Q Why did you write these books?
Good question. Does an author write for himself or an audience? It was almost by default. I had written masses of short-stories and poems but I seemed to be afraid to tackle a full length novel. First I wrote The Rogue Hamster which is an alternative handbook for living. Then I wrote a piece which would probably be termed a novella, about 25,000 words long. Shortly after I took up the counselling job I was driving the car and Kevin the rat landed in my mind and insisted on being incorporated into this novella. That’s how it started. I’m not sure I knew then that this first book was the start of anything. I wrote Blood Brothers very swiftly and easily. The words just channelled out of me as if I was living them.
I think that’s when I realised that it was more than just writing a novel and the title The Circular Scrolls came into my mind along with the framework of the seven books and their outlines. I don’t remember actually having a choice. There is always a choice not to but that would have left something inside me that would have turned sour with regret for the rest of my life.
I have always used writing and reading as a means of clarifying and understanding, first poetry and short stories, then The Rogue Hamster and now this seven book series. I hope my readers can do the same
Q How did you write them?
Prior to the Circular Scrolls as I have said I wrote this book of non-fiction called The Rogue Hamster. A handbook for personal development and change. I suppose this was my launch pad for my own quest which brought me to The Circular Scrolls. Both take the view that life is like a drawing board and Jigsaw; what we paint on it we can learn from, if we view it as the observer, and by adding or removing a piece we can change the entire picture.
As a writer I create small pictures like pieces of a jigsaw which I then gather into different frames. I am living it as I am writing it. I have a strong intuitive right brain which encourages me to espouse the concepts of meditation, channelling, virtual dreaming, past life regression and all the beliefs of living in the now and the totality of the universe and its power. I have a questing, questioning left brain which is capable of producing a list of negative what IFS and hammering me into the ground. My writing is the result of these juxtaposed but incendiary forces, blended with humour, pain and credibility. As the stories in this series progress the clashes get more violent and far reaching as the issues take on greater preponderance in Sam’s life and the stakes get higher. Book Six sees the climax of past dramas brought into the present. Book Seven is a story about love and choice. The threads spun in Book One can be plucked by the reader and unravelled if they wish. I encourage the reader to pursue their own goals through their own imagination, wherever that might take them, by owning the door of possibility.
Over the years I have studied alternative writers and together with an English degree course in literature and an interest in psychology, archeology and ancient history, have covered everything from CS Lewis and AA Milne through Agatha Christie and Alexander Kent to Beowulf and Milton. All have had their impact.
Words are my music. Before I write them I hear then in my head first. They call to me. They flow in. They insist. I write them down. I read them. More flow in. I then put them in the appropriate framework i.e. into the notes of whichever book they belong. I then Via Voice them into manuscript notes and then cut and paste them into the body of the novel, changing, reviewing and adding as I go. Or not.
That’s how I write. If I try and construct it doesn’t work. The words make pictures. I walk the path with my characters. I hear their pain, their humour and their fear. The pictures I paint might appear quite differently to each reader but that’s OK because everyone’s journey is different and I believe the imagination is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal.
I offer the thread. The reader pulls and unravels. My aim as an author is to try and be the shaman and create a state where the reader can shape shift between past, present, psychic and physical realities of their own. To become a bridge which allows them to explore aspects of their own selves. My creative purpose is to motivate them to pursue their own goals whatever, wherever that takes them, by opening the door of possibility.
I suppose in a way this is my story. They are all my stories but they are universal nevertheless. They represent stages of growth, garnering understandings and overlaying them on the experiences to bring a new and deeper level of wisdom, of confidence and the courage to seek new phenomena and continue the constant risk-taking which sustains the metamorphoses. What doesn’t change simply stagnates.
Q Who are the characters and are they the same in each book?
Sam is the main protagonist and remains so to the end. An individual troubled by modern values trying to live by some deep rooted law, essence of truth, which drives her to examine all the possibilities and paths.
An individual with a need for love but an equal need to be lonely, solitary.
An individual with a desire for a soul mate who might reflect back all the various parts – fragmentations – and yet with a need to find them all within – to make a whole of me – making the soul mate route seem like a sellout and therefore an unacceptable option.
An individual who courts all aspects of physical, emotional and spiritual imbalance but retains just enough central equilibrium not to be deluged by them – because balance is the desired state.
An individual on a journey which she realises will take her back to the beginning but she must nevertheless complete the circle, knowing that it is in walking the path that the understanding is to be found. No one said it would be easy…
So the young person invites a spirit guide into her life. What could be more appropriate and understandable then that she chooses for that guide the small, smart, cute, furry rodent! Kevin Kilcat. Kevin The Rat! And yes, he too stays the course, evolving with time and understanding just as Sam does.
When we meet her Sam has little in the way of a description, physical, psychological or emotional. This was intuitively deliberate for two reasons. She was intended to be every man and every woman. She was to be available to every reader as a vehicle, a vessel into which to pour the stream of their own consciousness, their dreams and aspirations, their memories; available to become their alter ego, spirit guide, as Kevin had become hers. No personality traits to react against. In addition I wanted Sam’s character and personality to develop as she walked her path, as she grew, as she made choices, book to book.
