Books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ben-Davidson/e/B07MMWJT4H
A year has gone by. I have done far too little promotion for my books, but I have been writing. I am doing the final edits on a short novel set in a gay cruising area, set near to a main road. It spans a period of fifteen years from the pre smartphone era of the nineties to the current day. I have also written a novel of uncertain/unrequited love. It needs more editing, so will be likely to appear later in the year.
I find the process and pace of writing unpredictable. The French Student was written and edited within three months. I revised it four times – but perhaps I should have gone over it even more. Give me reviews, if you have an opinion on this. There is a point at which a coma is removed, a word altered and finally switched back again. There is a limit to fineness of detail.
The novel of uncertain love is based on a large country house. The protagonist’s parents are the owners. They run it as a house and estate open to the public, along with a cafe, weddings and events. Any way to make money, and keep the estate afloat, with twenty holiday lets in the mews and cottages around the estate. Matty, the protagonist brings his beautiful boyfriend to visit his parents. They stay in the the Princess room, so named because the princess Victoria stayed in the 1820’s before her coronation. It’s that sort of grand pile. By chance, a group of three gay men have rented one of the converted stable flats for the week. Gabriel is loud and camp. He insists that the five of them spend more time together than Matty is comfortable with. Gabriel’s partner, Miles, is quiet and geeky. Dale, their friend is a tall strapping rugged lad. There is a conflict between Dale and Matty, because the former judges the latter as rich, and he also believes that wealth is unfair. Matty argues that his parents, despite having a vast home, only just manage to make ends met. It has been in the family since the 1920’s but he sees it as a fragile asset. Another reason for their conflict is Dale’s attraction to Alex. As I say, it needs revision, so will be published later this year.
Some writing starts early and is late to be finished and other writing is quickly concluded. I grew up in a family of Christian Scientists. The ones who do not use doctors, if you don’t know exactly who they are – and they are not the same as the Scientologists, they are another kettle of fish. The Christian Scientists believe that it is impossible to be ill, because in the true, spiritual world there is perfection, and in a perfect world it is impossible to be ill. The material world is unreal, so illness and anything less than perfection is unreal. I experienced the danger of this unreal world when I had untreated, persistent and very painful earache. And a particular injury to my leg which was not treated. It wasn’t just the actual events that happened to me, but the fear and knowledge that if I had a fatal illness, there was a good chance that I might die when my peers would have been taken care of. Three years ago, I wrote a novel about a Christian Science family based on an amalgam of my own experiences and those of others. I’m not exactly sure why but I had to leave it to rest, although I’ve recently picked it up and done another edit, untangling the messy writing. It is another piece of work that may soon be added to the list. I am also writing an article about a specific childhood experience of Christian Science which will appear here soon.
An even earlier novel I wrote five years ago, about an Englishman with Welsh family origins, who decides to move to Wales when his wife chooses to leave him. This is something of an indirect exploration of my own Irish family – my mother was from Cork and my father from Belfast. It was also a look into post industrial South Wales, as it is set in the former mining Valleys just north of Cardiff. It turned out to be a way too rambling story, many hundreds of pages, so it needs honing, but may eventually also be ready to be published.
Like many, the one thing I have due to the current coronavirus crisis is time to do all this editing. Did I need to tell you that? As the next piece to be published is the short novel about the gay cruising area – Preacher’s Wood – I have chosen as a picture for this update, a woodland spinney view. Just in case you wonder why.
Ben Davidson Writer 