For those of you (and there may be some) who wondered what happened to publishing William Wade Wilkins novel Albion's Children on this typed.com website, I must tell you that after my last entry here in mid September 2015 I heard nothing from him. Until just over a week ago, (September 11 2016) when he replied via a long email to my numerous attempts via Messenger, email & Facebook to contact him.
I had asked him in my last communication to give his consent to publishing the novel on these pages (this refers to my decision to move the novel to typed.com) rather than via Wattpad. It seemed to me important that he was involved in the decision.
Though he had broadly welcomed the new format on typed.com I still had a few questions I needed answering about some of the practical details. (Chapter order, character outlines etc.) before I published the chapters. He also said that he was sending me some new written pages relating to the novel. But they never arrived.
Below is a copy of his recent message to me.
Hello Gordon.
I'm sending you this email from an internet cafe in Phnom Penh.
Today I realised that it is nearly a year since we last had any contact, though I almost sent you a postcard in March. A picture of a frog or toad on the front sitting on a large leaf with raindrops running off it photographed in a Thai jungle somewhere.
It reminded me of the story you told me of your vist to Thailand a few years ago, the toad that travelled with you from Koh Lanta to the hotel in Bangkok in your sponge bag and your amazement when you opened the bag to brush your teeth and there it was! Of course you (and the toad) were lucky that the hotel was on the edge of a green space so you were able to release it into some semblance of the wild.
Much of Bangkok was like any large modern city, though proably greener than many, with vast areas of concrete, ringroads & skyscrapers. Of course I realised that I didn't have a terrestrial adress for you (strange phrase that) so the postcard remains in my rucksack. Perhaps I will be able to give it to you personally one day.
Today I also looked at the date, as it's the first time for a number of months that kind of information has been relevant for me, and realised it was the anniversary of 9/11.
13 years since those extreme events in New York. A city I visited some years ago.
Much of course has changed in the social & geopolitical world since then, but much remains the same. It would seem that the march of global capitalism is almost unstoppable and of course (from my brief sojourn out into the internet from a café in Phnom Penh), I have discovered the bizarre phenonemon known as Brexit. I wonder where that will lead Europe over the coming years?
But enough of my ramblings and random observations on the state of the world. Here is some brief news about my travels and rests.
Looking back through my messages to you I see that I last sent you one via Messenger from Sofia in September 2015. My intention was to travel to Istanbul by bus or train and from there take a plane to Bangkok. Which is what I eventually did after a rather lengthy detour from Istanbul to help out in a refugee camp on the Syrian border. One day I'll tell you in more detail about my experiences there with the victims & survivors of the appalling Civil War in Syria & Iraq. Makes the Spanish Civil War and even Vietnam look rather civilised in comparison.
I had met a couple of young people (actually in their late 20s which seems at my stage of life 'young'). An englishwoman and her french husband. She was of pakistani descent, his grand parents had lived in Algeria before moving to France during the Algerian crisis in the 1960s.
They lived in Sheffield, she is a doctor, he is a journalist and photographer. They were appalled by the number of young muslims being fooled by the rhetoric and misinterpretation of Islam by Isis and other radical so called jihhadist alignments. Both of them were what they described as secular muslims. They helped me to understand that this is a possible way of being, that there are many of them just as there are many secular jews, christians, buddhists etc.
So rather than sit and bemoan the situation in England they decided to travel to Turkey to work in one of the refugee camps. As a photographer and journalist he was hoping to document the situation, possibly even travel into Iraq or Syria, she was going to work as a doctor for Medecin sans Frontiers.
They persuaded me, against my better judgement, to go with them. I was glad I did as I was able over the few months I spent there (late October to late February) after a long bus journey from Sofia to Istanbul via Bucharest where I was able to complete some interesting research into Rumanian vampire legends) to help with the educational & trauma work being done with children and young people.
My professional experiences all those years ago as a psychotherapist, which I haven't revisited for so long, were useful in the slow painful process of helping those children and young people to move towards some sort of normality after the awful events they had witnessed and experienced. It brought back some of my memories of Vietnam and the things I had seen and done in the war there.
It also reminded me of a remark that the Horse makes to Slinger in Albion's Children. "War is by far the worst thing that you human beings do to each other"
I met so many extraordinary people in the camp. Doctors, nurses, syrian, iraqi & afghan refugees, kurdish, turkish and other fighters. This is not really the place to go into the detail of all that I heard, saw and felt there. But after some months, in late February to be precise, I decided that either I had to make a longer term commitment, possibly become an official staff member with Medecin sans Frontier as part of their trauma team, or leave.
