Month: January 2019

More from here

So, I have partaken in two distinctive American pastimes, though probably not for all.

The first is ice hockey.  It’s not for everyone but I’ve adopted the Toronto Maple Leafs as my team, and they were playing at ‘The Rock’, otherwise known as the Prudential Center.

It’s not as big as the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, or as noisy, and the 80’s theme, I thought, fell a bit flat, but the game was good edge of the seat stuff and went down to the wire.

The Maple Leafs won, so I didn’t leave disappointed, like the last time in Toronto.  I could not say the same for the many thousands of Devils fans.

Going to the game involved negotiating the underground and NJ Transit, which with a little help was painless, just two stations on the A train, and two stations on the NJ line, about 45 minutes each way.

Before the game, we dropped into a bar and burger place and the burgers and beer were spot on.  So far we have not had a bad burger experience.

That was yesterday.

Today we went to a diner.  The Brooklyn Diner to be exact, and it was everything I expected it would be, atmosphere wise, as it looked old, and had a picture of Ebbets Field where the Brooklyn Dodgers used to play.  That the waitresses were not in the dress of yesteryear was perhaps all that was missing.

I was looking for traditional American food and was not sure what was on the menu, but there were spaghetti and meatballs, chicken pot pie, and thanksgiving every day.

I chose the turkey, and it was delicious.  I had a local beer which was different, and I finally got a cup of coffee that was exactly what I wanted.  Who thought it would be from a Diner?

Now, all we have is one day left, and that’s going to be for Red Lobster in Times Square.

Oh, and we did go for a walk in the Park just to lose some calories.  It was cold, about minus three, but we were undeterred.

Tomorrow its going to be warmer.  How odd it is to be cold one day and warm the next, then cold again.

 

“The Things We Do For Love” – Coming soon

Like Sunday in New York, this is another attempt at writing a romance novel.  I’m one of those deluded fools who believe in happy endings.

I guess that was a ‘spoiler’!

This is the description I’m currently working with.

 

Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters.

For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself.  Tonbright, a small village by the sea, is one such a place, but he never expected to find another, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.

Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something had happened.  Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.

A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone.  To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.

But can love conquer all?

It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.

 

The cover, at the moment, looks like this:

lovecoverfinal1

 

I am the most disorganized person on the planet

It’s something that I have never been able to get a handle on, and I seem to stagger from one day to the next without getting anything done.

Over the years many people tried, some with limited success, others completely failing.

I guess I’m one of those freeform sorts of people and I guess it goes with the star sign, Gemini.

Yes, I’ve been to those time management courses with the books and diaries to seem to want you to time manage your life.  I considered it bit like micromanagement where your supervisor had access to the diary and put in the work, the estimated time and when it was expected to be finished.

I didn’t work well with deadlines.

But oddly enough most of the jobs I’ve had over the years have involved time management of one sort or another and I have survived.

Now, in semi-retirement, I really need something to organize my days so something gets done.  As a writer allocating 12 midnight to 2am for writing doesn’t seem to be a good idea.

Unfortunately it is the best time for me to write.

Anyone else out there with the same problem, and if so what was your answer to the time management problem?

Another day in, well, New York

OK, I have to start this off with a beef…

I can’t get a good cup of coffee.  I mean, for a country that is supposed to be renown for its coffee, so far the best I can say for it is, it tastes like bilge water.

So…

It seems that a standard cup of coffee with one shot is basically odd tasting milk.  A double shot, if they deign to give you one, tastes a little better.

A triple shot, well now we’re getting close to what a single shot tastes like where I come from in Australia.

I’m beginning to believe that what we call coffee in our country, would not be very acceptable here as it is too strong.

But…

The biggest problem I have is getting anyone who serves to understand what I want.  I ask for medium and I either get a small or a large.  I ask for a small, I get a large or a medium, and pointing directly at the cup I want gets no response whatsoever.

Is it because they cannot understand Australian?

I mean I speak English, but I’m resigned to the fact unless I make it myself, I’m going to give up.

And, just as a side note, Starbucks do not make coffee.  I’m still trying to work out what it was I got the last time I was there.

Now for the good stuff…

Public transport in this city is amazing.  I read a lot about the problems New Yorkers seem to have but for me, my experience couldn’t be better.

I had to go from 59th Street, Columbus Circle, to Penn Station Newark.  When we set out the only thing we knew was how to get to Columbus Circle.  There a very nice New Yorker helped us get underground tickets for the A-line.

At the other end, a Penn Station, a friendly policeman told us where we needed to go, and then a lady in the information center directed us to the platform.

The same happened on the way back.  I cannot speak more highly for the people in both New Jersey and New York in helping visitors.

All in all, an interesting day.

“One Last Look”, a thriller

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favorite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man?  Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required.  Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

onelastlookcoverfinal2

Experiences as inspiration

At what point does the journalist come out in a writer?

Quite often journalists become writers because of their vast experience in observing and writing about the news, sometimes in the category of ‘truth is stranger than fiction’.

I did journalism at University, and thought I would never get to use it.  I had to interview people, write articles, and act as an editor.  The hardest part was the headlines.

