50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And the story:
It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.
The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.
He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.
The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent. We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.
There was nowhere for him to go.
The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on. Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.
Where was he going?
“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter. He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.
“What?”
“I think he’s made us.”
“How?”
“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing. Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain. He’s just sped up.”
“How far away?”
“A half-mile. We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”
It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”
“Step on it. Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do. The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.
Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.
Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster. We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.
Or so we thought.
Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.
“What the hell…” Aland muttered.
I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility. The car was empty, and no indication where he went.
Certainly not up the road. It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit. Up the mountainside from here, or down.
I looked up. Nothing.
Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”
Then where did he go?
Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.
“Sorry,” he said quite calmly. “Had to go if you know what I mean.”
I’d lost him.
It was as simple as that.
I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.
I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.
It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.
Yes, I actually heard that answer given in a television interview, and thought, at the time, it was a quaint expression.
But in reality, this was a person for whom English was a second language, and that was, quite literally, their translation from their language to English.
Suffice to say, that person was not happy when lost the event she was participating in.
But that particular memory was triggered by another event.
Someone asked me how happy I was.
Happy is another of those words like good, thrown around like a rag doll, used without consequence, or regard for its true meaning.
“After everything that’s happened, you should be the happiest man alive!”
I’m happy.
I should be, to them.
A real friend might also say, “Are you sure, you don’t look happy.”
I hesitate but say, “Sure. I woke up with a headache,” or some other lame reason.
But, in reality, I’m not ‘happy’. Convention says that we should be happy if everything is going well. In my case, it is, to a certain extent, but it is what’s happening within that’s the problem. We say it because people expect it.
I find there is no use complaining because no one will listen, and definitely, no one likes serial complainers.
True.
But somewhere in all those complaints will be the truth, the one item that is bugging us.
It is a case of whether we are prepared to listen. Really listen.
This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
See below for an excerpt from the book…
Coming soon!
An excerpt from the book:
When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.
Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.
It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.
Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.
But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.
His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.
At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.
For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.
Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.
Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.
Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.
It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.
It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.
Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.
Except, of course, when it came to Harry.
He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.
So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.
There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.
So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.
There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.
She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.
Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.
Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.
Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.
Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.
Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.
It’s a slow march to the end of the stay for both of them. By unspoken agreement, they partake in picnics, walks, and talk about anything other than parting.
And in the end, she alleviates his concerns for her by telling him about a fictitious job that might be available, if only to keep the truth from him. It’s not fair, but it is better than the alternative. She also tells him he can write to her.
And at the end, she realizes that on one hand, happiness was an option if she let it happen, and on the other, she had stronger feelings towards him than she should, and should not have let it happen. It had, and it would have to be dealt with.
His concern that Mrs Mac might be worried about them is not a concern, she tells him that Mrs Mac had been subtly drawing them together with candle-lit meals, subdued lighting and gentle hints.
The fact he tells her he loves her almost breaks her heart.
They remained together this time in his room that last night, and she had to use every reserve to stop them from making a mistake.
They have to go back to their lives, and maybe one day they could be together again.
…
Henry takes the train back, an early call to return to the ship. At least he will not have time, at home or elsewhere to reflect on what just happened.
…
When Michelle returns home, we learn exactly who she is and why she left him. But, after everything, was there a glimmer of a plan that might be her salvation.
“Love is simply a tenuous attachment looking for a reason to break.”
As a twice-widowed, twice-divorced cynic of marriage, I could have expected no less from my mother.
I’d just explained the latest reason for Marigold’s non-appearance at lunch, without having to tell her the truth, that Marigold hated my mother.
At times, so did I. This was one of them.
I also hated the fact that we had become rich from my mother’s plotting and scheming, what she called strategic marriages and fortuitous deaths.
It left me a target, or so my mother said, and her opinion of Marigold was so low she had said from the outset that she had married me for my money. Hardly, because of a watertight prenuptial she had to sign, one that only a woman who loved the man, not the money would sign.
For that reason, I believed I was the luckiest person alive.
“Let’s face it, you don’t like her.”
“She’s a schemer Rodney, mark my words. She’s up to something, I can feel it.”
I shook my head. “Not accepting your lunch invitation doesn’t mean she’s up to anything. She had a prior engagement, and you always ask at the last minute.”
