It's a crack, I'm back

[TheTomG]

It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing
On the rooftops shouting out,
Baby I'm ready to go
I'm back and ready to go


Ok so everyone just goes huh what you were gone? Ha! Been absent for some months due to an ongoing tricky divorce, but am at a point where I want to start picking up my life again and reactivating the various things I have let slide for a while, like, a presence here on the Chrons!

I know, don't all be too excited at once, ha! Soon I will take a peek at what our writing challenges are, as I now have more writing time than ever!

[hopewrites]

welcome back. I saved your seat. Glad I didnt save it in vain.

[Warren_Paul]

Welcome back, Tom. Having been through the same thing myself, I know how it can take over all your time, and push everything you usually spent your day doing to the back of your mind.

I vanished off the grid for a few months myself back then.

[Abernovo]

Welcome back, Tom. I noticed you were absent. Sorry to hear of your situation.

But you're back now! See you in the challenges, then.

[Gary Compton]

Rock on Tom!!

Hope your wallet is still intact mate

[thaddeus6th]

Welcome back, Tom. Is that you with your human in the photo?

[springs]

good to see you back, Tom, sounds like a rotten couple of months.

[alchemist]

Welcome back Tom. Upward and onwards!

[StormFeather]

Good to have you back, and hoping that the 'ongoing trickiness' of recent times passes everso quicky for you.

Chin up, old chap, and all that . . . . .

[Hex]

Hurray! You're back, Tom. We missed you.

[TheTomG]

Thank you all, what a pleasant welcome (re-welcome?) - something to inspire and invigorate when times are dark and the mood is down. It is good to have friends, and a place to 'hang out' where one is welcome!

You'd think I'd learn, this is my third time heh, at least it's always my decision (yes, that may not say that much good about me, but at least it means I don't feel the sting of rejection; I'll save that for publisher's letters.) So, I seem to be collecting ex-wives, what fun!

I will share one piece of writing that came out a week or so back on my Facebook as I began to get back into using words (I had a time where I just had no words left in me at all to use for anything, but that time is passing with vengeance, so beware!) I hope you enjoy, I think I will take it into my latest novel in some form, but here it is for now anyway as a thank you for all your kind words! Enjoy

"
The darkness comes early, brought in on the wings of the storm. The lightning scars the sky, providing brief false light that only serves to emphasize the depths of the night when it crashes back in after the cutting illumination jumps from cloud to ground.

Strange how the darkness brings warmth and comfort when it rides in and you are sat in the comfort of a coffee shop, the huddle of humanity around you keeping the press of the dark pushed back.

But when you sit alone in an empty room, the dark has a different flavor, and it settles down into your core like a thick black sludge sinking down through your being.

A cell phone with a number no-one knows is a one-way street that offers little comfort. The computer, isolated from the racing digital bloodstream that circles the globe, is nothing but an electronic mirror that can only reflect your own words back at you. Even the instrument that sits in the corner can hold out nothing more than what you can put in to it.

There is nothing here but you; you against the dark outside.

You consider all this and search through all you know, all you have seen, all you have done, looking for any flame or warmth or illumination that might provide the merest spark of comfort that you can seize and fan to try to find a fire to drive away the bleakness, the chill void, that moves around you and through you slowly, determined to consume you, but doing so with a calm relentlessness that is more hideous than any sudden violent attack.

But there is no such spark. Nothing in all your knowledge, nothing in all your decades, gives you an answer. You shiver, briefly wrap your arms around yourself, and give a wan smile. Who can ever say what the plan is, what the path is, where your road is leading? None can know, but one thing holds true, we only partly write that route. The rest is laid out for us from outside, and there is nothing to do but accept.

One more growled flash from the storm, and your smile fades. Nothing to do but move on, carry on, as if it were any other day. Whatever this storm is bringing, you have no control over it, so no sense in fighting. You open the door, and step out into the night.
"