The Matter of my Health...

Hi there Finn Fans. 

Lady Ann's Folly came out last week and the afterword goes into quite a bit of detail of how my health is faring now. 

I thought it might be worth posting it here too just to make sure that anyone who's interested can be up to speed on what's happened and what's likely to happen. So, if you are interested, read on... 

Afterword 

In which shocking truths are revealed about the future

Things can change before you know it and sometimes the plans you have get altered as a result. Priorities that seemed crucial once upon a time can simply fall instantly away and it can take some time to find a way through for them again, if ever they find it.

Last October I published a book called Wishing Well and in the afterword there I chatted about the challenges of fitting in the writing time; about staying up into the wee hours to get it done and my plans for future books. I was very much in the throes of my drive to go on publishing a new book every month until my hundredth birthday. 716 books in total was my mission. 716 books.

But there was a fact that I didn’t know about at the time that was creeping up on me; something terribly insistent and insidious that had other plans for my future.

Only days later I started to get these funny little pains in my stomach you see, and the pains got worse and more insistent.

Pretty soon it got so I was in real trouble; real agony; but the doctor wasn’t bothered. Not at all. It was just a tummy bug, he said. Eat some dry toast. I saw another doctor and she felt the same way. They weren’t too bothered about the fact that I’d filled the toilet up with blood late one night. That was just a flash in the pan (heh heh). It was just a tummy bug.

Except I didn’t believe these doctors and thankfully my partner didn’t either, insisting I get further help... an insistence that might just have saved my life.

I went down to Bournemouth Hospital’s A&E department and even there my doctor had me on the phone, trying to persuade me to come away and let him look after me. Maybe eat some dry toast. I was past listening to him though, thank God. I don’t know why he was so desperate to keep me away from anyone else’s help but if I’d done what he said then things would have gotten worse.

Much worse.

But even the A&E doctors said I was fine. They told me to go home, even though I needed a wheelchair by this time to get anywhere close to the hospital exit. They sent me via the pharmacy to get anti-sickness medicine and I filled two vomit bowls up while I was waiting to be served before I went back and asked them to please have another look.

So reluctantly they kept me in and finally, after much hanging around, I talked to a surgeon who I guess had time to look properly and know what he was looking at.

It was this guy that told me the news. And it wasn’t good news.

It turned out that dry toast wasn’t going to solve the problem. Nor was anti-sickness medicine.

I had a growth inside my bowel; a growth that was as big as a cooking apple. There was only a little hole left for the food to get through and that food had been backing up inside me for some time. Something was going to rupture if I wasn’t careful and I was running out of time.

This cancerous thing had been in there, growing and festering for a long time, and something had to be done. Right away.

So they took me into hospital and they cut the fucker out and with it seventy percent of my bowel. It was like being in Hell and these strange, claustrophobic visions snatched at my mind, trying to suck me down. I’d been unwell for a while but suddenly I was practically an invalid, all the strength and vitality knocked out of me.

But I started the long road back to recovery. And thank God for my friends and family, coming round and being there; especially that one special person who has never left my side. I guess I’m very lucky to have someone I can always count on, and no matter how tragic and difficult life can get, it seems it only serves to draw us closer together.

I was well and truly knocked off my feet by all this and there were more challenges to come.

But what about the writing? That’s the subject that we’re here for after all. That’s the question drawing us on.

Was the writing going to continue?

Because suddenly I was in excruciating pain in a hospital bed and the chance of me getting the next story episode out was looking bleak. Even when I got out of there I was exhausted, and then the next batch of good news started to roll in.

Because it wasn’t over. It wasn’t going to be as simple as that.

I had cancer and it had spread to my liver.

In fact the way people started to treat me gave an oblique impression that things weren’t looking too good. The government was there with a very generous monthly payout and I was given a disabled badge for the car. Clearly they seemed to know something I didn’t about the path awaiting me. One doctor, whom I rather accurately renamed Doctor Death, painted a very grim picture of my future regarding statistical chances that seemed low enough to weep over. So I did.

I enrolled in my chemo and started the treatments and got a bit better and a bit worse and a bit better and a bit worse.

But going back to writing was hard, even though it’s right up there as one of the most important things in my life.

You see the drugs and the discomfort were working their grisly magic on me, destroying my concentration and sapping my energy. The grim pronouncements of Doctor Death were scratching away at me too.

