THAT ALICE IN WONDERLAND THING

When I was twelve I slept in the same room as my elder brother, John. One night I awoke in a state of serious disorientation. It seemed to me that the world around me just wasn’t right, whether my eyes were closed or not. It threw me into a panic to the extent that I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents’ room shouting, ‘Our John’s done something awful!’

Hard on my heels was my brother, quite truthfully protesting that he hadn’t done anything. My parents assumed it was some sort of nightmare and we were sent back to bed. However to me it wasn’t a nightmare as I was wide awake and the problem was still there. I made no further mention of it as I, at that age, didn’t have the words to describe it. The ruffles in the bedclothes seemed as big as monstrous waves in the sea, my fingers felt like sausages and the bedroom door, perhaps twelve feet away, might well have been fifty feet high and a hundred feet away. Eventually I fell asleep, and when I awoke in the morning the problem was gone. I sincerely hoped it would never return.

Some days later I was off school with a migraine― an ailment for which my mother found me a surefire cure in Beecham’s powders (not the pills, I hasten to point out). My mother had to go to work that day as she had a part-time job and I’d been left in bed with a supply of this stuff, to take whenever my headache came back. I was fine with this. Staying at home on my own was never a problem with me...until then.

I went downstairs and sat in the front room, perhaps to read a book or a comic, when the problem returned. Everything around me seemed out of perspective, big and distant; my own body felt wrong; my mind was disturbed in a way I could never describe, even to this day. I was twelve and I thought I was going mad. There was no escape from this, closing my eyes wouldn’t shut it out, all I could do was hope it would go away, which it did after a couple of hours. By this time my mother was back. Once again I didn’t tell her about it as I didn’t have the words, besides I didn’t want her to think I was going potty. I certainly didn’t tell our kid about it, as he already thought I was potty.

At frequent intervals, over the next two or three years this problem returned. Not once did I mention to anyone, not even to my friends. It was my personal problem and I didn’t see how anyone could help. It came and it went and, as I got older and perhaps mentally tougher, I learned to live with it because I knew it would go away after a while. After a couple of years, when I felt the problem coming on, I decided to take it on, live with it, try to figure it out, even have fun with it. Somehow, once I’d started to cope with it, the problem began to leave me. For a few years I got the strange feeling in passing, but it didn’t stay with me.

It wasn’t until I got much older that I heard a friend talk of ‘That Alice in Wonderland thing.’

I asked him about it and sure enough it was what I’d been getting. Just like me he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but somehow, in later years, he’d found out it was a recognised syndrome in children, with the nickname that Alice in Wonderland thing― a pretty good description.

According to Wikipedia it seems that the syndrome was first discovered in 1955 (two years after I’d first suffered from it), by  psychiatrist called Dr John Todd who worked in a mental hospital not ten miles away from where I was living. It’s officially called Todd’s Syndrome but it’s also called the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome after Lewis Carroll who was thought to have experienced it and used it to describe how Alice grew big and small in Wonderland.

Last week I was watching a hospital drama, Holby City, on TV with my wife who has an unusually wide knowledge of things medical, to the extent that she can usually tell me what’s wrong with a patient well before the TV doctors come up with their diagnosis. On this occasion the patient was a young woman who was displaying all my old symptoms (although hers were somewhat more dramatic).

‘She’s got that Alice in Wonderland thing!’ I declared, much to my wife’s amazement. Up until then the patient was showing no signs of anything other than not being right in her head. The problem continued to baffle both the doctors and my wife until five minutes from the end when the doctor pronounced that she was suffering from Todd’s Syndrome. My gave me that look told me I was wrong but in her next breath the TV doctor went on to say how it was also called the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. Now I’m not a great one for triumphalism in the home but I have to say that my arms shot up in the air like they do when England score a rare goal.

I now wonder how many people have suffered such a thing without actually telling anyone? I’m writing a crime book whose main protagonist is Septimus Black, a man with psychiatric problems. Such is the value of personal experience that Septimus also had the Alice in Wonderland thing when he was a boy.

Today, yesterday and tomorrow.

