Of Curve Balls and Brain Tumours

It’s been a while since I checked out my blog – thanks so much to those people reading it – or uploaded anything onto Wattpad. I just wanted to explain why I’ve not been around these past few months.

If I’m honest, I’d been having balance issues for some time – following a few bouts of vertigo which I first experienced back in 2019. I didn’t take this as seriously as I evidently should have – and then the pandemic got in the way – and so it was only in the Autumn of last year that I finally decided that I really ought to get checked out.

The GP told me that dizziness can be associated with just about any illness that there is – and she sent me for various checks, including to an ENT doctor who confirmed that there was a problem with my vestibular system – and off I went for an MRI.

I can remember that, even while I was actually having the MRI, I was still gaslighting myself into believing that nothing was wrong, and that this was probably just a residual ear infection. So it came as something of a surprise when the radiologist ushered me into his office and showed me the walnut size lump nestling above my right ear. That was the moment when I finally accepted that I had a problem.

The lump was identified as a vestibular schwannoma – sometimes also called an acoustic neuroma – and was a benign brain tumour. They’re pretty rare – according to the British Acoustic Neuroma Association, they occur in about two out of every hundred thousand people. So it’s kind of like winning a lottery ticket that really sucks. Along with the dizziness, people normally develop hearing loss – which I didn’t – and tinnitus – which I did.

I got fairly mixed messages from the radiologist – along the lines of ‘we know what it is, there’s no need to worry, it’s not cancer, but you really need to do something about it right now.’ The issue with vestibular schannomas is that while they rarely prove fatal, they can do quite a bit of brain damage in their own way – mostly by pressing on the cerebellum which can lead to a breakdown in fundamental physiological functioning. The middle of April therefore saw me booked in for a craniotomy – a procedure via which the neurosurgeons open up the skull behind the ear and take the tumour out in what I believe is a piecemeal fashion.

It’s safe to say that after this I wasn’t at my best – I spent a good part of the following week throwing up, before a weird moment of elation the weekend afterwards when I believed I was over the worst, only to discover that spinal fluid had begun to leak through my stitches. This then necessitated another operation to put things right.

It’s now over two months, and I’m on the mend – and incredibly grateful to the dedicated health professionals who helped me. My balance is much better, and I have far more energy. Unfortunately – and this is my main reason for writing this piece – surgery for a large vestibular schwannoma almost always incurs a price, and that came in the form of permanent unilateral deafness. It’s something that I guess I’ll get used to, but it has somewhat thrown my work as a teacher into jeopardy.

So I guess the message of all of this is that if you ever feel that something isn’t quite right, trust yourself. Trust your body – it’s trying to tell you something – and get yourself checked out sooner rather than later.

Leda is now on Wattpad

The descendant of ancient emperors, Leda Nérac has finally come into her birthright: the wealthy northern city of Dal Reniac. Yet, power brings new responsibilities and dangers. After the Emperor dies, his nephew Castor claims the imperial throne, instigating a reign of terror. Will Leda survive the bitter conflict which ensures? Find out at https://www.wattpad.com/story/337622158-leda

This story is also available on this blog as a PDF: https://katecudahy.wordpress.com/leda/

The Invitation is now back on Wattpad

This is just a short story which bridges the timespan between the end of Hannac and part three of The Duellist series – Leda.

Read it on Wattpad here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/334818766-the-invitation

The Invitation is also available on this blog here: https://katecudahy.wordpress.com/the-invitation-a-free-short-story/

Hannac is back on Wattpad

Storm clouds gather over Hannac. Bruno Nérac will stop at nothing to get Meracad back, and has vowed to set the North ablaze in revenge. Will Hal and Meracad's love overcome such fearsome odds? Find out in Hannac, the sequel to Hal.

You can now read the whole of Hannac on Wattpad once again here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/334255653-hannac-the-duellist-trilogy-2

Alternatively, the entire book is available as a PDF here on my blog: https://katecudahy.wordpress.com/hannac

Hal – The First Fight

Hal is young, naive and hungry for adventure: a former ward of the imperial court who has exchanged aristocratic privilege for the life of a professional duellist. A chance encounter with a thief leads her into the dangerous underworld of Riverside, and to Orla – a battle-weary soldier. Passions flare as summer heat bakes the city streets. But Orla is fierce and possessive in her love. Will Hal survive it? Find out in ‘The First Fight’, a short story – now available on Wattpad.

https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/333741226-the-first-fight

Hal is back on Wattpad

The full version of Hal is now available on Wattpad (alongside the PDF version you can download on this blog.

You can find it here: https://www.wattpad.com/user/KateCudahy2022

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be adding the other parts of The Duellist trilogy to the site. I’ll also be posting some material exclusively on my blog – more about that soon 🙂

Why Now?

Photo by Jessica Lewis Creative on Pexels.com

It’s fair to say I’ve taken a substantial break from writing any fiction over recent years. And that wasn’t necessarily out of choice – a lot changed in my life, notably a new job. I love it, but it takes up a lot of time.

There was something missing, however. I write other kinds of texts for my work, but it’s not the same. Writing fiction takes me back to my childhood and the experience of being lost in my own world for hours at a time. It’s also true that we don’t create fiction in some kind of hermetically sealed bubble. It has a habit of spilling over into other areas of our lives – and that can have a positive impact on the other texts we might be required to create.

