Month: September 2019

It’s nearly the end of another month

And where am I in the greater scheme of things?

I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress.

Well, that’s not exactly true.

With ‘The Things We Do For Love’, the final edit is about halfway through, and in a mad moment, I decided to flesh out Chapter Thirty, which was altogether too brief and didn’t say how certain events came about.  That’s been rectified now, and instead of one chapter, it’s now five.

OK, I know the reason for editing is to reduce the size of the book and weed out unnecessary words, but I assure you this is for plot continuity more than anything else.

I’m still not happy with Chapter Twenty Nine, but I’ve revised it about seven times now, and I think one or two more might do it.  I should learn not to keep tinkering and leave it to the editor to sort out.

Being Inspired, Maybe has finally come back from the editor and there’s a pile of pages sitting in my in-tray … waiting.

As for my four episodic stories, the treasure hunt, the surveillance exercise gone wrong, the world war two story, and what started with a helicopter crash and became way too complicated, they all need new episodes.

The other two, an icy rescue, and motive means and opportunity are still in limbo.  After all, there are only so many stories you can write at once.

Perhaps a crossover is in order, like in the Flash, Supergirl and others universe.

If only there were enough hours in a day.

Sigh.

Now NANOWRIMO is almost upon us and I have to get my next story for it into the planning stage with an outline and summary of chapters and daily schedule that will accommodate 1667 or something like that words a day.

Double sigh.

And the cat, well, just don’t get me started!

Being Inspired – the book

Over the past year or so I have been selecting photographs I’ve taken on many travels, and put a story to them.

When I reached a milestone of 50 stories, I decided to make them into a book, and, in doing so, I have gone through each and revised them, making some longer and into short stories.

50 photographs, 50 stories.  I’ve called it, “Inspiration, Maybe”

It will be available soon.

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In a word: Hair

You comb it every day, or brush it, it can be tangled, fine, smooth and silky or shiny.

It can fall out, you can have none, it can be red, brown, black, blonde, white, and a million shades in between.

Yes, it’s hair.

It can be pesky stuff, especially from animals who tend to moult and leave it everywhere.  We have a cat and well know the foibles of hair loss.

You can get it cut, get it coloured, trimmed, permed by a hairdresser in a salon, where lots of subjects are discussed, and even movies have been made around salons.

I haven’t been within a hairsbreadth of either living or dying, but I’m sure someone has.  That hairsbreadth is not very wide, and I’d rather have bullets, arrows or fists missing by that margin.

You can be in another’s hair, that is, being a pest.

There’s the hair of the dog, supposedly a hangover cure.

And, going to scary places will make your hair stand on end.

 

This is not to be confused with the word heir which means something completely different, namely it described the legatee or inheritor of the family fortune.

Or not.  Ages ago, only sons were seen as heirs, and that was even more prevalent among royal families.  It also applied to heirs when it came to titles, and the family wealth and property, which went to the eldest son.

It makes a good plotline for many a murder mystery.

Also, let’s be clear, there is also an heiress and an heirloom.

 

Then there is another, hare, which is a cousin of the rabbit and considered a pest.

I’m not quite sure how someone came up with the descriptor harebrained, which has nothing to do with the hare.

It could mean to run quickly and usually in a careless manner.

A little nostalgia

Today; like most of the times we have the grandchildren over during the school holidays, we went to the movies.

Bear in mind that they are all girls, the eldest is now 16 and I’m still wondering how she got to be so old so fast.  The other two are 13 and 9 going on 10.  The eldest belongs to one son, and the other two, the other son.

The two eldest get along really well, but tent to exclude the youngest, so it can get a little interesting when travelling in the car for any distance.

But, I guess they are no different from any other family when travelling, and sometimes you have to call ‘time’, when things get a little heated.

Today was one of the good days.

So…

We went to see Dore the Explorer movie.

You will no doubt ask why I went to see this, but here’s the thing, I have spent many years when looking after all three, in watching every episode more than once of Dora on the television.

Yes, I know about Dora, the map, backpack, boots the monkey and swiper the fox.  OMG!

The point is, we’re sitting down and it starts, and we’re all excited.  I know that’s absolutely crazy but when we first learned there was a movie, we were going, come hell or high water.

