Xavier Leret

The last moult of a caterpillar is quite an event. The new skin of the organism is not the skin of before but a new form, the pupa. The dermal cells of a butterfly are trimorphic: caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly are all the same. The pupa is a metamorphic transmorphification machine. The larva is dismantled chemically and the embryonic cells divide. Within hours of pupation the adult comes into being, its characteristics are formed, wings, mouth parts, thoracic muscles and legs. When the butterfly breaks free of the pupa haemoglobin is pumped into the wings and they expand and the hormone buriscon makes them hard. In the wind the wings twitch until they take command of the air and in a multi-coloured moment of self-expression the creature lifts, floats and flies.

1.

The first time he saw her a shudder passed through him like the word of God through a virgin. He was sixteen years old and on his way home from school, lost in thought thinking about Christ and pain and torment, scourges, blood, demons and eternal damnation; all the subjects that dominated his life as he had grown up. Walking with his head down, not noticing the empty street. The rise of the black tarmac in the road. The foundation brush of dirt. Or the crisp packet in a crinkle twist on the wind.

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*****"A wonderful coming-of-age story meshing dark experience with the dictates of religious rules and heavenly mercy, this is a book to savor and remember long after reading." Sheila Deeth

*****"A novel with a lasting effect…highly recommended!" Amazon.com

*****"A heartbreaking, beautiful, romantic story, if you ever find the same love that these main characters have keep it!" Book Girl Addict

*****"Leret displays a deftness with language and dialect that leaves the reader feeling eerily connected with the teenaged protagonists, who feel severed from the society in which they live." Marjorie. GoodReads

*****"a work of genius." Steve Emmett

This is a copy of the article that I wrote for Sheila Deeth's blog.

When I began Heaven Sent, it was a eureka moment, not in the sense that I had cracked something profound like light speed or the secrets to eternal life, I just knew that I had started my first novel. I hadn't set out to start it. It wasn't like when I wrote plays. I would announce that my theatre company was going to tour a play and it would be about this or that, and then I would write it. Heaven Sent didn't begin like that. I just wrote a thousand words. That thousand words were about sixteen year old Carlo, except that then he was fourteen. In that thousand words were three sentences where Carlo, a lad from an extremely religious background met a girl called Daizee, whose step father sold her to sailors from out the back of his van when she was just three years old.

None of that first thousand words made it into the novel, even though at the time I thought they were a brilliant thousand words. But what I thought was really special was Daizee and Carlo. Carlo was like everything that I wanted to be but didn't have the courage to be. And Daizee – well I just saw her through his eyes and she was dazzling. She was everything that would scare the hell out a parent. Crude, guttural, hard and yet vulnerable – though she would only show that side to Carlo. But more than this, she understands life. She knows that nothing is what it seems because she has been abused by the upright as well as the lowly.

Two weeks later I had sketched out what I thought the story would be. Then of course the characters decided to take over the narrative. Daizee and Carlo taught me how to write the book. They were very patient. They let me veer off on tangents and experiment in style. They let me have two or three years off when I wrote other plays or made a couple of movies – though they were talking to me constantly – Daizee especially. She was in my ear all the time. When I wanted to give up she would curse me, calling me all sorts.

Just after Christmas a year ago I sat down to finish the story, nothing was going to get in the way. I hadn't touched it for a year and I was angry at myself for not completing it.

Back then I thought Daizee and Carlo would have an equal presence. I wanted it to be equal. It took me half of last year to realise that actually it was really Carlo's story. Not to denigrate Daisy – I had written huge passages of her back story, that were shocking and disturbing – some of it I still think is extraordinary, but it was too much for most readers. And it wasn't very present, it was in the past and a story needs to move forward. I had written her stuff as first person narrative, she spoke directly to the reader and because it was so disturbing it was alienating. Heaven Sent is dark as it is, but to have added in that detail would have put off too many readers. So I/we compromised. Also during this last year I cut all the work of the five previous years. That was difficult.

Daizee's accent is thick Bristolian. Bristolian is almost like another language. I began to experiment with the accent over the summer and found that it made me experiment with her vocabulary. Using the accent gave her a very clear poetry and rhythm. I loved the way that visually it stood out from the page. It makes Daizee appear from out of this world. I think also it immediately makes people prejudiced against her – which is how most of the characters in the book are when confronted by her. She is difficult to understand and her accent will suggest to many that she is trash. But not to Carlo. And because he listens and loves… then perhaps…

I'm the guest post on Rex Robot Reviews. Visit the site and you could win a copy of Heaven Sent. Competition ends April 20 2011.

And you'll never guess what else. Another competition to win Heaven Sent! Yes you heard it right! Check out vvb32. To win here you need to visit my moviereel, watch a clip and let them know which one. Personally I would choose the one about the old man dying. This competition ends May 1 2011.

His mother woke him early the next morning by throwing off the covers from his bed. She was dressed in nun black, her bobbed hair was set with razor edges.

Rise and shine, she said.

What time is it? he asked.

Seven, she answered. It is time to get ready for church.

