Lent: One Month Later

Yesterday marked exactly one month since Easter, Resurrection Sunday and the end of my (mostly) fictionless Lent, so I thought it would be a good time to look back and, very briefly, review how it went and what has become of me since. Unfortunately yesterday was also rather busy, so, beautiful symmetry ruined, I shall update you today, instead.

Firstly, how do I think Lent went? During the experience I was pretty up and down about it, riding the highs and lows of successes and failures, expectations exceeded and disappointments encountered. One month on, however, I can view the whole thing as something meaningful, directional and for which I am hugely thankful to God for leading me into. Combined with the Aberdeen Passion, recent job explorations and church activities, it really feels like the sometimes glacial work of being transformed by the renewing of my mind was given a serious turbo charge!

That flipside of that comes in the answer to the next question: how do I feel what I learned and experienced during Lent has carried through into my post-Lenten life? The answer here is more ambiguous, at least partly because I'm still living it, but also because the successes and failures continue. I had intended to keep listening to sermons a few times a week, for example and managed it for the first week or so, but then the lure of new episodes of Fringe has dulled my enthusiasm.

I have managed to keep to my morning prayer and bible study time, however, and that has helped to stabilise me through the flat times, the depressing times and the moments of anxiety after the Passion. (There's actually a whole missing blog post about that, but I think I have been wise to leave it in my drafts).

I have also been examining the things I really love to do and tried to do them more, to God's glory, I hope. I've got back into song writing and singing more, and have posted a couple of songs on my new soundcloud account. I have also vowed to do more writing that is not merely Shadow, including updating this blog and finishing Murkland (although please bear in mind I last committed to finish it on New Year's Day, 2013.,,)

In the midst of all this in keeping my eyes and ears open for the opportunities God gives to use my talents and skills for Him and hope to find a more fulfilling path in life than where I've been up until now - careerwise, at least.

So, watch this space, I guess?

Passion

We're into the final week of Lent.

It's hard to believe that Easter is so nearly upon us.  I think of what it felt like to begin this journey and I wonder if I'm the same now as when I began, or if there has been some transformation, however small - an evidence for the Spirit.  I incline towards the maudlin, the pensive, the contemplative.  Easter can do that, but I go through these cycles, these whirlpools of excitement and disappointment, of hope and despair, of intent and disavowal.  I get lost, sometimes, in the maze of my own complex, as if it were something real, a place of some significance, not merely a matter of perspective.

There'll be time to examine what I have, or haven't learned from this journey.  There'll be time to look deep at what I am left carrying on the other side of Easter - something precious, something worn but functional, or a piece of burnt-out wreckage.  There'll be time for the big debrief, but I gave you this little piece of my often messed-up mind just now because it sets the scene for what I'm about to talk about, which is, as John Cleese once said, 'something completely different'.  Or...?

One thing I have mentioned Ad Infinitum on Facebook, but have breathed (typed) not a word of on this blog so far, is that at 7.30pm on Good Friday, I'll be joining a crowd of other Christians (and some Non-Christians) on stage at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre for the second Aberdeen Passion: One Hope.

This is a big deal in itself, but bigger still for me, I will have the wonderful privilege and the grave responsibility of playing Peter.  This is the biggest role I have ever played on stage.

To put this in perspective, here is a potted history of my life in theatre:

When I was five I joined my first Christmas play - the Magic Garden - in the role of.... one of the trees.  I had no lines.

My second Christmas performance was to be as a reindeer, one of the ones at the back.  Again, no lines.

A later play gave me the opportunity to play Joseph - the Holy Grail of schoolboy nativity roles.  I ended up a choral shepherd in this musical version, however, on account of the fact that I couldn't actually sing high enough for the role...

In my penultimate year in Primary School, I got to play the father of St. Patrick in a mimed play about the Saint.  I mimed a version of St. Patrick's Breastplate, then was chased around the stage for a minute before being stabbed to death and not involved in the rest of the performance.

Apart from these primary school performances (I was also an advisor to Aethelred the Unready in a P7 play, which, despite being the biggest role I'd had up to that point, I can barely remember) my acting career has consisted mainly of Scripture Union Holiday Club dramas, playing singing caretakers, mad Italian chefs and slimy alien villains.

