Featured

In a word: Incline

When you first think of this word, it is with a slippery slope in mind.

I’ve been on a few of those in my time.

And while we’re on the subject, those inclines measured in degrees are very important if you want a train to get up and down the side of a mountain.

For the train, that’s an incline plane, the point where traction alone won’t get the iron horse up the hill.

Did I say ‘Iron Horse’? Sorry, regressed there, back to the mid-1800s in the American West for a moment.

It’s not that important when it comes to trucks and cars, and less so if you like four-wheel driving; getting up near-vertical mountainsides often present a welcome challenge to the true enthusiast

But for the rest of us, not so much if you find yourself sliding in reverse uncontrollably into the bay. I’m sure it’s happened more than once.

Then…

Are you inclined to go?

A very different sort of incline, ie to be disposed towards an attitude or desire.

An inclination, maybe, not to go four-wheel driving?

There is another, probably more obscure use of the word incline, and that relates to an elevated geological formation. Not the sort of reference that crops up in everyday conversation at the coffee shop.

But, you never know. Try it next time you have coffee and see what happens.

Featured

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about. Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

I pick up the pen.

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing. Still me, but with a twist. Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance. Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons. It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated. There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss. He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him. Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him. Last name Benton. He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 30

It’s the end.

The last day, but not the last of the editing.

Yes, I have almost managed to complete most of the editing in 30 days, but with a few side trips, and changes to the plan on the run, it is mostly done.

The good news?

I’m going to stick with it until I’ve finished, so there will be a few more journal entries to cover the last chapters.

Had it been the length I had originally planned, it would have been finished.

I managed to get through the back chapters last night after some distractions, and now it’s just two, possibly three more, and then one or two for the epilogue, which will be epic.

At the moment, the story is about 73,000 words long and will finish closer to 80,000.

It’s been at times a trial, a lot of hard work, but it has been worthwhile. The thing is, I’m going to continue on, past the estimated time, and get this finished.

It’s now three of three, books that will eventually be published in the near future.

A to Z – April – 2026 – Z

Z is for – Zeppelin

…

Appearances were everything.

In a country where underlying suspicion and fear prevailed in a way that was far more terrifying than the manner in which the German authorities made everyone appear welcome in the so-called ‘New Germany’, I had a secret.

And I only had to maintain it until I was on the Hindenburg and on my way home.

We were lucky, or perhaps not, that the Olympic Games were on, and the regime was on its best behaviour.

Or seemingly so.

I’ll be honest, I always wanted to do a grand tour, but just never got there, confining my visits to my work. France, Greece, Italy, if only to exercise my curiosity in archaeological artefacts and digs, and then an opportunity arrived on my doorstep in a rather unique manner.

Stanley Davis Jackson, a member of the United States State Department, came to see me.

Perhaps that was the polite way of putting it, because he was sitting in my favourite chair in my folks’ old house, they’d left me in a will, the same day I arrived home from their funeral.

It was mid-July 1936, and the world was in a crazy state, with all manner of strange, at least to me, things happening.

An end to a war, a period of prosperity, a depression, and who knows really what it could be called. Someone said it was going to be another war, but maybe if we just ignored everything going on over the seas…

Or not.

Stanley Davis Jackson had other ideas.

In what he may have believed it to be in a personable manner, he explained how a few people were working towards making the world a safer place for everyone.

Why did I get the feeling that exactly the opposite was happening, and of course, the most important question: what did it have to do with me?

Easy…

I had a working relationship with a museum and an archaeological organisation in Germany, a range of German contacts who were well placed in the ‘New Germany’ government, and I was able to travel and move about the country relatively freely.

First thought after his introductory spiel, they needed a spy. I was not going to be a spy. A university acquaintance had also been approached, told it was simple, just keep your eyes and ears open, anything out of the ordinary.

Until he was ‘detained’.

So I asked Stanley Davis Jackson the question.

“Why exactly are you here?”

The way he shifted nervously in his chair was as telling as the grave expression on his face.

“We have a favour to ask you.”

Herr Doctor Hans Kneissl and I had just arrived at the Hamburg Hof hotel, the assembly place for the 50 or so passengers of the Hindenburg zeppelin airliner, after a productive week of investigations, one of which was his candid view of the ‘New Germany’.

Stanley Davis Jackson’s parting comment had been that if the opportunity was there, to ask for the doctor’s opinion. There didn’t seem to be one until, on the drive into Frankfurt, we had been stopped briefly by a road incident.

