Writing In The Dark

I can never get any writing done before midnight. I like a single lamp in a dark room. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Somebody-Elses-Dream-Conor-Mahood-ebook/dp/B01726YAQE/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/ebooks/dp/B00LBOWECG/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

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My favourite Bowie song is Soul Love.

My favourite snatch of lyrics from it:

“New love - a boy and girl are talking

New words - that only they can share in New words - a love so strong it tears their hearts To sleep - through the fleeting hours of morning”

I once had an argument with a girlfriend, when I was I guess about twenty-one or twenty-two. I was really upset and sad and when she fell asleep I walked out of the bedroom and sat out in the living room all night listening to The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. I really thought I loved her, and I wondered if she loved me. I felt some tears the second time the album came to Soul Love, because those lyrics above made me realise. No, this wasn't love, or wasn't love enough. I was crying (and I've never been great at crying, I can cry at movies or books or shed a tear for tv but I find it hard to cry at real life) but I felt something beautiful, even if I didn't have the thing that I wanted I had been reminded what it was.

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Really unsettling handprint.

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This is an incredibly well camouflaged cat.

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Foggy in London tonight. Kinda Spielbergian.

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Trying out a bit more of a unified theme for my covers. The tree is a stock photo but the beach is a photo I took myself.

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The Last Time I Saw That Beach

When I was leaving Dublin in July of 2014 I didn’t feel like I had a lot to leave behind. 

I went down to Portmarnock Beach, the place I had been to countless bonfires, rolled down sand dunes, drank beers and froze my ass off as a teenager. 

I stayed up all night and started walking there a little bit before dawn. It was only a fifteen minute walk away but typically for me, I started to wonder if I was missing the sweetest first rays of dawn and flagged a taxi driver on his way home, to get me there eight or nine minutes faster.

It was cold for July and I walked up and down the beach listening to music, throwing stones into the sea, stopping to sit and dig my hands into the sand sometimes.

After a while I took off my jacket anyway because the cold air felt good through my t-shirt. I took a lot of pictures because I felt wistful but looking back I think I also felt a little afraid. Afraid that I would never be there again in quite that way. I was afraid I was catching a last glimpse that morning of something I left behind twenty years ago.

I took a lot of pictures, most of them grainy and indistinct but I think a couple of them turned out okay. The best of them, or my favourite at least, became the cover of my new book, Somebody Else’s Dream.

It’s all a bit on the nose I realise, but I can’t help it, I’m a sentimental guy.

Here I am that morning. 

[conormahood-blog]

My new book is called Somebody Else’s Dream. 

It’s about a young man in Dublin who realises he’s not real, but maybe that’s not the end of the world.

Find it here.