DANCING THE MUSE - Danial Neil

 In my interview with Sheila Pratt, I was asked what The Sum of One Man's Pleasure meant, what informed me to create such a title. As a book title has great weight, and a certain mystery behind it, I wanted something compelling, and provocative. But I found the title in an unlikely spot, in one of Roderick Haig-Brown's celebrated books, A River Never Sleeps. Haig-Brown was a magistrate in Campbell River BC., but more recognized for his books on fishing, and for his views on conservation and environmental protection. His writing was one of my greatest early influences. Haig-Brown wrote eloquently of the rivers he fished, the mood, such as the heavy water of November. The feel of water against his legs, the power of it, the companionship of fellow fishermen, a bright fish, and life along the river. It's smells, and the texture of the woods, the earthy aromas. He called such things fishermen's pleasures. They are sensory pleasures, something the romantic in me can identify...

  Reading is juggling all the parts in a play with all the pace and tension that one can muster in 8 or 10 minutes. The book launch on September 26, 2023 was so much fun. Family and friends, and NeWest Press author Frances Peck with her book Uncontrolled Flight. 

Read how I constructed  The Sum of One Man's Pleasure on Vancouver Island, B.C. Follow link https://alllitup.ca/where-in-canada-the-sum-of-one-mans-pleasure/  

https://thebcreview.ca/2022/09/30/1577-neil-morrison-falling/  

A novel by Jaspreet Singh  https://thebcreview.ca/2022/06/15/1488-neil-singh-anthropocene/  

 An idea arises, perhaps from a sketchbook of ideas in your head, yes, snippets of thought, inspiration from an article you read, a television news story, real life experiences that includes your own, historical records, and, of course,  information from the  creative Universe.   So, ideas come from many sources. There is never one way to create a story. It is an intimately personal affair. I can only give one view of it all - from my own writing journey, what I have learned after more than twenty novels. A great catologue, you might think, but only six have been published. The other novels, I can reflect now, are where I learned to write well. I am always open to where the next novel comes from. I ask the Universe for a story, something important, what the world  needs to hear. Sounds a bit self-righteous, I know, but I want my 900 hours of work to be worthwhile, that I learned something important, that it contributes to a better understanding of human end...

 As I enter the last section of my current novel in progress, I begin to consider the ending. All things end, or at least come to a conclusion of sorts, satisfying, hopefully. There may be the promise, or hint, that the story has not ended definitively, that it may continue as a sequel. So, this novel, The Honour in Dying Young, will be a complete and finished work.  This complex stage in story making requires the tying of loose ends, from plot to protagonist, and the conflicts along the way, while maintaining the tension and propulsive fuse of the story. One must look at the work in its entirety, something writers must deal with all the time without losing the cohesive structure of the story they want to tell. Who and what decides? In my case, I leave that to the characters. My protagonist, Grant Barrie, must decide. I simply will ask him what he wants to do. What should happen next? Even what could happen? Nothing in my novels is nailed down. Yes, I have something in mind th...

https://thebcreview.ca/  

https://ormsbyreview.com/2022/02/12/1378-neil-isaac-quiet/  

    I do what I can, what comes naturally, out of the depths of my evolution, my karma, my willingness to be more, and to forgive when I see something that discourages me, that makes me turn away – in a kind of disillusionment I want everyone to be the best they can be, toward one another An idealist, you might say, perhaps, but I don’t the know the validity of labels, only that they may explain the world we live in Categorize. Name it. Frame it But ideology comes with a storm of things, religious, political, even claims to intimate knowledge No, I am not that, only a flawed human being, who is optimistic, hopeful, and all the while seeing the reality of life, but undeterred, reaches for the tangible, the good in every hour The Dalai Lama said, “We do not need… to believe in an ideology… The need for a sense of universal responsibility affects every aspect of modern life”  

   There are times when I awaken when I don't know what I'm going to do that day. I want to do something meaningful, something rewarding, some purpose. I am momentarily lost, without structure. And then I take a photograph, or write a good paragraph. That was my dream after all. Why such consternation in the early hours when dreams fade and another dream begins? I think we need such times to direct our attention to our blessings. I am humbled most days by all that I experience. I look around and see the suffering in the streets, the shopping-cart world that I do not know. I am grateful for what brings me joy, what moves me. Gifts perhaps - I don't know. But it is what I can do, the explorer of landscapes and mindscapes. And to share the human experience in my own way, and to be accepted and loved, is the true meaning and purpose of it all, to me at least. And the eagle in the tree, driven there by ravens, only waited for my camera lens. His/her preflight posture and the...

