SOCIAL MEDIA WARS - PART ONE THE MYSTERY OF MADELEINE MCCANN

 Oh joy, bliss and every happy adjective you can think of, I finally have focus, for my troubled, stress driven mind.  I need to write, and I do, uncontrollably, but I can't concentrate, I can't focus and I hate myself for it.  All you poison pen writers, you can't even dream up all the things I find to torture myself.  I would never advise my descendants to take up any form of art, it is perpetual torture.  Even if you write or create something good, you are immediately plunged into the nightmare of producing something better.  

However, I have now decided to take a bit of break from flogging myself and writing a book about something I know.  And sadly, I do know the the case of missing Madeleine McCann through and through.  Not intentionally or premediated, my involvement was one of those flukes of life, I was drawn in, reluctantly, the lives of Gerry, Kate, et al, meant nothing to me.  I was plodding along with my life, doing a demanding job, looking after two kids, but I had just fought a battle with the Catholic Church, which I had lost.  So maybe it was fair to say, I was a tad anti establishment.

I didn't believe Gerry and Kate and had no fears of saying it out loud, even though I had just had a book released by Random House.  My stance killed the releaser of my book stone dead, but I don't actually blame the McCanns for that even though they were trashing me online.  I'm a realist.  If it had a been good enough, it would have made it.  Ergo, I blame myself, and must work harder.

My memoir, I have to admit, was not a book I set out to write, well not at that stage of my life anyway.  But I got a book deal, what you gonna do?  I wrote it hastily, within 4 months, and with drafts going back and forth between myself and editors and lawyers.  I look back on it as a crash course in what you can say in a book and what you can't.  It was a huge lesson learned.  Never put faith in a publisher and agent again.  My 'McCann Media Wars' (working title) will be entirely self published and edited by myself.

All the advice I have received over the ages, tell me to abandon my writing pseudonym 'Cristobell'.  I can't and probably won't.  Cristobell gave me a voice, a confident voice when I ventured into chatrooms, hostile chatrooms, where old hands tortured the newbies.  It was however,  especially hurtful when I joined book club chatrooms, where I was I sure I would meet soul mates. It was mightily depressing, especially as none of them had any idea as to the origins of Cristobell.  Matters not in the whole scheme of things, but I am fortunate that in my life I have met people on my own wave length, people who can convey, in one way or another, 'yeah, I hear you sister'.

But it's I have drunk far too much Vanilla Vodka (what kind of brave new world is that that has such tempting delights in it?  Vodka that tastes just like Cream Soda, it's almost devilish, ha ha.  But not the right beverage to be writing real life crime novels.  Once I throw up and hit the coffee, then I'll begin.  The only thing I have eaten today is the ultimate coffee panna cotta, I can state categorically that the taste and texture were perfection and even during the projectile vomiting it wasn't entirely unpleasant.  Let me know if you want the recipe.

I have digressed obviously, and my mind is now set on toasted cheese with beans.  Much needed stodge after the stomach emptying.  Way too much information, but I am celebrating tonight.  The literal translation of depression is the inability to focus.  If you can focus, you're going to be alright.  I'm knocking on a bit, and had given up, I had done all I wanted to do, I assured myself, I had my chance and I blew it.  But my chance is still active, it still has breath and a heart beat within it.  Maybe I am not as alive and vivacious as I once was, but I'm not ready to hurry and die as has been wished upon me.  I don't know what the trigger was (I suspect Bjorn), but it's time I wrote that book.