I was never one of nature’s addicts. I smoked spasmodically up to thirty odd years ago then gave it up without a problem when a TV programme showed the damage I was doing to my innards. I once smoked a joint in Amsterdam and such is my abysmal tolerance to drugs that I became almost catatonic. My wife thought I was having a stroke. Luckily she was having a joint herself so she managed to see the funny side. I drink, but not to any excessive degree, in fact I thought I was immune to any sort of addiction until I began writing. This was about seventeen years ago. Since then I’ve written sixteen books published in print, many by mainstream publishers Little,Brown, plus another six e-books, several, so far unsold, scripts, some short stories and a few books started but abandoned.

In short, I write because I’m addicted to writing. I’m a retired builder who always had a couple of sidelines in stand-up comedy and free-lance painting. My writing day begins when the mood and the idea takes me, which can be any time during the 24 hour day. Many’s the time I’ve woken up in the dead of night with an idea I knew I must get down lest I forget it when I get up. I go next door into my writing room―I call it the office ―with the intention of getting the basic idea down and no more. I emerge hours later when the sparrows are singing outside and my wife’s wondering how come she’s got the bed to herself. It’s during these illicit hours when I’m at my most creative. I find my best ideas take shape when my mind is completely at rest, lying in bed having just woken up in the dark, the world is quiet and my brain is giving my ideas its complete and undivided attention.

I’ve tried writing these ideas down on a bedside pad, in the dark, reaching out from under the duvet with a sleepy arm, hoping my pencil is moving in the right direction and ending up trying to translate a page of hieroglyphics the following morning.

I play golf twice a week and never allow that to interfere with my writing. It’s a game for which a have a great love, but little talent. I need the exercise, I enjoy the camaraderie, the fun and the rare feeling of triumph when I hit a good shot. As a stand-up comedian I still do after-dinner work, perhaps a dozen gigs a year. I don’t paint much anymore. I intend to but haven’t yet got around to it, maybe I’m afraid it’ll take up too much of my time. Painting’s addictive as well.

So, I suppose my writing day is between the hours when I’m not doing anything else. There are 168 hours in a week, golf takes up maybe a dozen of these; sleep takes up 50 to 60, being a loving and dutiful husband, father and grandfather takes up time I can’t put a quantity on; leisure time is important although I regard writing as part of my leisure time so, somewhere within this 168 hours, I reckon there are about 40 or so hours when I find time to sit at my computer, happy as Larry (whoever Larry is). When the muse is upon I have been known to write for six or seven hours nonstop―as many as ten thousand words in a day. Others days I spend hours just doing corrections and improvements, not advancing the book a single word, just making it better. This is equally as satisfying. Some days, if the ideas aren’t there I don’t bother to write at all. I don’t worry because I know the words are in there somewhere, just not ready to come out that’s all. This is probably why I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Not sure I believe in it, to be honest.

Quite often, on my way to bed I’ll tell my wife I’m just nipping into the office to switch off the computer. Then I make the mistake of sitting down to take a quick look at what I’ve done that day and perhaps make the odd correction... perhaps more. After I’ve spent ten minutes or so by my writer’s inner clock I’ll switch off and go to bed. My wife will wake up and ask me what I’ve been doing in there for the last two hours. She’s a very understanding woman who realises that two hours of highly concentrated creativity can be compressed into ten mental minutes. At least that’s my excuse.

THE DARLING DUDS OF MAY

The title of this blog has nothing to do with its content, I hope, or maybe it has. It's May and it just popped into my mind. In fact it's meaningless. As I write I also ramble to myself. I ramble to myself even when I'm not writing. My wife often asks me who I'm talking to as I mouth my thoughts. I sometimes wonder how many people see me doing this and dismiss me as a silly old sod who talks to himself. Could be they're not wrong.

Occasionally, when I'm sitting in front of the computer screen with nothing coming to the forefront of my mind that's worth putting in whatever book I'm writing I tend to compose what I think at the time are brilliant letters about my various gripes.  Mostly I do nothing with them, having got the gripe off my chest and onto the computer but, with the advent of the email, it's just too easy to wing them to a newspaper's letters page. My computer seems to do this without my knowledge at least  two or three times a year.
     I did one a couple of days ago about the cause of the rise in house prices which I blamed on the banks and building societies. I know a bit about it having been a house builder in the past and I told the computer exactly what the solution is. Once again, the computer, without my express permission sent the letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post who published it as the headline letter on their letters page today. I'm now expecting letters of rebuke appearing in said newspaper, telling me what an idiot I am; letters which I should ignore but I won't because I'm argumentative by nature and I will compose  replies which will verbally demolish these adversaries and no doubt annoy the hell out of them, that's if the computer decides to send them to the paper.  Mostly the people who write to the papers are pretend intellectuals who talk rubbish and I'm lumping myself in with them. Or it could be that I talk rubbish as well?