A truck was on the side of the road, and two vehicles were stopped, and the occupants of the cars were lined up, and men in brown uniforms were standing in front of them.

“Identity checks,” Hans said. “It is called vigilance for troublemakers from alien countries, using the Olympic Games as a cover for illegal activities.”

“They don’t look like foreigners?”

“More likely Jewish. It does not bode well for you if you are Jewish.”

We drove past slowly, several of the soldiers, if they could be called that, waving us on, yelling in German, “Move along, nothing to see here”. Or words to that effect.

“Are they members of the army?”

“No, though I believe they are now being trained to become soldiers. They wander the streets, looking for trouble, though not as much as they used to. Still, avoid them when you see them. I believe they have been replaced by the Gestapo and SS, the intelligence arm of the Army. I’m never sure who is whom these days, except you never know who’s watching, listening, waiting. You keep your head down and mind your own business.”

I was going to ask a few more questions, but I got the sense things were not quite as they seemed.

And a lot different to the picture Stanley Davis Jackson painted for me. In and out. Keep your eyes and ears open. Discreet observation.

Enjoy the flight on the Hindenburg, a once-in-a-lifetime treat.

I hadn’t realised at the time, but it was like selling your soul to the devil. There was always a price to pay.

…

There was little else to say, that sighting of what Hans muttered later as arrests in plain sight, though I had not seen that happening, I suspect he knew more than he was telling.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we reached the Frankfurter Hof hotel, the last stop before the new airport, [name]. It was the home to the hangars and two zeppelin balloons, one of which I would be travelling on, the Hindenburg.

The hotel was also referred to as the Grand Hotel, and I could see why. Frankfurt’s elite were in attendance, and it was not surprised this was the starting point of an experience of a lifetime.

I felt remarkably out of place, and had it not been for Stanley Davis Jackson, I would not be here.

Security, Hans said, would be tight, which was why they did the pre-boarding for passengers at the hotel before being taken to the hangar and airship, directly by bus.

We arrived at 4pm. Immigration and ticketing would start at 6pm. We had two hours, and Hans had decided to stay with me.

It was obvious who the passengers were. Although there was a handful when we arrived, by five thirty, nearly all had arrived, and groups were forming. Americans, English, European, German.

The Americans were noisy, some brash. It was not cheap flying, so most of the passengers were wealthy, and you could tell.

Stanley Davis Jackson had given me a role to play. What interested me was how much he knew about me, what I had done, where I’d been, and who I knew.

And how that could be woven into a story that had already been created. Had they assumed some time in the past that I would be working for them?

My role was that of a reclusive archaeologist and philanthropist who financed and attended digs. Anyone digging into my past would see that my wealth came from parents who made a fortune from oil, discovered on their ranch

If only that were true.

I was also engaged to be married, which I certainly was not, to a rather equally reclusive daughter of bankers, who was ‘somewhere’ in Europe on a pre-wedding hike with friends.

Whoever wrote the script for this was a master storyteller. He gave me a few days to read the novella and then burn it. There was so much to the story, I hoped I could remember it all.

The key piece of information, my fiancé might or might not turn up at Frankfurt, so the happy couple could return to America on a pre-honeymoon. Stanley Davis Jackson thought he had made a joke, but sadly, I didn’t laugh.

I was the only time I saw him feel ill at ease, realising suddenly that I might not be able to pull off a so-called simple task.

I had mentioned Eloise Matilda Bainborough to him several times, particularly when Mrs Hans asked if I’d met anyone, and seemed surprised when I said I had.

It was all the questions she asked about her, and I felt in the end I was dodging and weaving because they were the sort of intimate details I should know.

So much so, I did wonder if she was not just a Hausfrau, but a Gestapo interrogator.

We did the rounds of the room, making myself known to the other passengers, navigating introductions which I hated, and questions which, because of the underlying nature of why I was there, always made me wary of everyone and everything.

Especially when Hans pointed out the possible Gestapo, Air police and security officials, some overt, some not, because, he said, the government could not allow anyone to sabotage such a valuable asset, and propaganda tool.

It was the first time he used that word, and for me, a lot of things I’d seen and heard made perfect sense. Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor, and his team were ‘selling’ a product, not only to his people, but to the rest of the world.

And, to me, it seemed like everyone was buying it.