An hour and half later he was standing in church, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and green tie, below blue painted clouds with pink fluffs heralded by fat cherubs with trumpets, standing with his hands in his pockets holding his new phone. Because breakfast was forbidden on Sunday, due to the holiness of communion, his stomach groaned with starvation as he watched the priest who was decorated in a purple chasuble with a thick red wine strip down the front, with a double italic crucifix on his chest, presenting to the gathered a silver chalice. An altar boy, decorated in a red cassock and white smock was kneeling to his right. Every Sunday the performance at the altar was the same. Carlo watched and wondered that if there was eternal life whether it would involve going to church everyday, or would God demand that you just kneel forever in his light and occasionally get up when it was your turn to make the tea. He knew what hell was, he had seen the pictures of the torture gardens, but it struck him that an equally powerful depiction of heaven had yet to be conceived.

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Alright my luvlies! I've been busy copy editing Heaven Sent ready for its full descent to an outlet near you – in other words just one cheeky little clickety click away – and it'll be at a bargain price, don't you worry none (even though its stealing food from my babies' lips).

Now, part of this weeks process has been sorting out Daizee's voice, who doesn't actually appear in this chapter, but she does feature extensively in the earlier chapters that are posted. I've been fine tuning her Bristol accent. I'd be interested to hear what you think, so please do have a look see, as I have updated those earlier posts. But for now, without further ado, here is the next installment of Heaven Sent.

At 9.30 the next morning Carlo walked out of the Carphone Warehouse in Broadmead with a plastic carrier bag. He had his own number and was feeling like his own man as he walked home through the shopadel of windows, not daring to take the phone out in case someone saw him. The church had a network of eyes everywhere, the subways, the concrete office blocks, the coagulated traffic, behind the green doors of the massage parlours, the burger bar painted with confederate colours, the bombed out tower block, the giant bar that had once been the city temple, under a railway bridge. Everywhere he walked he felt eyes on him.

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That night he was like a fish pulled from the sea, his body flapping this way and that in his bed. Would Daizee be there next Friday? And what if she wasn't? What if something happened to her? Only that morning he had read about the killer who hand picked prostitutes from the streets and, having killed them he shaved them clean to deposit them as naked mannequins in fields. Carlo's stomach cramped. He pictured Daizee lying in a field, broken, naked, on her front. Saw himself searching for her, trolling the whole of Bristol, every building site, every disused building, the Downs, Leigh Woods and finally, after walking out into the countryside, seeing her from a distance. A white blur, it could be anything but he knew it was her, could feel it in his stomach. Throughout his search he knew that this was how it would end, that she hadn't abandoned him, but had been taken from him. Falling to his knees to take her up in his arms, his lips brush with her hair. Carlo bit his pillow, choked and as he told her that he loved her again and again he could not control himself from soaking his pillow with tears.

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Once home Carlo sat down to supper, his head lent sadly to one side, resting on his left hand. He was unable to face his meal. The dining room walls were plastered with two dimensional Byzantium icons depicting the Madonna and child, various saints in various states of ecstasy. Behind his father the Saints Peter and Paul. Behind his mother Christ was crucified.

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Carlo had no idea what the film was about. His attention was captivated by Daizee who was sitting beside him engrossed in the movie, twisting her short hair with her finger and spooning popcorn into her mouth. She hardly noticed him, at least that was what he thought. Every time she laughed it brought a smile to his face.

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During the week he could think of nothing else but her black eye. Had it happened in that car she had climbed out of? He had only seen the shadow of the driver, was this the villain? Or had she wandered into some dark place like some caped crusader and dished out as much as she had received, leaving her attacker broken on the floor, exiting the scene as police sirens howled warning of their coming? It was not long before he too had been there, in the scene, and, once the blow had been planted on her, he shot into action and broke the hand of her assailant before splintering his legs to leave him begging for mercy, which he was not prepared to give, and it was she who stopped him from landing the killer blow for she was a creature of clemency.

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The next Friday, having arrived early, Carlo sat on the same bench in that same park, his right hand in his pocket holding tight the money he had brought for her. It was chilly. Unwell clouds had been coughed into the sky, smokers splats to block out the sun. Behind him a line of terraces that were blue, into orange, into red, into white, two tall rooms high with skylights scattered into the roofs. Ahead of him young kids with their mums on the slide and swings. A little monkey on the climbing frame.

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The last moult of a caterpillar is quite an event. The new skin of the organism is not the skin of before but a new form, the pupa. The dermal cells of a butterfly are trimorphic: caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly are all the same. The pupa is a metamorphic transmorphification machine. The larva is dismantled chemically and the embryonic cells divide. Within hours of pupation the adult comes into being, its characteristics are formed, wings, mouth parts, thoracic muscles and legs. When the butterfly breaks free of the pupa haemoglobin is pumped into the wings and they expand and the hormone buriscon makes them hard. In the wind the wings twitch until they take command of the air and in a multi-coloured moment of self-expression the creature lifts, floats and flies.

1.

The first time he saw her a shudder passed through him like the word of God through a virgin. He was sixteen years old and on his way home from school, lost in thought thinking about Christ and pain and torment, scourges, blood, demons and eternal damnation; all the subjects that dominated his life as he had grown up. Walking with his head down, not noticing the empty street. The rise of the black tarmac in the road. The foundation brush of dirt. Or the crisp packet in a crinkle twist on the wind.

» Read the rest of this entry «