Yes, it surprises even me that I’m continuing this madness. And am now ready to talk about my brilliance (which I say even as I snort and roll my eyes…it’s so far from brilliance, it’s in the next planet :( ).
My book has no name. And I have no intention of naming it until I’m done with it. It’ll be an unnamed child. Let’s hope it doesn’t grow up to have issues.
I don’t know if this book will ever be published or will be read by anyone who is not related to me (by blood or love) but I believe I need to write this before I can write anything else.
Okay. So if I were to write a synopsis or you know, tell people what the book is about… I’d probably take a deep breath and go “…I don’t really know?” I’m joking! But since this very much a work in progress, I shall give a brief synopsis which may or may not change depending on the directions the writing takes.
There are two stories within this book. One is about a boy who has moved to Canada from Fiji and is trying to come to terms with his new life. His new identity. Everything is foreign to him. The people, the atmosphere, the surroundings, everything. It doesn’t help that he is Muslim and as such, he cannot fully participate in a lifestyle that is more western than anything he is used to. I feel there is a need to explore the differences. I know that Islam and its accompanying issues are very much relevant at the moment because some people want to paint us as villains while others see us as normal. I think what I’m trying to do with Rizwan (my main character’s name) is to show that differences do exist but they are not necessarily a bad thing.
The other story is about this spirit/ghost who has been trapped inside a theater for a period of time. She doesn’t know anything about her life before she died, she doesn’t know who she is or why she is trapped the way she is.
The book about how these two unlikely people (I don’t know if I can call the ghost people… she might be insulted) meet and how they change each other.
This book is not a paranormal romance. I’m not even sure what category it would be fit in, honestly. A marriage between contemporary and paranormal? I don’t really know. In the beginning, I was trying to write the story I thought people would want to read but that wasn’t working out for me. Not too well. I’d much rather write something I like and then if other people like it too, that can be the cherry on top of my cake. I’ve never been successful when trying to write popular fiction so we’ll see how this works out. This is not the first book I have written. But I do find it one of the most difficult ones because I am basically taking so much of myself and putting it into the main character. It’s not fiction so much as a reimagining of my own life. A ficitionalization of my reality.
Anyway. If you’ve managed to reach this far in something that is honestly just me talking to myself, I shall share the prologue of UB (aka untitled book).
There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for the inevitability of death. Don’t believe any of the lies they tell you. No matter how good of a person you may have been in your life, death hurts. Like that moment on one gray winter morning, when you may hear the slide of the bow on the strings of a violin – that exquisite clarity of the note that penetrates you right inside the part of your being where the soul holds on to your body – that one note takes your soul and wrenches it away from the tangible part of you.
Dying feels like a succession of heartbreaks – one slice of devastation followed by another until your heart is just an organ beating futilely in the cavity of your chest.
It’s an explosion of all your favourite colours in a summer garden but you have just been struck blind and all you have is the memory of the colours and it, too, is fading.
I think sometimes it is a clean separation – that when the soul separates from the body, it does so completely. Perhaps that is what happens to the good.
But for others, to the ilk I now belong to, it is not a clean break. The blade that separates the body from the soul is serrated and some pieces are left behind, still attached, to prolong the torture of death. The body withers and the pieces of soul left behind cohere together in a desperate attempt to soothe the sense of bereavement that comes at being separated from the rest of the whole. This is what I am. A piece of the whole.
Was I a sinner in the life I no longer remember? I don’t think so. When did I die? I don’t know. Time has no meaning to me. I could cup eternity in my palms – perhaps I already do – and it would not mean a thing to me.
I exist – if you can call this existing – in a perpetual state of reflection. I am amongst the living and yet no one is able to comprehend me. I watch them, these humans, who are so caught up in living that they are entirely unaware of the horror that awaits them at death.
I question my purpose. Do I have something left undone in this world? How long will I remain incomplete?
