Life is for Living 

by Andrew Critchley - 2014

Being an independent author is the most fun I’ve had in life with my clothes on.

The simple pleasure of creating – characters, dialogue, a story – was a glorious state of unrestrained and uninhibited creativity that I found both liberating and empowering. It’s a Wonderful Life is my favorite film of all time and its basis was a short story, The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. The possibility of being able to take my favorite film as inspiration and a spiritual guide and build a full length novel, rather than short story, around it was exciting beyond words. 

At the heart of the book is romance. Although stated many times before, probably most notably in Eden Ahbez’s song Nature Boy immortalized by Nat King Cole, I do believe that the only thing that really matters in life is to love and be loved.

In my book Dublin in the Rain, the two lovers are Sophia and Jonathan. Jonathan is haunted by his past – a legacy of being abandoned by his mother and the subsequent suicide of his father – and so stubborn and anal at times that readers want to leap inside the book and physically shake him. Sophia on the other hand is well-read, outwardly confident and sexually expressive but struggles to relate either to her own family or the world around her.

Their relationship is redemptive for them both and they fall in love, marry and have a child. However, as often happens in life (and I can speak personally from my own experience of my wife dying at 42), tragedy changes everything in the book as the baby dies from cot death. Jonathan is distraught, unable to cope and their marriage disintegrates.

Within this is the second key theme of the book – namely that it’s how one deals with difficulty that’s important and not the difficulty itself

Tragedy is sadly a fact of life and often totally unavoidable and beyond anyone’s control. What is controllable however is how one responds to tragedy. The old adage that the glass is half full or half empty is very true. Jonathan’s problem with his life is that not only is the glass half empty but that he neither likes the glass itself not what is contained within it. Change, as is invariably the case, comes from within but sometimes we need help.

With that in mind, underpinning the whole book is a sense of spirituality and destiny. I have always loved D.H. Lawrence’s quote ‘The dead don’t die. They look on and help.’ My belief in the quote has been strengthened still further following the death of my wife. It is this essence that also acts as a catalyst for Jonathan’s annus mirabilis in Dublin in the Rain as he finds reconciliation, forgiveness and ultimately true love.

I have a smile on my face and I sit here writing this piece my book sits beside me. Receiving my copy was one of the best moments in my life.

Being an independent writer meant that I could resist suggestions, pressures even, to leave the book open ended, turn it into a duology or even trilogy, or to further cut it so that was below the ‘industry standard’ of 110,000. It is truly the book that I wanted to write.

It is still early days for me as an author but initial feedback from many readers who have bought the book quite simply fills my heart with joy. And of equal pleasure, I will be starting my next book very soon. It is a very different type of redemption story to Dublin in the Rain and no doubt it will be another joyous adventure as part of my journey as an independent author - full of challenges and learnings.

As Molière once wrote, ‘The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.’

In life, very often the greatest obstacle that we have to overcome is ourselves – for we are most commonly the people who stop ourselves from doing what we truly want to do with our life. Although she died in 2007, my wife Nadine is still looking on, still helping me overcome the obstacles.

Life is for living. Embrace life, love life. It’s often not what you do; it’s the energy and passion that you do it with!

Many thanks for taking the time to read this piece.

GIVEAWAY

Today I have one copy (paperback) of Andrew Critchley's Dublin in the Rain. This is open to everyone, for your chance to win please fill in the copter.

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On a rainy day in Dublin, during the spring of 1947, a tragic accident brought devastation to those involved. As the subsequent years pass, unable to come to terms with the accident, the survivors set the path for a deeply troubled future for each generation that followed.

Jonathan Melton had a traumatic childhood in which he ended up in foster care, but when he meets the wild, willful, sexually experienced and free spirited Sophia at university, everything changes. At first inept with women, Jonathan’s complex relationship with Sophia evolves from a one-way obsession into a genuine love and shared passion, as the relationship brings happiness, romance and joy to both their lives that neither thought was ever possible. The two marry, and Sophia gives birth to their first child; a beautiful baby daughter. Everything is seemingly perfect, until the evening that their tiny baby is found dead in her cot. 

As his world falls apart around him, Jonathan slips into a dark depression and, increasingly haunted by his past, becomes distant and dysfunctional as he struggles to cope with the loss of his daughter. His marriage to Sophia disintegrates, and Jonathan along with it as he descends further into darkness after leaving Sophia. Although his close friend David succeeds to some extent in saving him from his demons, Jonathan remains a lost and lonely soul, until his apparent chance meeting with the enigmatic Maolíosa in a Dublin bar. Maolíosa and Jonathan form a unique bond, and she challenges his vision of life and the world around him. Fate intervenes, but it ultimately leads Jonathan to redemption, and a final resolution to the aftermath and consequences of the 1947 tragedy.

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