entry seventeen. moving home.

thissideofdarkness.com

So this is it. The time has come to move on... Because I have a new place to call home! My own ‘dot com’–exciting times! Fingers crossed the new layout is designed to be easier to read, easier to connect, and easier to follow. To the beautiful people who are keen readers and already follow me, make the switch, and I hope you enjoy the new website!!!

There will be more coming soon, but in the meantime head on over to thissideofdarkness.com and…

Read The Storyteller, and The Princess of the Howling Waste, if you haven’t yet, they are my personal favourites!

Connect with me on Facebook, or Instagram (@jr_manawa)

Follow me through the “Support my Storytelling” link on thissideofdarkness.com

If you do choose to follow me, I can’t tell you how much that means! Thanks for all your support! #thebestisyettocome!!!

Forever this side of darkness,

JR Manawa xxx

entry sixteen. tonight the moon.

Tonight the moon is waxing, not waning.

                 The sun is rising, not setting.

                                  I am being born, not dying.

                                                      My existence is at its beginning.

tonight the moon. J R Manawa.

A teeny poem as a gift to you, and if you have the time, below you can gift back to me by linking back to Facebook to LIKE "The Storyteller" which has been entered in a good ole' fashioned writing competition! ....you never know until you try!

Like "The Storyteller" in the GET INSPIRED TO WRITE contest

Like "The Storyteller" in the GET INSPIRED TO WRITE contest

Written by JR Manawa

entry fifteen. creativity takes courage.

French painter Henri Matisse set it straight for us when he said "Creativity takes courage". To be artistic because you have a 'talent' is never as easy as the world seems to think it is. Matisse' words resonate with me deeply this week as I receive critique on the query letter I have written for my novel. I've had to look back and address why I want to do this. And then – knowing what motivates me – I have to look forward again.


creativity takes courage. J R Manawa.

If you like to write you should do something about it, right? When I was nine I wrote my first book, partially because I had to for school book week, but mostly because I wanted to tell a really awesome story about a girl who has a pet lion as a regular part of her everyday life. The plot thickens when she decides to take that lion on an outing to the local shopping mall.

Unrealistic? Absolutely! But I was privileged enough to be blessed with an imagination free to roam as far and wide as it pleased, all I had to do was harness the power of that beautiful, untameable creature. By eleven I was writing a novella every other month.

At sixteen my mother put her foot down on my imagination and more or less ordered me to do something about it. You should note that by this stage I’d already spent four years of my life relentlessly working on my first novel, and she probably assumed I had no real life. She dumped a newspaper in front of me, folded to the page advertising a nationwide short story competition. Entries closed two days from the moment that paper hit the table. “Enter it,” she said. “Or not.” I retorted. “Or else,” she hedged, “why keep writing?” I whined, I argued, I am not a short story writer, I labelled myself. Eventually I saw the light and did it. Forty-eight hours.

I didn't win. However, I emerged triumphant with a certificate edged in gold that told me I was one of the top ten finalists from across the country. Forty-eight hours considering, I was pretty chuffed, all the more because I now had parental blessing to return the creative cave in my mind and thrash pens, or keyboards as I preferred – I cannot write as fast as I think. Thank God for computers!

Jump back a paragraph and know that first novel is still my chimera, my mythical beast that I chase, and one day just maybe, it might get published. If not, I'm cooking up fresh meat also. Watch this space.

Is this a biography you ask? Sort of. I struggle to write from experience, reality often bores me. Having said that, all of my writing is influenced by my experiences in life; the people I meet, places I see, and situations I get myself into. When I do happen to write from experience, I lace it like a hash cookie with sprinklings of my imagination. But all you read now is true. At least I am honest.

Fast-forward to the present and I'm four novels written, no attempts at publishing yet. But I am positive, I've only just begun to open the doors of my mind to share with the wider world. I'm confidence building and flexing my creative muscles as I go. There is a lot to learn and a lot to edit, but if for that one moment I have you hooked – on that first word, sentence, paragraph – and you can close your eyes and see that picture I am painting, then I am a storyteller, and I am winning.

entry fourteen. lipstick stained cigarettes.

On that note of breaking the silence, let me get your imagination flowing with an offering, one hundred words of drabble to wake you. For those who love darkness, who romance the night, beware....

lipstick stained cigarettes. J R Manawa.

Lipstick stained cigarettes and a chain of twenty butts, smooshed over the cobble stones with a well-heeled shoe, were all that was left. The vampire could taste her carbon dioxide in the fumes that remained. Weightless, the tiny fragments of ash were still now dancing through the shadows of the alleyway toward the ground. She had been disturbed. Questions rampant - How much had she seen? How far had she run? In the distance, pebbles crunching under footfall so soft and cautious, prompt the vampire. He moves fast, shrouded with the darkness, dancing through shadow. She cannot know what follows.

entry thirteen. the nature of the world.

Hey, welcome back! Pull up a chair and come sit at this table with me. I have something to share, something personal. It's been suffocating me for far too many months. But don't let me stop you from eating, please! Try some of the food, it's good for your soul. My friend and I, we've been practicing our cooking for sometime now, so why don't you take a bite while I talk? 


the nature of the world. J R Manawa.

I've been silent for far too long, and in the silence I've realised that the nature of the world is to have a firm grip on our hearts and souls, so easily crushing our dreams. While imagination, a gentle mother, only holds us tight as children and then happily releases us into the wild to grow. And it seems only when the world destroys us that we run back into her arms where her comfort is temporal, shallow and unreal.

So I invite you, bring your hearts to the scales, allow them to be weighed against the world. Hold your imagination and dreams in one open bowl, and reality and the world in the other; take even portions of each and allow them to hang until they balance. This is how we should move forward – keeping our dreams fueled by the world, letting the brutal reality of life push us toward our goals. 

The outcome? Rise to the challenge, cling to your dreams even tighter, and pull them into reality.

entry twelve. not for sale.

It's been some time. Again. Eventually this prisoner in chains will rise from captivity. Through the key hole a small offering escapes; these one hundred words, a dabble with drabble.

not for sale. J R Manawa.

Exhilarated, accelerated, inebriated on the moment, she spun. The colours, they twirled faster and faster, the dress twisted fuller, fuller. Her hair a fan of auburn slicing through the air. The sword in her hand blunt and useless as her life. She paused and fell to the floor as the coins tumbled through the air toward her. He was pleased. They were all pleased. In her mind the sword pressed to the whet-stone, getting sharper, ready to cut the sign chained to her neck; ‘for sale’ it read. He stood and placed his drink down before crossing the dance floor. 

entry eleven. for love of night.

Here's a quick one for you. A love poem. A romance with light versus the seduction of night. Bare your soul.

for love of night. J R Manawa.

You and I are unique, the sun and the moon. You light up the world while I bring the night. You leave shadows, I birth starlight. I am the canvas of heaven, you brighten the earth. We are worlds apart and spaces between. There is no eye to eye from what I've seen.

Yet the sun always chases the moon and lights up her darkness, devours her night. And the moon in return oft speeds through the black. Desperate t'would seem is her search of daylight. Till at last there she is, in the shadow of the sun. In their choice to keep fighting, the two they are one.