Author: aloysius5

Over the years, I have traveled extensively and kept journals, with the idea that one day all of those places would become locations in books. Notebooks filled with odd characters, people and incidents observed, and whole tracts of stories written when the on the spot inspiration has been a driving force. All of this is the basis of the first three novels, Sunday In New York, set, of course, in New York, probably my favorite city in the world, “Echoes From The Past’ equally set in New York, Brooklyn Heights and Philadelphia. The third, The Devil You Don’t, travels through Europe, starting in Geneva, moving to Rome, then Sorrento, and then to Venice. Now, my passion to write is fuelled by travel and fine dining. When I take a break from these, I get to torment my three wonderful grandchildren whom I actively encourage to read as much as they can, and more recently to also write. As for almost every other writer, I would not be able to do any of this without my wife who has put up with my moodiness, the times when I'm locked away in a room trying to push out another 2,000 words, and yet despite everything still puts up with me. I wish I could say the same for our cat. Alas, I am still trying to work out how to be his friend!

The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 6

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Locked up with nowhere to go

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It looked like a military camp, but the soldiers were not like my captor. They were as I had expected, of foreign origin. The woman driving the pickup was American, and also the last person I’d expect to see in what was quite obviously a military camp.

The pickup stopped with the brakes squealing outside a large wooden building covered in camouflage netting. The man sitting next to me got up, jumped off the end of the vehicle. The woman got out, they exchanged words in quiet voices I could not hear properly, then she walked away.

He walked down the side of the vehicle hitting the metal side quite hard. To wake me up, perhaps.

“Get down Mr. James. I’m not buying the jelly legs anymore.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t been pretending when they picked me up but maybe he knew my condition better than I did. I didn’t think it was worth annoying him.

I slid to the end of the well and dangled my legs over the side then slipped slowly till my feet touched the ground. Aches and pains in my ankles and knees, but they would hold me up.

Time to move on.

He stood beside me. “This way.”

As I surmised, we went into the wooden building, down a narrow passageway for a distance, and, judging by the gentle downward slope and the temperature drop, we were either going into a cave or underground.

A minute, two, then he stopped and opened a door. “Inside.”

I took a deep breath and stepped into the room, expecting to be either shot or worse.

But it was nothing like that. It was just an empty room with a camp stretcher.

The man put his head in the doorway. “Get some rest, Mr. James.”

The door swung shut and I heard the key turn in the lock. This was not a room that could readily be escaped from.

…

Coming soon – “Strangers We’ve Become”, the sequel to “What Sets Us Apart”

Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.

The blurb:

Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!

Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.

But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.

In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.

From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.

The Cover:

strangerscover9

Coming soon

The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 28

A new mission

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When we reached the hotel, the countess was met by a man whom I deduced was her brother-in-law. I stood back because I got the feeling that the meeting was not expected and that his arrival was a shock, rather than a surprise, and not a good one.

I didn’t see her again that night, her personal assistant coming over to advise an urgent matter had come up and the countess was needed elsewhere.

Nor did I see the Rodby’s who it seemed were diverted from coming to the hotel. Rodby called and apologised on the countess’s behalf and left it at that. I went home in the chauffeur-driven car; a small consolation afforded for my participation.

I also got the impression that a certain wife got a bollocking for interfering in matters that were not her concern. She may have thought so, given their close relationship, she could ‘help’, but European families preferred to sort their own problems out in very definitive styles, something we did quite understand.

I doubted I would have been able to help. That phrase, ‘lifelong enemy’ told me that another woman had eyes for the count, and her snafu was unexpected and unwanted. The question was, did it have anything to do with the count’s death. It was a stretch, but Rodby would not have made that small concession if she did not think either of us could be any assistance.

When I got home, I had a few drinks and put it all out of my mind.

…

Three days later I was sitting in the basement briefing room, after being taken down by Rodby and introduced to what he described as the two best researchers in the organisation.

Anthony Bird, and Alessia Lombardi.

And as a complete, but pleasant surprise, sitting at the other end of the table, looking as her cell phone, Cecilia. Was her starring role over? Or was working for Rodby her day job?

She heard me come in, looked up, nodded, and then went back to her phone. Rodby didn’t stay. Nor had he mentioned at any time, from the moment I arrived outside his office, what this was about.

I sat next to her at the end of the table.

