Ride

Photo: Light coming through Dylans tree (24/4/2016)
When I was writing, the ‘working’ title for Ride was ‘Life after Suicide’ - meaning my life and Dylan’s life after his departure. It became pretty obvious that the word suicide wasn’t necessary in the title and that the writing was so much more than ‘just about suicide’. I cannot even tell you when Ride became the title – it just seemed to arrive in my mind and when I considered it I could see the value of it and the multiple level meanings it had within it.

Photo: Tutaki in flood on 14.10.2013
When it came to write the synopsis for the book I thought – ‘What the fuck is this book about!’. I knew it was my story and my Ride but I really didn’t know what it was actually ‘saying’. The synopsis that I have written is what the book is about to me however I have a feeling that it is going to mean different things to different folks.

Photo: Gus's ashes.
Ride is a book that has come about because an internal nagging wouldn’t go away. I tried to ignore the nagging and decide it was born from an impractical unachievable dream that was irrelevant in my new reality. It wouldn’t go away so - In the end I surrendered and ‘put aside’ 9 months in 2017 to write - just to see what happened. I had written short notes over the previous years – of key words, and sometimes I used them as starting points. Sometimes I sat at my computer and the words would just flow from my fingers.