Faith Hope's website

Hello and welcome to my website. It’s nothing much yet but I’m hoping that, with some proper attention, it’ll grow and get big and strong.

Faith Hope is, of course, a pseudonym. There are some cruel (or stupid) parents out there, but I don’t think any of them would actually combine those names together, usually being more concerned with calling their children Nigella or Euphemia, Gerald or Tarquin; Sunflower Moonbeam or Merlynn Hedwig. The name was conceived in 1996 to allow me to publish articles about subjects that my parents wouldn’t have been too happy to read, and it’s travelled with me as a useful mask for dubious activities (or ones that make me shy, anyway).

It’s pretty much going to be about my creative writing, so don’t expect flashy graphics, games, porn (the photographic kind), pictures of me drinking tequila in San Antonio, or tributes to my favouritest film star. It ain’t gonna happen. You can, however, purchase artwork (some bloke from California already has! Colour me flabbergasted!) from here.

However, if you want to get back to me about anything you read on here, add a little rain of praise or manure of criticism (either are welcome and both are good), please feel free to email me on: faithhope1@hotmail.com or sign my guestbook:

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Ta!

Faith x

Recently joined WriteWords, a UK writers' forum.

NEWS: Collection I, a collection of early work - some short stories, one medium-length one and a poem - arranged together in a handy, pocket-sized (this is the official designation for the size of publication) tome is available for sale from http://www.lulu.com. It costs about £5.29 for the 106-page paperback, or £1.91 for the pdf to download. I make a laughable £1.50 per book, but they all add up - go buy, go buy!

Chapter 20 and Chapter 21 of JJ posted.

Song/ poem "Selfish Bastard" wins me third place in an accidental poetry slam entry...

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Works-in-progress

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Short Stories

Some of these are very old. In fact, most of them are pretty old as, for one reason or another, I’ve barely written for ages. However, I want to get started again. And no, this isn’t all I’ve written, but it does carry a certain themette...

To See	one of the very earliest short stories (and the earliest one for this themette) I’ve got on record and written 12 years ago.
Summertime	about that halcyon time between the end of one era and the start of the next (and incidentally the first story to feature P)
Dancing Down the Middle	P’s own story
Travelogue	originally published in ten percent

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creative stuff

Erotica

There will be more of this on the way, I promise!

Gardens	naughty but fairly subtle
Cold Art	much ruder! First published in The Nifty Archive
Two Lusts	naughty solo/ mf – written 2002
New Sensations	hard-core filth - mf (+ ff and mff implied) – written Dec 2007

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creative stuff

Poetry

~~I rarely write poetry. I mean really rarely. And by ‘poetry’ I mean something I’d show to anyone else.~~ That's all changed now - I seem to be writing more poetry than anything else, and really getting into the performance poetry side of things. Of course I used to write bad and depressing and ‘experimental’ (and sometimes all three) poetry when I was a teenager, but since then it’s been extremely scarce (which is probably a good thing from the point of view of the general public!). However, I was inspired by the excellent Monkey Kettle to give it a go as an adult and, when they published Killing Phase a few issues ago, I was inspired to keep going (slowly). NEWS: Killing Phase was requested for publication in the all-new Monkey Kettle anthology, Now, That's What I Call Monkey Kettle: 1999-2004 v. 1, available from Amazon (click here to order).

(Poems with an "MK" next to them have been accepted for publication in M(onkey) K(ettle).)

Killing Phase (MK)	pun intended
Put It Like...	allegory is great, isn’t it?
It Ends	depressing
City Of Exiles (MK)	less depressing (but more cynical?)
Secret Name	heading back to my ‘experimental’ roots?
Cohesive (MK)	a true story
Aspire	an old story
Selfish Bastard (MK)	another old story, and not necessarily about who you think it might be... (third-place finalist in the Monkey Kettle Poetry Slam - accidentally, I swear!)
Personal Poetry	I found this recently in a clearout, written while cycling to my second job one Cardiff Thursday evening and hastily scribbled down after I got back, so possibly not as good as the original. It’s clearly performance poetry, and is in response to someone else’s poem where they assert that poetry’s not personal (not without some measure of irony, I’m sure) and some of you will remember who that is...
small, pale people (mk)	It’s entirely up to you whether you think this is an attack on you. Poetry is personal, but mine is always in the fashion that it’s all about me!

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creative stuff

Essays/Rants

Now, I had a lot of non-fiction work published in Gair Rhydd in the mid- to late-90s. If anyone knows a way of getting hold of it for me, I’d be incredibly grateful! In the meantime, this is what you got:

Fifteen Days Later

somewhere between philosophy and directed rant (never sent), written in February 2001. I comfort myself with long words; sometimes it works...

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creative stuff

Works-in-progress

These will hopefully be updated on a regular basis. Keep coming back to check and hassle me for more; I need chivvying!

Stones Chapter 1	I am determined to write one novel before I die. Even if it turns out to be shit. There are lots of bits of the rest of this floating about, written about a year after this first chapter was conceived as a short story, all I need to do is stitch them together with intervening plot and an actual conclusion, right?
JJ’s tale...	JJ wakes up with a strange woman and has 24 hours to piece together the last 48 before the current lover returns after a month in Greenland. Certain issues need to be resolved in that time, including why JJ, with a legendarily good memory, is missing large chunks of time; whether and what to confess to the current lover; and what has happened to JJ’s new watch?
JJ part 1	suspicions awake
JJ part 2	exploring the surroundings
JJ part 3	encountering the natives
JJ part 4	dressed for excess
JJ part 5	inevitably baffling communications
JJ part 6	heading home (re-edited)
JJ part 7	reality starts to bite back
JJ part 8	moments of truth
JJ part 9	attention-seeking
JJ part 10	one tough mother
JJ part 11	what are you looking at?
JJ part 12	destination anyway
JJ part 13	raised voices
JJ part 14	delving (with diversions)
JJ part 15	travelling and standing still
JJ part 16	probing (torture)
JJ part 17	we're here... we are going shopping...
JJ part 18	take me home
JJ part 19	fillings
JJ part 20	bloody party favours
JJ part 21	bird-spotting (with thanks to Amelia for the inspiration)

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creative stuff