Belle's Gateway

I spent hours but maybe that just wasn’t necessary, I can’t give the whole game away – What fun would that he? This portfolio will explain the two personas I have, three if you account for being the Veteran’s wifey. Without such circumstances my novel False Providence wouldn’t be possible.

But then this is the other me, the worker bee me that just can’t make honey no matter what they do. Nonetheless the hive expands and they try and they try and they try again.

I’m an creative amateur who has a natural eye, this natural eye has yet to see the shine of potential bank. But it’s my therapy as well as my chronic failure to launch, my hobbies are the professions I can not reach – National Geographic photographer, songwriter, Egyptology in the next life and so on

The Canvas will run and keep running until some piece of fair significance can be made. Muse will hound me, like she hounds all creatives until something actually works or life’s Autumn has arrived – I’m not there yet but the leaves ARE turning.

Five Years In Focus

Here is my portfolio, displaying my time in America, my rough idea of art and dabbling in mock ups and Generative Art via Freepik and Craiyon. There is no background, no knowledge, just my imagination and the ability to try the billions of ideas I have just for ONE to keep

Life through my lens

AIn’t it Pretty??

Razzle Zazzle https://www.zazzle.co.uk/store/iscariotarts/products

Canva

I Think that’s everything…

A little snippet into the spilled easel that is my Irish London mind, I hope to reach for those like myself, the misfits, the lost souls. That like the edgier outskirts of life, the gamer geeks, the subtle goths, the lone wolves of the world. Thank you for peeking in a little

There are so many of us out there, we’re a pack without knowing it!

As this Site was initially set up for my Writer’s blog in my pen name, feel feel to drop a portfolio-related note

THANKS

The only time I ever typed the next four words was in a text message; I fled The Trump Regime, it’s strange to put that down. Was it in fear? Yes, were there other factors? Yes. It wasn’t with guns blazing all around, bombs going off, it was by in-laws suddenly becoming my enemies. My Mother in Law making a barb about guests minding their manners and not throwing stones. I didn’t flee mid warzone, I fled in the middle of the ascension of something all too familiar to European history. In some form I envied the American that didn’t know or care why the world looked upon Trump through the cracks of their fingers.

What does this have to do with writing you ask? Plenty I say – This is why writers prefer fantastical yarns of dragons or Boy Band member type Vampires. Historical fiction is a gambit of what’s frivolous and what’s probable. We writers observe people better than anyone on two fronts; love and fear, every so often we get accurate when we were aiming for fanciful. You think I want FALSE PROVIDENCE to be a guidebook to the future??

No I don’t! And who’s future do I mean anyway, January 6th would have told me America, October 25th would have suggested the U.K. Hell Russia could fold, split up and contend at this rate!!

We’re treading into the unknown or at least that’s what we hope for, this dark path could be a loop, a roundabout, a wheel of year numbers that might fall to 1933. And that could really be for any of us, there’s a smorgasbord of storytelling to be had if it wasn’t so unnerving. Not least since we harken back to the days of Royal rivalries, where a Writer could make a War of the Roses for the modern age – Nobody has a damn clue what to expect these days. Authors should enter dystopian world building with caution, you never know what you’ll manifest into reality

Don’t Worry, I’m not gonna burst into song – My last post was prior to my dog suffering a dramatic death. I was back in the DARK WOOD again for those that don’t know this location it’s where the wild things are and where army veterans and their families pitch their tents. It’s very lonesome and frightening wood, where ghosts of war reside alongside the army families forced to dwell there. The aforementioned canine was a guide through this Dark Wood and without him came memories of what might have been.

Needless to say I wasn’t in the blogging mood!!

You need faith to write, faith to market and strive for that contract you dream of. Despite your books gathering cyber dust in the Amazon attic along with AOL, Google Glass and the doomed BlackBerry. Maybe writers aren’t meant for the digital kingdom? For we made our bread and butter via niche magazines and guest columns many centuries ago and now look at us, we are the Art Muse left behind

The reduction is our craft is painful, for tabloids have made writers absurdly gladiatorial. Our weapons in the arena are the worst words we can come up with, to the winner goes the spoils of a front page article. A war of words against a Celtic-haired Prince or distant traveller, the lucky few paid oodles of money for a schoolyard spat in written form. We used to revere journalism for its almost mythical in difficulty to get into

Then, then we have the language vandals, the Nepotism Babies taking a sledgehammer to precious childhood with lazy lazy screenwriting. A parody of its theme or indeed anything and a great great parody and insult of a writer’s study and respect of the English language.

I wasn’t gonna begin a story for the billionth time but my tales of Narcissism, especially at Christmas, need to be told with a dollop of humour of course. Women’s fiction was never my jam but how else can I write about such absurd things like buying somebody amethyst earrings only to get a leather pouch in return?? Yes ladies and gentlemen I created a Bridget Jones story, it’s still burgeoning and eighteen pages in but it’s there in my endless attempt at a merited lifestyle.

