Dancing In the Dark

Afterword to Flowers of the Moon

2 min read

My fingers touched the home row. I saw Whitestone manor, glowing in the darkness of some lost English night; a grail to the lost soul that is Patrick Hill. His car dies in the darkness. He finds light, but it’s an unexpected light, and then…

…from a window in the mansion house, Uta appears. A vampire. A timeless thing that watches the man approach in the darkness. Then…

…Uta is Aster, and she’s no longer a vampire. She dances through the dark. An unknown creature, as lost as the man in the darkness beyond.

I lost Uta in that moment, although she would return in a later story, and found Aster. Or at least, I started looking for her.

Flowers of the Moon began as a weekend novella. A challenge to write a simple tale of an ancient woman who lives, and feeds, in an abandoned mansion somewhere out in that lost slice of England, where all the monsters quietly live.

That weekend turned to a hundred weekends, a hundred-and-fifty weekends, as I followed Aster through the blackened halls of Whitestone, as much in awe of her as Patrick Hill, the lost man who was also trying to find his way in the darkness. Where she came from, I only discovered as I wrote. Where she was going, I only knew when the final page came into existence a long time later.

In that time, I wrote in darkness, looking to find light, and where Aster danced there was light, of a sort. A starry glow, a ghostly comet trail left in her wake, where the history of Whitestone lived and breathed. I saw a war and fires. I saw the shadows of children burned into the lawns. Out of the black tar darkness, a glasshouse rose, its white metal bones those of an old dinosaur. And in the belly of this beast, flowers grew.

The flowers of the moon were little more than decoration in my original imaginings. Certainly not the title of the novella, or the centre of the tale. They grew in the dank earth that was Uta’s bed, but soon, blanketed by the moon, Aster slept there. Aster gave them meaning, and the moon became more than a night light for her slumber.

I think now to the beginnings and the ends of Flowers of the Moon; there were more than a dozen in total over the years. Along the way Aster turned from vampire to ghost, from ghost to something eternal, from child to woman, and woman to child. There was only one constant in the writing of the novel: the dance.

Aster danced, and I followed. Aster danced and I discovered. I took no notes. My research, if it could be called as such, was done long after the dance had ended. Details, added like the tags hung off the war children evacuated from the cities out to Whitestone.

Aster danced.

I followed.

I heard music in the darkness. Songs that had birthed Uta, now midwifed Aster. Elysian Fields Afterlife became my constant accompaniment. Now, where Aster danced, Jennifer Charles’ voice rose like smoke.

I followed where the dance touched and the music played. I found history there. I found silent ghosts haunting lawns. I found a topiary zoo, where the animals ran wild. I found ancient architects building prisons for eternity.

I followed, because in the end, I could not lead. No matter how I tried to steer the dance or shape the story, always, always, Aster would dance and the music would play, and I...I would follow.

Writing, in the end, is a dance through the dark. It is the joy of movement. Something that runs deep into the bones. It is best experience with eyes closed and heart open.

I invite you now to close your eyes and dance with me.