“My plans are nebulous. I could be anywhere, anytime. Right now, I’m here.”
I shrugged. It was not an argument I was going to win.
I went back to my office after lunch, dejected.
Perhaps there might be something in what she said because Marigold had become a little distant over the past few weeks and oddly secretive about her movements. I thought she was planning a surprise party or weekend away.
Candice, the PA who’d been with me ever since I’d made junior management ranks, followed me into the office.
“I can tell you lunch went swimmingly.” Sarcasm wasn’t her strongest asset, and it dripped off every word.
She hated my mother, too, particularly in the way it affected me.
“She should have been living it up in the south of France with the rest of the meddlers.”
I could just see Marigold in my peripheral vision, and when I looked up, I could see her almost stomping her way towards my office.
Others were familiar with her visits and used to her moods. I wondered what had happened.
Candice left as she came in. She stopped in front of my desk and literally threw her cell phone at me. I caught it just before it caused an injury.
“What the hell is that?” I could see now she was extremely agitated.
“What?”
“On the phone, it was attached to an anonymous message sent to me.”
I swiped the screen, once again lamenting her lack of implementing security on her phone, and a still from a video was sitting on the screen. I pressed the play icon and watched. Three minutes of what appeared to be me with another woman, in bed, in a hotel room. It certainly looked like me. It had a date and time stamp, 9:53, three days ago, when I was in Salt Lake City.
“It’s not me, Marigold.”
“Sure as hell looks like you, Rodney. You care to explain where you were and who you were with, if not with that woman?” It was accompanied by a belligerent look, daring me to have a cast iron alibi.
The thing is, I did. But it was not one I could explain to her. But what was more concerning was the fact there was a video and quite obviously a fake, and that it had found its way to her.
“I’ll go one better, Marigold. I’ll give the phone to the IT tech department, and they’ll tell me who sent the anonymous message and verify whether or not it’s me. You do want me to prove it’s not me, don’t you?”
Judging by the expression on her face, she did not, and it took a few seconds to realize why. My mother’s iron clad prenuptial had only one failing, and it was null and void if I was caught cheating. My mother had told me enough times.
“Of course.” Less bluster now. “I’ll leave it with you.”
Candice watched her leave before coming back into my office.
“What did you do?”
“More like what didn’t I do but apparently did.” She sat down, and I handed her the phone. “Have a look at the video. It’s quite interesting.”
She did, and I watched her fascination turn from surprise to wide-eyed amazement. Then she gave me a look that may have been misplaced in awe. “If that’s you, then you’re leading a secret life.”
“Did you see the date and time stamp?”
“Yes. It’s definitely not you. But it begs the question, do you have a brother or twin you know nothing about.”
“Would you like to ask my mother that question?” Her change of expression told me she didn’t. “That leaves the tech guys down in IT.”
“Oh, lucky you mentioned IT. I got a report this morning about the unauthorised use of the mainframe computer.”
“We know what those guys get up to, using it to run simulations, within acceptable limits. They know that if they break the rules, it’s their loss.”
“This is different. It was only reported because, apparently, while you were practising your sexual skills, you were also down in the computer room. Your pass card was used, albeit an older one that you reported as lost about a month ago. It was supposed to have been deactivated, and it wasn’t.”
“Then I guess I’d better go down to security and find out what it all means.”
Going down in the elevator, I had a few moments to ponder on how quickly my mind had set on the idea Marigold was hatching a scheme that would bypass the prenuptial agreement. Perhaps the continual verbal battering that I could not trust her.
Of course, it didn’t help that she turned up with a so-called anonymous video file of me cheating, just the evidence she needed. Perhaps I would more readily accepted her innocence had she not subtly changed in the last month or so. I put it down to the conversation about children, the fact my mother wanted to become a grandmother, and Marigold’s reluctance to be a mother, a sentiment fuelled by a very bad experience with her own mother. My mother wasn’t exactly a role model either.
And if it was a scheme, why would she readily hand over her phone with the evidence? Perhaps I needed to have an open mind. That meant definitely not telling my mother, though she seemed to have spies everywhere. If I had been even thinking of cheating, she would have sent Boris, her fixer, to stop it before it started.
IT was one of three departments under my jurisdiction, and the current manager was one of my recruits. I’d read about Gabrielle some months before when she was arrested for hacking several government computer systems to prove their vulnerability to foreign hackers and instead of being applauded had been vilified, and sent to computer Coventry. No one would hire her. I tracked her down, spent a few days talking about computers, hackers, and stupid people, and then hired her.
A computer genius of this calibre was impossible to find, and if I did manage to find one, it would cost far more than we could pay them.
“Rod, what brings you to the dungeon.” Gabrielle was always pleased to see me. I had wondered a few times if something else might have developed between us, but I was a married man and it never crossed my mind. There was also a chance her open and friendly manner could be misinterpreted.
“It seems I’m in trouble.” I held up the phone. ” This has images of me, only I know it’s not me because I was somewhere else.” I passed it to her. “I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a deep fake video.”
She looked at the video, with similar facial expressions to Candice. “It can’t be you.” She’d also seen the time and date stamp. “We both know where you were. Let me check it out, and I’ll get back to you.”
When I arrived back in my office, Eric Dorning, the head of security, was waiting for me. Candice simply nodded her head in his direction and shrugged, telling me Eric had not told her why he was there.
“Close the door, Rod. It’s a delicate matter.”
And Seriously, he wanted the door shut? I closed it and sat behind the desk. “What can I do for you?”
“A key card that was believed missing was apparently used to gain access to the computer department. Two issues, one that was not deactivated, and the other, that it was yours, and had an all-access clearance attached to it. That it was lost is, at the very least,8 a suspension, while aspects of how and where it was lost are undertaken. At worst, it could cause dismissal depending on the damage caused to the company. As you are…”
I put my hand up to stop him right there. The fact that my mother was a substantial shareholder and was in some small part responsible for my position in the company, I never asked for special treatment. “I know what you are going to say, and don’t. I am no different from any other employee, and if the course of action on your part is to suspend me while you investigate, then do so.”
“We don’t have to do that.”
“You do. This can’t be kept under wraps, and everyone needs to know that no one in this company should expect or be given special treatment. A short truthful statement about why I’m missing will suffice.”
“Your mother will not approve.”
“It’s not her call. Am I being suspended?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should escort me to the front door and remove my key card and phone.” I put the card and the phone and company car keys on the desk, and stood. I could see Candice observing, and she knew what it meant. She made a face, then headed for the elevator. I deduced that it meant she wanted to see me at the cafe up the street.
It was clear Eric did not want to suspend me because when I was unavailable, he had to report to my immediate superior, Victor Wellman, a man who was bitterly opposed to my appointment. With this crisis, he would have all the ammunition he needed to get rid of me. Eric had said as much on the way down. He said he would call when the investigation was complete.
Candice had two cups of coffee waiting and a puzzled expression. “What did you do wrong?”
“Losing a card key without adequately securing it at all times is a cardinal sin, and in certain circumstances, a stackable offence. I’m guilty as charged.”
“What about the fact that after reporting it missing, they didn’t deactivate it? If there’s blame, Eric is the one who should take responsibility for the current incident.”
“I hardly think any of that matters. Wellman will use this to have me removed. And he’s well within his right to do so.”
“You think he’s brave enough to take on your mother?”
“He’s the only one who is, but it may have unintended consequences. But I’m not going to fight it. I’ve had enough of politics and everything else. I asked for no special treatment.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Take a few days off, see what’s bugging Marigold. I have been missing lately, so perhaps we can catch up.” If she was home. To be honest, I had no idea what she did with herself lately.
I had expected to come home to an empty house.
After leaving Candice to contemplate her future, I took the subway, something I hadn’t done in a long time. Then, it was a reasonable walk to our apartment. I spoke the James, the only building concierge I knew, who was on a rare day shift. It was odd to see the foyer in daylight on a weekday.
Then I went up to the apartment and let myself in. I had expected to be alone, but after I shut the door, I heard subdued voices, followed by laughter. Marigold. And she was not alone.
I followed the sounds up the corridor to the end, our bedroom. I put my head in the door and saw her naked, sitting on a man I didn’t recognise. It was not hard to see what they were doing.
“Revenge sex, Marigold. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
She squealed in surprise, or was it shock?
“When you’re done, pack your bags and leave. You better not be here when I come back. Goodbye, Marigold.”
I left, knowing she would not be able to catch me or follow me. Whether she left or not didn’t matter. I was never going back to that apartment again.
…
It took a week to unravel the conspiracy and see the reality.
The man with Marigold was one of Mellman’s recruits in a plan to get rid of me. He had also recruited Marigold, who had tired of me because I was never home, and it was she who had taken the card key.
Her ‘boyfriend’ was a graphics expert and had been the one to transplant my body and that of a random woman over a recording of him having sex with Marigold. It took Gabrielle a week to work out how he did it and was more appreciative of his talent than she should be.
He had used the card key to get in and was the one responsible for the unauthorised use of the mainframe. He has also erased all the CCTV footage for the time of the transgression.
Wellman was silly enough to send the video to Marigold, thinking it would be untraceable and anonymous. It may have seemed so to a novice like him, but it was easily unmasked by an expert like Gabrielle.
I never did understand why Mellman wanted to destroy my life because it couldn’t just be because my mother had used her influence to get me that job. Not for a few months, anyway, when Eric had told Gabrielle that he had discovered that there had been another candidate for that role, a relative of Mellman’s. Still, to me, it seemed over the top.
I could understand Marigold. Perhaps if she had told me she didn’t want to be married to me anymore, I would have been disappointed, but I would have been sure she got a decent settlement, rather than what she ended up with.
But, in the end, I did get to do something I’d always wanted to do, and that was to try my hand at being a private detective. Gabrielle had brought it up in one of our late-night conversations, the fact we were well suited to handling cases where people were wronged by deep fake videos and anonymously released revenge tapes.
We were both surprised but the number of people who called, texted, or emailed in the week after I posted an advertisement.
You know, the sort of day where you have the best of intentions, you get up ready to start attacking the agenda you’ve told yourself you’re finally going to sit down and get on with.
The same set of words you’ve been using to fire up the enthusiasm you really don’t feel much of the time, but this time, have worked yourself into a high degree of positivity just before going to bed.
Everything is set up. All you have to do is bound out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go.
That was the first mistake. You went to be very late, around 2 am, and when you woke up, it feels like death warmed up. No bright eyes, and definitely no bushy tail.
But, there’s work to be done.
Before that, there’s other stuff, and as each succeeding chore is down, the less enthusiasm feels. I have to clean up the dining room, which, at the moment, is the go-to for all the tools, paint, tile glue, tiles, and everything that’s being used in the latest round of renovations.
Frankly, the room is a mess. I can move a lot of the tools out to the shed now that I’ve finished with them, and the rest, a few pain brushes and the tiling equipment, we be used over the next week.
An hour and a half later, the room is now clean.
I go out to the writing room and look at the list. Good thing I’d didn’t put a time against anything, because if I have, I was now looking at being at least four hours behind.
A phone call made that timeline worse. People always call when you don’t need any calls to distract you. It’s one of the reasons why I have seriously considered getting the landline cut off. And if it wasn’t for the grandchildren, who know they can call on that line, with a number that’s easier to remember than a mobile, I would.
But that of course leaves me open to the half dozen scam calls a day, trying to sell cladding, and solar panels, defend myself from a car crash that I never had, fend off illicit charges from Telcos, and now Amazon. Not forgetting my friend from the NBN who rings once, sometimes twice a day telling me my internet is about to be cut off.
To be honest, I wish they would, but as much as I tell them to cut it off they never do, perhaps knowing that if they do, they can’t scam call me anymore.
By the time I get back to my office, it’s time for a cup of tea.
Or something stronger.
The morning has gone, and the afternoon is half over, and all I’ve done is look at the list.
And since blog posts are on the list, this is why I’m writing this whinge.
How is your day going? I hope it’s better than mine.
When has time gone? I mean, just yesterday it felt like the start of a new year, and all those projects I had lined up are still on paper, somewhere.
Has anyone else over 65 got the feeling time is speeding up rather than slowing down? It sounds weird doesn’t it, that as you slow down as old age approaches, time goes faster, and those things you wanted to get done seem further and further away. I’m 70 this year, and it feels like I only turned 65 a year ago!