It’s hard to plan to write a series of novels or even just one if you aren’t sure you’re going to be there to craft the climax. That 716 book target didn’t seem possible anymore. Even a three book mission seemed likely to be out of grasp.

But things actually started to pick up.

The chemo did well. Even Doctor Death started to talk more optimistically. It looked like maybe I could have some more surgery; cut what had spread into my liver out and maybe; just maybe; get a clear bill of health... for a while at least.

Except the pain started to get worse again, and worse again, and I ended up back in hospital just to manage it. I’m dosed to the gills right now on painkillers.

Because these things aren’t cut and dried. There isn’t a ready answer to how things will proceed.

The latest tests show that there’s no point cutting the liver cancer out because it’s in my lymph nodes causing trouble and threatening to spread out elsewhere. So no more surgery for now (which is good) but more chemo to come (which is bad).

It’s all kind of up in the air and nobody knows what will happen. I’m carefully not asking too many questions. The doctors don’t know what will happen anymore than I do and speculation can be... frankly terrifying.

We choose to be optimistic, my family and me. We choose to be happy. We choose to plan for a future.

And I plan to go on writing for as long as I can.

Fuck the pain. Pain is something I can ignore as long as the writing juices are flowing. And when the pain gets too bad, well I just signed up for Netflix. Netflix will get me through.

It’s a very interesting thing, having this happen; learning you might die. It really makes you think.

Lying in my hospital bed I put a lot of thought into the nature of that elusive happy ending we’re told will be waiting for us when we’re children.

And you know what I realised?

I realised that I was living it. I am living happily ever after. I have a wonderful partner who I just married. We have two perfect little kids.

There’s this thing hanging over us that might get better... or might get worse. But each day we’re doing the stuff that makes us happy. Little things. Happy things. Just spending time and being close and making the very most of each day.

And it also got me to reflecting about my writing.

You see for many, many years I didn’t make it as a writer at all. I was trying to get published conventionally and nobody was buying. That was kind of depressing. But things are different now. My transformation stories found a little home on the internet and people came to find them. And to enjoy them.

I don’t make millions from my book sales but what’s more important to me is that I have that creative outlet, to share the stories I come up with. I post my episodes on my blog and get loads of feedback and appreciation and I can publish any book I want, whenever I want. I’m living the dream I always dreamed and have no regrets whatsoever.

Nobody can say what the future holds. Maybe I’ll get worse and worse now and drift away into oblivion and maybe things will turn around and I’ll still be pumping out those 716 books when I’m a hundred years old.

I choose to believe it’s the latter and live my life accordingly.

So let me pop a couple more pain pills and bolster my back with a cushion, then settle back to work on my next little tale of transformation.

Keep on living and dreaming until there’s no breath left to do it with. That’s the plan.

And maybe; just maybe; I’ll reach my one hundredth birthday after all.

I hope you’re there to help me celebrate.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Twelve

MELISSA

I stood staring at her; at Dahlia.

The potential that had existed for this thing to go either way; for the decision to fall in favour of either future path... It had existed as some magical, writhing creature all summer, escalating in tension as the stakes of our physical transformations had risen. There had been the tiniest smidgeon of it that first time she had asked to swap places, back at Summertop: the possibility of a real and total trade of places. On the side of the Dorset Way in the thunderstorm, when I had been contemplating ending it all and Dahlia had appeared like magic through the curtain of rain to offer a different possibility; it had been even more possible. Each day; each week; each month that had passed since then, had made the unreal potential of her really wanting to go all the way with this seem first plausible, despite its foolishness, and then seem actually likely.

Despite her waverings and doubts since our arrival in Greece, I had allowed myself to think it could really happen; to coax her toward it, to push myself harder than I had ever pushed myself in my life; to even plan and book the facial reconstruction procedures, the plane tickets, the hotel rooms.

It hadn’t been a done deal – of course I’d known that – but my confidence had grown anyway. I’d let myself believe it out of a necessity and desperation to have something to cling on to, and I realised now why that was.

Because if Dahlia were to refuse then all power would be taken away from me.

The potential had flicked back and forth between the different possibilities, driving me to frenzy – I hadn’t realised how enveloped in stress I had been and all the more over these last weeks.

Because suddenly that whip-snapping alternation of potential was gone – the decision had been made – and it was suddenly blindingly clear to me how little power or control I had ever had over this.