Right now I'm between books. Almost A Hero was published on May 1st, my next book, Nearly Always, is finished at 105,000 words and I'm 25,000 words into another called Say It Isn't True. So I'm taking time off book writing to do a screenplay of one of my books that was only ever published in hardback.  My regular publisher wouldn't take it as their editor said it was so dark that she read 50 pages and felt like slitting her throat. I took another look at it and realised it probably has great potential as a noir TV drama so this is what I'm doing. So far I've never had any success with screenplays but this is a great story and I know I do good dialogue. I also know a couple of production companies who are interested in my work, plus I find writing screenplays to be enjoyable work, so what the hell? Get on with it McCoy.

The book is called Free As A Bird. It's only available in hardback or on Kindle and as far as sales are concerned it's probably my least successful book, but sales aren't always a reflection of a book's quality. Sales are all about marketing. A poor book with good marketing will easily outsell a great book with no marketing and Free As A Bird had zero marketing.

I played golf today. I love the game. It keeps me fit and mobile, I just wish I was any good at it. I love the challenge and the camaraderie and the dozens of good friends it brings me. See, I'm rambling again. My lips weren't moving though. At least I don't think they were. Oh heck! How can I possibly know?













   

SO FAR SO GOOD

May 15th 2014

With it being 2011 since I did my last blog maybe it's time to update things. I've had two books published since then, one of them. ALMOST A HERO  only a fortnight ago. No idea how well it's doing. it'll do better if you all rush out and buy it.It comes either in paperback or Kindle. The publisher's already sold the large print and audio rights to Magna, for those whose eyesight isn't so good.

Regarding the audio. I've done the reading on all but one of my audio books, 13 in all, but I don't know if that's come to an end right now, as the next two books are being done by a different sound studio. I enjoyed my time down at Whitehouse Sound near Leicester, lovely people, very helpful and understanding. They needed to be with me. My first audio book, Hope Street, took me five days to record. By the time I finished my last book I had it down to less than three days.  

As a matter of interest I also did the cover designs for two of my large print and audio books, ANNIE'S LEGACY and THE FABULOUS FOX TWINS. So I did the writing, the voice recording and the cover design. Not sure if any other writer's done that before. Just thought I'd mention it.

I've actually finished my next book. It's called NEARLY ALWAYS and set in Leeds in the 1950s and in wartorn Europe in the 1940s. I like to hang on to manuscripts for a few months before I submit them, then read through them again. It's amazing how much you see with fresh eyes.

Anyway, I've started a new book, SAY IT ISN'T TRUE, set both at home and in Europe during the First World War. If you think I'm jumping on the WW1 bandwagon you'd be dead right. However it's great how much WW1 info comes pouring out of the TV screen right now. Helps with the research no end. It's a new era for me, and this book certainly won't be the last set in that time.

I've done a partial screenplay of Mad Carew, my crime series. It's currently with Screen Yorkshire and Yo Yo Productions. I've had meetings with people from both companies and have learned one thing...it's unusual for new screenwriters writers to get their stuff on TV, but this won't stop me trying. I had a comment from one screenwriter's agent saying she thought it was too much of a cosy crime story for them. I thought she was wrong, but I've now picked out the darkest of my sagas and have begun to write a screenplay synopsis.  The book wasn't published by my regular publisher, but by Severn House. My regular editor said she read the first fifty pages and felt like slitting her throat. The book's called Free As A Bird and it's a real barrel of laughs if you like  murder, rape, drownings, innocent women being hanged, children being locked up for crimes they didn't do, crooked and perverted politicians and seriously brutal coppers. Of course there's a thread of humour running through it. It's the only way I can write.

Before I go I must mention that I've started my autobiography. It's only in its infancy but I given it a title, the same as this blog. SO FAR SO GOOD. I will report back in less than three years, maybe even three weeks.