The Dummies Guide to Serial Killing

My sister Nute has won a Silver Dagger (her second such award!) with her short story called (brace yourself) "The Dummies Guide to Serial Killing".  It is a classic of its kind, with a punch. And a great win for her - and for my young publisher Dan. He is not her publisher Thriller-wise, but this was published by him in a Fantastic Book selection.  He chose well.

Here is the book:
https://www.fantasticbooksstore.com/the-dummies-guide-to-serial-killing-and-other-fantastic-female-fables.html

And here is a great article about her win:
https://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/people/sheffield-crime-writer-amazed-award-win-824160

She was not able to go to London and collect the award this time, due to illness in the family.  But Dan went down and collected it for her, and gave a short thankyou speech.

Good news at a stressful time for her.  And it reminded me of what Janet Frame called "the sadness that belongs to the world".  It is all so wonderful, but all so sad.    I was lying on the sofa yesterday, supposedly bracing myself to do my walk, but in fact dreamily watching layers of white clouds drift and join and part across a soft blue sky - beautiful, graceful and muted.

And when I watch the sky - and trees wave against the sky, or the balcony geraniums blowing in the breeze from the sea - I feel a happiness that I must have felt in the faraway days of the late1940s when us babies used to lie outside in our prams, watching the sky and the leaves and the trees blowiing in the peaceful post-war winds.

Then it was an uncomplicated unconscious happiness. But soon I became aware of the strange sadness of things, a wrongness somewhere.

Now, because I know who created it all and why, and what has gone wrong, and how it's being put right, I often feel that uncomplicated happiness -that joy in the creation - again.   And I can now hope that I will not have to lose it forever in the blackness of darkness, the nothingness that is death.

I am so grateful for being taught by Jehovah. There is no teaching like it.  He is truly the "Grand Insructor".  And He is offering this teaching freely to everyone.

And I wonder, as I may have blog-wondered before, what sort of stories we will write when the whole earth is restored to Paradise   Will we even have or need fiction then? I don't know. But we really only have one plot now, which is that something has gone wrong and it has to be put right. And to throw the term"post-modern" about (your guess is as good as mine), much current art seems to me to say that things have gone wrong and its all hopeless, or even that this is how it is meant to be.

This is the very story we, the damaged children of Adam, are living. Things have gone very wrong, we have not been able to put them right, and many are now losing hope.   Can we really imagine any other story?    Well, if I am blogging away a Thoutsand Years from now, who knows what new things there will be?  All we can sure of is that they will all be wonderful, and if there are short stories being written then, they will require a very different sort of title.  But how sad that many are losing hope - or being persuaded to lose hope - just as the rescue is imminent.   The valiant Jean and I were out there yesterday morning trying to tell others. And thank God, we had some lovely calls.

I did force myself to have that walk - to the shops and back - an hour including the shopping. It left me exhausted - and carrying two moderate sized bags of shopping back home has left me with very painful shoulders.  I was going to go out and shop for Jacks and us today, but I can't drive at the moment.   What a feeble creature I am these days.

As a reminder to myself,  I posted cards to Darren, to Gale (with the cartoon about the Bayeux Tapestry from The Speccie), and to Lilian.  The Darren and Lilian cards also had a litte tract about hope for the future enclosed.