The plot…

Who cares about the plot.  It’s an adventure, you suspend all belief in reality, and just go with the flow.

And the use of real like characters made it all that more watchable, and that monkey, it’s amazing what they can do with special effects.  I had to admit I almost felt sorry for swiper, and the bad guys.

It’s a gentle reminder that good guys and girls don’t always come last.

And…

It was made in Australia, so I was happily looking for places that I’ve been to, but most of it was in the jungle, and the only recognisable spot was the canefields just south of where we live.  Good enough!

It was a light-hearted great way to spend a couple of hours, and, at the same time, relive a few fond memories.

 

I’ve always wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt – Part 27

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

I was taken to the hospital, despite the fact the paramedics deemed that I might not be as badly concussed as they first thought.  At the very least, I got a ride in the ambulance and painkilling pills that were very effective.

They kept me in the emergency department in between being taken for X-Rays, and I think something they called a CT Scan.  Whatever it was, it didn’t help my claustrophobia.  When that was completed, my mother was waiting in the cubicle.  Benderby, looking concerned, stood behind her.

After the attendant left, he said, “I’ll be going now.  Take all the time you need to recover Sam; I’ll make sure you don’t lose any wages over this.  And you can be assured that it will not happen again, and we will get the people who did this.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’m just glad nothing worse happened to you.”

He said something to my mother in hushed tones and then left.  My mother had got over her initial reaction, and a more curious look had replaced the one of fear.

“Tell me you didn’t try to apprehend those thieves yourself, Sam.”

“No, I didn’t.  I didn’t know there was anyone in the building until I was hit from behind.  I’m not sure what they thought they were going to find there that was of any value, it’s just parts for some of the products built there.”

“People will steal anything for money these days.  You should know that.  Times are not as good for some.  Perhaps it’s not a good idea for you to work there is this is going to happen again.”

“You heard Mr Benderby.  He’ll make sure security is improved, and I suspect I was in the wrong place at the wrong time because I don’t normally go into the warehouse itself, that someone else’s purview.  So, stop worrying, and go home.  I’m fine.”

I wished she would go.  I wanted to check if Boggs had been brought in and see what had happened to him.  I also wanted to know if the perpetrator was Vince.  If it was, Nadia was first on my list for a visit when I got out of the hospital.

It seemed to mollify her concern.

“Mr Benderby said to tell you if you need a ride home, to call this number,” she gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it, “and a driver will come.  He’s been very nice about everything.  You will thank him.”

“I will.  Yes.  Now go home.  Get some rest.  And stop worrying about me.”


Ten minutes later, I got off the bed and stood.  Well, I tried to stand, but my head wasn’t quite ready to accept that it was in command of everything else.  It took only seconds for the room to start spinning, and I had to lie down again.

My reconnaissance was going to have to wait for an hour or so.

A nurse came and checked my blood pressure and pulse, both high but not off the chart, and she went off looking concerned.

A few minutes after that an orderly went by with another bed, empty but recently used, and I recognised him as another of the boys Boggs and I went to school with.  He was destined for bigger things, but it seems he, too, never got out of the neighbourhood.

He saw me looking at him, stopped, and his expression told me he’d recognised me.

“Sam?”

“Angelo?”

“The same.  I’ll be back after I’ve dropped off this bed.  Won’t be long.  I won’t ask how you are, you must be sick if you’re in that bed.”

True.  And it was natural to ask, ‘How are you?’ when you see someone after having not seen them a while, even if you are in a hospital.  A weird custom indeed, which occupied my thoughts till he returned.


Angelo had been the smartest kid in our class, and we had all assumed that he would become a doctor, or a lawyer, one of those jobs that made piles of money.  He was also the boy whom all the girls swooned over.

Being his friend had benefits.

Unfortunately, Boggs and I, not being the two brightest kids, didn’t register on his friend’s scale.  In his favour, he was not a bully like Monty was, but I guess that went with being one of the school’s star athletes, but he did simply ignore us.

Now, it seems the mighty had fallen.  It was a destiny that seemed to befall anyone who came from our neighbourhood.

