Fiction Writing
Annie Forbes Cooper
She is a writer, reader, painter, yogi, skier, tireless friend, world traveler, hiker, biker, art enthusiast, gardener, cook and lover of life. Writing is a lifelong practice and commitment. As a writer she is always beating against the wings of time and the feeling that nothing she writes is ever good enough.
Publications
Laura Hird Website - "Terminal One”
Laura Hird Website - “Can’t Find My Way Home”
Literary Pot Pourri - "Not Everything in Life Has to be Explained"
Word Riot- “The Whisky Didn’t Help at All”
Raw, Random Acts of Writing - “Maidens Like Moths”
The Source – “The Beating of Angels’ Wings” - Chapter One
Peninsula - “The Beating of Angels’ Wings” - Chapter Two
Favorite Websites
Excerpts:
CAN'T FIND MY WAY HOME
by Annie Forbes Cooper
I have always tried to avoid weeping in public. An early baptism in such saline displays, convinced me of their undesirability as anything other than a rare aberration. Yet, on that typically Scottish, dreich and dour evening before grandma's funeral, I found myself tearing up at every corner. Not for her. At 96, she'd lived a long, relatively healthy life, but for that much earlier loss that I'd thought long since expunged from my consciousness.
Earlier that night, I'd met my old school pal Patsy for a drink in The Moorings, our former stomping ground. After losing contact for years, we'd bumped into each other in the street the previous day. “Amazing how after all this time in the Big Smoke and your accent’s stronger than ever," she'd said, after our customary greetings of Fit like? Nae bad, foo's yersel?
"Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment," I'd responded. "You know what they say, you can tak the quine oot o' Aiberdeen, but never the Aiberdonian oot o' the quine."
"Actually, I think they say that about some other city, but never mind."
While Patsy had stayed put, I'd moved to London, rarely returning home. As teenagers, we'd bombed around town in her turquoise Mini Cooper with Santana blasting, smoking Number Six's, Du Maurier's or spliffs - depending on finances and availability.
"Here for long?" she said, after getting the drinks in.
"Just long enough to settle things and sell grandma's flat."
"I’ve been trying to remember when we last saw each other?"
As if in some kind of time warp, the old-fashioned jukebox started pumping out Blind Faith's ‘Can't Find My Way Home.’ Ned's favourite.
"Wait - wasn't it the day before you stood me up and got off with Ned?" she continued.
The sound of his name spoken out loud gave me goose bumps. The song's lush, lyrical melody swept over me, pulling me into the past. “Well I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time, well I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.”
"Oh Gawd, nae going to hold that against me for ever are you?" I said, struggling to remain in the present.
"Probably. What really happened to him? Never did hear the whole story."
I thought I heard someone call my name and as I looked over at the swing doors, for one heart-stopping moment, I saw him standing there, laughing that laugh I’d once loved so much. I shivered and knocked back my whisky and ginger ale. "Same again?" I said.
"You buying? That's as rare as a Scotsman with a tan. Make it doubles. And get some fags while you're at it."
I grinned. Hadn't smoked in years, but what the hell, it was that kind of night. Grandma's death, seeing Patsy in The Moorings again, the gloomy Scottish weather, and Blind Faith's plaintiff lyrics had loosened an ice floe of memories. Which was why, once back at the tiny tenement flat I'd grown up in, I sobbed relentlessly through the night for everything that had once been, and was lost forever. Maybe the time had finally come to turn over the stone of my life and examine whatever scuttled forth.
Please read more on the Laura Hird Website: http://laurahird.com/showcase/annieforbescooper.html
Not Everything in Life Has to Be Explained - excerpt
I hovered, make-up clotting, surveying the setting sun transforming the streets into a tawny Tuscan landscape, and absorbing the aroma of roasting garlic and the siren sounds of the Cuban chanteuse from the corner bistro. Preferring foreplay to climax, I savored the moment, so sublimely unlike any other. I wondered, could love's redemptive power could still triumph and relieve such self-induced misery? D.H. Lawrence believed erotic love would unite two people forever. Something to do with all those lashing limbs and repressed emotions. And if I stood there any longer I'd…
A buzzer sounded. My finger seemed to be on it.
"Hi, it's--"
"C'mon up."