I thought I had. I thought when she relinquishes her name and handed it to me along with her purse and pin codes, that I was truly becoming the dominant one. I had set up the awful circumstances for her here at the Castle Hotel. I had refused to allow her to move over to a cushier life at my hotel. I had insisted on her learning the intricacies of my history and on lowering her standards and self-image so as to take her place within this iniquitous pit of cleaners and abuse cooks.

I had become slim and beautiful like a princess in a fairytale, able to get... almost any man I desired.

But here, finally, it turned out that I had no say in the matter whatsoever; not really.

I wanted to go to Thailand and change our faces; really become one another. I had done everything; given... my soul to this; and now, with a few words she had shut that down forever with her smug, implacable, sad-faced conclusion.

I had faced all my demons. I had accepted that I was wrong to be trying to take her life but I had pushed forward anyway, really damaging my heart in the process; accepting that lesser image of myself and embracing it; that corruption. Now, with her whim, she had made that sacrifice meaningless. She had cost me my soul for nothing in return.

Everything I had done had been a waste, as her, now, she had simply snuffed it out. I had never had anything more than an illusion of power. All of this had been the playing out of this ridiculous rich woman’s fantasies and nothing more. Now that she had had enough, it was over. My feelings didn’t matter one whit.

She stood there, looking at me and what was that in her tired, muddled, inebriated face? What quality was framed at last, in this moment when the potential of that fabulous future life was being ripped away from me?

Her body was still but there was a quivering of energy beneath the surface of her face as though she were readying herself to speak further or show some sign of... something. My own gaze flicked from one element of her facial features to the next, waiting to catch the clues of what that would be. It was coming now. The moments of stunned silence were coming to an end. Yes. There.

Her cheeks shifted; the line of her mouth the curvature of her eyes; and she took on a cast of... sadness... apology... and pity. Pity for me. For me! Who had had it all just seconds ago!

I had been Dahlia Western with all the potential to remain that way forever; a rich, retired model living in a palatial home; beautiful, slender, perfect. And maybe I could have even gone back there to England and restarted that career, become the celebrity that she had been so afraid of becoming again. Maybe I could have gotten acting parts; starred in movies and really done anything I had ever desired.

And now, instead, I had nothing. That potential had been whipped away from me by her whimsy; her stupid, pathetic, fucked-in-the-head, on-again/off-again fantasies; and all she could do; all she could give me back; was a slow look of condescending pity.

I had never liked any of my employers. They had always made me feel like a second class citizen; like they were supposed to be better than me, even though they weren’t, just by virtue of their wealth or position. I had resented Dahlia in just the same way. Of course I had, with her beautiful house and perfect figure; her beauty that I couldn’t possess and her wealth and fame. But things were different now. When she had wanted to swap places I had looked down on her and begrudged the ridiculousness of it all. I had scorned her unenviable descent into madness and alcoholism, even though it mirrored my own.

But she had made me believe I could have this life. She had all but offered it to me. For that I hated her. I loathed her. Right now I wanted nothing more than to roar with pain and anger and drive her backwards through the very wall to plummet to her death. If there had been a balcony I might actually have done it.

I. Might. Actually. Have done it.

Thinking that now made my hands quiver and close into fists at my hips. It made the world contract about me until all I could feel was the burning rush of real rage in my head and shoulders – the rest of my body was ethereal – stabbing daggers of fury pressing through each of my eyes from behind, and the terrible vision of her crumpling face, looking at me as though she truly understood what her decision meant to me.

She couldn’t understand, though I bet she thought she did. I bet she thought she knew exactly how hard it would be for me to step down from the plinth of her life and go back to mine. She had walked in my shoes all summer. I bet she thought she was a fricking expert!

But it wasn’t about being fat. It wasn’t about being a cleaner, or poor, or ridiculed by those around me, or having no friends, or sinking deeper and deeper into vice and despair.

It was about the total lack of potential – that was what becoming Melissa would be like for me again. To have had every possibility and then have it removed just because this debutante felt like it; as though my life meant nothing.

Behind those sad eyes, was she justifying it all right now? Was she thinking, Hey, it’s okay! Melissa got to have an all-expenses paid long summer holiday. She got to lose all that weight. She got to see how the other half lives.

And now she gets to go back to that loving husband of hers.

That loving, fucking husband, Robert.

Oh, how I had laughed about the lies I spewed her regarding him; at the misty looks she got to imagine having someone so wonderful to look after her. And now who was the fucking joke on? Who was doomed to go back to that; top live with him and return to the selfsame abuse that had dogged me all my adult life?

Certainly not her. Not fucking Dahlia.

Me. Only me.

