Trouble with Chapter Seven

Chapter seven of Hellfire is becoming problematic. I'm having trouble moving the characters on. I know where I've got to get them and what happens in the book overall but they are stuck. One reason for this is that I've had an idea for a short story that has been going around and around in my head since I thought of it and I think I need to get these ideas down on paper whilst I'm in the mood. 

Hellfire will continue. I have found that as my work matures I tend to write in cycles, with each expanding and driving the story forward. I just need to take a breather from the work before I come back all fired up.

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A while back I read a David Almond book based on the fact that Dave Mckean had done the art work. I was impressed and vowed to read more. I have done, and he's amazing. Heaven Eyes is a children's book like I've never read before. Almond seems to like damaged children, those who have been affected by the adult world and so retreat to fantasy constructs to cope. 

In Heaven Eyes three children run away from a home for children in need of care that their parents are unable to give. They float down river on a man made raft and end up stuck on the 'Black Middens,' an area of industrial decay. Here they meet Gampa and Heaven Eyes, a family who have created their own mythology of misunderstanding. Heaven Eyes believes herself formed from some aquatic creature, whilst Gampa searches the river mud for treasure and lost history.

The story is simple and pared down, but it is the voices of the children that ring through here. Heaven Eyes, a girl with webbed hands, comes through loud and clear through the use of simplified language to describe the world she sees and tries so hard to explain. This is an amazing book.

Read this week:

Heaven Eyes by David Almond.