Month: March 2025

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

The novel ‘Echoes from the past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The birthday’.

My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.

Thus the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.

So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.

So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.

I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.

And like all re-writes, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.

There was motivation.  I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample.  I was going to give them the re-worked short story.  Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’

Originally it was not set anywhere in particular.

But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself.  We were there for New Years, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.

One evening we were out late, and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow, it was cold and wet, and there were apartment buildings shimmering in the street light, and I thought, this is the place where my main character will live.

It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected.  I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.

I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.

Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller center is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.

The original main character was a shy and man of few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party.  I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble.  No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.

Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule, and begins a relationship?

But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul, as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

newechocover5rs

Writing a book in 365 days – My Story 4

My story 4

Most spies are loners.  They don’t like help, except in rare circumstances, and certainly don’t want a partner that could at any time be used for leverage.

Those are the rules, be responsible for or to anyone else, no permanent home, and with the motto, by any and all means available.

Oh, and the one attribute that makes them look like everyone else, that ability to blend in, anywhere, and not look like exactly what they are.

I personally have that down to a fine art.  No one notices me, even when I stand at the bar waiting to get a drink.  People seem to not see me, or there are too many other distractions to get their attention.

This time our protagonist is going to be on the way back from a disastrous mission that almost killed him.  After a year of rehabilitation, the aches and pains are still there, and the mental scars have not healed.

There are questions, so far with no answers, and that will be a thread we’ll be following.

Of course, if the protagonist is male, then the partner is female, and, of course, is the type that commands the attention of every male in a crowded bar.

Whatever happened to ordinary women?

Well, this is the spy business.  We don’t do ordinary.

But…

There’s always a first time.

I’m thinking; the proverbial shy and reserved librarian, conservatively dressed, hair always in a severe bun, glasses, and ten years off the pace for fashion trends.

Clever, and dangerous, the type of woman who goes hang gliding, or parachuting, just for the hell of it.

Maybe this time we might make a slight adjustment, she was once a librarian, one that fell for a chap from the wrong side of the tracks.  He escaped and she got five years in jail.

And there’s nothing like jail to take the innocence away and leave something very savage behind.

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility she will have fake blonde hair with green streaks.

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

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!

PIWalthJones1

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.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

In a word: Zip

Which, unfortunately, I do not have a lot of in my step.

At last, we have reached the end of the alphabet because I’m running out of zip to write these blogs.

So…

Zip is the sing, the energy, the spring we have in our step, that usually gets us from a to b quickly.  Without this zest, we would need to take a bus, train, or cab.

Then comes the variations like …

Zip code, we all have one of these, though in some countries it is called a postcode.

Zip it up, meaning do not speak, especially if you’re about to spill a secret.

A zip, which is a part of some types of clothing, usually in trousers, jeans, and skirts to name a few.  Some dresses have long zips, some short, all seem to get tangled at one time or another, or, in the most embarrassing of situations, split.

Then there is a colloquial use of the word zip, meaning nothing, zilch, zero, in other words, a basis for of z words.

And that’s about as much zeal I’m going to show for writing this blog, and I’m going to close the book on it.

Thank you, and goodnight.

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters Harry and Alison there are other issues driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact he has a beautiful and desirable wife, and his belief she is the object of other men’s desires, and one in particular, his immediate superior.

Between observation, the less than honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, nothing is ever what it seems.

…

Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

The Cinema of My Dreams – It ended in Sorrento – Episode 59

Aftermath of a kidnapping

…

“You knew what was going to happen?”

“Of course.  Did you think you were dealing with rank amateurs?”

“Maybe my boss did.  Who are you two really?”

“We’re the sort of people who kill people like you, then go down the pub and have a few pints and laugh about it.”  It was almost a treat to see Cecelia acting so cavalier.

I glanced up at her, and her expression told me this was just another role, she was playing the bitch from hell.  And so much more dripping venom than Anna would ever muster.

That statement, of course, delivered in the deadpan voice of a deranged killer had the desired effect.  Francesca was suitably frightened.

“It was not my idea.  I just do as I’m told.”

“That’s what the Germans said at the Nuremberg trials.  Didn’t save them from being shot or hung or whatever.  Can I shoot her now?”  I almost laughed at the sincerity.

Francesca looked at me.  “You only told me because you knew what I’d do?  I told you who we were working for.”

“Who your boss told you to tell me.  Now we’re going to find out the truth.  I hope he told you the truth because if he didn’t, he isn’t going to be your boss for much longer.”

“Finally,” Cecelia sighed.

I almost laughed.  She was playing the role too well.

Alfie’s voice returned.  “What were you expecting?”

“Another party stepping in the rescue the countess.”

“How…”

“She can’t afford to have Anna find out who she really is.  Not yet.  Not until it is fait accompli.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“At the appropriate time, which is now.  Let it go for now.  I know who’s got her.  And I know where she will go though not the exact location yet.  We have more work to do.”

“Who are you talking to?” Francesca asked.

“I have a plethora of friends Francesca, a plethora of friends.”

What happened next was like watching a bad stage play unfold in an unexpected manner.

Vittoria decided to turn up after the party had ended.

Seeing the door half open she blundered in and ended up with Cecelia’s gun in the back of her head, the door closing, and Francesca slowly getting back up off the floor.

Cecelia told Vittoria to walk slowly into the room and not try anything.  Vittoria was smart.  She did as she was told.

Francesca did the same.  She knew she had to humour me.  Then her phone rang.

“That will be your boss.  Answer it on speaker.”

She pulled it out of her bag and did as she was told.

“Sir.”

“What the hell is going on?”

I decided to answer that question for her.  “I might ask the same of you.  Had you just simply come and asked me, we could have sorted this out together, but no, you had to do it your way.  Now you have nothing.”

“Neither have you.”

“No.  What happened was exactly what I wanted to happen.  It gave me three valuable pieces of information.  Now you get nothing.  Go back to Rome and leave the professionals to get this done.  I am keeping Francesca with me.  She is the one concession I’m granting you.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Then you will have to explain to her family how you got her killed because unless you agree, she will not leave this room alive.  Make up your mind.  My assistant has no patience and an itchy trigger finger.”

I counted to ten under my breath.  Francesca was getting more terrified by the minute.

“This is not acceptable, but I agree, only under extreme duress.  If anything happens to her, I will hold you personally responsible.”

“Agreed.  She will keep you posted.”

Francesca disconnected the call.

“It was a good job while it lasted,” she muttered.

“You’re a private detective and an art historian.  I’m not sure which day job you should not give up, but you can do better.  Now, enough retrospection.  We have work to do, and more feet on the ground.  Alfie, back to our hotel for a meeting.”

I heard him mutter, so I took that to mean he would be there soon.

In all the excitement I had forgotten about Juliet, and when I looked over to where she had been standing, near the countess before they took her, I saw her on the ground, just moving.

I went to her and knelt down to check on her head.

There was a bloody gash on the back of it, and it appeared one of the intruders had hit her.  Then I realised that I had seen her try to grab the countess back from one of the intruders and the other hit her with the butt of his gun.

She turned her head and looked at me with glassy eyes.  “What happened?”

“You tried to be brave, and as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.”

“And a lot of good that did.  She’s not here.”  That was the result of her quick search.

“Never take on impossible odds.  Bad for your health.  Stay there and I’ll get a wet cloth.  You’re going to have a bad headache for a while.”

Vittoria had taken in the scene, seen her daughter, and yet it was me who got to her first to help.  It only reinforced my assumption about her.  No one could be that callous towards their daughter.

“Where’s the countess?” she asked, finally realising she was not there.

“Masked gunmen took her away,” I said.  “I believe they were taking her to Anna Von Burkehardt.  That’s going to be some reunion, don’t you think?”

The look on her face was priceless.

© Charles Heath 2023

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 60

This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.

The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Things are about to get complicated…

Joanne let me get away far too easily. 

When I got back to my car, I ran the scanner over it.  One tracker was easily found, another that took a full half hour to find, and some very strange stares from people on the sidewalk.

I put them both on another car and then went back to the safe house.  Knowing O’Connell was just a pawn meant there wasn’t a hurry to find him.  Anna had everything she needed from him, and now he was of little use to her.  The only question was whether he was still alive.

Jennifer had taken my pyjamas and my bed in the master bedroom, so I was relegated to the spare. 

Not happy.

We needed a plan.  In all the excitement I’d forgotten O’Connell had three places, the original apartment with Herman, his mother’s house in Peaslake, and the apartment in Bromley.

I was up before Jennifer, making coffee, when she came out.

She made my pyjamas look good.  And there was the distraction factor Maury was prone to banging on about.

“How did it go at the office?”

“Turns out Anna Jakovich, the apparent seller of the USB, is a biochemist herself, one who was involved in a laboratory disaster, and discharged as part of the problem.  Make of that what you will, but it looks like her husband was just the fall guy.”

“Of course, it all makes sense then.  Gets the husband to steal the data on the pretext they’re saving the world, then kills him, and pins the blame on him if anything goes wrong. gets us to stump up several million pounds, then ditches O’Connell and runs with the money, and the USB, to bilk another unsuspecting government, like the Russians, or the Chinese.”

“Can you read minds?”

“No.  Got a call from Dobbin, though I have no idea how he found my number since it’s a burner.  Seems he finally found the file on Anna, presumably the same one you got.

“He doesn’t know you’re involved.”

“He does now.  He figured you’d seek help from your classmates that were still on the books.  There’s two of us, me and Miss Desirable, Yolanda.”

“Didn’t she leave the Severin School of wannabes before qualifying?”

“And went straight to the city office of the department and offered up all details on our once fearless leaders for a second chance.  On the books, and back in training, training we might be able to use.”

“Possibly.  The question is, of course, whether she knew what they were planning…”

“Dobbin says she was fooling about with Severin, or perhaps that was Maury…”

“Then Dobbin or Monica or both knew in advance what was going to happen and could have prevented a tragedy if that was the case.  I don’t think she quite knew everything.”

“Well, what I know now is that we’re simply pawns in a much larger game, dancing to a tune that is completely out of key.  Makes things all the more interesting, don’t you think.  By my estimation when we complete our mission, we’re likely to end up like Severin, we just have to work out which one it is before we reach our expiry date.  That coffee smells divine, by the way.  We’re not going anywhere until I’ve had a cup.”

At least she hadn’t decided to go back to her old life.  Not yet anyway.

We tackled Peaslake first.  It was a free-standing house, and we had reasonably covered access that gave us entry to the property with minimal chance of observation.

When we were close, I was nearly run off the road by a fire engine, in a hurry.  Closer still we could see a plume of smoke rising from behind the trees, and when we reached the top of the street, we could see where the fire engine was going.

O’Connell’s house was on fire.

I parled the car and we went to join the throng of nearby residents, all with nothing better to do.

“What happened?” Jennifer asked one of the residents.

“There was an explosion, a fireball, someone said they thought it was a gas tank, and then a fire started.  It was fully ablaze by the time the first fire engine arrived.”

The firefighters had most of the blaze subdued, and we could see the house was destroyed. 

Was it Anna or O’Connell, or both covering their tracks?  The house had become compromised when Jennifer and I turned up.

Five minutes later the Detective Inspector and her Sargent arrived.

“Should I be worried now you’re here,” she asked when she saw me.

“It belonged to the mother of one of our officers who is involved in the case I’m working on.”

“He has the information?”

“No, or maybe.  We don’t know.  We do know there’s a woman involved who was working with our agent.”

“Oh.  I’ve been told there are two bodies found inside, one man and one woman.  Nothing else yet, but I’m going to talk to the forensic team waiting to see if they know any more.  Don’t go anywhere, I may need to talk to you.”

“Just a question.  You didn’t let Jan out, did you?”

She looked puzzled.  “Jan?”

“The girl who shot Severin.”

“Oh, her.  MI5 came and took her away the moment my back was turned.  Why?”

“She probably did this.”

“You might have told me she was dangerous.  Who is she?”

“An MI5 assassin.”

She sighed.  “You people are a law unto yourselves.  Don’t go anywhere.  I’ll be back.”

We watched her stomp away.

“Well,” Jennifer said, “that just made our life a little more difficult.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2023

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 57

What story does it inspire?

…

…

There is always a place for a romantic walk along the beach on a hot summer night.

At least we all like to think that. Usually, we are competing with hundreds of others and their dogs, some of whom seem to snarl at you, the dogs I mean, not their owners.

Hardly romantic, as it is in the movies. After all, they get the beach cleared of everyone and then it feels like you have the place to yourself.

But, is the beach the place for such a stroll. At night perhaps, or early morning.

I would prefer to go for a stroll in a park, like Central Park in New York, just large enough that you can get enough space to yourself, as well as walk for a long distance, and have a hope that you might see a movie star walking their dog, or just taking in the sunshine.