…

The moment of truth came at 5;42. That time will stay in my memory forever, not because it was a heart-stopping, horrendous moment when everything could fall apart…

It was when Eloise Matilda Bainborough arrived.

It was supposed to be low-key, almost invisible.

It was anything but.

“Darling…”

It came from the doorway and travelled across the floor in such a riveting tone that no one could miss it.

Timed stopped.

Everyone, including me, looked.

I gasped.

And seconds later, I was hugging and kissing the most beautiful girl I had never seen or spoken to before.

And going weak at the knees.

Literally.

Ten maybe fifteen seconds, or perhaps a week, my mind was so boggled she stepped back, both my hands in hers, looking at me with what someone later told me were the most adoring eyes.

“My God, Ethan, you have missed me. I sure as hell missed you.”

And kissed me again, in a way that pushed my heart rate way beyond the recommended limit.

The rest of the room sighed, and the murmurs of conversations started up again, and I was positive I knew what they would be talking about.

A hotel staffer brought her backpack over from where she had dropped it.

I could see Hans grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

“Oh, sorry, Eloise, Hans, my archaeological nemesis and very good friend.”

“Doctor Kniessel. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Ethan is always telling me all this stuff, and you know us girls. It’s fashion, marriage, children and not rocks, artefacts and relics. The only relics I know about are my grandparents, which I shouldn’t be sounding so awful…”

All of which tumbled out in a mish-mash of breathlessness, the sort of babble a rich girl might indulge in.

I was almost madly in love with her myself, because now she was here, people gave us just enough time to reacquaint ourselves before turning her into the centre of attention.

Then, a few minutes later, a tap on my shoulder, a whispered, ‘doorway’, I saw what Hans was referring to. Uniformed officers, plain-clothed Gestapo, conferring and looking in our direction. Then in the next, they were gone.

I knew they would be back.

Eloise had her back to them, but I had seen her briefly just as she arrived, look back as she reached the door. Had they been in pursuit? Was that why we had the attention-grabbing entrance?

Plain sailing, Stanley Davis Jackson said.

We were about to go side-on to a tidal wave in a dinghy.

…

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 103

Day 103 – It’s easy, all I have to do is write stories

…

Beyond the Myth: Leigh Brackett and the Hard Truth of Professional Fiction

For many aspiring writers, the dream begins early. It’s a seductive, glittering mirage: the idea that you can simply sit down, tap a few keys or scrawl across a page, and “easy money” will flow forth in exchange for your tales.

Leigh Brackett, the legendary “Queen of Space Opera” and the force behind iconic screenplays like The Big Sleep and The Empire Strikes Back, began her journey with that very notion. For Brackett, the idea of writing as a living wasn’t just a career path; it was a beckoning light that captivated her at the age of thirteen.

But as Brackett’s prolific career eventually proved, the distance between the idea of easy money and the reality of a professional writing career is vast. To turn a childhood fascination into a lifelong vocation, Brackett—and anyone who follows in her footsteps—had to learn that writing is not a shortcut to riches; it is a discipline of iron.

The Myth of the “Easy” Vocation

When you are thirteen, the act of storytelling feels like magic. It is unburdened by deadlines, market trends, or the daunting weight of editorial rejection. Brackett, like many others, viewed the pen as a wand.

However, Brackett quickly learned that the “easy money” myth is a dangerous trap. It ignores the cold, hard reality that writing for a living is a business. It requires more than just a vivid imagination; it requires the fortitude to treat your craft with the same seriousness as an architect treats a blueprint or a surgeon treats a theatre.

What Else Does It Take?

If not “easy money,” then what fueled Brackett’s longevity in a field as fickle as pulp fiction and Hollywood screenwriting? It takes a combination of grit, adaptability, and a relentless evolution of craft.

1. The Discipline of the “Daily Grind”

Brackett didn’t wait for the Muses to descend. She understood that a professional writer shows up. She treated writing as a job, sitting down at the typewriter day after day, regardless of whether the words flowed like water or felt like pulling teeth. Inspiration is for amateurs; professionals have a schedule.

2. Radical Adaptability

Brackett’s career path was a testament to survival. She moved from the pulps of the 1940s to the high-stakes world of Hollywood noir, and eventually to the blockbusters of the late 70s. She didn’t cling to one medium. She learned the nuances of dialogue, the structure of a screenplay, and the pacing of a novel. To succeed for decades, you must be willing to learn new languages of storytelling and pivot when the industry shifts.

