Hi, I'm Charlie Tyler, and Sophie from the development office asked me if I could say a few words about my my book,
which was published this year by Dog Strache. It's called The cry of the Lake and it's a psychological thriller.
So what my inspiration for it was,
I had an idea about a little girl who was desperately keen to see a mermaid and her older sister has
told her that she can she can see one if she goes to the lake at midnight when there's a full moon.
And she does. But when she gets there, she witnesses something that she really shouldn't.
And it's something that she can't make sense of. So she buries this this idea in her head.
And later on, it comes to the surface and it's really about what happens when you suppress something and hide something without dealing with it,
without unpacking its meaning. And so later on, when it does come to the surface, she has to say, looks at the fallout that that's caused by this.
So how do I find the process of writing? I find it relatively easy.
I get to my desk in the morning and I do look for for reasons not to sit down and write.
There's a slight fear that when I sit down, I won't be able to to produce anything.
But on the whole, after a couple of cups of coffee, I manage to get something down.
And then all sort of right away until maybe midday when when I've got other jobs to do and other other things and real life gets in the way.
During lockdown, I think I was relatively lucky that I was at a stage in the publication where I was just doing final edits.
So I didn't. We have to concentrate because when I am writing, I do you like it to be quiet.
And now my son is back at uni and my girls are at school.
So I have a long period of the day where where I am on my own and I can create.
So that's that's kind of worked out quite well. I do find the Internet a massive, massive.
Distraction. And I just can't seem to bring myself to turn it off.
I think if I could. I would probably get a lot more done.
But I'm safe. I'm not going to miss out on something. It's just ridiculous, really.
Yeah. No, I'm I'm okay. Morning. I can ride.
It's good. One of the things I learnt during my time at Worcester, I had a brilliant time with.
I was a theology student. So actually quite a lot of my tutorials were one on one.
And I think I learnt quite quickly that the just nowhere to hide.
You know, you have to write your essay. You have to read out to your tutor who has your undivided attention.
And so there's no point in waffling or, you know, quoting reams of stuff that you don't understand.
So I think really what it taught me was right how to write a good essay.
I hope you taught me how to write a good essay anyway. And the other thing, I suppose, is I had to deal with a deadline.
There's no point living. They're writing to the night before we even get wet, get away with it.
I think maybe once or twice. But on the whole, if you want to have a good time, you get a little bit more prepared.
Don't leave your essay writing to do the last minute.
Thank you very much for watching.