Cancer is a monster.
It has been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember. I first came across it in the late Sixties. My Gran's brother came back to town to die with his family. I was fascinated by this man, so thin as to be almost skeletal, wound in clothes that were many sizes too large for his frame, his skin so thin that I could see his blood moving... not pumping, for it had long since stopped moving enough to keep him alive long. He rarely spoke, just sat by the fire as if trying to soak up heat, his eyes frequently wet from tears, not of sadness, but of pain. He lasted for months in that condition until it finally took him and I knew then that cancer was a monster.
Since then it has taken others, both friends and family, a young mother with two pre-teen children, a cousin who was like a big brother to me, and a girl I never got to know for she was taken before her twentieth birthday. Other family members are still fighting. I had my own brush with it in 2019, getting a tennis-ball sized tumour hacked out of my guts. I had another brush with the monster in 2023, closer this time, and lost 1/2 my liver to it. I'm still here.
Cancer is a monster. I can't fight it for you. But as a writer and as an editor there is something I can do. I rallied up some friends, and friends of friends, and asked them for some stories. They responded brilliantly. We put them together in a wee book.
Johnny Mains and Peter Mark May at Karöshi Books published THE UNSPOKEN as an ebook and paperback with all profits going to The Beatson Cancer Research Institute.
The lineup is stunning.