When Rodby left, she said, “We meet again.”

“For a retiree, it seems odd, unless you’ve also retired.”

“I tried. A starring role wasn’t a good enough excuse. Good thing they finished filming my scenes.”

“Can I expect to see it soon?”

“It was a pilot. It’ll probably finish up on the cutting room floor.”

We looked at the two standing up at the front of the room, glaring at us.

Anothony said, “If you are finished?”

She threw her phone on the table and looked at him. I shrugged.

“I suppose it’s too much to want this to be a guide to setting up a retirement plan.”

I guess not.

A photograph of the countess suddenly came up on the screen on the wall. Anthony was starting the show, “You will know this woman as Countess Heidi von Burkhardt. She is nominally the head of the international Burkehardt bank, with headquarters in Geneva, and principal branches in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Vienna, and a few other places.”

“A banker. I must have missed that. She doesn’t look like a banker.”

“She isn’t, she inherited the bank from her husband.”

Another photo appeared on the screen; a man I thought looked like a terrorist in an expensive suit. He continued, “Alessandro Burkehardt, her late husband’s brother. Claims he should own and run the bank, that it’s a family company that’s the purview of the male line of the Burkehardt family. Actually, he wants everything she has, and then kick to the kerb for want of a better expression.”

Nice man. He must be the lifelong enemy she had referred to. Looking at him, he was not a man I would willingly challenge to a duel.

“I don’t think we’re here to discuss family squabbles. Money will do that, but it’s not in our purview to settle those scores, is it?”

No answer. Perhaps Rodby didn’t have anything else going on like a megalomanic trying to take over the world this week.

“Bear with us, it gets better.”

Another photo flashed up on the screen, that of a woman about the same age as the countess.

“Vittoria Romano. Alessandro Burkehardt’s current squeeze and a very nasty piece of work. She had already tried to kill the countess twice in twenty years.”

Beautiful but very deadly.

Another photograph came up on the screen, the same woman, but in a photo with three others, two women, the countess, and Mrs Rodby. And a teenager. A girl that looked very much like…”

“Wasn’t that your ex back in Venice, what’s her name yes, Juliet Ambrose?”

Long before she became the disgraced doctor. Long before any of them had become the old ladies there were now.

“This photograph was taken the week before the countess’s wedding. The girl, as you say, has the name Juliet, but she, we now believe, was the illegitimate daughter of Vittoria Romano, and the Count. It’s a very tangled web.

The words ‘lifelong enemy’ came back to me again.

Vittoria. She had his baby, expected him to marry her, didn’t and like any other normal jilted lover, tried to kill the replacement.

“So just the normal complicated Italian aristocratic family secrets fuelling an equally normal feud.”

“Which you two are going to uncomplicate. But first, you must find the countess. She has, as far as we’re aware, not left the country, and hasn’t been seen since she left the hotel shortly after coming home from the Opera. You were there, I believe.”

“I escorted her to the hotel, and when we arrived, she was intercepted by someone who looked a lot like Alessandro Burkhardt.”

“Most likely Fabio Burkehardt. He had an altercation with the check-in staff over a lost booking, and shortly after that, she checked out. A half hour later the surveillance team lost her. We have her last known location and direction she was heading.”

Alessia came down with two folders and gave one to me and one to Cecilia.

“Everything we have on the relatives, those in the country at the moment, possible locations she could be staying, or being held, and background on the family’s issues. There’s a list of properties overseas where she may have gone, but we have no active record of her leaving.”

“Planes or ferries are not the only means,” I said. “Does she or any one of the family own a yacht?”

“She does, but it’s moored at Antibes. It hasn’t moved for over a month.

“I’m assuming Alfie is out there and will be the go-between?”

“Yes. Oh, and one more thing. There’s a bit of an urgency to this because if the countess is not in Geneva in five days’ time to sign the transfer documents, passing complete ownership of everything the Count possessed, she forfeits it to the eldest brother.”

“Doesn’t point a finger at him at all does it,” Cecilia muttered.

Anthony switched off the projector and put all the papers into a folder. “The clock’s ticking. Daily reports to the Chief are mandatory.”

The 2am rant: If only something made sense!

It seems rather fortuitous that we have a holiday at the end of the year.

I mean, who sat around a table however many years ago and decided that holidays like Christmas should be at the end of the year? And who decided one half of the world could freeze to death on their holidays, and the other half burn?