3. Developing a “Thick Skin”

The myth suggests that writing is a form of self-expression where your soul is the product. The reality is that your work is a commodity subject to intense scrutiny, brutal edits, and rejection. Brackett’s ability to take the “notes” from studio executives or editors without losing the integrity of her voice was vital. She understood that being edited wasn’t a personal attack; it was part of the refinement process.

4. The Craft over the Ego

Finally, it takes a genuine, unyielding love for the craft itself. Brackett didn’t just love the “money” or the “status”; she loved the challenge of building worlds. When the money was thin, and the deadlines were crushing, it was the intellectual puzzle of constructing a narrative—of finding the right word, the perfect plot twist, the emotional anchor—that kept her in the chair.

The Takeaway

Leigh Brackett’s journey from a thirteen-year-old dreamer to a titan of science fiction reminds us that while writing can become a career, it is never “easy.”

If you are looking for easy money, there are faster ways to find it. But if you are looking for a vocation—a calling that demands your best, pushes your limits, and forces you to grow every single day—then you are in the right place. Just remember: professional writing is earned in the trenches, one word at a time, long after the myth of “easy” has faded away.

Searching for locations: Florence, Italy

Florence is littered with endless statues, and we managed to see quite a few,

If those statues came to life, I wonder what they might tell us?

Like castles on the shores of the Rhine, there are only so many statues you can take photos of. Below are some of those I thought were significant.

Michelangelo’s David directs his warning gaze at someone else.

The impressive muscles of Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules from 1533. The worked-out demi-god is pulling the hair of Cacus, who will be clubbed and strangled.

Achilles with Polyxena in arm, stepping over her brother’s body

Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus, in the Loggia dei Lan

Statue of Hercules killing the Centaur by Giambologna in Loggia dei Lanzi. Piazza della Signoria.

On the back of the Loggia, there are six marble female statues, probably coming from Trajan’s Forum in Rome, discovered in 1541 and brought to Florence in 1789

Once Upon a Time… – A short story

Everyone knows someone who has a child that will not go to sleep.

You can set the bedtime at whatever early hour you like, but by the time they actually fall asleep, there have been two or three hours of up and down, in and out of bed, and at least one episode of a scary monster lurking under the bed, or, worse, outside the window.

After exhausting every method of achieving a result and failing, I thought I’d try reading.

The first book I picked up was, yes, you guessed it, about monsters. In fact, nearly every book for kids was about monsters, witches, ogres, dragons, and vampires.

I put them back and sighed. I would have to come up with a story of my own.

It started with, “Once upon a time…”

“But that,” Mary said, “only applies to fairy tales.”

“Well, this is going to be a fairy tale of sorts. Minus the fire-breathing dragons, and nasty trolls under drawbridges.”

“It’s not going to be much of a story, then. In fairy tales, there’s always a knight who slays the dragon and rides off with the princess.”

This was going to be a tough ask. I thought of going back to the book pile, but then, I could do this.

“So,” I began again, “Once upon a time there was a princess, who lived in a castle with her father, the king, her mother, the queen, and her brother, the steadfast and trusty knight in shining armour.”

“Why is their armour always shining?”

I was going to tell her to save the questions until after the story, by which time I had hoped I’d bored her enough to choose sleep over criticism. I was wrong.

“Because a knight always has to have shiny armour, otherwise the king would be disappointed.”

“Does the knight spend all night shining his armour?”

“No. He has an apprentice called a squire who cleans the armour and attends to anything else the knight needs.”

“And then he becomes a knight?”

“In good time. The apprentice is usually a boy of about 11 or 12 years old. First, he learns what it means to be a knight, then he has to do years of training until he comes of age.” I saw the question coming, and got in first, “When he is about 21 years old.”

She looked at me, and that meant I had to continue the story.

“The princess was very lucky and lived a very different life than her subjects, except she wished she had their freedom to play, and do ordinary things like cooking or collecting food from the markets. Because she was a princess, she had to stay in the castle and spend most of her time learning how to be a princess, and one day a queen, because when it was time, she would marry a prince who would become a king.”

“Doesn’t sound too lucky to me, being stuck at home. I like the idea of getting somebody to do everything for me though. She does have maids, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. And you’re right, she has everything done for her, including getting dressed. A maid to clean, a maid to dress her, a maid to bring her snacks. And it was these maids she envied.”