I was in the last Aberdeen Passion, One Life Given back in 2012, but even then I was a two-line Pharisee abs a one-line Angel. That experience was part of what drew me back to the Passion, but nothing I've done before has really prepared me for this. I'll come back to that - in fact there's a lot I want to say about the experience and it might not all add up to one neat, coherent narrative, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to ask you to bear with me and take what you can from my musings.

Firstly playing this role has made me look at Peter in a way I never have before. To me Peter has always been the bold, reckless caricature he is often portrayed as. A man of great faith and little time for thinking things through before hand. I say caricature, but that's not too deny that he had those traits. They are clearly to be seen in the texts of the gospels, after all. But, even so, actually playing the man on stage has forced me to look for more depth than I have usually been presented with in my previous encounters with his story.

Some of this had to do with my own weaknesses as an actor. I am not a bold person. I am not especially reckless. My faith has always been weak and, whilst the essence of acting is appearing that which you are not, I find it hard to portray a man who was, in many ways, my opposite. So I had to find some part of Peter I could identify with, a fragment of my own personality within him: the seed from which my portrayal of him could sprout. I think I found it quite early on in rehearsals.

Asked to talk a bit about our characters, I found myself latching on to the fact that Peter is, in fact, a man of some not inconsiderable contradictions. He walked on water with Jesus, was the first to recognise him as the Messiah (by the Spirit), proclaimed loudly how he would die for him; yet Peter was also the one whose faith failed him on the lake, so that he began to sink, who constantly told Jesus that the things the Son of Man predicted about his death and resurrection were 'not so' and who denied even knowing him three times to save his own skin.

The word 'passion' originally meant only 'the suffering of Christ on the cross', so it is right and proper that we use it in reference to the Easter story, but led me flip that about a bit just now by using it in its modern sense to describe the contradiction of Peter: Peter's passion for Jesus was matched only by his inability to follow through.

Taking a moment to look at that in my own life, I have often struggled with the idea of being a 'passionate' Christian, indeed, I have struggled with the concept of passion in many areas of my life.  For one who so easily gets lost in his own internal, emotional landscape, I can often seem cold and whilst I do get fired up about things, they are usually the things that don't really matter, as if it is easier to commit oneself to the frivolous than to the deeper things of life.  I have prayed for passion in my life almost as much as I have prayed for faith, and it is still something I am not always comfortable with.  One friend once told me that I was the British person she knew, and perhaps this was part of what she was alluding to?

Passion was clearly not a problem for Peter, however.  From his fervent attempts to please Jesus to his vehement denial, Peter was a man for whom strong emotion was no stranger, but how to balance these polar opposite moments in his life?  Having looked to see a way in which I could play him, with my more reserved demeanour and shyness, it seemed to me that he was actually a man riddled with insecurity.  What follows is my interpretation.  It may not be correct, but I think it is still illuminating for our own lives as Christians.

Peter is taken from a humble life as a Galilean fisherman to become one of the principle players in the most important event of human history, and, somewhere along the journey, the impact of that must have hit him.  He did, after all, get given the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah, so he was in no doubt that he had entered an exalted circle.  His only reason for being there?  Why, that would be Jesus himself.  Jesus was Peter's passport to lead him out of obscurity and into history.

So Peter clings to Jesus.

He loves him, yes - that's clear from his actions - but there is also a sense in which his image of Jesus is what is holding him, allowing him to reconcile his new circumstances with his old - his privileged position with the unschooled man he knows himself to be.  Jesus is everything to him, but his idea of who Jesus is is not completely correct and wont be until after the resurrection - in fact he'll still have plenty to learn about who Jesus really is for the rest of his life, just like the rest of us.  Peter is holding onto an idea of the Messiah which does not match up to what Jesus ultimately goes on to do.  It is obvious from his rebukes to Jesus every time the master tells him that he must die.  It's obvious from the way he responds to the appearance of Moses and Elijah during the transfiguration.  Peter has glued his insecure identity to a distorted image.

