Alan McCluskey

Silence is the door to Oran Mor. Close your eyes. Quieten your thoughts. And listen. Listen in particular to the sound of the waves. Let the Great Song sing in you. In an hour I will ring a bell. When you hear it, make a sound that resonates with the waves. Let it flow and develop, calling on all you have heard in the silence.

Instead of writing backwards over what had happened, giving structure and meaning to his story, he wrote forwards, slipping into troubling futures.

Organised religion generally gets in the way of spiritual experience.

He felt a deep urge to put some order in this chaos. Leaning against a large standing-stone by the wayside, he drew out his dreambook and began to write.

A stylized sun and moon, joined by a horizontal bar, floated above a country divided in two by a river that snaked between them.

Alan McCluskey__espair is an ugly thing when it refuses hope.

When the battle is over, the winners find it very hard not to pursue their violence. If you are strong enough to hold violence, you are strong enough to hold true to your pact. Then you have more moral fiber than most adults. Free will is one of the pillars of being human.

Writing a story about a place calls that world into existence. Sometimes, as the author, you accompany it for a while. But even as you write, the characters have minds of their own.