How much does that resemble the job of coming up with a title for your book?

Well, several opportunities arose over the last few months to dig out the journalist hat, put it on, and go to work.

Where?

Hospital.  I’ve had to go there a few times more in the last few months than I have in recent years.

And I’d forgotten just how hospitals are interesting places, especially the waiting room in Emergency.

After the second or third visit, I started to observe the people who were waiting, and ran through various scenarios as to the reason for their visit.  None may have been true, but it certainly was an exercise in creative writing, and would make an excellent article.

Similarly, once we got inside the inner sanctum, where the real work is done, there is any number of crises and operations going on, and plenty of material for when I might need to include a hospital scene in one of my stories.

Or I could write a volume in praise of the people who work there and what they have to endure.  Tending the sick, injured and badly injured is not a job for the faint hearted.

Research, if it could be called that, turns up in the unlikeliest of places.  Doctors who answer questions, not necessarily about the malady, nurses who tell you about what it’s like in Emergency on nights you really don’t want to be there, and other patients and their families, all of whom have a story to tell, or just wait patiently for a diagnoses and then treatment so they can go home.

We get to go this time about four in the morning.  Everyone is tired.  More people are waiting.  Outside it is cool and the first rays of light are coming over the horizon as dawn is about to break.

I ponder the question without an answer, a question one of the nurses asked a youngish doctor, tossed out in conversation, but was there a more intent to it; what he was doing on Saturday night.

He didn’t answer.  Another crisis, another patient.

I suspect he was on duty in Emergency.

Conversations with my cat – 1

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This is Chester.

Don’t be fooled by the benign expression, I’m getting the ‘your conversation better improve, and quickly’ look.

I guess it’s the talkative Tonkinese in him, tempered by the crabby Siamese part.

But …

We were talking about the state of the world, and he agrees it isn’t looking good, especially for travelers in Europe.  Of course, he is averse to either of us leaving him alone for any length of time, so he would say it was unsafe and we’d better stay at home.hat

I suppose that selfish part comes from the Burmese in him.

However …

I have scratched Germany, Austria, France and England off the list for the time being and consider it’s time to see a lot more of Italy.

We’ve been there several times, to Rome, in summer, to look at the Ancient ruins (Chester was rather impressed when I showed him a picture of the Collosseum), to Florence several times, just for the ambiance, and to Venice simply because we love it.

Then, we have also spent a few days in Tuscany, in an apartment very close to the town center of Greve in Chianti.

Chester, of course, was dismissive, but, he says, if we agree to take him with us …

 

 

“Sunday in New York”, it’s a bumpy road to love

“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.

When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.

From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.

There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.

Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.

Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?

Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?

Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?

As they say in the classics, read on!

Purchase:

http://tinyurl.com/Amazon-SundayInNewYork

Sunday In New York

It’s cold out there

But…

It is, but it isn’t.  Oddly enough after two weeks in temperatures ranging from -21 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, I think I’m finally used to it.

My early morning walk after leaving the hotel is both for exercise and exploring.

Looking for locations, observing people, watching and learning what it’s like to live, work, and hang out in a city like New York.

It’s so much more interesting than where I come from.  There it would be impossible to spin a story in such a small city.  You need to be able to hide in plain sight among millions of people over a very large area that encompasses Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and everything else in-between and beyond.

I was looking at going to a Walmart in Secaucus, about three and a half miles from my hotel in Manhattan.  Three and a half miles.  In my city that’s way beyond the limits of the city and in the outer suburbs.

Here I can spin a tale that could live within the confines of 35th street, 85th street, 2nd Avenue and 10th Avenue, and have so much material, I could probably write a trilogy.

Pity is, I won’t be here long enough to gather enough background.

Still, it’s like being in literary seventh heaven.

I’ve written one book based in New York, I’m sure another is currently writing itself in my head and will be on paper over the next year.

Then, maybe I’ll be back.

I’m back in the big apple

Only to find that no one calls New York that anymore.  Just goes to show you how far behind the times I am.

But…

Here I am, and loving it.

We’re staying in the middle of everything.  One way is Broadway, and down the road, Times Square.  Go the other way, and we’re in Fifth Avenue, looking in shops that I can’t possibly afford to buy anything.

Yet it feels good to think one day I might.

And to magnify the stress level through the roof, we hired a car from Avis whose office was in West 54th Street and then went ‘joy riding’ through the streets of New York on our way to the Lincoln Tunnel and further south to Philadelphia.

There’s something about being out in the minus 1 temperatures, dodging the rain, looking at the low mist, or clouds, hiding the high rise buildings.

It took us two days to find the Empire State Building.

We haven’t been to any museums yet, nor have I found a good bookshop, which is practically sacrilegious for me, but it’s now very high on the list of things to do.  There’s a Barnes and Noble in 5th Avenue, which is not far away.

But for the moment it’s dining at Ruby Tuesday where I had the best hamburger, simplicity in itself, and Cassidy’s Irish pub where I had some strange meat burger thing and vegetables which was delicious, and a slice of apple pie that would take three people to finish off.

And a bucket of beer.

Wow, are things done differently here.