It was not an easy decision to make but I realised in the early hours one morning that I had a different path to follow. Saying goodbye to the young doctor was hard (her partner had left a few days earlier with a group of Kurdish fighters to attempt to get into the city of Aleppo, take photographs and write about the war there) as was saying goodbye to all the other workers in the camp, the friends I had made amongst some of the refugees. Particularly the children and young people. One of them, a young Afghani woman, I gave my mobile phone. This partly explains my lack of communication with you. A reason rather than an excuse.
I travelled to Ankara in the back of a Turkish military jeep with a couple of young army officers, both of whom spoke near perfect English. They asked me polite, probing questions about how I had ended up there, what I thought about the war (nobody calls it a conflict out there as it is so obviously a war) and what I thought about modern Turkey.
I was as honest as it was good to be but got little real sense of what they thought. In modern Turkey many people have learnt not to speak their true thoughts. I spent a few days in Ankara which I found rather ugly due to the large number of buildings that are half built with no roofs, though all occupied by their owners who don't put the roofs on to avoid roof tax. A bit like window tax in England in the middle ages.
But parts of the old city are beautiful and well preserved so I was able to spend a few days in the Hotel Marmaris in one of the squares. There was an ancient mosque a few streets away so I was woken every morning by the muezzins call to prayer. Rather than a prerecorded digital version this one was live. Slightly different each morning. In spite of my own feelings about theistic spiritual practice it was a beautiful way to be woken up.
From there I flew to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur of which I only saw the inside of the shiny modern airport. Though it's my intention to return there very soon.
My travels since arriving in Bangkok (where I nearly sent you that postcard) in early March have taken me through Thailand, Laos, Burma (now called Myanmar) with an unexpected stopover on the Chinese-Burmese border, then down through the length of Vietnam to Hanoi.
Finally across into Cambodia and the city of Phnom Penh from where I am sending you this email, drinking green tea, eating sweet sticky rice cakes in a rather delightful internet cafe by the Mekong river where there are a number of young english, french & swedish 'backpackers'. Another rather strange term that seems to have entered the language. All of them friendly, interesting & interested in me. We have had some fascinating conversations about life as a young and not so young person travelling through the modern world.....
A full description of my travels in this fascinating part of Southeast Asia would take up more of my time to transcribe from my memory into digital form than I currently have but some of the highlights, in more or less chronological order I will write about in my next email to you describing my long arc on a motorbike on my rather foolishly/optimistically hopeful way to Tibet through Thailand, Laos, Burma , China (briefly), Vietnam & finally Cambodia which is where I am now.
And.....No I didn't get to Tibet though at some stages in the journey it almost seemed possible.
It's likely that my next communication will be from Malaysia as I intend to fly back to Bangkok & then to Kuala Lumpur after spending a few more days in the fascinating city of Phnom Penh.
Finally......please do whatever you need to get Albions Children published on the typed.com website. I trust your creative intuition to publish the chapters in the relevant order. Of course our readers can choose how they want to read it themselves. It would be wonderful to create a novel that has no particular starting point, middle or end point!
So just do it !!!
During the 3 months I spent in the Buddhist monastery in Laos (more of that next time) I wrote some new material. I know that for the last year (at least!) I've been promising to send you an envelope full of my writing for Albions Children.
One of the young people I was talking to earlier today has an iPad and reckons she can scan the written pages, save them & send them to you. Who knows her promise may even become a reality. So that may be a safer/quicker way of getting those new pages to you. Modern technology is wonderful but, as with all human devices, there is a dark side particularly the disgusting & disastrous machinery of modern warfare.
But enough of my ramblings & rantings. I look forward to seeing Albions Children on its own website soon. I have a new iPhone bought at a knock down price in Saigon which will do all sorts of extraordinary things including (in the right circumstances) receiving and sending emails. So I may be in touch soon.
Go well my cousin & dream deep.
With much love
William
After that long email from William in Phnom Penh (see above) I published the first 5 sections of Albion's Children on typed.com yesterday Friday 23rd September, almost on the autumn equinox. Technically they're not really all chapters as one is basic information about the novel and the other a brief introduction by the author.
So 3 actual chapters with more to follow as the weeks and months pass. Currently there are at least another 30 chapters that I'm reading through & editing for William to prepare for publishing.
Thank you for taking the time to read Albion's Children in this new format on typed.com. Whoever you are and however you arrived at these pages I hope you're entertained, engaged & even informed by what you find here.