At the end of a long year at that, you know, 52 weeks, 12 months, 365 days, where even when some of us get a weekend off once in a blue moon, it still seems like we’re working 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

So, who decided a week would have seven days, a year would have 12 months, and while we’re at it, who decided to give each month a different name? And who named names?

Was it Father Time? As children, we all learn about Father Time, or has political correctness stepped in and we now call ‘Father Time’, ‘person time’.

Anyway…

Who do we blame for this mess? We have to blame someone. It’s not our fault. If it were up to me I’d have Christmas in September when there’s more temperate weather in both halves of the world.

And who decided that Christmas should be attached to Winter and not Summer?

It’s like the whole mess was designed by a group of academics majoring in philosophy sitting in a back room and fed Coca-Cola and Pizza until they came up with an answer, which was probably to send it all to a parliamentary committee made up of candidates from Bellevue Asylum.

The same people, by the way, who are responsible for coordinating traffic lights.

And then there’s that other mystery I’ve never quite understood.

If you work for the FBI, your first name suddenly becomes ‘Agent’. Everyone gets that name change, whether you like it or not.

Which is much the same as how all Russians once called each other ‘comrade’. Beats the hell, I suppose, out of remembering people’s first names, especially in Russia, where, to us, they’re unpronounceable.

Sorry.

You can tell I haven’t got over last Christmas.

Nor missing out, again, due to the world getting crazier.

Perhaps things will be better next Christmas.

What I learned about writing – How has writing affected your life?

When I was much younger, and life was very difficult, my imagination needed to take my mind off that dark world around me, and fired up and fueled a great many stories.

The pre-teen years were not those in which I wrote anything beyond those school assignments, but I remember the desire to read and, in doing so, imagine it could inhabit those idyllic worlds.

When I was old enough and in the first years of secondary school, the subjects we learned helped expand that imagination; some wanted to be someone different, to be somewhere else, anywhere but home.

I remember reading books about boarding school in England and somehow thought that would be better than what I had here. That notion of self-sufficiency and navigating those younger years in such an environment would be fun.

Of course, later on, I realised the reality of that sort of life, and it was just as horrible as I had already.

It didn’t stop me from wanting to be in a rich family living in a large house and having a whole estate to play in. It didn’t matter that it might not be the truth, just that it was different.

As I transitioned out of school, now having discovered I could write and translate those dreams into stories, I embarked on a university degree that majored in Narrative, which was writing, and journalism, which, in combining the two, provided three years of writing experience.

In other words, from an early age, I used writing as a means of survival and later as a channel for my creative whim. I never expected that I would write a book, not in those early years, just that the scribbles on paper would eventually become something.

Yes, I wanted to have a perfect relationship, but I soon realised that there really isn’t one. Writing about it and trying to create perfection, I discovered a lot of interesting lessons and everything that can go wrong, as usual.

Yes, I wanted to be a spy, and watched, ready and studied as much as I could, and discovered that Spies don’t live a charmed life; they are always teetering on the edge of life and death.

Yes, I wanted to be a billionaire and live a charmed and successful life, but it mostly didn’t happen, and the newspaper pages are littered with the death and ruination of a great many privileged souls.

Others struggle. My father always said life wasn’t meant to be easy. I soon learned that in my imagination and my stories, it could.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 114

Day 114 – Cliches

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Beyond the Cliché: How to Refresh Your Writing and Ditch the Tired Tropes

We’ve all been there. You’re deep into a draft, the ideas are flowing, and suddenly, you hit a wall. You need a phrase to describe a messy situation, a strong promise, or an aggressive reaction. Your brain reaches into its mental filing cabinet and pulls out the usual suspects: “can of worms,” “mark my words,” and “feeding frenzy.”

They’re comfortable. They’re recognisable. But are they good writing?

Cliches aren’t inherently evil; they are shorthand. They exist because they were originally clever, punchy, and effective. The problem is that they’ve been used so often that they’ve lost their impact. They are the “white noise” of the literary world. When a reader sees a cliché, their brain glosses over it because they’ve already encountered it a thousand times.

If you want your writing to stand out, you have to be willing to do the extra work of finding a fresher way to say what you mean. Let’s break down three common cliches and look at how to replace them with something that actually bites.