  Standing alone, I see the colourless, the poetic boundaries of the world. It gives me my place, my lane so to speak, where I can construct, or imagine, my stories into being. It is not detachment from felt experience, but rather a subtle felt experience where what one imagines, takes up the same memory space as real experience. What is real after all? I use this often in relating how writing fiction enriches my life. A memory of something I did last summer feels much like a chapter or scene I wrote during that time. The imagery and details are similar. To the mind, both are experienced, both have left impressions. To be honest, to experience life in real time cannot be replicated, or equaled. Still, I have both experiences and grateful for the opportunity to create characters and scenes at any time in our history. That is the gift, to create stories, to inspire and entertain, and even educate. And all the while it comes from our own minds, or does it?  It is difficult to sep...

 I have come home to the West Coast, home to the sea. I had been away, preparing for my return but never aware that I did so. The mystery of such things must remain a mystery. How could we manage our days if we knew? How would we discover meaning, our true purpose, the things we had to go through, learn, discover, uncover, forgive, forget, meet the right person out of chance, luck, or more rightly some divine intervention that saw that love burned unlived inside them, and, yes, grow, grow, grow like a flower, a tree if we knew the road ahead? That is the meaning of our lives after all, to experience this human life, this amazing, astonishing life. Existence is mindblowing. I want to be wowed by life, by love, by touch. I want to drink the long draught of it, and savor all of its offerings. I want to cry when I'm hurt, and cry when I am overwhelmed with love. I want to forgive every error, every wrong turn, and be humbled by the rightness if it all.

  the rain settles like hands upon you, cold fingers remembering your face there is no one in the street but the washed few who think that it is for them there are small voices in the rain, no one talks, and you can think without the urgent sun and the melancholy drift of it, the grey and insipid pouring that allows you to shrink back we can rest there, a moments withdrawal from the world look at the solitary crows and how the rain boils off their ungodly capes they cackle with their jaunty hops, pleased, I would say, to be so ridiculous in the carnival of wet and shivering but not too much of it under the dripping leaves listening to the drizzle and sizzle I once sat in the woods as a boy when a thrush told me stories with its rusty-hinge song and when it rains now and the sky falls black and brooding, I take his hand and wait for the music    

While Winnipeg Free Press did give Dominion of Mercy a good review, the reviewer did criticize the absence of indigenous content, specifically the impact of the Anyox Smelter and its development on the occupied traditional lands of the Nisga'a people. The story takes place in 1917 in northern British Columbia.  I thought a lot about this in the context of historical fiction, writing a novel that contains both fact and fiction. Although I did have the main character question the presence of an indigenous person in one scene, and further content offered by an other character, (Dominion of Mercy p.197-98), the structure of the novel could not provide the proper treatment to address the cultural and human impacts of the smelter. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/scottish-lass-starts-fresh-in-bc-mining-town-574612052.html My reflection returned me to a question that I've had for a long time. How did we acquire the lands called Canada? Were they just...

      The movement of individuals of one country into another for the purpose of resettlement is central to Canadian history. The story of Canadian immigration is not one of orderly population growth; instead, it has been — and remains one — about economic development as well as Canadian attitudes and values. It has often been unashamedly economically self-serving and ethnically or racially discriminatory despite contributing to creating a   multicultural   society (s ee  Immigration Policy in Canada ;  Refugees to Canada ). Immigration has also contributed to dispossessing   Indigenous peoples   of their ancestral lands. Canadian Encyclopedia   So, it was, for my fictional heroine, leaving all that she knew for a better life. That one motivation is not without its self-serving aims. Conditions in Europe in 1917 were dire. A world war raged. Poverty in Scotland, as well orphaned children of the war, made the prospects of a new beginning ...

 The cover of Dominion of Mercy was inspired by historical events, and portrayed by a painting in 1871 by John Everett Millais. Margaret Wilson was executed by drowning for refusing to swear an oath declaring James II of England as head of the Church. As an eighteen-year-old young woman, her faith in the face of death became celebrated as part of the martyrology of Presbyterian churches. They believed that no man, no woman, not even a king, could be the spirtual head of their church. Margaret Wilson was chained to a stake on the Solway Firth in 1685. As the tide rose, choking on the salt water, Margaret was told to offer a prayer for the King, which she did, but she continued to refuse to renounce her beliefs. She was overcome by the tide and drowned. Cover design by Michel Vrana