The same could be said for Monty, who got a sports scholarship to further his sporting career, but he too stumbled at the second hurdle, being done for performance-enhancing drugs, and banished to the boondocks from whence he came.

Now, as far as I knew, he was working for the Colosimo’s.

Angelo seemed bright enough.  That impression was confirmed when he returned with two bottles of soda and handed one to me.

“Hopefully it won’t kill you,” he said, sitting down.

“Shouldn’t.  I’m here because someone hit me over the head.”

“Bar fight?”

Once, in the old days, that might be the case.  “If only I could take the bragging rights, but no.  I work over at Benderby’s warehouse, and someone broke it.  Seems I got in the way.”

“Benderby’s eh?  Thought you said you’d die before ever working for them.”

True, we all said the same, in school, as naïve children who hadn’t yet learned how tough the world was going to be.

“Needs must.  My mother isn’t getting any younger, and it’s a struggle.  But I guess you already know that.  You were going to be a doctor, not a trolley pusher.”

His shook his head.  “As you say, reality trumps dreams.  Education costs, my parents couldn’t raise the money, and, well, I think you know the rest.”

A minute’s silence for the death of whatever dreams we may have had passed.

“Have you seen Boggs.  He’s here somewhere.”

“I saw him in ER, didn’t look too good, but I think it was mostly superficial wounds.  Apparently, some unknown assailants beat him up.  You two still hang out together?”

“Off and on.”

You weren’t with him when this happened.”  He nodded towards the bandage on my head.

“No.”  but, I thought, it was most likely the same person who inflicted both injuries.  Had Boggs set us both up for some reason?  It had to do with the treasure, and now Vince was in on the act.

“Does Boggs still go on about that Pirate treasure he reckons is buried here somewhere?  I mean, his dad used to bang on about it, and there’s no doubt it got him killed.  You reckon someone went after Boggs over it?”

Angelo hadn’t forgotten that even in school, Boggs had said he was going to be a treasure hunter when he grew up, and he had a map that would be the basis of his first quest.  That same map he told me was his father’s.

That same map that had got both of us beaten up.

“Is he here, somewhere?” I asked.

“Next ward.  Last I saw he was out; they gave him a sedative so he could rest.”

Squawking sounds came out of Angelo’s communicator, and only he seemed to know what it meant. 

He stood.  “Got to go now.  Perhaps we can catch up later.”

 

© Charles Heath 2019

“The Devil You Don’t”, be careful what you wish for

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums.  Looking for new opportunities, prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.

Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.

If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favor for him in Rome.

At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.

That ‘favor’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follows.

Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

Purchase:

http://amzn.to/2o7ZtxZ

 

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Inevitability

There’s nothing more certain that a favourite web site you go to and use often, sooner or later starts charging a subscription ‘fee’.

Like a few weeks ago the NANOWRIMO site had been updated, and the changes look good.  At the moment this site is free, but you do get a lot of emails and requests to purchase products, which I think is a reasonable way to raise money for keeping the site free,

But, how long is this going to last before a ‘fee’ is introduced, and then a ‘fee’ to enter your book?

It’s the airline principle, once it was a flat charge for the ticket, now you pay for this tax, that tax, fuel tax, baggage tax, tax on the tax, and then if that’s not enough, a charge for the food and water.  Soon it will be a charge for toilets, and then the air you breathe.

It’s inevitable, and once these charges start they don’t stop and only get higher with each passing year.

A lot of the sites I use are free.  Some have since started to charge.

I’m not a rich author, so sadly I have to discontinue using these sites.

Perhaps the problem is that the owner of the site has come up with a good idea, thousands of people sign up, and suddenly a small web site becomes a big one, and hosting costs suddenly go through the roof.

Like airlines, it’s the user that pays.

Often I see or get an email from, various people with what looks to be a useful site.  Some start out by giving you a month free to have a look and use the facilities.  In some cases they are quite good, in other, well, there’s a dozen others like it that are still free.

But, after a month, you have to pay.  What gets me with some of them, they are asking somewhere between 50 and 100 US dollars a month, you heard that right, a month, which you can basically double that for me after the exchange rate and a dozen bank fees.