1. The “Can of Worms”

The cliche: “Opening this investigation will just open a whole can of worms.” The problem: It’s become so cartoonish that it evokes a literal fishing trip rather than a complex bureaucratic nightmare.

The Strategy: Focus on the consequence of the action. What kind of trouble are we talking about?

Try these instead:
- “Opening this investigation will trigger a cascade of unforeseen fallout.”
- “This will unearth a hornet’s nest of complications.”
- “If we pull this thread, the entire tapestry of our agreement starts to unravel.”
- “This is a Pandora’s box we aren’t prepared to manage.”

2. “Mark My Words”

The cliche: “Mark my words, this company will be bankrupt within a year.” The problem: It sounds like the dialogue from a mid-century detective movie. It carries a sense of performative drama that often rings hollow.

The Strategy: Don’t demand that the reader “mark” your words—simply state your conviction with enough strength that they have no choice but to believe you.

Try these instead:
- “I’d bet my reputation that this company will be bankrupt within a year.”
- “History suggests that this company is headed for bankruptcy.”
- “Write it down: this company is on a collision course with bankruptcy.”
- “Make no mistake: this company is folding.”

3. “Feeding Frenzy”

The cliche: “The press went into a feeding frenzy over the scandal.” The problem: It dehumanises the subjects and relies on a biological metaphor that has been used until it’s transparent.

The Strategy: Describe the action of the group. Are they frantic? Are they ruthless? Are they opportunistic?

Try these instead:
- “The press swarmed the scandal with predatory zeal.”
- “The scandal triggered a vicious, rapid-fire cycle of speculation.”
- “Once the news broke, the media circled like vultures.”
- “The scandal sparked a competitive scramble for every shred of information.”

How to Stamp Out Cliches in Your Own Work

You don’t have to get rid of every single cliché on your first draft. That’s what editing is for. Here is a simple workflow to sharpen your prose:

Read Aloud: When you read your draft, cliches stand out like sore thumbs. Your tongue will stumble or your brain will feel a “ping” of familiarity.
Ask “What do I actually mean?”: If you want to say something is a “can of worms,” ask yourself: What is the specific danger? Is it chaos? Is it legal liability? Is it a mountain of paperwork? Be specific.
Use the Thesaurus as a Guide, Not a Crutch: Look up the core words of your cliché, but don’t just pick a synonym. Use the thesaurus to trigger a new way of visualising the concept.
Embrace the “Plain Language” Rule: Sometimes, the best alternative to a cliche is simply stating the truth plainly. Instead of “a feeding frenzy,” just say “relentless media scrutiny.” Plain, direct language is often more powerful than any metaphor.

The Bottom Line: Great writing isn’t about using the biggest words or the most complex metaphors; it’s about choosing language that feels earned. By ditching the tired tropes, you show your readers that you value their time—and that you have an original voice worth listening to.

Searching for locations: The Jade Factory, Beijing, China

The first stop is at a Jade Museum to learn the history of jade. In Chinese, jade is pronounced as “Yu” and it has a history in China of at least four thousand years. On the way there, we are given a story about one of the guide’s relatives who had a jade bracelet, and how it has saved her from countless catastrophes.It is, quite literally ‘the’ good luck charm. Chinese gamblers are known to have small pieces of jade in their hands when visiting the casinos, for good luck. I’m not sure anything could provide a gambler with any sort of luck given how the odds are always slanted towards the house.

At any rate, this is neither the time of the place to debunk a ‘well-known fact’.

On arrival, our guide hands us over to a local guide, a real staff member, and she begins with a discussion on jade while we watch a single worker working on an intricate piece, what looks to be a globe within a globe, sorry, there are two workers, and the second is working on a dragon.

At the end of the passage that passes by the workers, and before you enter the main showroom, you are dazzled by the ship and is nothing short of magnificent.

Then it’s into a small room just off the main showroom where we are taken through the colors, and the carving process in the various stages, without really being told how the magic happens.

Then it’s out into the main showroom where the sales are made, and before dispersing to look at the jade collection, she briefly tells us how to tell real and fake jade, and she does the usual trick of getting one of the tour group to model a piece.

Looks good, let’s move on. To bigger and better examples.

