Chemical Lovers

Runner Up, Irish Writers Centre novel award.

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I thought it might be fun to post another piece that I was placed for in a competition.

It’s an early version of the start of my previous WIP, which has been through two major redrafts and a title change since this. Coming back to it, I really enjoy its immediacy and the fact that I can still see all the stitching in it, where I am trying to make it just work, and not just a bunch of rambling sentences strung together. There are a few elements to it which don’t work, and I’ve edited some of them out as to republish here. Those parts are often the ones I shoe horned in to answer other peoples’ feedback and to give it more suspense.

At this point in my writing I wasn’t the least bothered with plot, but eventually things do happen in this novel. Just maybe not in the way or the order that agents would like. I’ve pretty much shelved this novel but I need to decide what to do with it. It’s had a few full manuscript requests for which I will love it eternally and keep it in a comfortable retirement with regular Sunday visits.

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There is a day, that first year when we are in London, and I am standing on Charlotte Street, in front of the building where you live. You’re up on the top floor, where the ceilings are lower, and the floor leans towards the street. It’s October, and the weather is grey, and I am looking at the brown building like it might hold something of you, except that the bricks look rough to the touch, and you are nothing of the sort.