So, when Jesus is arrested, Peter's world starts to crumble.  This bold, courageous man, is left alone and terrified.  He follows Jesus at a distance, because Jesus - or at least his idea of who Jesus is - is all he has to hold his identity in place, but faced with the very real threat of being implicated with him and suffering severe punishment for being one of his followers, he buckles.  His idea of who he is and who he was cannot cope with the pressure put upon it by circumstances that, as far as he is concerned, make no sense whatsoever.  His vision of reality is falling apart, and, passionately, he denies having any connection to his master, his friend - his idol.

As I said before, I am not bold and courageous in most things and I certainly lack Peter's walk-on-water faith, even at my best.  What I can relate to, however, (and many others would be with me) is insecurity.  I've been over this before - I wrote a whole post on it - but being able to see and understand the problem, and even seeing the solution in the form of God's good grace, does not make it simply vanish.  I am still an inherently insecure person the vast majority of the time, and so I can relate to this in Peter.  I can relate to his uncertainty about who he really is, why he is being used by God the way he is and how he should follow through when things get rough.

So, this is my hook for playing him: Peter the bold who crumbles when his Master is taken from him, because his identity was hanging on who he thought Jesus was, rather than who Jesus was revealing himself to be all the time.  My Peter is somewhat stripped down, thought that's not to say simplified, necessarily, but I've focussed on this aspect of his character over some of the more traditional elements.  There is still some bravado, some rushed, thoughtless action - I can't change the story, even if I wanted to - but my performance hangs on Peter's internal life, the emotional landscape he, perhaps, doesn't really understand, the thoughts he holds onto and those he cannot yet grasp.

I don't know how much of that will show on stage, but I hope it will inform all that does.  In the end it is the best that I can do.  I'm simply not a good enough actor to portray Peter any other way.  I can only do my best with the talents God has given me and hope that, by his Spirit it is enough.  I know, also, that I'm not at the centre of this play.   The Passion is not about Peter, but he is one of our roads in to understanding it and so I take the role very seriously, praying that God will use it to reveal something of Himself to the audience this weekend.

And that brings be to the other thing I want to examine, just very briefly. I mentioned praying for faith, and have pointed out on numerous occasions that I am not bold - I lack confidence in myself and can be very shy.  So why, you might ask, are you acting on stage at all?

It's a very good question.  I was plagued by stage fright when I was younger - I remember once imagining myself having heart attack on stage at a school prize giving event and seeing my (somewhat rotund, and rather posh) headmaster looming over me to say "Get off the stage, George, you're blocking the procedure" - and even this weekend past standing up in front of my church to give an announcement was utterly terrifying, but here's a funny thing.  The last time I was involved in the Aberdeen Passion I was not really nervous at all.  There are still a few more days until the first performance and I do have a very strong sense of just how much bigger my part is this time around than last, but even so I'm still not really nervous.

Some of it is probably just because of how well and often we've rehearsed.  I cannot doubt that I know my lines and what I need to do with them.  Some of it is likely because of the great team of people I have the privilege of working with - the Passion family as we call it, because, in so many ways, that is what we have become and I treasure the time we get to spend together working on these productions.  But, there is more to it - of that I'm sure.

If there is a miracle hidden within my testimony, it is this: God has transformed me from a timid, socially awkward youth into a timid, socially awkward man - who can do whatever He asks of me, even in front of an audience, when He wills it to be so.  Praise the Lord, because without him I'd be hiding in cupboard somewhere right now!

Shadow is back!

Copied from Shadow - Monsters, Machines and Mad Scientists.

Good afternoon (if you happen to be living in a time zone where that is an accurate description of the time of day, and you're reading this not long after I post it, or, by coincidence, happen to be reading it in the afternoon, during a lunchbreak, for example, or after a brief siesta, or if you, perhaps, subscribe to the belief that all times of day are really after some noon and so, by extension any time of day or night might be described as such), dear readers,

It's been a while; much longer than I had intended, in fact.  When I posted my previous news post about my intention to take a break from writing Shadow whilst I prepared for the imminent arrival of my offspring and then dealt with the chaotic aftermath of the miracle of new life, I had not, in fact, planned to be away for more than a few weeks.  It has, instead, been over two months since I last posted an episode of Shadow and I have very much felt it's absence from  my life in that time.  The truth is, however, I had neither the time, nor the energy to commit to it in any way and even when I returned to work and thought that, at last, I might begin writing again, I found that I didn't have the energy, most days, to do much more on my lunch breaks but sleep.

