Month: July 2023

Mistaken Identity – The Editor’s Draft – Day 1

I have been working on the story, the editor is asking for a second draft after making suggested changes – and I’m now working on it

…

It’s a story I’ve been thinking about – the notion that you could be mistaken for someone else, and put down a first, rather hazy draft.

And that someone else was someone who is on the run and wanted by the police.

Of course, finding that first sentence that is going to drag the reader down the rabbit hole of the story to come takes longer than it does to write the first chapter and didn’t survive the editor’s critical eye

But, after a few hours of deliberation, I had to agree with him, and now the game’s afoot.

So, the MC is a travel agent, one that prefers to go on his own tours so that he can truthfully tell his clients what places, hotels, and travel services are really like.

I’ve noticed that when travel writers do reviews, they seem to get different rooms and experiences than us poor travellers, no more noticeable than when we stayed in San Gimignano. The hotel sounded wonderful, and the description of the room overlooking the town square was fantastic. Pity then we were shoved into a small room out the back, overlooking pigeon coops, and a shower that continually broke down.

It’s probably this disappointment that provided some inspiration for the book.

But rather than being a travelogue, I’m adding some mystery, and suspense to make it more readable.

Today’s effort amounts to 1,700 words, for a total, so far, of 1,700.

More tomorrow.

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

…

With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction.  He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.

That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.

He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.

I kept my eyes down.  He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup.  I stepped to the other side and so did he.  It was one of those situations.  Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.

Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic.  I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone.  I shrugged and looked at my watch.  It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.

Wait, or walk?  I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station.  What the hell, I needed the exercise.

At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’.  I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light.  As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.

A yellow car stopped inches from me.

It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini.  I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.

Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car.  It was that sort of car.  I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him.  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on.  The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.

My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter.   Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.

At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure.  I was no longer in a hurry.

At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring.  I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road.  I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.

At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar.   It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.

I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did.  There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me.  It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.

Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me.  As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.

Now my imagination was playing tricks.

It could not be the same man.  He was going in a different direction.

In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter.  I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.

I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in.  I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.

Just in case.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

newechocover5rs

In a word: Wall

There’s nothing like ‘hitting the wall’.  It’s a rather quaint expression used when you have used up all your energy and there’s nothing left.  A lot of sportspeople are very familiar with this expression.

But it doesn’t have anything to do with hitting a real wall, you know the sort, made out of plaster, or bricks, or timber.  Some people hit the wall in this case too, and soon find out what it’s like to have a broken hand.

There’s wall street, you know the one, it has a bull in it, and it’s in New York, down that end of the city where the Twin Towers used to be.  It’s rumoured lots of ‘jiggery-pokery’ goes on there.

Try stonewalling, you know, give answers to questions that don’t answer the questions, or find something else to do and put off being questioned.  I’m not sure, however, that’s how Stonewall Jackson got his name.

We can climb the walls, metaphorically speaking, but it is something we don’t actually do when we’re bored.

And, I’m sure everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China.  Even those who travel in space have seen it, from a long, long way away.  I’ve tried walking along it, and up it, yes, parts of it go up the sides of mountains, and it’s challenging.  Maybe you should try it sometime.

Perhaps a few others, just to finish with, like

I got hit by a wall of water – yep, watch out for them tidal waves

There’s a wall between us, nope, not gonna talk to you

His stomach wall is failing, which means he’s in very bad shape, and

He couldn’t get through the wall of players, oh, well, maybe we’ll win the FA cup final next year!

Inspiration, maybe – Volume 1

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:

lookingdownfromcoronetpeak

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.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

Short Story Writing – Don’t try this at home! – Part 4

This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories.   Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine.  It works for me – it might not work for you.

…

You’ve got the place, now you want the who.

My main characters are quite often me.

Not the real me, because I’m boring.  No, those characters are what I would like to be, that imaginary superhuman that can do everything.

Until, of course, reality sets in, and the bullets start flying.  When that happens, we should be looking to run or at the very least get under cover, not walk into a hail of bullets, with a huge grin, staring down the enemy.

Hang on, that never happens except in superman comics.

What’s really needed here is a little vulnerability, a little humility and a lot of understanding, qualities at times I don’t have.

