loneliness.

And the pain.

But there is something more to be discovered and I think that my own forays into ‘crime’ fiction will only allow me to go so far.

The darkness has so much further to go.

So much depth to explore.

I have barely touched upon it, hardly closed my hand upon the doorknob and twisted it to peek through and see what’s inside.

Given the favoured reading material of my youth, the question becomes, why did I not explore this realm before.

Was I afraid?

Well, considering the choice of material, of course I was.  That’s kind of the point!

And yet I always felt I was being pulled in by the author, that their clammy hand was holding onto mine.

Guiding me through the darkness with them.

As a writer, I must explore alone.

And instead of being the one led through the darkness, I must be the one doing the leading, with the flickering torchlight, showing my characters the poorly lit way.

The question is, am I ready to return to the worlds that were opened up to me as a child, to explore them for myself.

Ready to go back to the dark woods.

And see what’s really there.