Excerpt from my book!

The following is an excerpt from a book I am writing about a lad caught up in the First World War, trying to understand his passage into manhood and the relationships that help or hinder him from getting there... I'm only posting is because I saved it as a draft in here while I was at the gym earlier, but if you enjoy do tell me as I think I might need some encouragement at some point in this journey...!


Howie glared through his own reflection in the carriage window; chasing the blurred greenery that was speeding through his head. The last few weeks had been like an awkward silence; disconcerting and uncomfortable; and he hoped they'd disappear behind him as fast as these rolling hills; but the asthmatic grip of the army was beginning to choke.

He'd kept himself to himself as much as possible during the training, searching out every conceivable secluded corner around the Barracks to secret himself; finding himself all but allergic to conversation with new and unfamiliar breeds of people. It wasn't that they were soldiers - officially he was too, as bizarre as it felt to have to frame himself that way. It was not even their strange differences; different smells, different ages, different laughs... Although that had been intimidating too having only ever known the Whitby stock. It had taken a frustratingly long time to work out that the common factor amongst this cloud of raptors that encircled him was that... they were all men. Simple, and profound, as that.

It was embarrassing to admit it, but Howie's epiphany was that he didn't know how to relate to them - they were a complicated but primal congregation amongst which he felt tiny and silent. It was a shocking realisation just how little he had actually spoken to the men of his town - any men - all the while he'd been growing up there. They were like a completely alien species to him and it pained him to feel that way. His teachers had always been women and many an afterschool hour he'd stolen chatting to Miss Little about the books she quietly lent him, but if ever there was an errand to be done at the Butchers or Haberdashers for his mother, his father would have to take him himself, swearing under his breath about 'if you want something done properly...' or if they bumped into fishermen on their way to church Walter would do all the talking about the sea reports and the health of the crabbing industry; he'd literally pull Howie to stand behind him. Whether that was to protect his fragile mind from the inexplicable pains of normal conversation or the complicated rigours of idle banter he wasn't entirely sure. He wondered if perhaps he really was that inept at every imaginable task that he had to be hidden as much out of sight as possible for everybody's sake... None of these options made him feel any better about it, but the upshot was that he had never really engaged in any meaningful way with any older males and now felt achingly intimidated and disorientated to be stuck here in this den of lions, waiting to be devoured - if not by them then by the distant, fictional and harmless war that seemed to be solidifying and materialising with alarming speed and proximity. In a sea of blackness the only dark grey seemed to be the idea that the war could at least eat all the lions first leaving him free to go home.

The countryside began to glow and then a little later fade to black. Still he avoided any eye contact, shrank a little lower when the singing began to ring out and pretended to be asleep when any joking faces scanned his direction in search of approval.