I got rid of all 9 stories, in a fit of defeat and despair, with never being able to write another story. Ideas seem to simply refuse to come to me until I met him…

Who’s him? I hear you ask. Well, I shall tell you, because he is the person that helped make Dawn Wake happen, the story that started all the other stories that came after it. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so I shall start at the very beginning.

I was on the whole in quite a depressive state after I had gotten rid of all of the stories that I had spent months on writing and completing, that in the end added all to nothing. I was quite gutted; I can tell you that.

Before leading up to the moment Dawn Wake happened. One day Paul had given me a tape of an audio story that he had done entirely all by himself, complete with sound effect tracks, that he had done with only just a tape deck a record player, a microphone, his voice and two LPs with sound effect tracks on them.

I can tell you this much, I completely blown away. The audio tale sounded really professional like, and I was seriously and sincerely impressed. I told him as much and that was when we got talking about doing stories. He had done a few himself, which led me to telling him about my Flightpath story and me throwing the stories away and being heart broken of not having any creative ideas for writing stories and I so wanted to write again, so badly.

He told me how sorry he was to hear that and that was it. Or so I thought. I was not completely expecting him to come visit me one day where I was living in a flat all on my own in Blackpool, long before the move to Kirkham, where I currently live. Paul sat on the sofa and produced a six-page unfinished prologue that he had written. And then he said to me.

“I can’t finish this off and I want you to have it. When you had told me about needing to write a story and wishing that you had the creativity to write again. After writing this prologue, I could not carry one and then I thought about you and what you said and I knew right there and then that I wanted you to finish this story.”

I was completely moved by his words. No one has ever been that kind to me, my whole life. For most of my life, I had been criticized in one way or another, more times than I can possibly count. No one was ever kind to me and yet here was Paul not only being kind to me but offering me such a beautiful gift. The unfinished prologue had no title to it. I read it and I was completely astonished.

The six pages had been written in a way with words of a words smith, that I could not possibly contend with, not on that level. I said nothing right away, because I honestly did not want to offend him in anyway. But one day I told him the honest truth. I told him carefully.

“Thank you for that six-page unfinished prologue you had given to me. But I honestly do not think that I can finish it. I do not think that I can ever possibly write in the same style as you.”

I held my breath, worried that he’d be offended.

And he replied with…

“Nonsense. I have complete faith in you.”

Those words right there totally blew me away. I thanked him. I did not start on the unfinished 6 paged prologue right away. I sat there going over and over what he had written and in the way that he had written it and his words. “I have complete faith in you.” Ringing in my mind. And then it happened, a spark. My mind started to fill with imagination, imagining where this prologue to lead to and so slowly and steadily I started off not only finishing off the prologue, but the whole entire story itself.

That story was about two souls existing in different people throughout different realities, waiting to be joined together as one. Waiting for the fall of the Dawn Wake, a mystical awakening of two souls becoming as one.   I had written the entire story in exactly the same style as Paul had written and used fancy words just like what he had used. I do not know how or where they came from, they were just there in my mind. All I had to do was for me to write them down.

The title of the story of course was Dawn Wake, and I read it Paul and he absolutely loved it. In a completely unexpected events, Paul had stopped doing stories, as he had no ideas for any and I had begun getting ideas for the next story after Dawn Wake and from there on in, one story after another, simply kept pouring into my mind and I have never stopped writing ever since.

So, I owe completely everything to Paul, without him giving me that 6 paged unfinished prologue-none, of my stories would ever have been possible. His unfinished work was the seed that sparked my imagination which grew into something utterly and completely beautiful. I am absolutely beyond grateful for his belief in me and his gift, that made all of my stories possible.

Back in 1990 I had started a story entitled Flightpath. It was a story in part inspired by the novel Return to Mars, by W. E. Johns the paperback novel, the one with the men in green uniforms outside a UFO type spaceship, being attacked by giant red mosquitoes. That image alone from that book cover, stayed in my head for a very, very long time and that sparked the idea for a story about a whole hive of giant red mosquitoes that actually live inside and control an insect like shaped spacecraft with a sphere at the end of it that has on it oceans and islands (Earth Like) with the hull being completely made up of checked steel plates and right across the middle of the segmented hull are large bold red letters that reads: *Flightpath 1*

The main protagonist of this story was a 20-year-old man called James Sephens, who buys up a plot of land with an airstrip on it with an old control tower too and just a few feet away from it, is a house that he had built to occupy the plot of land. The airstrip fascinated him immensely, as well as the old control tower. One lone night, he’s woken up by the sound of an aeroplane flying low, he looks outside and sees a red aeroplane and it’s coming down fast, it looks like it’s going to crash.

Quickly, James gets out of his bed, runs downstairs and out of his house in his PJ’s. He starts to run the entire length of the airstrip, which seems to oddly stretch on and on, with no end in sight. He wakes up one morning, still on the airstrip, but the sky suddenly looks all wrong. It looks like it’s made of metal plating. Some one finds him and tell him that he has got get away from there before *They* Get him, but the man who is trying to convince him to leave, simply will not say who *They* are, until the sky suddenly turns red, a red mist appears in the sky and a massive swarm is now coming their way.

James and the lone man stand no chance to outrun the swarm. Soon, they are completely surrounded by very large red mosquitoes they talk in clicks, which are then somehow translated into words.

“You are our prisoner Mr James Stephens.”

They say in unison.

“You are aboard our crat, Flightpath One. You shall stay here and be our prisoner for the rest of your life.”