I hoped each reader would form a different view of Sam. That she would become a tiny grain of sand in their oyster consciousness, a small irritant, the beginning of their .pearl. It is your oyster and not the sand that creates the pearl.
There are characters that we meet again through Sam’s journey albeit in different forms. Indeed some of them she actively seeks. The bluecoat commander who becomes her adopted father in Blood Brothers is told
“Only through death can you know it is but another season in the circle of a man… only then can you know that your spirit will find what you believe you have lost.”
And he looks at Sam and says
“Then we will find each other again and we will recognise each other as we did once before.”
And Sam knows because
A little breeze passes over my head: I smell the tall grass of the open plains upon it; my nose silences my brain with the power of her memory; I shall return.
The archway of lives seen first in Book One, A Rat’s Tail, denotes her interactions with others.
Again and again she recognises old spirits in new faces with recurrent themes as she searches for her meaning.
And some she finds again and some she walks away from but none are lost…
Q Are the next books in this series a continuation of first?
In the sense that Sam’s development is a continuation, yes. In the sense that the threads from the first book are picked up and woven into each subsequent book, yes. But the stories themselves and the elements they contain are all separate and self-contained although read as a series they have more meaning and more impact.
The epilogue to the first book might well read something like:
In which some things are left behind but some taken to heart and into a bright future with a broad horizon.
The first book is an allegorical journey and the first of many. A Rat’s Tail is a trail whose threads and clues can be used as a reference through Sam’s subsequent travels. It is a book within a book and a life within a life and the first step on the path, whimsical, fantastical and allegorical.
Because it is a path, a journey, the target audience for these books is anyone who cares to travel, young or old. And what you see, what you get from the books depends on who you are and what you’re looking for.
This is one soul’s journey through youth and growth to maturity, transition, fulfillment and hence to rejuvenation on the circle of life. The content and depth of each book reflects its stage on the processional path. The main character, Sam, matures with the books and the books mature with her.
We might introduce the first book thus:
In which we are introduced to Sam, her small life and the opening of the book of possibilities and the start of the unique relationship which will remain with her all her life.
We might introduce the last book in the series thus:
The road she travels, the journey she makes, the choices she makes are both real and metaphoric on another level, emotional and spiritual. This juxtaposition allows her to keep moving forward, indeed in some instances projects her forward when she may have tarried.
The theme runs through them all:
Not – what can I achieve? What can I acquire? But – what can I be?
In one sense the relationship between fear and death and good and evil and the process of growing from child to adult, all of which are presented in Book One, continue to preoccupy Sam during the years to come. She comes to understand that the journey is the purpose not the arriving.
She comes to believe that to be alive, to be truly happy, means to be growing, developing and changing – metamorphosis.
The last change, the last metamorphosis, in the present life cycle, is death but it is only a change and a life of metamorphoses prepares us for it. It may even be welcome.
She comes to reason that if you are given the opportunity to live by what you believe and in doing so an opportunity – however infinitesimal – to help others change – how can you refuse?
Q What would a reader hope to get from the books? How would this differ with each age group?
Primarily I would hope that the reader might gain a new perspective on experiences, on beliefs, on life or a confirmation of some of their own. Even the process of rejecting a new idea provided it is first considered is a developmental one. And for some it might mean picking up the tools they never used before or never risked using. Change might come about in all kinds of ways. Because they recognise and validate their own experience; because they gain insight into the behaviour of others; because they risk change in the light of others risk. It may not be my change or my risk but it is still change and change is growth.
I think the reaction to the books will differ with age simply because human beings are more predisposed to change at different stages of their lives. Those making transitions of any kind, whether it is from child to young adult, dependency to independence, security to insecurity, life to facing death, one’s own or that of a loved one, are facing up to change and looking for handholds.
I have used humour, cynicism and character interaction to both relieve and cement the elements of the messages and to allow and encourage constant dialogue and discussion on the points raised because any belief, any truth, is only valuable if it’s true for whoever is doing the believing. And belief without questioning, without fear, is not belief at all; its fear with a fence around it.
So – thought, challenge, change, entertainment and comic relief are fundamentally in all of the books, and the reinforcement of hope, the loss of which takes human beings to their very lowest if not beyond.
Possibly the whole series could be summed up as a quest and as an author I now think that this questing nature was always a part of me and governed the directions I chose and the choices I made.
The reader can take what he wants from these books to the level he wishes. Philosophy and meditation; mystery and dream landscapes; past life regression and parallel universes; argument and debate; characters drawn from cartoon or real life. Exploration. It could be seen as an alternative handbook for survival or just the development process of the individual on the journey of a lifetime. A seven step development, seven explorations; seven, linking the masculine to the feminine and the rational to the irrational. The characterisation of time. The books develop as the psyche develops, in response to the decision to grow, a feature of choice not age. They are journeys through different cultures and times, races and personalities, following the theme of the wheel of life, where nothing is destroyed, only changed. One soul’s journey for everyone
I believe human beings have two things that can never be taken from them. The capacity for love and their right to choose. Above all else it is this that I hope to communicate.
And that you do not have to be a philosopher, an artist, recycle your rubbish or drink only camomile tea to be a seeker of stars