Still, as time has passed I have found it easier and easier to fit writing back into my life and so I am pleased to be posting this today to tell you that Shadow has returned to the internets and, God-willing, I will have the energy and enthusiasm to resume my weekly updates (although I'm not 100% committing to that just yet).

But enough about Shadow.  You probably want to know about the baby, amiright?

Her name is Elizabeth Aria George.  She was born at 3.10 on Sunday 13th October, weighting just 7lb 1/4oz (or 3.2kg) and she is the most beautiful baby ever.  Despite the lack of time, the lack of sleep and, often, the lack of any functioning brain cells whatsoever, I am loving being a father and am looking forward to the day when, perhaps, Lily (as we are calling her) will be able to write her own stories and help me with mine.  Until then, I had better start coming up with some I am happy for her to be told (and then to read).  She'll be a bit young for Shadow, yet.

Thank you for your patience over the last two months.  I hope I haven't lost any of you to the capricious whims of the internet and that you'll enjoy reading Shadow once more.

Regards,

Chris George (Daddy).

Memetic Makeup

Following on from last week's article about all the stuff I'm (technically) working on at the moment, I have been tagged by the lovely Eruntane (my wife) over at her blog, Josephine Must Write, in a writer's meme of sorts.  Duty and some kind of memetic addiction compel me to complete it.  For what it's worth, it is reproduced below.

What is the working title of your book?

Well, as I said last week, I’m working on at least two things right now, so the novel is called The Dream and the web fiction series is called Shadow.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

Well, The Dream came to me in a dream… I’m kidding.  I came up with the idea for that novel in 2001 or 2002, when I was trying to find a clever twist for a fantasy novel (I was struggling with the traditional fantasy genre at the time).  I found a premise I really liked and thought I could work with, but then when I tried to write it I kept getting bored.  I’ve come back to it several times over the last decade or so and only recently have I found the right voice and the right sense of setting to really feel comfortable with it.

Shadow on the other hand came to me originally as an idea for a piece of chain fiction to write with friends.  I wanted to explore the idea of a city on another world which would be humanity’s true origin, wild and dark.  It never happened.  Then, when I was bored in work one day I started writing this story for a friend and the setting of the city of Shadow seemed perfect for what I wanted to do.  The city has turned out very differently from what I had originally intended, of course, but the base ideas are still there and keep growing all the time.

What genre does your book fall into?

An easy one this!  The Dream is a traditional fantasy novel (or trilogy) with, what I hope is, a fairly unique twist (no spoilers here!)  Shadow on the other hand is a mostly light-hearted Steampunk-lite fantasy tale.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

You know, for all that I love the idea of my stories being turned into films (in contrast to my wife) I am rubbish at thinking of actors in connection to my characters.  I can see them and they don’t look like people I know, mostly.  Having said that, Siren from Shadow was always supposed to look a bit like Kaley Cuoco with her hair dyed black and  Gulliver was inspired by Mackenzie Crook’s Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

The Dream:  The world of Erinëa is falling apart: people vanish without a trace, wars and plagues are rife, a darkness spreads across the lands that is more than the mere absence of light and for four young friends - a bard, a priest, a mountain guide and a soldier – there will be a personal journey that will change the way they think about the world and themselves.

Shadow:  Ellis Graves is a normal English lad with his fair share of relationship troubles and identity issues, but when he finds himself inexplicably sucked into the world of Shadow - a world of monsters, machines and mad scientists – he finds himself a pawn in a much larger game; the goal: Earth.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Shadow is already being published weekly online.  I have vague plans to release each volume of it in eBook form as well.

The Dream is really too early in development (yes, even after a decade) to say what will become of it.  I’m not sure I’m really good enough a writer to attempt anything beyond self-publishing anyway, but who knows?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

This question is really non-applicable, I think. The Dream is unfinished and Shadow is an ongoing serial publication.  Still, the former has been worked on, on and off, for around a decade and the latter for about five years.

To what other books in your genre would you compare this story?

