Today, I'm super-excited to be sharing a short story from the fabulous Gothic Horror writer, Judith Crow. Here is her Poe-inspired story, The Clockmaker ... The Clockmaker I cannot sleep. I cannot allow myself to sleep. In sleep, Death may strike with as little awareness as warning, and I find myself refusing to accept unawareness at the moment of demise. Yet, I wish I were afforded others’ natural ignorance of the timing of death. In the names of heaven and hell: I both curse and envy them for their ignorance! I, like others, started my final day with little to suggest it may be my last. I was in rude health when I arrived in London twelve days earlier, and today I took the time to call upon Sir Benjamin Pelham, a man I had served alongside in India. Twenty years ago, his interest in science and invention had lured him back to the English universities, while I had stayed abroad to make my fortune overseeing the collapse and redistribution of the once-mighty East India Company. Si
Friday 22nd November – Illustrations
I respond best to visual learning styles. I’m always looking
for pictures. Whether it’s a pre-existing landscape just begging to be
photographed, or the words of a writer on the page calling out to be
transformed into art.
I’m not the best artist in the world, but I can make a
decent attempt at drawing. But the hardest thing about illustrating a book is
pleasing the author, while the hardest thing about having your own work
illustrated is relinquishing your hold on it.
So, what I tend to do now is wait to be asked to illustrate
things, or else I illustrate my own stories. Over the last few years, I’ve
offered to illustrate people’s favourite poems for National Poetry Day, and this
year I had my first published illustrations in “Rosie Jane and the Swadgrump”. When
we launched the book in the school, the thing which most impressed the children
was how I’d managed to do the characters' hair(!) and how I’d reproduced the same
character, from scratch, in every picture. Their awe really gave a newbie like
me a massive confidence boost! This was the first time I’d shared any of my digital
graphics with the world, creating most of the pictures in strong, bold colours
using the computer’s shades rather than my own.
One thing I’ve learnt (although, not always done!), is not
to fill a picture. Look at the needs of your audience, and the needs of the
illustration itself. Sometimes, empty spaces aren’t blanks, they’re
vacuums which draw the reader in.
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