She could justify things as much as she wanted but we both knew my life was over now. I might as well have ended it in the Spring; walking out onto the dual-carriageway into the path of a truck.

It didn’t matter what I’d achieved; the weight I’d lost. There was no way I would be able to maintain that when we went back; no way I would manage to cling on to any of the so-called advantages I’d achieved.

The despair would return – it already was returning – and I would submit to it fully; I knew that. How could I not? I had no real strength of my own. I never had. I was a pathetic fake who had survived in Dahlia’s lie only by virtue of its fantasy nature. Once the real world smacked me back down I would crumble instantly. I would fall into the cogs of the humdrum world and be every bit as crushed as ever I was. The drinking would return. The self-loathing would return. The overeating and everything that entailed would return.

Dahlia, in her well-meaning, utterly selfish fancies had lifted me up from the brink of ruin only to dash me back down again.

I hadn’t been happy when we had started the swaps but I had been existing. How quickly had these games pushed me to realise that I couldn’t live my life anymore? Why would my future be any different now?

And maybe it was lucky there wasn’t a balcony after all, because now it felt like it wouldn’t be her going over it, clawed beneath my rage. It would be me; stumbling into wilful oblivion as the truth of my wasted potential overcame me.

And then suddenly Dahlia spoke and even in this she had the power to strip away this space I’d claimed for my emotions to run riot. Of course she did. She controlled everything. She always had.

She fixed me in her gaze and locked me there and the sides of her mouth turned up, even has her brow crinkled inward and her eyes took on a mockery of sadness and empathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. But it has to be this way. You understand, don’t you?”

And she looked at me, expecting some platitudinal answer; something glib that exonerated her of any blame in the terrible ruin she was about to make of my life again, and I thought to myself, You fucking bitch. You fucking bitch to do this and then honestly think it’s okay; that I might make you feel better when all you’re doing is stabbing me in the back.

And then I replied and there was venom like battery acid in my voice that made that dopey, sad-sack expression of hers flinch right off her face.

“No,” I said. “I don’t fucking understand, you nasty, stupid little shit. I don’t fucking understand at all.”

OUT NOW: Lady Ann's Folly!!!!!

It's taken MUCH longer than anticipated to get it out, but Lady Ann's Folly is now available!

This is a greatly expanded version of the book than what appeared here on this site. I've added in loads of new scenes to explore the changes that take place and given a lot more time to characters who were previously marginalised. I've also restructured the story somewhat to make it more self-contained and build it to a proper climax that both gives it its own identity and sets it as the next thrilling instalment in the ongoing adventures of the Neville family.

Hopefully that means it will be a good read, even if you followed its release as I worked on the original draft.


What Does it Say on the Back of the Book?

“A BODICE-RIPPING, BODY-SWAPPING EDWARDIAN EPIC”

It is 1908 and the height of the Edwardian era and in the second part of the Griply Valley Saga, events are rapidly falling further and further out of control at Griply Hall!

The former Lady Ann risked everything to trade lives with her lowly stable-hand Burt Harper, but the new Ann seems to have inherited the same rather reckless streak and she has set her sights on Mavis, Burt’s bawdy barmaid girlfriend. It is her plan to swap lives with the strumpet, but only long enough to partake of a night of unbridled passion with the passionate and physically potent Burt.

But after Ann sets her scheme in motion she quickly finds that controlling her exchange is not going to be easy, especially after the mystical pendant that caused the exchange falls into the hands of her darkly mischievous younger sister, Hattie, and the former Mavis gets it in her head to keep her alluring new life.

Hattie has some scores to settle and sets out to use the pendant for revenge, but with swap after swap occurring, it quickly becomes clear that anything could happen and no conclusion can be guaranteed.

Ann and Burt once again find themselves in the middle of a maelstrom of change and humiliation, but this time the stakes are even higher as the entire Neville family get involved.

One thing is certain. This is all far from over and can only hope to get even more complicated!

“PURE SUPERNATURAL FUN WITH AN EDWARDIAN TWIST”

How Much Does it Cost? 

The book is available for the reasonable sum of $3.50 or about £2.50 in e-format.

The paperback version will be out in a few days.

Where Can You Get It? 

Lady Ann's Folly is available at the following places.

For the Kindle & Paperback Versions: 

Amazon.com 

Amazon.co.uk 

For pretty much any kind of electronic format: 

Smashwords 

It should also be available on iBooks and Barnes & Noble pretty soon, if not immediately.