Sometimes there are different levels, but basically, if you look at the fine print, the lowest level set, which gives you very little, is set low.  Say it’s 10 dollars a month.  It’s no different to the free version except they probably don’t have annoying ads and 24/7 help (via an email, no guarantee they look at it more than once a week, if at all).  Money for jam for the site owner, as the saying goes.

Why can’t there be a more reasonable option?

But I get it.  Everyone wants to get rich quick, it’s an objective that’s built into all of us, but it seems I missed the inoculation given the day after you’re born.

I also get it that these people worked hard on coming up with the web sites and facilities, and they deserve a reward for that hard work, but to me it would make more sense if they sold the service for 10 dollars or even 20 dollars a month if the systems were available and they worked.  And flowing from that wouldn’t 20,000 sales at 20 dollars, be better than 2000 at a 100 dollars?

The same seems to go for the so-called decent web site hosts, like WordPress, Wix and GoDaddy.  The free option is good but just for show and tell, but I’m sure they deliberately nobble it so it’s slow and kludgy just the sort of attributes that turn potential visitors off.

I thought if I paid a monthly charge for Wix, and reading the inclusions for what my site could do over the free one was very persuasive, so I signed up.  The site was no better than it was before and half the options that were on the list weren’t available, and still aren’t.  But I suspect if I paid them 100 plus dollars a month or more for their premium package I’d get it.

But, to pay for it I would have to be selling a million books a month, and I doubt, no matter how good my web site is, it wouldn’t attract that kind of business.

Not one of the basic packages, read affordable for me, has the ability to allow downloads after sales.  You can’t even have a sales page where you can actually sell books to people like you were a bookshop.  That’s in all of the premium packages, so they say, and that costs far too much.

GoDaddy were by far the worst, telling me if I signed up to the 60 dollars a month package I could have sales and downloads.  I tried to add it to the web page, which I might add was as difficult to create as all hell, and when it didn’t work, rang up to ask why I couldn’t have downloading after sales and was met with silence.

No, that’s not available at the moment, I was told, and not likely in the future.  What am I paying all this money for?  I don’t have a GoDaddy site any more.  I had a Wix site that I paid for, and I don’t have that any more.  They don’t offer anything useful, and they too, make it virtually impossible to create a useful site, so it sits out there in the ether with disappointment written all over it.

Perhaps others have had better luck, or things have changed in the last few years but I won’t be going back.

Maybe one day someone might understand the needs of the majority who can afford to pay, but just not as much as we are expected to, for very little in return.

What’s that saying, hope springs eternal.

PS Sorry about the rant!

I like to think I know where I’m going, but…

I’ve been on roller coasters, and they actually scare the hell out of me.  It might have something to do with watching the news and hearing about a breakdown.  High up and usually hanging on for dear life upside down.

My fear is it’s going to come off the rails, or that I’ll lose my grip!

A bit like my life really.

I’m in an abyss and free falling.  The first thousand yards is exhilarating.  I’m not sure if everyone has done skydiving, but it’s like that time before you pull the ripcord.

Absolute adrenaline rush.

Followed by a single thought.  Will the parachute open?  I’ve seen too many TV shows where ripcords don’t work, and strangely I have actually seen a skydiver whose parachute didn’t open, and it’s one of those moments when your heart is literally in your mouth.

Ok, I get it, if you don’t like the heat in the kitchen …

But, it’s hard to get that thought, that the metaphorical parachute won’t open, and I’m at a point where I’m starting to think about the landing.

You dash headlong into a job, thinking yep, you’ve got it covered, but, what if you haven’t.  What if there are variables you never thought of, what if the people around you, so happy to cheer you on at the start, are now starting to change their tune.

It’s like jumping into an abyss; starting a new job, or the first day after a promotion, your choice of vocation, the sort of lifestyle you want to have, whether you are following a dream that could quite easily become a nightmare, it seems there’s very little difference conceptually.

I think about writing, and it’s an individual thing.

Are we writing for ourselves first, or are we writing simply to make money?  If it’s the latter, it ain’t going to work, at least not until you’re established.  If ever.

But, here’s the thing.  It’s where I feel the most comfortable.

Now, I’d better get back to work.