But writers are vagabonds, misfits and Vagrants by unappreciated trade, what would I know about Meritocracy??? What do any of us?

This is an odd day to bring the blog back, granted – For one terrible moment last year I thought my book became prophecy – All the hallmarks were there, tumultuous rage in Washington D.C. similar to what I wrote two years before. It manifested from a protest like in False Providence, unlike False Providence the protest wasn’t innocent and did not lead to the Fall of The Union – Thank God!

You might think writers like hitting a prophetic Home Run, we don’t, we eye our manuscripts like they’re suddenly Crystal Balls of immense power. There was a moment I could have felt the way Tolkien did the night of The Nuremberg address, was he heart-sick? Did he become faint as his fiction transformed into something else? His Sauron of Mordor becoming Hitler of Austria? It doesn’t help matters that now there is no clear cut Good Verses Evil when myopic tycoons fashion entire news empires to their will. It’s a little bit like Star Wars without the Skywalker Twins. There’s no real fight for justice yet, law must pave the way and God, isn’t that Slow Boat to China?!!

I’ve been absent since cruel tragedy befell my dog, he was killed with intention by a reckless driver. I was dragged back to a very dark place I never wanted to return to, my husband was made homeless by my mistake, abandoned by kin and destitute, he was forced to give up our pack to the shelter. Dark days followed us for a year, to the point I forced him to face a new day then another and another when he had no interest to. Though off the streets for nearly a year now I was terrified I’d return to those days of utter, utter pitch blackness – Did I mention he was a U.S Army Veteran?? I feel like I need to, cos fact and fiction blur so wildly in the American Conscience and yes, writers are to blame. Writing the American Dream like it’s the Magna Carta was always gonna come back to haunt us. If a Veteran can be turned away from kin, left starving in woods then ‘American Patriotism’ is stupidly subjective.

I wrote more Poetry about it from my well of rage and indignation at the Pantomime actors that were once his kin. It’s a tough, tough thing being an Army wife – His efforts, however meaningless to those who turned him away sure as hell won’t be wasted on a Toupee Tyrant’s Coup Attempt!!

If writers are these strange Prophetic beings then we should write more happy endings, shouldn’t we?

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A funny thing happened today, an old contact I’d forgotten about reacquainted with me and asked about the next step I was meant to make. My mind drew a blank cos I had travelled down many avenues and through many brainstorms since then – I was lucky I made a coherent sentence, really!!

For we’ve come to it at last, the last way forward is always the Mercenary way, the way you were too snobby for once. Okay, snobby ain’t that precise the emotion, more along the lines of the introverted. I’m speaking of freelancing AKA the American idol of authorship. It’s for certain tastes and for certain personas, the Devil May Care kind, that’s never really been me but I guess now it has to be.

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Folks, my Amazon steed is a non-runner so I’m hedging my bets on a gamble. On something that is almost on a cash in hand basis: ghostwriting. Ghostwriting is when your name disappears behind your words and behind those words is a bigger word, ANONYMOUS. You provide the service, reap the fruits BUT the condition is – you’re in the haunted attic of your professional sphere: The Ghostwriter

You wanted it to achieve the green by more dramatic means, every writer below 30 bears in mind J.K. Rowling’s slow yet stratospheric rise, well what about the women at 40??? I feel a change in the air like I always do when trying to shape the future but at the same time I am accepting to be that cog wheel of the money-making machine. I’m at the age of not minding, stepping stones are stepping stones and, yes with great inevitability – Money is still money.

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These last few weeks have been calamitous, absolutely calamitous – The Milestone Birthday had many miles and stones washed up from the coast. The worst daydreaming happens when the world gives us more than a reason to daydream. My birthday was a Narcissist’s getaway with my name day tagged at the end, complete with fawning and gushing like I was cruising up The Nile with a Pharoah!

Daydreamers are borne from a neglect or overlook, we dream about who we wish we were, we write always shout the different things that could have happened. Without these scars, muse wouldn’t find us, these scars are homing beacons for our story ideas, our poetry – I have yet to find a better sculptor from moments of pain than a writer.

Buuuut, I’m not feeling muse today, I feel adrift ….For someone that was meant to be a lighthouse in the storm snuffed out the wick and now I’m rather lost. Who am I? I’m an American Veteran’s wife, that’s who I am – But I’m not American, not for lack of trying I assure you. That speech, that Monastic, softly isolationist speech has hit me very, very hard reminded me greatly.

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I never realised till that moment how powerful the writer is, we make empires rise from dramatic dialogues and epic scenes. The audience thinks Ah, this is the world as it’s meant to be, without realising it’s a product of wildest imaginations. We’re Kingmakers when all we wanted was out damn book read, that’s all we wanted!!

Writers are gatekeepers, we’re there to transport you into the world we created. Wishing just as much as you to be able to stay there and never go back to the reason it was created in the first place! I know of War Ghosts and flashbacks and endless nights of bad moons rising, for what? For what?? My book title was meant as a nod to history, it was never meant as something prophetic!!

