Tattooist “You want what?”
Me “If, by Rudyard Kipling.”
Tattooist “The bloke who makes cakes?”
Me “No, the poet who makes poems.”
Tattooist “You want a poem?”
“Yep.”
“Not a dragon?”
“Nope, not a dragon…a poem.”
“I got some nice Celtic bands here…”
“Er, thanks but I want the poem.”
“Poem….right…how about a nice Coy going up your arm? Nice Carp? Fancy a Carp? Some great colours in a Carp.’
“Just the poem thanks.”
“The poem…tattooed on your arm…”
“Yep.”
“An actual poem, like…actually tattooed on your arm…with like, words and shit.”
“Yeah, er…well yes.”
“Sure? We do lovely daggers here, got some skulls too, they can be nice and shaded, bloke the other day had a tiger…fancy a tiger?”
“No, really…just the poem.’
Tattooist sits at computer, “Right, what’s it called again? Something about cake? If you fancy a cake?”
“If, by Rudyard Kipling.”
“If what?”
“If nothing, just If.”
“What kind of title is that?”
“Er, dunno but that’s what it’s called.”
“Yeah got it, hang on….oh you mean that one about people having their heads fallin’ off”
If by Rudyard Kipling is a beautiful set of words and although written a kazillion years ago, still bears relevance today. So it’s now tattooed on my arm. First verse on my right inner forearm and second on the reverse. And some other stuff there too. I like tattoos.
Sorry for not doing a blog for a long time. I have been busy falling off treadmills, getting tattooed, buying a house, puppy training, working, waiting for my new website oh and writing another book.
The Undead Day Fourteen was finished and put out and the response was mind-blowingly wonderful. Really good. But I needed to take a wee break from that world so got absorbed into a different world for a little while instead.
Mental Health fascinates me. The way minds works and how perception from one person can be so different to the perception of another. Two people can have the same experiences but because of their childhood, experiences, education, values, morals, influences etc, they can perceive it entirely in different ways. Or is it simply genetic make-up, the way our neural pathways are constructed. We know our brains are immensely powerful and capable of far more than we currently use them…or so we’re told. What if we were capable of a whole lot more? What if we had collective conscious such as the infection has in The Undead series. Not just in terms of intelligence, but ability of use of imagination, of the power of our minds.
Those thoughts were a whirling and a spinning until I finally landed with a what if scenario. What if, a man who is schizophrenic, is sectioned within a treatment centre for mental health assessment for apparent precognitive ability…well, what if he was actually right?
The age old question of “If Jesus came back now, would anybody believe him?”
Those thoughts evolved and eventually, The Second Reality was born. It is wholly different from The Undead, and wholly different from anything else I have written before. It is graphic but without intending to offend, it is a love story, a fantasy, a gory bloody tale of sexual control, power and some other stuff too.
The book is finished after months of grafting away at the bloody thing. There were times I hated it, detested it, loathed it and equally there have been times I adored, loved and cherished it.
Now, I am in the hands of the ever loving and brutally honest pre-readers…waiting nervously for them to read it and contact me.
New website now (at bloody last). It was meant to be ready in January, then February…and now, at the end of March…woohoo, here it is! The old one was great but Ipages, the company that host it, were unresponsive and I was getting spammed a hundred times a day from people wanting to sell me shit, and saying I should buy shit, and then telling me how shit my site was and they could get more traffic to my shit site if I gave them loads of shit.
But, the new one is here and wow…look at it! All sexy n streamlined n lean n just oozingly gorgeously wonderfully spankytastic. The yooootuuuuube video is on The Undead page and actually plays on a telly that Howie is watching…fuck me! How cool is that?!?!?
Eddy the illustrator and Ian the website man came up with the idea, or was it Ian the website man who got the idea and Eddy drew it? Um….anyway, awesome.
Ian the website man said I had to have a newsletter. I said I didn’t want a newsletter. He said you have to have one so people know when you release a book or do something else. I am uber anti-corporation and hated the thought, so we negotiated and Ian won but, we agreed that anyone signing up to the newsletter gets a free copy of The Undead Day One emailed to them, as a way of saying thank you.
Right, well I’m off to do re-drafts, edits, spell-check, proof-reading (which I am crap at and hate) and other book related stuff.
More to come soon and I will bore you all to tears with my puppy training, house buying and treadmill falling off in stages rather than one massive bore session of mindless and inane ramblings.
Take Care
RR Haywood
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