James learns that the environment that he’s in is an artificial one, made to simulate planet earth. His strange lone companion has no idea where the giant red mosquitoes come from and that he is just as much a prisoner as what James is. James spends then the rest of his life on Flightpath 1. With no way back to Earth, he does not even know how he even got aboard the mosquitoes spacecraft.

The mosquitoes spacecraft is an unusual one at that, as in my mind, I saw what I can only describe as an insect type body, (3 Honeybee shaped like hulls interconnected with one another) void black with lit windows and a sphere at the end that had oceans and islands on it (Earth Like), but the entire thing was made up of checked metal plates and right across the middle of the segmented hulls were the words in bold red lettering that read: Flightpath 1.

As James gets older, he simply wants his life to end. He’s 80 years old and feels like he’s never lived properly. He feels sad, very sad. While out in the artificial environment that’s been made to look exactly like his airstrip, for reasons not even he knows why. A lone red mosquito visits him, and she asks him why he is sad. James tells the female mosquito how he feels, like his very life has been robbed from him and he has nothing to show for it.

Much to his shock and surprise, the female mosquito offers him eternal youth, a life without dying. James takes her up on her offer. But he soon learns that the price for this eternal youth is to be completely transformed into one of them, to become an actual mosquito. James at first refuses to undergo such a radical transmutation and transformation, in one. But as time goes on, he finally gives in and accepts to be turned into one of *Them*

However, much to his shock, he gets transformed into a female mosquito human hybrid, which means that she is able to take on human form at will. And so, James in her human form takes on the name of Sheila, but she keeps the surname, as a means that she will never forget who and what she once used to be. Her human form of course is a woman, a forever 20-year-old woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes and a curvaceous figure. She becomes a very important member among the hive of the mosquitoes, and she becomes the bridge between them and their human prisoners, helping them to settle into their lives as prisoners under the rule of the mosquitoes.

But Sheila soon learns that the mosquitoes are nothing but tyrants and she sets out to free the human prisoners, she’s soon on the run that leads her right to the artificial copy of the airstrip, a red mist is on her tail, she runs the length of the airstrip, which suddenly seem to stretch endlessly, that she passes out. She wakes up on the airstrip, but she notices that she’s not on-board Flightpath 1 anymore, in fact she’s back on earth. Not knowing how she got there, the only problem is the fact that she is still a human mosquito hybrid that she must keep anyone form ever finding out.

Much to her relief, no medical scans can detect the mosquito part of her. She does not question it. She’s just glad that, that part of her cannot be detected. One night, when she is asleep, she hears an aeroplane flying low, she looks out of her window and sees a red aeroplane, that looks like it is going to crash. She gets up, puts on her night gown and goes outside. She runs across the length of the airstrip trying to reach the aeroplane, but the airstrip seems to wind on endlessly until she passes out, when she wakes up, it is to find that she’s back again onboard Flightpath 1 and that is where the story ends.

I was writing on A5 lined ruled paper, at the time, as that was cheaper than buying A4 and money was a bit tight back then. So, I settled with what I could afford back then. I wrote an entire trilogy and circumstances changed that meant I could afford A4 sized lined ruled paper, and I ended writing two sets of trilogies. Flightpath II was entitled The Return. Sadly, however, I can no longer remember the titles of the other stories. But I ended up with a total of 9 stories in 3 sets of trilogies under the main name of my main story. So, the titles went something like this:

Flightpath

Flightpath II: The Return

Flightpath III

Flightpath IV

Flightpath V

Flightpath VI

Flightpath VII

Flightpath VIII

Flightpath IX

There was one huge problem though, every other story was a copy of the first story the only real difference, was that Sheila ended up one day getting pregnant, that was somehow possible, she gave birth to a son that she named Stephen, who ends up getting turned into a female human mosquito hybrid, just like her mother. Several generations of the Stephen’s family that always end up as males somehow each undergo the same transformation from human male to human female mosquito hybrid, in a never-ending repeating pattern.

But like I said, stories 1-9 were essentially exactly the same as each other, 9 versions of the same exact story. I soon realised the errors of my ways, and I got rid of all 9 stories, in a fit of defeat and despair, with never being able to write another story. Ideas seem to simply refuse to come to me until I met him… To Be continued.

The very first story that I ever wrote, long before 1992. Was one that I attempted to do at the age of 16. I had gone into an arts supply store and asked if they had a writing pad that had both lined paper and blank paper combined. To my surprise and sheer delight, they did. The reason why I wanted such a pad, was because I had this very ambitious idea to write a story and include art to go with it. 

I was pretty decent at drawing. Though I could not draw people, I still can’t. Though I am pretty good at doing facial portraits. Anyway, I had this idea for a story that I had entitled: The Girl in The Attic. The story was essentially about a boy of my age who had moved into a new house with his mother, and he went off to explore the attic. There to his shock he sees a little girl, wearing a frilly pink dress, a pair of frilly white ankle socks and a pair of pink Mary Jane’s.

When the boy asks her who she is. The girl cryptically replies: “I am you and you are me.” This frightens the boy and he runs right back out of the attic, and he does not return it for some time. Days latter he goes back to the attic and the little girl is there waiting for him and she informs him. “It is time that we become as one.” Curious now instead of being afraid, he steps toward her, their hands touch one another, and then in a blinding light. The boy is now stood wearing the frilly pink dress and everything else. Sadly, that was as far as I had managed to get up to in that story, which was at that point just 6 pages long. Unfortunately, I do not know what ever happened to that story. But I had remembered the story enough to one day, many years later to rewrite it and have the story about that boy seeing a little girl in the reflection of a mirror instead and that story ended up being entitled: The Girl in The Mirror, which I still have to this very day