So, in order to create a more believable character, I start dragging traits from others I’ve met, or know, or really don’t want to know.  

In a writer’s environment, there are a plethora of people out there that you can draw on for inspiration.  I once spent and afternoon at a railway station just observing people.  Even now, I make observations, some of which are true, and others, wildly off course. 

I once tried to convince my other half that I could pick people’s traits, and we sat at a café outside a church in Venice.  I was lucky, I got more than 75% correct.

Other characters in my stories I have met along the way.

Like a piano player in a restaurant.  It was not so much the playing was bad, it was the way he managed to draw people into his orbit and keep them there.  The man has charisma, but sadly no talent for the instrument.

Like an aunt I met only twice in a lifetime, and who left a lasting impression.  Severe, angry looking, speaking a language I didn’t understand, even though it was English.  It was where I learned we came from England, and she was the closest thing I came to as an example of nineteenth-century prim and proper.  And, no, she didn’t have a sense of humour or time for silly little boys.

Like one of my bosses, a man of indeterminate age, but it had to be over 100, or so it seemed to my sixteen-year-old brain, who spoke and dressed impeccably, and yes, he did once say that I would be the death of him.

I can only hope I wasn’t.

Like a Captain of a ship I once met, a man who didn’t seem to have time for the minions, and a man who reeked authority and respect.  I’ve always wanted to be like him, but unfortunately, it was not in the genes.

Those are only a few, there are thousands of others over the years, a built-in library, if you will, of characters waiting to be taken off the shelf and used where necessary or appropriate.  We all have one of these banks.

You just have to know when to use them.

A life so ordinary – a little bit more

There’s very little that I remember of those years before I was five or six, because it was that time before I would have cognitive memories.

Most of whatever I knew was from others who delight in telling you how precocious you were, all the naughty things you did, but never the good stuff.

But, oddly enough there are some things I do remember those I suspect these were reinforced later on by being reminded of those events by my parents.

Like falling off the front gate and hurting myself. I think I face planted the ground and finished up in hospital.

Like sleeping in a cot that must have been at the end of my parents bed.

Like playing with the children who lived in the house behind us, the parents of whom were very good friend of our parents, and we visited them off and on long after we left the neighbourhood.

I remember they had a daughter my age, and she had a nickname ‘gigglo’ because of her infectious giggle. I last saw het when we we about 10 and often wondered how like had life turned out for her.

As it happens I ran into her 55 years later, and there was nothing we had in common to talk about, our lives being so different.

That time at Warren Road was to me a lost period, mostly spent at home with my mother, awaiting the birth of my younger brother, a period fraught with medical issues for my mother suffering first a miscarriage and then a difficult delivery.

It was the year before I had to start school, and it there was anything to remember, it was going on the bus to the shops.

Something else that came to mind, my father coming home with goodies from the petrol stations of the time, like cardboard cut out buildings.

And, heading off into the paddocks behind our house to pick daffodils. I was never quite sure why that memory remained.

We had a photo of the three of us taken when Raymond was a baby, and it was the only time any of us smiled when together.

That time was the end of an era for us. Something happened and we moved to Dandenong, the place called Bess Court.

My father stopped working at Lucas’s, a car part manufacturer, and started at General Motors, the company that built Holden cars, as a paint buyer. Yes, he knew every colour of every Holden car.

Cool eh?

Oh, and that was the beginning of a very dark few years.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 8

This is a story inspired by a visit to an old castle in Italy. It was, of course, written while travelling on a plane, though I’m not sure if it was from Calgary to Toronto, or New York to Vancouver.

But, there’s more to come. Those were long flights…

And sadly when I read what I’d written, off the plane and in the cold hard light of dawn, there were problems, which now in the second draft, should provide the proper start.

A voice with a German accent, a male, middle-aged.  A scientist?  He sounded very frightened.

“Apparently I’m on the wrong side.”

“Englander?”  The voice sounded very close, perhaps the cell next to mine.

“Yes.  Seems the men upstairs are not, even though they look like my fellow soldiers, so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered they were German.  Did you come here looking for a better life away from the Reich?”

“I heard rumours of such a place in Italy where if you had certain information, they, the British and Americans would help you escape.  I thought it was another SS ruse, but a friend told me he believed it was true, and we came together.”