Again, this is another tricky question.  The Dream is, ostensibly, at least, a traditional fantasy and that means it carries a lot of that baggage of that genre with it.  Part of the reason it’s taken me so long to get going well with it is because I was unhappy with the clichés I was trotting out with every page.  The current version plays about with the setting a bit more even before the twist which, I hope, makes it a lot more unique in its genre.  I could compare it to some well-known sci-fi properties instead, but, I’m afraid, that would constitute a spoiler.

As for Shadow, I’m actually woefully under-read in the Steampunk genre and am not sure what it might be like.  It’s really my own take on it and it’s a lot more light-hearted and frivolous (with far less attention to detail) than many would be.  It certainly doesn’t aspire to be good literature, just an entertaining weekly read and an exploration of a crazy and, I hope, fairly original world.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve discussed inspiration already, I think, but I will say that The Dream was partly inspired by a famous Science Fiction film, which led me, eventually, to ask the question, ‘What would a fantasy version of this be like?’.  Shadow was inspired by not enough work to do in a Call Centre, ha ha!

What else about your book might pique your reader’s interest?

As I’ve said before, The Dream is a hopefully fairly original twist on the traditional fantasy genre and I hope it’s premise will intrigue and entertain.  Shadow is like an ongoing Steampunk fantasy TV series, only written down and with a bigger special effects budget.  If either of these things sound like your thing then, chances are, you’d find reading them worth your while.

Here endeth the meme.  I know I'm supposed to tag someone else now but (sad admission) I don't have anyone else to tag and not just because I don't know anyone else working on any writing right now.  Oh well.  If you're reading this and this applies to you, consider yourself tagged and please post a link to your completed meme in the comments!

Just like startin' over

So, once again I make the attempt to resurrect this blog, although this time I have a more reliable purpose in mind for it and one which I think it will be better suited for.

So, from now on, Seraphic Worlds will serve as a sort of hub and commentary blog for my web fiction series, of which at this precise moment there is but one, but I am working on another at this very moment (well, not literally) and I have a few other ideas up my sleeve for further down the line.  Until any of these other projects surface I will use this blog for any news, commentaries or whatever that relate to Shadow, although I will still post news articles in the Shadow blog itself as well, just so no one is left out.

But what of this new project, I hear you ask?  Well, I can tell you that, just like Shadow, it's not really new.  It's something I was working on a few years ago and put on hold for a few other projects and, as is so often the case, I never got the time to go back to it.  So, it seems I am going back to it now and I'm rediscovering that I actually rather liked it and that it's format might lend itself particularly well to serialised web fiction.  It is very different from Shadow.  Here's a list of comparisons:

Shadow is a fantasy adventure story, [Project Name] is a supernatural horror story.

Shadow is aimed at a wide audience, suitable for almost all ages, [Project Name] is suitable for adults only.

Shadow has no definite end point, being an ongoing, TV series-like tale, [Project Name] was intended to be a Novella - it may get extended some in this format, but it will always have an end point in mind.

And those are just for starters.

So, if you like supernatural horror and particularly if you a fan of the Silent Hill series of video games/films/comics, then you will probably want to keep an eye out for when [Project Name] goes live.

That's all for now folks!

More Shadow

Well, it has been a surprisingly long and quite stressful week thanks, mainly to driving lessons, but now a new week has begun and, consequently, there is a new episode of Shadow for you to read.  In truth it's really this episode that starts the story off for real.  Episode I is more of an introduction, but it doesn't give you much idea what to expect from the series as a whole.  Episode II is much more honest and it introduces the character who I like most of all those I've ever written:  The Former Baron von Spektr.

As Shadow continues it will become clear that he is a very eccentric and enigmatic character, but despite his comic appearances he has a surprising amount of depth and history.  I don't know it all yet and I always enjoy discovering something new about him.  I suppose he's like my version of the Doctor from Doctor Who. In fact, since discovering classic Doctor Who I can now compare him with a somewhat more comical version of the First Doctor, although I was not familiar with that character when I created the Former Baron.

Anyway, visit Shadow, read it and tell me what you think.  I'd be really interested to know.  I'd also be interested in any advice people might have about getting the word out about it, although since I haven't even managed that with this blog, it seems unlikely that anyone will reply.

Or will you?