What interested me, other than the small zodiac signs and other smallish pieces on the ‘promotion’ table, was the jade bangle our tour guide told us about on the bus. If anyone needs one, it is my other half, with all the medical issues and her sometimes clumsiness, two particular maladies this object is supposed to prevent.
Jade to the Chinese is Diamonds to westerners, and the jade bangle is often handed down to the females of the family from generation to generation, often as an engagement present, to be worn on the left hand, the one closest to the heart.

There are literally thousands of them, but, they have to be specially fitted to your wrist because if it’s too large, you might lose it if it slips off and I didn’t think it could be too small.
Nor is it cheap, and needing a larger size, it is reasonably expensive. But it is jadeite, the more expensive of the types of jade, and it can only appreciate in value, not that we are interested in the monetary value, it’s more the good luck aspect.

We could use some of that.

But, just to touch on something that can be the bugbear of traveling overseas, is the subject of happy houses, a better name for toilets, and has become a recurrent theme on this tour. It’s better than blurting out the word toilet and it seems there can be some not so happy houses given that the toilets in China are usually squat rather than sit, even for women.
And apparently, everyone has an unhappy house story, particularly the women, and generally in having to squat over a pit. Why is this a discussion point, it seems the jade factory had what we have come to call happy, happy houses which have more proper toilets, and a stop here before going on the great wall was recommended, as the ‘happy house’ at the wall is deemed to be not such a happy house.

Not even this dragon was within my price range. Thank heaven they had smaller more affordable models. The object of having a dragon, large or small, is that it should be placed inside the main door to the house so that money can come in.

It also seems that stuffing the dragon’s mouth with money is also good luck. We passed on doing that.

After spending a small fortune, there was a bonus, free Chinese tea. Apparently, we will be coming back, after the Great Wall visit, to have lunch upstairs.

In a word: Right

Am I right? Or is that correct?

In the moral sense, or in answering a question?

Do I have a right to …

As an entitlement?

Maybe

But right means generally to be correct, but the word itself can be used, like many others in a variety of ways

Such as, do we have any rights any more, since the government is slowly shutting down our freedoms, and, you guessed it, rights.

What about a right angle, we know this as being an angle of 90 degrees

How about I right a wrong, returning a bad situation to a good one?

Are you left-handed or right-handed?

Are you one of those people who can’t tell their left from their right?

And who was it that decided what was your left or your right, ever thought about that? I didn’t until just now. Good luck finding an answer on Google.

And how many times have you wished you were in the right place at the right time???

Then, of course, if English is a second language, how about confusing right with write.

Means something quite different, doesn’t it?

How about rite? Yes, I guess if we were in the habit of chopping chicken heads off and dancing around a fire, that might be its meaning,

But…

It too has a lot of different meanings

Are you confused yet?

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

Searching for locations: The Great Wall of China, near Beijing, China

This is in a very scenic area and on the first impression; it is absolutely stunning in concept and in viewing.

As for the idea of walking on it, well, that first view of the mountain climb when getting off the bus, my first question was where the elevator is? Sorry, there is none. It’s walk on up or stay down the bottom.

Walk it is. As far as you feel you are able. There are quite a few who don’t make it to the top. I didn’t. I only made it to the point where the steps narrowed.

But as for the logistics, there’s the gradual incline to the starting point, and what will be the end meeting place. From there, it’s a few steps up to the guard station no 7, and a few more to get up to the start of the main climb. The top of the wall is guard station no 12.

Ok, those first few steps are a good indication of what it’s was going to be like and it’s more the awkwardness of the uneven heights of the steps that’s the killer, some as high as about 15 inches. This photo paints an illusion, that it’s easy. It’s not.

If you make it to the first stage, then it augers well you will get about 100 steps before you both start feeling it in your legs, particularly the knees, and then suffering from the height if you have a problem with heights as the air is thinner. And if you have a thing with heights, never look down.

This was from where we stopped, about a third of the way up. The one below, from almost at the bottom. One we’re looking almost down on the buildings, the other, on the same level.

It requires rest before you come down, and that’s when you start to feel it in the knees, our tour guide called it jelly legs, but it’s more in the knees down. Descending should be slow, and it can be more difficult negotiating the odd height steps, and particularly those high ones. You definitely need to hang onto the rail, even try going backward.

And, no, that rail hasn’t been there as long as the wall.

While you are waiting for the guide to return to the meeting place at the appointed time, there should be time to have some jasmine tea. Highly refreshing after the climb.

Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance