Today we have visiting Love Bytes author Taylin Clavelli .
She is taking about therapeutic writing and shares excerpts on all three stories
Welcome Taylin!
A Tale of Three Shorts by Taylin Clavelli
A Tale of Three Shorts Tour gets readers up close and personal with three late fall releases by Taylin Clavelli. The three short stories, Invisible, Sleepwalking, and DIY Delights, will take you from loss and sorrow, to tender love, to laughter, and a deep sigh when you finally reach the end of each tale. Come meet the men of A Tale of Three Shorts and their stories!
Invisible
Blurb:
What do you do when you become invisible to the love of your life?
DAVID
IT’S the small hours of the morning when I walk through the door of our home. The savory smells of lasagna hitting my senses make me close my eyes in delight. Ahhh, beautiful. Just the thought of beef, tomato, cheese and herbs caressing my pallet has me salivating, and my stomach rumbling. Sean sure knows how to look after me. He’s beyond wonderful.
A tidy apartment and a scrumptious meal are superb to come home to, especially after a hard day in the ER, where I’m surrounded by blood, tears and anguish. My feet hardly touched the ground, from the beginning of my shift until the end. My team and I dealt with everything from a saucepan stuck on a boy’s head, to a multiple pile-up, where the rider of a motorcycle caught the worst of it. He sustained two broken legs, a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder. Thankfully, he was wearing all the correct safety gear, which saved his life and held him together. He’ll have a long road to recovery, but at least he will recover. In the future, however, he’ll set off all airport alarms as he passes through security, with the amount of metal now inside him.
Eating my meal, I settle in to unwind.
The next thing I know, I’m shuddering with cold. Dammit, I’ve fallen asleep on the couch again. There’s no blanket in sight. Oh dear, Sean must be pissed at me. I know he doesn’t like it, and if I could catch myself drifting off, I’d move to bed. Except, I couldn’t, and I didn’t.
Looking at the time, I realize it won’t be long before he’ll be up for work. Walking into the kitchen, I flick the switch of the amber nectar machine, ready to wake him with coffee and a cuddle—albeit a belated one.
With drink in hand, I walk into our bedroom. The bed is empty.
Buy the short story:
Sleepwalking
Blurb:
Devastated by loss, Matthew sleepwalks through life, existing but not living. Can someone rescue him from his waking nightmare and help him to live again?
Matthew almost looked like a ghost, too—he was thin and gaunt. The trousers of his grey suit were held up by a belt that, judging by the markings, had been tightened several holes—so, it must have fit him properly at some time. Other than that, he kept clean-shaven. As for his dark brown hair… it had been cut and cut well, because it didn’t seem to matter how many times his fingers ran through it, it looked fantastic.
Yes, I’d studied him quite a lot since I started. I’d noticed him on my first day, and every day since. There was something about him that drew me to him, and yet he’d never looked at me even once—it was as if he were off in his own world, and a sad one at that. I’d never seen him smile, and I felt nothing other than sadness emanate from him whenever I passed by his desk. I didn’t even know the color of his eyes, as they were always buried in a file, or watching the floor whenever he ventured elsewhere in the office. His thick rimmed glasses stopped me getting a sideways peek at them, too. The wide arms hid anything that might expose them to me.
The only thing that elicited any kind of positive emotion from him was his coffee—frothy cappuccino with two sugars. Relief washed over his whole body and downcast face with his first sip, which was usually followed by the back of his hand swiping the foam away from his upper lip.
Yes, I was so intrigued with the man that I knew how he took his coffee. A little stalkerish, I know, but there was just… something.
FOR a few days, I’d noticed a change. If it were possible, he was even more withdrawn than usual, yet no one in the office said a thing, or even seemed to care what was happening with him.
I decided to do something about it.
Buy the short story:
DIY Delights
Blurb:
While renovating his first house with his partner, Mike, Duncan discovers a plethora of reasons to use his favourite word… Bollocks!
Needless to say, once the day came when my life partner, Mike, and I bought our house, no one was surprised when it turned out to be in need of a little TLC. In fact, if it was a trauma patient, it would have been taken immediately to intensive care.
That was when the “Holy fuck, what have you taken on?” version of the word bollocks was used.
The wiring was old. The electric heater was there to cover the hole from an open fire, and the bathroom was a disaster waiting to happen. Walls were covered in fading flock paper, and the banister looked as though it had been leaned on a few too many times. As far as carpets went… ughhh. That was when I found another way to use the word—in disgust. Things were living in the crumbled rubber backing.
The poor dwelling was in a shocking state, considering it was only built in the sixties.
It had its good points, though. The damp course and walls weren’t in bad condition. Only a few parts needed rendering. No roof tiles were missing, and neither squirrel nor bat had taken up residence in the loft. Structurally, the place was sound. All it needed was the home improvement equivalent of some Botox and a serious facelift.
Our house was a little two-story, two-bedroomed cottage on the outskirts of Evesham—a town around a third of the way to Bristol from Birmingham. The town itself wasn’t small, and continued to expand into the surrounding farmland. It’s an area well known for its fruits and vegetables.
Due to the cottage’s dilapidated condition, and lack of sleeping accommodation, we purchased the property for an exceptional price. Beautifully, both of us could see its potential. The electricity source at ground level was up to standard, and so was the basic plumbing. The convenient thing was we had a caravan to stay in while we completed repairs.
We loved the cottage. The first thing we did was give it a name—Gayden.
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Therapeutic writing
Since being an adult whenever I’ve gotten my knickers in a twist over something, wanting to send a scathing letter or e-mail, I’ve written all my thoughts down in detail first. In that first draft, I used every swear word and descriptor to voice exactly how I was feeling and say exactly what I wanted to say without diplomacy marring the way. Then after a few days I’d compose more sedate versions actually to send or shred.
In a similar way, I find writing stories therapeutic. I have watched movies and read many stories over the years, and occasionally they haven’t had the ending I wished. So, when writing my own stories, I can give my characters the endings I think they deserve. Likewise, I can send them on weird and wild adventures if I see fit.
It’s like having a whole new limitless toy box to play in, and all the items are designed to stimulate the imagination. I can sink into a world far far away from the present, express anger, excitement, sadness, love and lust, and come out the other side feeling as though I’ve been away on holiday. I can re-live experiences and change the outcomes. I can also take my characters into extreme situations and have them emerge – sometimes a little battered – but always wiser for the adventure. I’ll even kill a few characters off if the story calls for it.
I can be anyone I choose to be. I can stray from personal characteristics and become a total psychopath or change directions to become introverted. In a nutshell, I can do everything I would, could, should and shouldn’t do in real life.
Being able to write a story where it’s only your characters who pay the consequences, is a freeing experience.
I’ve had quite a few people say to me, “Oh I could never write a story.”
My answer is, “Until you try, you never know.”
Everyone is capable of transferring their thoughts and feelings onto the page when writing a letter of complaint or praise. Why not add your own ending and turn it into a story? Give yourself the idealistic ending you want to the letter, or go for the comedy approach.
There are also many people who have said, “Wouldn’t it be great if…” Why not give an ending to the…if?
In a story coming out soon – I have done precisely that. A couple of years ago I completed five flights in a short span of time, and I had that ‘wouldn’t it be great if’ experience. I put pen to paper and soon it will be published. Keep your eyes open for Wayward Ink’s Anthology – A Likely Story.
DIY Delights, Invisible, and Sleepwalking are three stories in which I’ve taken a little bit of experience, added some extremes and a whole lot of ‘What if’s’. They’ve been therapeutic and fun to write, and they’ve taken me to the edges of my emotions. I hope they do the same for you.
Taylin Clavelli lives in the United Kingdom, about 15 miles south of Birmingham, and a short journey from the world famous Cadbury’s Chocolate factory. She’s married with children and loves her family with all her heart.
Her love of books has been a long standing affair, with Taylin liking nothing better than to lose herself in an imaginary world.
Until she met Lily Velden, she never considered trying her hand at writing. However, after talking ideas, Lily encouraged her to put pen to paper—or rather, fingers to keyboard. Since, with a few virtual kicks in the right place, she hasn’t stopped. Her confidence eventually led to her writing an original work for submission.
Her first published work was Boys, Toys, and Carpet Fitters, developed for the Dreamspinner Press Anthology – Don’t Try This At Home.
Now she absolutely adores immersing herself into the characters she creates, and transferring the pictures in her brain to paper, finding it liberating, therapeutic, and wonderful.
Outside of writing, her interests include; martial arts (she’s a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Taekwon-do), horse-riding, all of which facilitates her love of a wide variety of movies. Her action heroes include Jet Li and Tony Jaa—finding the dedication these men have for their art combined with their skill both amazing and a privilege to watch. If pressed, she’ll admit to thinking that the screen entrance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl, and Shadowfax in LOTR, to be the greatest screen entrances ever. Her all-time favorite movies are Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
The simple things in life that make her day, putting a smile on her face are:
Laughter – especially that of her children.
The smell of lasagna cooking – it makes her mouth salivate.
The dawn chorus – no symphony ever written can beat the waking greetings of the birds.
Social links:
Website: http://www.taylinclavelli.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005234535413
Twitter: https://twitter.com/taylinclavelli
These sound so varied and intriguing!
Love the entire post!