Above all, however, I realised that my writing was a way of understanding myself and the world around me. It is a kind of excavation of the psyche – if you return to a piece of your own writing after several years, you realise what it was trying to tell you. Or what you were trying to tell yourself – and pieces of the puzzle just seem to fall into place.

And so this is why I decided that the fiction that I’ve written so far, and the fiction I’ll create in the future – including the work I’ll be publishing on this blog – is really one massive exercise in self-exploration and self-expression. It is my voice.

Over the coming weeks, months (and I hope years) I’ll be publishing my short stories and novels here, as well as reviews and general ramblings like this one. If something on here resonates with other people’s experiences and ideas too, then that would be great. I hope to enjoy some dialogue with other readers and writers. I also hope that I’ll manage to entertain a few people. If I succeed in doing that, then I’ll consider it to have been worthwhile.

It’s been a very long time!

Sometime back in 2019, I just seemed to stop writing fiction. Simply put, life got in the way – and I’m sure we were all in a similar place with the pandemic going on and life changes to deal with. Increasingly, though, I’ve felt that something was missing – and now I know what it is.

Hal started life as a novel on Wattpad. The great thing about that platform is the way it enables dialogue between writers and readers. That, I realised, was the missing element – the interaction. For this reason, I’ve decided that Hal, Meracad, Leda and all the other characters in these stories are going back there, and I’ll also be publishing the novels on my blog. It gives me the creative freedom to change and (hopefully) improve them. And it also enables me to exchange ideas with other readers and writers.

The full version of The Duellist Trilogy along with other works like The Firefarer will be available here, for free, on WordPress. I’ll be posting new chapters of each book once a week on Wattpad, with the intention of responding to readers’ suggestions. It’ll be experimental, it’ll be fun and above all else, I sincerely hope that you enjoy the books. At the end of the day, that’s my only goal.

Kate X

Review: Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley

Hold the front page. I actually finished this one in under 24 hours! And given the fact that I’m a tortoise when it reading, that says something about Andrew Michael Hurley’s ability to captivate a reader.

Starve Acre combines some of the best elements of Hurley’s other books The Loney https://katecudahy.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/review-the-loney-andrew-michael-hurley/ and Devil’s Day https://katecudahy.wordpress.com/category/devils-day/, although I’d have to say that nothing ever really comes close to the drip feed of terror that infuses The Loney. It’s probably the best horror I’ve ever read.

However, what features in  Hurley’s writing at all times is the way landscape operates as another character in the book: often evil, certainly unwelcoming. Another character that mocks all human attempts to inhabit it and call it home. Whether it’s the bleak Lancastrian coastline in The Loney, the hillsides of the North West in Devil’s Day or the Yorkshire Dales in the case of Starve Acre, Hurley is intent on impressing how cruel, unknowable and dangerous nature is. And how it’s best left well alone.

Starve Acre incorporates all the staple ingredients of classic gothic. An old, ruined house; Folk tales of evil spirits; a dead child. And as Hurley racks up the pressure, you just know things are not going to end well. It’s true that, as Guardian reviewer Nina Allen observes, Hurley’s female characters could do with being a bit more nuanced: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/23/starve-acre-andrew-michael-hurley-review. And I frequently found myself screaming at Richard, the main character ‘to just get out of there, you idiot!’ but I still reckon that there are very few writers around now capable of creating the same chilling sense of sinister atmosphere; of incipient evil as Andrew Michael Hurley.

Review: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Review – Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

The one thing I kept asking myself while reading this book was, ‘how did I miss this?’ And ‘why haven’t I read anything by Bernardine Evaristo before’? I mean Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker in 2019 for God’s sake. But it probably says everything that Evaristo was then forced to share the prize – a rule-breaking decision on the part of the judges – with Margaret Atwood. And that she was later referred to by Shaun Ley of the BBC, reporting on the award, as just ‘another author’:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50658750 .

Another author who just happened to have won the most prestigious literary prize the UK has to offer. No disrespect to Atwood – I love her work and I have yet to read The Testaments. But if this shameful incident proves anything, it’s that we need more books like Girl, Woman, Other. Because it’s a novel which brings to the fore the stories – and in some cases the hidden histories – of women of colour. It forces the reader to rethink over a century of British history; it challenges the very notion that there was no space for black women in post-war England, or that their stories are in some way not valid or of interest.

There’s no obvious underlying plot to Girl, Woman, Other. Instead, we encounter a chorus of voices; it’s fundamentally more polyphony than melody. But what rises out of that complex web of harmonies is a refusal to be silenced. A refusal to accept the kind of cultural erasure which has seen British history white-washed for so long. There are, for example, the lesbian political activists Amma and Dominique – their fight against establishment England ironically ending up in Amma’s  dramatic production for the National Theatre. There is trans activist Morgan, discovering their identity in their lack of  gender, and Hattie – Morgan’s great grandmother – Yorkshire farmer and proud of her mixed race identity. It is a glorious revelling in the lives of people who never get their stories told, and Evaristo has the ability to get so deep inside each of her character’s conscious that you almost feel as if you were journeying with them. Ultimately, it’s a book which demands a new way of looking at the world; of acknowledging the people around us, about thinking of them in a new way. It’s probably one of the most important novels ever to have won the Booker.

So, yeah, BBC. Well done.