Tag: the Memory of Hannah Babinski

Origin Stories continued: 10/15, The Memory of Hannah Babinski: Revisited

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We’re two-thirds of the way through, but has Corpse Road Blues from Demain Publishing manifested into your shopping cart yet, or is it still a gruesome and terrible absence haunting your periphery? Whatever you’re going to do, thank you so much for staying with me, I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts so far.

I can’t really say much about this story, not because there isn’t anything to write, but for fear of giving too much away. Suffice to say, Revisited was written after my partner read The Memory of Hannah Babinski. She put the manuscript down and, after some hesitation, said, “What would be great is if…”. She was right. But you knew that. Adding that extra something changed the story completely for both of us. At the time, I didn’t realise the epilogue would become a story in its own right. The decision to separate it from the original tale in the collection and give it a name was taken to emphasize time passing, and increase the story’s impact.

If you’d like to read The Memory of Hannah Babinski: Revisited, you can buy Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues origin stories continued: The Memory of Hannah Babinski

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Welcome back, and if you’re here for the first time, thanks for joining us. The Memory of Hannah Babinski is the sixth story in my collection, Corpse Road Blues from Demain Publishing, and influenced by the coast, kissing gates, and the 2020/21 Lockdown.

I recently did a workshop about Psychogeography and Flow, led by the wonderful Kerry Hadley-Pryce (author of The Black Country) in which she talked about how walking feeds creativity. I often wander through both urban and rural landscapes giving my brain space to digest current projects or find inspiration for new ones. In rural settings, I often come across kissing gates which I find quite charming. As you probaby know, this type of gate doesn’t require a securing latch, and swings back and forth within a framework, gently knocking or ‘kissing’ both sides of the enclosure. And… the awkward navigation of the gate can also provide lovers with an opportunity to kiss.

Like all gates, these weathered, wooden posts are liminal spaces, crossings from one place to another. When The Memory of Hannah Babinski was beginning to form, I considered the consequences of something getting caught in a kissing gate, not a tangible object like a piece of clothing or a limb, but maybe an echo of a kiss, maybe a memory.

The story takes place on a clifftop. The coast has always had a hold over me. I regularly feel the pull of the sea, and often end up riding my motorcycle to greet the waves, or travelling parallel to them throughout the seasons. Standing on the edge of a country, overlooking the vast body of wild and surging water, the howling wind whipping around you, brings with it a sense of wonder and a humbling of the spirit. I hope I’ve captured a little of that in this story.

And Lockdown? That time that means different things to different people: silence, the beauty of it, or its unsettling quality; Nature’s reclamation of the streets; grief, anger; the fear of being trapped at home with a violent partner—a real horror faced by too many people.

If you’d like to read The Memory of Hannah Babinski, you can buy Corpse Road Blues here.