DCD is backing away from Young Adult books, to actually write and blog like an adult, on culture, ideas, others essays, thoughts and stories, and perhaps particularly on the differences between America and Europe. Those young adult stories though are a calling far too precious to really survive what happened in America, and the bottom line is that he became abusive, lost his own sense of responsibility, and it affected his language and his writing. The Telling Pool will be published to eBook, as will Scream of the White Bear, and the works out of PollipigglePuggar. The Pimpernels is currently a bit of a question mark. Things said here may be true, but that does not necesarrily justify them, particularly the invasion of others, because two wrongs do not make a right. We’ve blogged before that when such things happen in public, ‘everyone gets a black eye’. Actually the internet is not exactly ‘public’, because though it is a record, the vastness of it only means those reading it are aware. So we shouldn’t sweat it too much, though it can be far more a threat to the young, than gnarled old timers. If there is some self defence though, the invasion to him, and this story happened three years ago, was so hurtful and monumental, and over so long too, it can’t heal, but only leave deep scar tissue. Since he’s extremely proud of his epic books, he’ll have to wear that scar tissue with pride too, and protect his rights in the books that he does have ‘out there’. In one sense they belong only to the Reader, but as an object lesson in genuine and adult respect, they belong far more to the writer than they do to any publisher, good or bad.
Readers have often asked who David most associates with in his books. Fell is a rather obvious one, especially because it was written, or at least completed, during that failed journey in America. Fell and Larka are the opposites, the dark and the light, and again its interesting how the feminine Larka ‘redeems’ Fell, but with a kind of Christian love, the weight of which he is not sure is always healthy. It’s why the question is asked about what freedom is, even from legends, especially religious ones. But no writer is just one character, they have to inhabit the spaces and journeys of all of them. Actually, the character that most touched who he was, is probably Kar. Sad, that having once gone into the cave of near madness years back over love, he had to experience that again, in such a way and such a place. He did not need to, and it was such a fine line between happiness and disaster it has haunted him for three years.
To ‘Tarlar’ he has this message though. There are many ‘weapons’ in life, many ways we fight and grow, but in certain circumstances silence and inaction are the most vicious and irresponsible. He thinks he deserved more than that for two years of a life, and he certainly deserved more than that for ten years of a tough career. If he’s said things about others ‘past’s’ or families that perhaps he shouldn’t, because if we reach back into the past of mankind, let alone our own families, it is a story of dark and light, and so what, none of us are to blame for the past, only responsible for the present and future. He has spoken far more loudly about his own difficulties and the possible causes but the ’cause’ above all was having to return to an emotional place that as a functioning and rather strong adult he had long superceeded. Though a very precient 12 year old wrote once to pick up the line that explains almost the whole dynamic of a book like The Sight. It comes during the great battle sequence and is something like “as if the whole thing were just two people arguing in a room, accusing each other of not showing enough love.”
Life and balance is not about an argument at all, it’s very easy indeed, but in those circumstances he does accuse her of not showing enough love, and not enough maturity either. Love personally, but also something that has nothing to do with ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ a relationship, first a genuine acknowledgement, but then a love for his attemtps in stories. Some women think the male psyche is an obvious thing, and it is far more complex than they know, maybe especially a storyteller’s. You can’t stop time though, the world can be very nasty, badness must be fought against, and invasion resisted. Fantasy and reality got far, far too close too, as did ‘the public’ and ‘private’. This would not have happened if she had had the respect to turn to him in person and ask if it was all right to do a book like ‘Hew, Screw and Glue’ in such circumstances. Had confronted, not with any drama, just genuine respect, rather than always avoided and always gone behind the scenes. But on the other hand perhaps losing the person he knew, and the man he suddenly recognised in himself again, was actually just far too precious to be able to cope with being tied to that firm and those memories. Tolstoy suggested when love fails men go to war. They should certainly walk ten thousand miles away, and struggle through the Amazon, found new civilisations and learn to laugh again.
To SVM he’ll just say good bye. A book, or the supposed psychic content of that book is never to be revealed until it is actually finished, because it is a journey. There was literally no understanding of the relation between storytelling and ‘real’ life, but above all no protection of the vital electric link between author and editor. Because of a supposedly private matter, there was also absolutely no editorial honesty either. If life were only about ‘shoulds’ David should never have accepted the commission on Scream of the White Bear. But the argument about The Pimpernels really was to try and release a different kind of energy. If a partner could so go on about ‘ultimatums’, the ultimatums that came down from that firm were outrageous. From forcing a title, to ‘give us another Fire Bringer’ to ‘you can do better than that’. But on the other hand no one person can be held responsible for others actions or inactions at a firm, and once no real peace was allowed, where on earth could anyone go? HR for a long time, specifically resisted attacking though, but an editor chose to play bad cop and start issuing prescriptions and judgements all over the place. David tried to talk to H because he needed a man to understand, and to be ‘on his side’, and an editor was just too close to the source of hurt. Unfortunate David bumped into both an editor and ex together on a big street in dear old New York City. Absurd. He did not need to be that frightened, or that pathetic. It was a return to a past that was done with. Nor is he ‘a fictional character’ as that Changing Hands t-shirt proclaimed, because that really is the realm of the psycho. David is only a fictional character when in the process of writing and creating. Then he’s Lord Voldemart and Harry Potter too, and a lot else besides. But if he had the magic he’d summon a Patronus charm and give it to everyone alive, including Tricia Kallet, Michael Jacobs, HR and the doorman. Because we are all real people and we all matter very much. He did summon blessings. It was about lighting candles in Chatres Cathedral, when he was terribly frightened and terribly alone, and it began the healing. But since you have read a lot of literature and we all make mistakes, even DCD(!), perhaps we’ll just share a poem, out of the driving imaginative passion of great literature:
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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