Unlike, if you were in London, hoping it would not be raining, or snowing, or both, or just simply freezing cold. That, of course, might be Hyde Park, a stroll around the Serpentine, but to be honest I would prefer going to Kew Gardens.

That’s the notion from seeing that photo of dusk at the beach, so many ideas, and not all of them about the sand, the sea, people, dogs, or conversation.

Then, perhaps there is another thought … a sea-based invasion, and just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just a thought…

Writing a book in 365 days – 45

Day 45

Time management, or not so much time management, to set a daily routine so a project can be completed.

It’s not so hard, really.  After all, to build underground railways or any multi-billion-dollar project, they trot out a project management tool and plan it from start to finish.

For me, I use the simplistic method of planning a novel based on the fact that I’m trying to write 50,000 words a day for 30 days in November.

Yes, you guessed it – NANOWRIMO.

That’s 1,633 words a day, and that’s easy, isn’t it?.

Well, over time, I have managed to get the hang of writing a novel every November.  I will admit that I
Start thinking about the process much earlier than just sitting down on November I and start writing.

The reason for that it I tried the first time and like any novel written from the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method, you can only go so far before the ideas dry up and suddenly with pressure mounting writer’s block sets in.

I still don’t necessarily plan every detail, but I do have the start, which is usually a short story written in April as part of the A to Z month.

And in the period between April and November, a few more stories might appear, basically giving me a head start.  So despite the fact I say I’m what they call a panther, I really do some sort of planning before I tackle a novel.

Of course, that is not the only novel I write for the year, there is my series of books, long and short, The Cinema of my Dreams, and series like those involving Zoe the Assassin.  They take longer, and a few years to write, in between everything else.

However, what works for me may not work for you.  It’s just a starting point, and over time, you will find your groove. 

Searching for locations – Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia – 1

I’m not going to spark a debate over what a holiday is and what isn’t, but …

We received an invitation to stay for a few days with my brother-in-law down at a coastal resort city, what is known as the Gold Coast, not far from where we live in Brisbane, about 70km north.

Not far, but some say far enough.

We come down every now and then, but before Covid, and before I retired into a more modest lifestyle, we used to stay once a month at the Gold Coast Hilton, dine at the restaurant and get luxurious massages at Eforia.

That was 2015, and this is 2023.

We are staying in a two-bedroom apartment right on the water, and it could not be better than that. Right now, I’m looking out the windows at what could only be described as an idyllic sunrise breaking over a relatively calm ocean, with the sound of waves continuously breaking on a pristine beach.

It’s just after 7 in the morning, and there are a lot of hardy souls taking their morning constitutional, some with exuberant dogs frolicking as they do at the waterline.

I’m not one of them. The thought of tackling the three fights of steps to get from the apartment to the ground floor is not so daunting going down. It is the going back up that’s the killer.

I did that trip six times yesterday moving stuff from the car to the room. By the sixth, I was done. The rest of that afternoon was watching the rain come in from the sea and towards the late afternoon, a rainbow that came with it, practically ending right on the beach in front of us.

No pot of gold, though.

The difference between staying in a hotel room and in a fully functional apartment is the fact you can cook your own food.

Whilst the nightly rate is basically the same for the room, not having to dine our every lunch and dinner can save a fortune.

The added benefit is that if you are doing this in another country, you can spend some very interesting hours in their supermarkets, or just markets looking at the different types of food they have.

We have done this in England, Italy, France, and China, to name a few. By far, the most fascinating was China. We couldn’t read the labels, so it was guess what’s in the packet.

Or not!

Of course, when on holiday, a must-do is to see the sights. After all, you don’t go on a holiday just to sit in the room…

…or on the balcony watching the waves roll in, or watch the clouds go by.

Given that neither of us is very mobile, it’s usually exactly what we do, but being with others, we will be doing some other activities.

Besides I’m one of those people who like to have a food theme whilst away, like the quest for the best meat pie, a quest for the best friend battered fish, or the best-fried potato chip.

Since we are by the sea, there will be a fish and chips moment, and though in this world of convenience, even fish and chip shops get their food in plastic bags, there are still some who batter their own fish and cut and cook their own chips.

The delight will be to find one and then savour every mouthful.

I’ll let you know if I find one.