 

 

Past conversations with my cat – 15

There are good days and bad days

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This is Chester, a cat looking for trouble

 

Bad days, today, trying to make the bed and the cat decides to get under the sheet and chase imaginary mice.

Peel the sheet back, toss the cat off the bed, go to remake it, and, you guessed it.

OK, we’ll come back to that.

Good days, sometimes occurring, but not often, he’s off the bed and on the prowl, though what he’s looking for is a mystery.

Perhaps there’s a gecko somewhere.

Good news, he’s out of my hair and not sitting on the keyboard trying to make a statement.

Working on the new chapter, I hear the patter of cat paws on the steps down into my office.

I turn to give him the ‘go away’ icy stare.

He returns it, in equal measure, tentatively puts his paw on the ground, ready to run if need be.

I shrug.

He goes over to the rug and flops down.

Under the fan.

Yep, they are lazy days of spring for some of us.

Are we doomed to remember the past?

I find that as I get older, there are fragments of my life coming back, and I’m beginning to dread the fact that I will relive past events over and over, especially those that I don’t want to remember.

When we’re younger, it seems difficult to get past certain events that occurred in your life, but with the passing of time, it’s possible to send them to a corner of your mind, not completely gone, but far enough away that you can get on with your life.

These are emotional, and sometimes physical events that happened to you.

And it’s possible that in living those events, it has made me a much better person, because I never treated my children or anyone else for that matter, the way I was treated.  I won’t say life was brutal, all of the time, but there was a period where I and my both my elder brother and mother constantly lived in fear.

It stopped eventually, but those memories haunted me for many years.

Then, when a new set of circumstances enters your life, it tends to force these out, in a sense I wanted to think there’s only so much hard disk space in my head, and I would have to erase all those bad memories so there was room for the new.

Apparently, it doesn’t work like that.

Now that I’ve gotten older, and retired, I’ve found that those old memories are resurfacing, and to be honest, it’s annoying.  I put it down to the fact, if you are no longer working full time, you are no longer actively using your brain as much, so there’s some sort of compensation going on, and the brain fills in the gaps with past memories.

In my case, it’s all the wrong ones.

I don’t want to remember my years in secondary school, my life with an abusive father, the fact that I used to hide under the bed to escape a beating, and those nightmarish screams of my bother and our mother trying to get my father to stop.  Usually, he would turn his anger on her.

Yes, and after an indeterminate number of years it stopped, but in my mind, it went on for so long those moments have been seared into my brain, and it’s no wonder they come back.  Why couldn’t the later days of holidays at Lakes Entrance, and Wilson’s Promontory, or the school holidays when we used to get a pile of box sides to build a cubby house come back?

Is this one of the problems of old age?

I know my father, who served in the second world war came back scarred, mentally and physically.  Given the brutality of war and the fear most of the men must have held in in the face of the enemy, it would be hard not to have some problems when you come back and try to fit back into normal society.  I suspect there was no such thing as PTSD back then, and no counselling, so perhaps the reason why he turned on us.

He only spoke of it very rarely, but those glimpses were enough.

He too is very old now, and I suspect he lives with these memories, ones I’m sure he’d rather not.  I’m also fairly certain that not all of my father’s issues came from the war, but he had issues with his father, and it perpetuated through him.

The thing is, still in this day and age we do not have the capacity to understand why this happens and the means we should use to try and send those memories back to the dark recesses.  We are willing to admit that there is such a thing as mental illness, and a lot of people have it, but only a small percentage of people will admit to it.

Why?  The stigma of admitting there is something wrong prevents us from doing so.  And admitting what caused it, well, people then start to avoid you because they think that you might be like that or turn out like that.

I am not like my father.  I saw what happened, I was on the receiving end, and I knew it was wrong.  It could quite easily go the other way, accept that what happened to me was the norm, and perpetuate the problem.

I did not.  I wanted everyone to have the sort of life I did not, and over the last forty-five years, and for as long as I live, they have been able to, and will.

And probably the best thing to come out of it, my children’s children had lived the same fear-free life.

I suppose seeing a psychiatrist might help, but it means dredging it all up so that you can talk about it, and then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

Is there an answer to the problem?

If I find one I’ll let you know.