Maybe I should not make the story too interesting, or she’ll never go to sleep.

“Well, one day, she decided to change places with one of her maids. They were almost identical and when they exchanged clothes, the other maids could not tell they had changed places. At the end of the day, when the maids went home, the princess headed to the house where the maid she had taken the place of lived.

It was very different from the castle, and the room she usually had. The mother was at home, cooking the food for the evening meal, and it was nothing like what she usually had. A sort of soup with scraps of meat in it. There was a loaf of bread on the table. The father came home after working all day in the fields, very tired. They ate and then went to bed. Her bed was straw and a piece of cloth that hardly covered her. At least, by the fire, it was warm. It didn’t do anything for the pangs of hunger because there had barely been enough for all of them.

The next morning, she returned to the castle and changed places back again. When the maid she changed places with asked about her experience of what it was like in their life, the princess said she was surprised. She had never been told about how the people who served the king lived, and she had assumed that they were well looked after. Now she had experienced what it was like to be a subject, she was going to investigate it further.

After all, she told the maid, I must have all the facts if I’m going to approach the king.

And she thought to herself, a lot more courage than she had.

But, instead of lessons today, she was going to demand to be taken on a tour outside the castle and to see the people.

“This sounds like it’s not going to have a happy ending.”

No, I thought. Maybe I’ll get the dragon that her brother failed to slay to eat her.

“It will. Patience. But that’s enough for tonight. If you want to know what happens, you’ll have to go to sleep and then, tomorrow night, the story continues.”

I tucked her in, turned down the night light so it was only a glow, just enough to see where I was going, and left.

If I was lucky, she would go to sleep. The only problem was, I had to come up with more of the story.

Outside the door, her mother, Christine, was smiling. “Since when did you become an expert on Princesses?”

“When I married one.”

—-

PI Walthenson’s second case – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’.

Known only to a few, there is a legend that a ship named the ‘Flying Dutchman’ left Nazi Germany in the last weeks of the war and set sail for America, escorted by U-boats, under a different name. Aboard was a trove of treasure and gold worth a ‘king’s ransom’.

It was said that it had been sent to a group of American Nazis to create the Fourth Reich at an appropriate time. Over the years since many expeditions off the coast had searched, but found no trace of the vessel or the treasure.

In other words, it was just a legend created to boost tourism.

…

Fast forward to 2024. Our intrepid private detective, Harry Walthenson, overhears a conversation at Grand Central Station. It was the oddness of the message that caught his attention. An investigation turned up nothing out of the ordinary, and he thinks no more about it.

Then Harry is kidnapped, interrogated, and asked questions over and over about a date and a place, why he went there, and when he could not give satisfactory answers, he was beaten half to death and left for dead on a rubbish heap. He was lucky that it was a living space for homeless men; otherwise, he would have died.

In the aftermath, he once again gives it no more thought.

…

After resolving his first case successfully, there’s no rest. Harry’s angry mother comes to his office and demands that he find out where his father has gone. She believes he has run off with a mistress, not for the first time.

Perhaps it was not the wisest decision she has made, because Harry promises to investigate, and adds that she might not like what he finds.

He soon discovered he does not like what he finds, that his father’s friends, a cabal formed at University, have two who are his mother’s current lovers, and another, a criminal blackmailing his father.

Felicity, now his partner, working on a different case, and trying to get answers, uncovers a crime family involved in guarding a disused warehouse on the docks, where she believes Harry had been taken for interrogation, and subsequently dumped nearby to die.

Why are they up to? What is so important that the empty warehouse needs guarding? Who is employing them?

Harry, following up on the death of the blackmailer, traces his death back to an enforcer employed by his grandfather. His mother’s grandfather was a pre-war industrialist who made his fortune in war munitions and shipbuilding.

He was also a member of the American Nazi party.

When Harry also discovers a logbook belonging to a so-called wartime Liberty ship the “Paul Revere” in brackets ‘Freiheitskämpfer’, hidden by his father, and written in a code that is not readily identifiable.

It is no longer a matter of a father who has run off with his mistress; it is a very frightened man in fear of his life, running from a group who will stop at nothing to get the logbook back. And when Harry discovers a family connection to the group, it becomes a race against time to decode the log and find his father before his grandfather does.

…

Coming soon: Harry Walthenson’s new adventure – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’