PUBLISH OR BE DAMNED

If there’s one thing I love it is writing short stories – or Doodles, as I like to call them – so I’ll feature the occasional one here. Hope you like the following.

I think I’m getting too old for this game. I’ve been an editor for fifteen years now. Why I ever bothered I don’t know. It certainly isn’t going to make me rich. I suppose, deep down, it must be the job satisfaction. Yes, that’s it – it satisfies me. And, boy, do you meet some characters.
Amateur writers are the most fascinating – you know, the REAL amateurs; the ones who’d have to turn to stamp collecting as a hobby to get it licked. For some reason, the more terrible the writer, the greater he thinks he is, and the abuse that can fly upon rejection … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. And the cons they use to try to get published. The mind boggles:

Dear Editor,
Please find enclosed story for consideration. It took a long time to write this piece on account of arthritis. Infact, I’ve only just turned to writing again after getting over the death of my mother in a car crash. My heart condition is improving, but acceptance would go a long way in enriching my life.

That was my favourite. Ten out of ten for effort, but nothing for literary competance. We tend to get anaesthetised to this sort of thing do us editors. But as I said, I think I’m getting too old for this game now, especially since I began getting stories from Paul Hobson.
What sort of a writer is he?
Well, a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters and infinite time may not be able to write Hamlet, but I feel they may stand a good chance of re-creating the works of Paul Hobson. Yes folks, he’s bad.
His first story arrived about two months ago. It was a dreadful tale, badly written and almost devoid of plot, and concerning nothing more than a man narrating his feelings upon coming down with flu. It was immediately rejected, but, knowing the sort, I knew I’d soon be bombarded with stories from him, so I began to hint at philately.
It took three weeks for his next masterpeice to turn up.
I was in a bad mood to begin with that day, the sore throat, etc, still getting me down. But us editors soldier on. It was almost as bad as the first – a story of an accident-prone man breaking his arm for the fourth time and about to give up on life.
Corn, sheer corn. The rejection was more severe and I enclosed a small packet of stamps I’d been saving for charity. A much more worthy cause, I thought.
I received his third story yesterday. A most depressing piece, this one. It concerned a man stuck in the same job for fifteen years and stress beginning to get the better of him. In the end he has a heart attack and dies. The writing was no better; the plot lousy. But for some reason I found myself typing the following:

Dear Paul,
Many thanks for sending your story and I have pleasure in accepting it for publication. A most forceful tale which gets straight to the point.

As I said, I think I’m getting too old for this game. And my plaster cast is making it damned hard to type.

© Anthony North

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THE CRUSADES

The Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, were a series of campaigns organised by allied forces in Europe to secure pilgrim’s access to the Holy Places of Palestine.
For 300 years after Islam took the region, there was little interference in such pilgrimage but in the 11th century the Turkish Seljuk dynasty subjugated the Abbasids, took most of the area and began interfering with Christian pilgrims. Enraging Europe, an undisciplined mob was sent to capture Jerusalem for Christianity in 1095.

GAINS AND LOSSES

All perished. However, the following year the First Crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon fought its way through Asia Minor and entered Jerusalem in 1099.
Setting up a Christian Kingdom, castles were built in the area and the Knights Templar and Hospitallers created to defend the Kingdom. A Second Crusade was needed in 1147 to regain losses in Mesopotamia, but proved a disaster.
By 1174, the Muslim warrior Saladin had risen in Syria, becoming Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty, which would survive until destroyed by the Mongols in 1250. Sweeping his forces through Galilee, he engaged a Christian army at the Horns of Hattin, successfully using guerilla tactics to bring victory, retaking Jerusalem in 1187.
Further Crusades were mounted, one jointly led by Richard I of England, but non retook Jerusalem and most ended in disaster, such as the Children’s Crusade of 1212, the children being sold into slavery.

EFFECT ON ISLAM

For Islam, success against the Christians brought another period of empire, beginning in 1290 when Osman I broke from the crippled Seljuks and began expansion. His Ottoman Empire was to finally break the Byzantines, Constantinople being taken in 1453 and renamed Istanbul.
From their native Turkey, the Ottomans took to the sea, taking much of south east Europe and north Africa, reaching their height in the 16th century under Suleiman I. Internal decline in the aristocratic led and corrupt empire began after the 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto when a Venetian alliance crippled the Ottoman navy. However, the decline took until the 1920s when the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed, Turkey becoming a republic under Kemal Ataturk.

EFFECT ON EUROPE

As for Europe, the Crusades proved even more important. For in the creation of an overseas Kingdom, the Europeans first thought about empire. In later centuries it was to lead to a huge period of empire building.
Yet even at the time the Crusades were a success in one way. For they gave Christendom an outer ‘evil’ to fight, cementing them into a single system across the Continent. A system that was the Middle Ages.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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