“Is he still here?”

“No.  He was granted safe passage with another group who left a week ago, or so I was told.”

“And why are you still here?”

“Waiting to be sent in the next group.”

I arrived a week ago, probably just after the last group had been dispatched, more than likely to their deaths, or back to the Reich.  No more had been processed since I’d arrived.  No one had come or gone.

“How did you specifically get here?”

“The Resistance.  We had a name to contact in the town not far from here.  He then arranged for us to be brought here.”

Not the resistance that may have originally been involved, but a collaborator.  I’d been having problems communicating with the resistance cells in this area, and now I think I knew why.  They’d been informed on by one of their own.  Because of the problems, we’d decided not to use the normal channels to get, and because they didn’t know I was coming it was the reason why there ‘d been the last minute botched attempt on my life in transit.

The problem was far worse than any of us had imagined.

And there was a lot less hope for a rescue by the local resistance.

“How many others are here?”

“Three.  There have been no new arrivals for several days.  And I think there are a few prisoners who are being tortured by the sound of it.”

And if Jackerby gets his way, I might be added to the list of suspects to be questioned.  I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before they realised I had usable information, especially about the resistance cells.  It certainly gave credence as to why Jackerby hadn’t been so rough with me.

It looked like it wasn’t going to be long before being asked a few sticky questions.

© Charles Heath 2019

Mistaken Identity – The Editor’s Draft – Day 1

I have been working on the story, the editor is asking for a second draft after making suggested changes – and I’m now working on it

…

It’s a story I’ve been thinking about – the notion that you could be mistaken for someone else, and put down a first, rather hazy draft.

And that someone else was someone who is on the run and wanted by the police.

Of course, finding that first sentence that is going to drag the reader down the rabbit hole of the story to come takes longer than it does to write the first chapter and didn’t survive the editor’s critical eye

But, after a few hours of deliberation, I had to agree with him, and now the game’s afoot.

So, the MC is a travel agent, one that prefers to go on his own tours so that he can truthfully tell his clients what places, hotels, and travel services are really like.

I’ve noticed that when travel writers do reviews, they seem to get different rooms and experiences than us poor travellers, no more noticeable than when we stayed in San Gimignano. The hotel sounded wonderful, and the description of the room overlooking the town square was fantastic. Pity then we were shoved into a small room out the back, overlooking pigeon coops, and a shower that continually broke down.

It’s probably this disappointment that provided some inspiration for the book.

But rather than being a travelogue, I’m adding some mystery, and suspense to make it more readable.

Today’s effort amounts to 1,700 words, for a total, so far, of 1,700.

More tomorrow.

Searching for locations: Vancouver, Canada – 4

Staying at Hampton Inn and Suites downtown, whatever that means because it looks like we are in the middle of nowhere.

But, judging by the crowd in the breakfast room, it’s a popular hotel.  Of course, it is Sunday morning so this could be the weekend escape people.

Two things I remember about staying in Hampton Inns is firstly the waffles and whipped butter.  It’s been five years but nothing has changed, they are as delicious as ever.  The other, its where I discovered vanilla flavored milk for coffee, and it, too, is addictive.

They also used to have flat burgers that were made out of sausage meat which was delicious, but on the first day, they were not on the menu.

Nevertheless, it was still a very yummy breakfast.

After some research into where we might find this pixmi unicorn, it appears that it is available at a ‘toys are us’ store in one of the suburbs of Vancouver.  So, resuming the quest, we took a taxi to West Broadway, the street the store is located.

A quick search of the store finds where the toys we’re looking for are, after asking one of the sales staff, and we find there are at least a dozen of them.  Apparently, they are not as popular in Canada as the might be in America.  Cheaper too, because the exchange rate for Canadian dollars is much better than for American dollars.  Still, 70 dollars for a stuffed toy is a lot of money.

We also get some slime, stuff that our middle granddaughter seems to like playing with.

After shopping we set off down West Broadway, the way we had come, looking for a taxi to return us to the hotel.  There’s no question of walking back to the hotel.

A few hours later we walk to the observation tower, which was not very far from the hotel,

a place where we could get a 360-degree view of the city of Vancouver although it was very difficult to see any of the old buildings because they were hidden by the newer buildings, nor could we see the distant mountains because of the haze.

