Days 123 and 124

A review of the progress of my story

…

It’s a third of the way through the year, and theoretically a third of the way through the book.

There have been 16 updates so far, which gives the barest of outlines of what the story is about.

This story started when I was away for business, and I woke up disoriented, having suffered a delay in a connection in an airport that really wasn’t a nice place to be. Firstly, I had a good view of the military running security, not the police or the airport security. They had cars with mounted machine guns. They had people walking around the airport with machine guns on full display.

That’s a very frightening scenario when you are not used to it back home.

Then. on arrival in a place where so many people had advised me that no where was really safe, I got there late, had to get a car from the airport to the hotel, and was basically scared half out of my wits that I was going to be kidnapped, killed, or worse.

Then, waking up, the hotel room was hot, there was a fan rotating slowly circulating the turgid air making the atmosphere in the room worse, and that abnormal silence, with the hum of the air conditioning, or other appliances, made me thing, for just one moment, that there had been a coup de etat, the power and communications were out, and I assumed the airports would be closed.

All that was missing was gunfire in the streets.

It doesn’t pay to have an overactive imagination.

Anyway, a piece of paper was shoved under the door, explaining the temporary lack of power, which came back on a few minutes later. But a story was born in those few moments.

I don’t plan, just write, and while I was away, with nothing better to do with my spare time, I threw words on paper, taking advantage of my surroundings, and the type of country it was, the sort that had in the past been subjected to a coup. How hard could it be to add a few agents from the premier spy agencies and have them all vying for a seat at the table?

The only point left was to decide whether to back the rebels or keep paying the military junta the necessary bribes to maintain the premise that it was all in the aid of democracy.

I think my sense of irony saw the idea of holding a human rights conference in a country that abuses human rights as a nod to the stories written by Graham Greene.

So, before I left that city, and country, I had all the basic elements, the environment, the corrupt government with a figurehead leader, the military junta, the fierce and highly dangerous leader of the secret police, the secret police, the notion of rebels, a rebel leader that was missing, feared captured and languishing in a cell somewhere, a bunch of rebels that for want of another description, really had no idea what they were doing.

In other words, the right person, at the right time, in the right place, with the right people, could make this work. Maybe.

Let’s add another couple of elements. There is a proper police force, with real police men from France, the colonial power that looked after the country before it gained independence, a non-corrupt police chief, and, because of the conference, a press corps.

Wondering why I’m mentioning the press corps? Fear no longer. I’ve decided to get the spy agencies to use the cover of journalists for their agents. Well, that was the premise I came up with in the beginning.

So one of the questions I should be asking right about now is, how is the plot holding up? Is it how I envisaged it in the beginning?

Well, since I don’t plan, the answer is yes. Holding up well. However, what has changed as the story has developed? The addition of an assistant, the girl with a checkered past.

Then rather than start slap bang in the middle of waking up in a sweating nightmare, the story starts with the mission that went bad and put our protagonist on the recovery list, and made this mission the first after being shot to pieces, and being the last man standing.

That was the reason for the assistant.

And then I added another element, one that might go before the story ends, the search for reasons why that mission was shot to pieces, and who it was that wanted the organisation, and the man currently in charge of it, to fail.

There’s nothing like having a sub-plot simmering along with the main problem about to blow up in everyone’s face.

Yes, there are rumours of a coup, and everyone is gearing up to square off, perhaps in the catacombs.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time to add an underground network of caves that used to be part of the castle defences, the castle that is not the presidential palace.

So parts of the story getting written are:

An intro to the characters, and where they fit into the fabric of the story

A conference, its effect on the people and their rulers, and all those who are here for it

A pre-conference ball, and the first of the rebels’ forays

Endless distractions, and dancing with police, military, and secret police

The story behind the missing rebel leader, or rather, the once-leader of the opposition. We’re not going to be using poison-tipped umbrellas or assassins with poison-laced needles or tossing people out of 20-story windows.

That should be enough to keep me amused.

We’ll be back with another update in a hundred days.