When you’re young it always seems like you will have all the time in the world, and that seems to play out over the first forty or fifty years, putting this off, putting that off, while all the little details of life take more and more of your time.
And there’s that one huge thing that hangs over your head, the fact that you might never get to that time when you said you would have time for it. People are dying younger again, of stress, bad habits and overexercising.
I’ll never be guilty of the last once. It’ll probably be bad habits, something we are all guilty of.
That’s also a reason why I don’t have New Year’s resolution, and I try not to make plans for anything too far ahead.
It’s also the reason why we decided to travel and do all those things people say they’re going to do when they retire, only to discover they can’t for one reason or another, or they just simply died.
Stopping work after being so wrapped up in it, can kill you, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that you can quite literally die of boredom.
It’s why I write. Keeps the mind active, gives me something to do, and believe me when I’m writing I’m never bored, and is a perfect fit between bouts of being a grandfather, a taxi service, and doing everything else that needs a not-so-handy handyman.
Time flying is the same reason why my granddaughters have grown so much because it seems like it was only yesterday they were babies, and now the eldest is 16. When did she get so grown up?
Oh, well, back to childminding duties. It’s the school holidays and tomorrow we’re off the travel down ‘the coast’ what most ubiquitously call the Gold Coast, or otherwise known as Surfer’s Paradise. It’s glitzy, has a dark side, and always looks shiny until the sun goes down. We go there during the day. Tomorrow will be the first time in over a year.
If we can get the kids off their computers and smartphones.
Of course, it’s too good to be true, and Henry is going to have to steel himself when the holiday comes to an end.
It’s halfway through the holiday, and the conversation veers towards the elephant in the room; parting.
Then…
Michelle takes ill, the ravages of the past still causing her problems that she does not speak about, but requires a doctor’s ministrations, and discretion.
We learn she had been in rehab and left early. Grim determination is not enough to substitute for doing the time.
She recovers, but Henry knows something is wrong.
Once again out for a drive, Henry is overcoming that painful shyness, and awkwardness in her presence, and she is letting him via the door that is more than ajar.
After another pleasant dinner, he ‘escorts’ her back to her room, at the other end of the corridor, a metaphorical wall built between them, where she asks, innocently or otherwise, if he’d like to stay.
It’s that proverbial loaded question with a double-edged sword.
He does, and he doesn’t take it any further, afraid of what it might lead to, and disappointment.
But …
They sleep, fully clothed, on her bed. Another subliminal moment.
I have seen this television program once or twice, where a television personality digs into their past and sometimes they discover they had famous, or sometimes infamous, relatives.
I don’t think I would be so lucky, or unlucky as the case may be.
But, to be honest I haven’t really been interested in digging into the past.
On the other hand, my older brother has a keen interest in genealogy in general, borne from a desire to find out more about our family tree.
And he has gone back to the 1600s, for the relatives who came out from England, and no, they have no transported convicts, or at least he’s not saying.
Genealogy is a rather fascinating subject, and, I’ve discovered, is taught in university as a degree. My brother has one now.
What I didn’t realize is that I’ve been playing with it for years because in writing what might be called sagas you need to create your own set of mythical families, and then trace to forebears back in time.
I have one novel I’m writing that has required a family tree, and recently another for a story that required starting with a character who participated in the Eureka Stockade. We had to create parents, a migration from England to Australia, and then construct a family tree through to today so we could write a story from the perspective of a fourth-generation girl at school doing a school project.
If that sounds complicated, believe me, it is. But from my granddaughter who came up with the idea, she is very excited about it.
Much better than sitting in front of a computer playing games or a tv watching cartoons.
But once again I digress…
I have found a lot of genealogy stuff that my mother had been working on, and I’m taking it to my brother, and at the same time, l will get the latest installment on our family.
So far I’ve learned that I come from a combination of British relatives on both my mother and father’s side, the most recent my father’s mother who was born in England, and German from my mother’s side, her surname being Auhl.
No doubt, and with a great deal of irony, my relatives probably fought against each other in two world wars.
I’m sure more will be revealed on Wednesday.
But, the more I learn the more I feel inclined to create a fictionalized history with my family members as characters in the story. At the moment a biographical account of the family would be reasonably boring since as yet no one notorious had been discovered.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 