Saying Goodbye
It's hard saying goodbye.
I spent two intense years leaping in and out of bodies and off the tops of tall buildings with Mercy, the exiled angel heroine of my Mercy series, and letting go of her was harder than I thought would be the case. While I was writing the books, completely new characters and story ideas for other books would rudely intrude and insist on being given a little air time.
And I remember thinking: 'I can't wait to start all this new stuff once I put Fury to bed!'
But then Fury (the last book in the Mercy quartet) went off to the printers and the new ideas were all still there, shrieking: "Me! Me! No, me first!" But I think I went into a kind of fuzzy mourning phase that is only just starting to wear off now. Weird, huh?
So here's a snippet from something new I'm working on. You, dear reader, are probably only the second pair of eyes (outside of mine) that has ever seen this:
My earliest memory is of waking in the dark, and knowing, without knowing how, that I was completely alone. The house had seemed enormous that night, as if everything in it had been built for giants – only their shadows left behind – and noise had assailed me in every room, through every wall. It wasn’t a terrible sound, not even so very loud, but constant. Inhuman.
A hum, a buzz, chattering. Power: surging unseen all around me.
I know now what that sound is, for I have lived with it every day of my life. But then, when I was only just starting to wake to the world, and my position in it, I couldn’t place that sound, and I cried out for my mother: who was not there.
Hopefully the above will flower into something that will survive the light. It's hard to say. Very few writers ever feel confident their work will ever be published again. And most writers I know find it hard to tell people they are, in fact, "writers" because it's a daunting privilege to be let, even once, into someone's personal head space. Heaven forbid any right-minded publisher would ever let you near the public again without a very good excuse ....
Likewise, it's been a massive privilege for me to have been writer-in-residence, here, for the month of August. I've been honoured by your visits and comments. It's been so lovely to connect.
If you want to continue the chat about reading, writing, whatevs, you can find me at:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/Rebecca.lim.906
Wishing you all an extraordinary journey.
Rebecca :)
