Just incase you hadn’t heard …

If you hear that squeaking sound, it is me with my cart, my donkey died. I am hawking my wares (a debut novel) and it’s heavy going uphill as you can imagine, with the Big Five publishers able to place their tenderizing wares in glittering bookstore windows for Xmas, I have only the rag-n-bone cart and my own throat of moths.

This is a good novel. If you know me, you know my saying this is no small thing. I have put a lot of work into it. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s a hard-hitting, unflinching psychological thriller based upon true events. Nevertheless it’s well written, and every single sale, every single review on Amazon or GoodReads goes a LONG way for a small indie author like myself.

I tend to spend most of my time promoting and helping others, with their output, so it is a strange place to be on the other side of the coin. I am selling signed copies and accepting Vemno, Paypal and checks. Otherwise you can purchase The Cruelty through most vendors, including asking for it at your local bookstore. Every single sale helps me enormously and I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received.

The Cruelty is available via all bookstores.
Direct from publishers Flowersong Press:
AMAZON:
BARNES & NOBLE:
BookShop.Org:
WATERSTONES:
FOYLES:
FishPond (NZ/Australia):
& many more. Or DIRECT from me (USA shipping only) candicedaquin@gmail.com

Lettres jamais envoyées*

You are dead, this letter is for you.

The kind of paper it’s written on

Chengxintang, or Florentine marble—unknown.

You may delay but time will not;

soot, by-product-of-fire, formation of ink

squid, gold, glass, the pen’s nib, fine, finer

all things that once mattered.

No-one sits on carpets drinking mint-tea anymore

funny how, in just a few hours dreaming

what we knew, what we could rely upon

vaporizes into Samarkand ash.

It’s a living funeral, all kinds of absence

bundled into packages without address

where do we send ourselves? When grief

reveals her ragged heart, where do we go?

When this play has moved on and our letters

go unopened, unsent—dissolving

fig, pulp, tangerine, 4pm sun.

I am the only one who remembers

and I hate that, I really hate that

keeper of naught, keeper of all the things

that matter nothing to anyone else.

Where the little pill box from the roaring twenties

with a Tamara de Lempicka replica is painted

in miniature 30/0 nickel ferrules was

stolen by a friend from a lighthouse, the Île Vierge

that kersantite granite giant, its bright white light

bleaching hours, counting disciples with abacus

who else will cherish those memories, evaporating

in situ, like a watched wound never scabs.

Who cares for the toys with their sorrowful

glass eyes and well stitched sides, who will

make the connections? You’d say about now;

Oh, that reminds me of the quote from Lear.

Are you there? Do you hear? Will you see?

The world stops writing letters, the prices too high—thief

stamps of their lick, everything prefix is an affix

a tumble of errors and delight, beneath thick

cloth, where the world had no assess, we divined

make-believe in costume—masks of feathers

your slow grin, sloe gin, stained teeth

smoking a black cigarette, head tossed back

oh god life was astonishing then, then.

You are dead, this letter is for you.

Unsent, sealed inside me, where I dry,

husk and molt and wilt faire de la confiture

beneath endless gris mote and rote

without you, still, still, gone almost

hanging on for what purposing?

A torment, in fancy-dress, we

clasp leather reins, canter, gallop

smelling of horse and blood-oranges

spilling through heavy doors, here at last! Sorry we’re tardy!

Where it’s never too late, until it is.

Then padlocks become our winter bones

beneath cold water, an odd reflection

Alice stared, until she could neither see

the way out, or the way forward

drink me, they urged, drink me

and she grew so small, so miniature

nothing could hurt her anymore

not even the echo of your laugh

you who did not read any longer

who rested in the sunlight, one ring on your finger

too tight, they said; perhaps soon

they’d have to cut it off.

*Letters never sent.