Ready for Portals?

The Charley Beri Portals 

How did this come into being? 

I sometimes think the concept of ‘portals’ is misconstrued, but then I use portals in a loose sense throughout most of my stories. A portal, in most cases, is simply a doorway in our imagination where we discover what was if thinking back to a past event or person in our own experience, or thinking forward, imagining an outcome of a plot or, in our personal lives, what a goal would look like. Take that one stage further and it can be what a goal ‘feels’ like. So, we create the framework, then step into the picture to experience the sensation. 

The same applies when looking back beyond our own lifetime experience. In my upcoming series The Charley Beri Portals I have transported my thoughts back to a time at the end of the second world war, the partition of India and the violence that followed as the new Indian Federation was founded. Even though this was before my time, but there is so much material available that it isn’t difficult to amass detaila around which to construct a plot. All the action in Book 1 takes place in England, but the story has roots in Hyderabad in 1948. 

The Charley Beri concept started life as a short story largely set in Cornwall, notably on Bodmin Moor, that vast, open stretch of high country that is the backbone of Cornwall stretching several miles between Launceston and Bodmin. Charley is a musician, as most of my characters tend to be in one form or another, and I had him and a few quirky companions roaming the spiritual sites on and around the moors, and there is a surprising amount of ancient sites on the moors which are ammunition in this respect, uncovering secrets, some modern by way of dodgy dealers in contraband, others more ancient, and this is where the portals element came in. In my imagination, ancient spiritual sites held secrets, not necessarily treasure, but enlightenment and, occasionally, danger. Eventually, I found the concept to be getting too ‘esoteric’ and shelved it, but Charley stuck around, knowing he’d come in handy at some stage, and he’s now making an impact in the full novel, it may stretch to another. 

Here am I saying the concept started to get ‘esoteric’ so, see what you make of the new template I am now about half-way through. 

The setting is the late nineteen seventies, and thirty-year-old Charley is in Cornwall, singing in pubs and clubs (just like I did through the seventies in Cornwall), the worse for drink and drugs, having a wonderful time but…something is happening to him which will drive the story forward in a big way. Putting it down to the mis-use of alcohol and drugs, he is, increasingly, experiencing flashbacks so extreme that he is actually participating in past events. 

Back in London for rehab, the sensations grow, he is made aware of a ‘gift’ he possesses whether he likes it or not. A half-sister, Saisha, drifts in and out of his days and nights, 

reminding him that he will need to use his powers, but for what purpose? The emergence of representatives of a powerful secret society emerge, after over thirty years, to claim certain artefacts that are required for nefarious purposes. Such artefacts were, supposedly, brought back to England after partition by Charley’s father and Nagesh – Lord of the Serpents – and the chase to find these objects takes Charley through a series of portals, into the Sutrayantra, pursued by the baddies, under the evil, watchful eye of Nagini, the objective being for Charley to locate and hide a certain artefact that, should it fall into the hands of the society, would have catastrophic consequences, the nature of which I have yet to work out! 

Charley’s explorations – and it is he who is leading me – have taken us back to Cornwall, to the ancient Templar site of Temple on the moors, deep below the ley-line matrix around Highgate cemetery in London, out on to the mysterious marshes at the mouth of the Thames and I sense a trip to Norfolk where two ancient ley-lines intersect. There is a code yet to crack, which will lead Charley to a remote location in Wales, there to find this missing code that will allow him to access the second and third level portals beyond the mysterious golden threads of the Sutrayantra and finally locate the portal that hides the missing artefact – and considerably more I feel. 

Meanwhile, all Charley really wants to do is play music in a quiet pub in Cornwall, watching the sun go down. That may well happen, but he may have to wait until the second book. After all, he still has to rescue his mother Ashani, comfortably restrained in a portal somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas – sorry, I forgot to mention that! 

Overall, this is an adventure in progress and one I am SO enjoying. I have had some ideas from friends and readers in India and Sri Lanka, some of which have been really helpful, especially with a few Sanskrit phrases I will be using in the text. The overall story-arc is simply to make this an adventure, uplifting, a little unbelievable, fun and factual enough to hold together but not to be stodgy – suspend disbelief and run with me. 

I do hope you’ll let your imagination – your portal if you like – be expansive enough to allow me freedom to share The Charley Beri Portals with you without too much close examination. I expect this to be ready in the summer of 2025. Excerpts will precede publication.