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Muse will find it difficult to find me for a while, you need a joy in your world-building, a sense of purpose and hope. Writers can’t quit cos we have a responsibility to help others escape into their imaginings via reading. Right Now? Right now I’m in the dark and I can’t see because there’s no power at the lighthouse…..

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We’re in a weird time, the science of progress doesn’t seem to be wanted these days. An indifferent Australian tycoon seems to have a monopoly on what and what not to believe. Nature is under Anger Management and so far, it doesn’t seen to be working, the pandemic rages on and people refuse the cure….We’re in a weird time.

Something happened the other day that made me think of this pandemic as an Agatha Christie Villain, quiet and manipulative and cunning. I aimed to go out to the mall via The London Underground and I just couldn’t do it, am I a hermit? Not necessarily, the city is vast and Londoners stick to their stomping ground anyway. Pride stopped me running the gauntlet, there’s something a bit off about risking your health for a new dress, governments may say after our freedom days we’ll be grand, I’m erring with caution and I suspect many more are too.

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It’s hard to a writer to judge how the water is, on one side is the Calm of Muse giving writers hundreds of ways to turn times like these into books, poetry, art, song. On the other the rapids of the angry and misinformed.

If you take things at face value you may see the final End of The Age of Reason. God only knows what Georgians would think,I don’t really wanna know what the future will think of us but Sunday Buffet springs to mind

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I’m a little nervous of the responsibility ahead, fellow writers – we record these crazy times in our fiction, our essays, our sonnets. Either to make accounts of how reason was escorted out of the world or, like always – To find a a hopeful fiction from a hopeless place – a Place or UsV them, up V down, left V far right, Star Trek V Star Wars! We can navigate ourselves through it or guide people via our stories, find reason or escapism, whatever makes the day easier for them. Muse has always had the key, let’s open a door for our audience and keep it open. Keep scribbling!!

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Two holidays I feel at odds with these days, one is Saint Patrick’s and the other is Independence Day. The former was a date of my darkest hour two years ago, when kinship didn’t mean anything and I was looking upon a remark of pure evil after asking for help. The latter is because as a Veteran’s Wife I see beyond the firework smoke and I know those that probably had a hand over their heart when singing The Star Spangle Banner and not mean a single word.

I’m my mind as a Writer, The Fourth of July is a Grand gospel choir where some attendees don’t practise what they preach. I grew up in the absolute glory of the 80’s and I ate every bit of the Pop Culture up, every bit, I realise now it was quite an unhealthy diet! Muse is a teacher and like all good teachers she is not meant to be your friend, merely a guide. Last year I tried to enter a contest making a horror story out of this recent trauma and I just couldn’t do it, I was full of so much rage. The name of this True Evil fills me with such rage as she celebrates the holiday whose meaning she defiled one lonely St Patrick’s night.

But in the many months after, Muse rescued me with poems to write and song lyrics to arrange. True Evil was spent for some good so there’s that, there’s many a villain I can create because of that True Evil, many life lessons to enrich whoever wants to hear it. That novel I’m too enraged to do may be tempered one day (very, very far off in the future!). But that’s our trouble, the artist’s beasts of burden are many and yet, and yet we always find a way to make them into fluffy little pets as long as we have our paper and pen.

So, the Pen really is Mightier than the sword, it can cut and parry, mark and gravely injure, it can destroy, redeem and memorialize. It can record our small little lives after we’re long gone – But that’s if we’re lucky –

To War then Artists, avenge yourselves through your ideas and stories, go forth and fear no darkness…

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Musicians are probably the only other Arts Folk that gamble away their lives as much as scribes do and no, this ain’t a G A meeting. Musicians pin their ENTIRE life on a guitar case in a Tube Station or music file. Writers used to just pin it on a decent computer or typewriter with tape that behaved, now there are contests, societies, tests.

I mentioned before how Writing is a thankless profession, it’s also rather aimless and you stumble here, there and everywhere. You are effectively a water witch for most of your life trying to find the source, to quench your thirst and know it was worth it. The funniest thing about dicing with death is, it makes your fear of living go away, or maybe numb it a little, the thousenth idea/route forward pops up like a firecracker and you’re on the move again.

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The worst thing about imagination is you can’t really tell when the delusions of grandeur start or if it’s the daydream helping you to plod on. You want this thousandth dream career idea and yet you’re worried of the execution and will it come at all. But I can separate delusion from daydream for now

Delusion: Egyptology

Daydream: Photography

I’m Four decades soon, four not with much merit either but I’m okay with that. Love accepts you and with it you accept life and apply for every job going cos you’re fearless. Doesn’t matter if they don’t reply, you never had a plan anyway! So I’m gonna try the billionth way out while daydreaming about a photography studio I may not even open. Because I’m 40 in 5 weeks and know nothing about photography but I’ll daydream regardless

There’s more of us dreamers than you think, so let’s Cloudbust…

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