“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men—John Chatterton and John Mattera—are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth century, Bannister’s exploits would have been more notorious than Blackbeard’s, more daring than Kidd’s, but his story, and his ship, have been lost to time. If Chatterton and Mattera succeed, they will make history—it will be just the second time ever that a pirate ship has been discovered and positively identified. Soon, however, they realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren’t enough to track down Bannister’s ship. They must travel the globe in search of historic documents and accounts of the great pirate’s exploits, face down dangerous rivals, battle the tides of nations and governments and experts. But it’s only when they learn to think and act like pirates—like Bannister—that they become able to go where no pirate hunters have gone before.
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“And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can’t really share the enormity of our lives.”
― Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing
We are the bees of the invisible… [Our work is] the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain
Some writers cut straight to the truth. Chris Nicholas is one such writer. Enjoy!
‘We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realised they were inside us.’
-Sam Steven
Confession time: I’ve been on a bit of a downward spiral as of late. Ever since my last post I’ve been struggling to find the urge to even turn my laptop on each day, let alone write something worth reading. In fact I could probably count the amount of times I’ve actually written anything on one hand, and the most I ever managed to produce in one sitting was about two hundred and fifty words. That, my dear reader, is hardly the way to go about finishing one of the multitudes of manuscripts currently sitting half-finished on my hard drive.
So why this complete lack of willpower to create? Why after coming so far with my craft of the past year and a half have I suddenly taken such a momentous step backward…
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It lay there silent, even with the promise of speech written in black sharpie. I don’t know how long it had lain there. Two years at least. That was how long he’d been dead. Two years.
How had I missed it for two years? How had he known? And did I really want to know? Now?
He died on a Wednesday. Windy Wednesday. I remember the cold surrounding everything, reaching in between the folds of my coat as I hurried towards work in the morning. He still lay in bed, asleep, as I leaned down to kiss his flushed cheek. Blonde tousled hair, strong jaw, lids closed over crystal blue eyes.
When we first met, he was conceited and arrogant and vain. I loved him. Too handsome and he knew it. Talented. He sang like an angel. Rock and Roll God. He was drunk, probably high. I found out later that he never used drugs. Hardly ever drank. What I had seen that night was just the sheer joy of his being.
I hated that and I hated him.
I loved him.
In the end, hate won out. He lied, pretending to be what he was not.
Now, the silver disc stared up at me like a plea. Listen to me, it seemed to say, hear me!
He’d loved me with a passion both deep and strong. Wanted me. Needed me. Gave me whatever I wanted except the one thing I had to buy for myself.
The silver disc stared up at me like an accusation.
There had never been a suicide note. Nothing was left except the broken body after he jumped. All the talent and those looks, the betrayal, gone. Crushed.
Did I want to hear his voice again? His song, for it was almost certainly a song. Did I want anything of his that I did not already have? Hearing him would not make up for his lies.
I know he had been drugged that morning. I don’t know if he woke as he was stumbled to the balcony. I don’t know if he woke as he was shoved to the rail. Did he know, that moment before? Was there a single moment of clarity when he saw death?
What did he know on the long way down?
Picking up the silver disc, I broke it between my hands, shock of his knowledge vibrating across my flesh as it shattered, mirrored splinters scattered across the bare wood floor.
“Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
— Simone Weil (1909-1943)
Acknowledging fear gives us an opportunity to be brave.
Amandalynn Jones
“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”
― C.S. Lewis
A Writer's Life 
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