After leaving the tower we walked down Water Street to see the steam clock and the old world charm of a cobbled street and old buildings

We stopped at the Spaghetti Factory Italian restaurant for dinner and is so popular that we have to wait, 10 minutes to start with.  It doesn’t take all that long to order and have the food delivered to the table.  Inside the restaurant, there is an actual cable car but we didn’t get to sit in it.

I have steak, rare, mushrooms, and spaghetti with marinara sauce.  No, marinara doesn’t mean seafood sauce but a very tasty tomato-based sauce.  The steak was absolutely delicious and extremely tender which made it more difficult to cut with a steak knife.

The write up for the marinara sauce is, ‘it tastes so fresh because it is made directly from vine-ripened tomatoes, not from concentrate, packed within 6 hours of harvest.  We combine them with fresh, high-quality ingredients such as caramelised onions, roasted garlic and extra virgin olive oil’.

Oh, and did I mention they have a streetcar right there in the middle of the restaurant

I’m definitely going to try and make this when we get home.

After dinner, we return to the observation tower,  the ticket allowing us to go back more than once, and see the sights at night time.  I can’t say it was all that spectacular.

Another day has gone, we are heading home tomorrow.

There’s more time for TV

Being confined to home because despite the conquering of COVID, it’s still out there and we have to live with it – something in my condition I can’t take too many risks with – not only gives me, and a lot of others more time to write, it also enables us to explore a few more leisure options to fill in the time.

After all, we can hardly just keep writing endlessly.

Well, perhaps some of us could.

At first, I decided I would do some virtual travelling, you know, go to places I would never go in person, like South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, South America, you know the sort of places I mean, the ones where you can’t get travel insurance cover, or not without mortgaging your home.

That lasted about a day. Seeing the pyramids online was not the same as being there, getting the sand blown in your face, or the tour bus being hijacked, and you spend the next three months in a dark, hot, hell hole while the kidnappers negotiate with governments that refuse to negotiate with terrorists.

So far, I’m not filling in my time very well.

There are weeds to be pulled, lawns to be cut, shrubs and trees to be pruned, painting to be done, you know, all of those chores that you put off until tomorrow, knowing tomorrow will never come.

Don’t ask me to explain that.

So, we’re left with television.

Firstly there was a series called Yellowstone, a western in a modern setting, three series worth. Yes, we watched all of them, no, didn’t like the swearing, or Beth Dutton, Rip was channelling the Duke (John Wayne), and Kevin Costner, well, his stint in Dances with Wolves stood him in good stead.

Geez though, how much trouble can one ranch attract? Indians, speculators, developers, and an international airport? To be honest, at times it spiralled out of control, but for sheer entertainment value, it was slightly better than I thought it might be. As for Jamie, how could one person be so complicated?

Then there was another series, Away. OK, this was about as far-fetched as a premise could get, and the characters, as diverse, and sometimes as obtuse as any I’ve seen thrown together for over eight months. Thank god we didn’t have to suffer eight months of it.

It was good, I guess, with people being the way they are, and I’d expected in the confines of that small space for so long, they might have killed each other off one at a time, like in Lord of the Flies, but no such luck.

My favourite? The Russian. He might have been blind but he was interesting. Just would have liked a few subtitles for us non-Ghana, Chinese, Russian, and Indian people.

As for White House Farm, I’m still trying to work out who killed them all, because it definitely wasn’t the daughter. It had to be the indifferent son, or at his behest. Full marks to the dogged detective, who, the last time I saw him, he was a rather improbable Hercules. Funny how your impression of a performance goes back to one you’ve seen him before.

Which is another of our viewing interests, watching a show and trying to work out where we’ve seen the actors before. Some are familiar and seem to be in everything, others rarely seen, or remembered. I hope this is not a sign of their acting talent, or more to the point, lack of it.

At the moment we are in the middle of Young Wallender. Those who may have seen Branagh in the Wallender series would remember this as being the most stultifying of series, filmed bleakly in a bleak country with bleak characters, and bleak crimes.

Fortunately, the Young Wallender series is not as bleak, but it has dark undertones. Some might call this gritty. There are four more to go so it can only get better.

Like jumping off a ten-storey building, it’s so far so good…