There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well, not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end of it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum: find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father, who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
We didn’t have to wait that long to see what our tail did, he simply sped up and drove off, perhaps satisfied he had been made, and knew we were going to ditch him before we got to our eventual destination.
It would be hard for him to guess where we were going, so that meant that he would arrange for someone to pick us up as we came into the city, or after.
After all, he knew what car I was travelling in, and he knew what we looked like. Which is why we stopped briefly in Naples and changed cars and clothes.
Then, by a quirk of fate, we saw him again, parked on the side of the road, near Pompei, waiting. He had been hidden behind several trucks, but at the last minute on of the trucks moved, and I saw the car.
And there he sat, not assuming we would be smart enough to change cars. What was it Rodby said from time to time? Good help is hard to find.
I had no doubt the moment he reported in, that other arrangements were not already underway. If they were smart, they’d know what my destination was, the home of the Burkehardt’s up in the hills that overlooked the Mediterranean, with billion-dollar views, nestled in among the exclusive and very expensive resorts.
Cecelia had booked on and it was where she had been relaxing in what time she had away from surveillance. She was at the hotel when I called, and we arrived there a half hour later.
I’d already forewarned her about my new shadow.
She met us down in the foyer, gave Francesca her ‘don’t mess with me, or else’ scowl, and then took us up to the room. It was amazing, and I would probably never be able to afford to stay in a room, or place, like it if I had to pay for it myself.
Francesca was suitably impressed. “How much had you got on your expense account. I can barely buy a sandwich with mine.”
“Normally we don’t either, but this is a ‘by all means available’ mission.”
She gave me a blank look, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to explain it to her. We would not be seeing her again after this.
“I trust your charges are behaving themselves selves and remaining anonymous,” I asked her, after sitting down with a bottle of wine and three glasses, and we’d all taken a separate chair each.
“No. You didn’t expect them to stay in the room, despite the fact someone is trying to kill them. I’m not their nursemaid. They want to get killed they can.”
I frowned at her. We were supposed to be keeping them alive. I suppose learning they were fakes didn’t help. Vittoria and Juliet weren’t, or at least I hope they weren’t, but the jury was still out on that.
I was going back to see them after I spoke to the Burkehardt matriarch. Or maybe I would talk to Juliet again. I couldn’t believe that everything I did seemed to involve her, and I was hoping the universe wasn’t trying to tell me something.
“Who are these people again,” Francesca asked.
“Didn’t you tell her?” Cecelia looked at me.
“No. Relevance?”
“None,” she looked at Francesca. “A woman called Vittoria who was a maid at the house I’ve been watching for that last day or so and her daughter Juliet are supposed to be keeping a low profile. It appears Juliet might be another direct descendant of the Count’s. I’m surprised your employers didn’t tell you of her?”
“They mentioned the possibility of another heir. They just didn’t know who or where she was. She’s here, you say?”
“Yes. I hope they’re safe, and, no, we’re not telling you where they are. Not until we know your employers, whom I’m assuming are the Burkehardt’s, are not trying to kill her.”
“I assure you that neither am I, and I work for the investigations company, not the Burkehardt’s. I can only take orders from my boss. He was very clear about that.”
“Good. I’d hate to have to shoot you because you lied.”
I could see she meant what she said. I hoped Francesca did too. She seemed to brush that threat aside.
“What about the countess?”
“That’s the bigger question, where is she? We’d like to know so if you have any ideas, please share. For this dynamic to work, you must be willing to share information. It’s not going to be a one-way street.”
“So, you don’t know where the countess is?”
Cecelia looked at me.
“Inquisitive little bugger, isn’t she? Don’t make it so obvious you want to know. Didn’t your boss tell you; that you must be subtle when approaching people like us, people with more experience, and less of a conscience.
Francesca looked at me.
“Don’t think I won’t stop you if you get in the way. You can stay while it is useful to us, but don’t ask questions you know we’re not going to give you answers for.”
“Then I’ll assume you don’t know where she is, other than most likely in Sorrento, waiting for the meeting.”
Today I decided to take some time out and read a few blogs, to see what the rest of the world is doing leading up to CampNaNoWriMo, and sometimes read some news that’s usually a few days old, not that I’m complaining.
And still working on the James Bondish piece that set my mind on fire. Last I heard, he has almost completed a successful, almost suicide, mission. There’s just a small matter of a rebel helicopter with air-to-air missiles trying to shoot down the escape plane.
I try to keep away from the news if it’s possible, but it comes at you from everywhere. My browser somehow decided to allow notifications and every few minutes a little popout slides out from the bottom right corner and tells me what’s gone wrong.
Never any good news by the way.
And yes, I have Windows 10, but I can’t be bothered reading the manual to find out how to stop them. Maybe, subconsciously, I don’t.
I never thought one man could generate so many headlines. We had one, given the nickname, the human headline, but Trump, he is in a class of his own.
I used to like watching him on The Apprentice, believe it or not.
But again I digress…
I saw the word selfish popup in a number of posts, and it reminded me that, at times writers have to be. There are only so many hours in a day, and after emails, blogs, reading, news, life, there’s very little time left to write.
So, we need to be selfish at those times. I am because when I sit down to write, there shouldn’t be any distractions. As a writer, I’m not seeking popularity, maybe one day that will come, but I’m in this writing thing because I have stories to tell and I want to get them down. Nobody may ever read them, I may never rise above mediocrity, but I am doing something I love, and very few of us out there can say that unequivocally.
Most of us have a day job or something else that consumes a great deal of our time.
Oh to be a successful author like James Patterson? But how does he do it? I guess it comes down to hard work, and a little bit of luck.
And maybe, one day, if I work hard enough, some of it might come my way.
The Scheherazade Challenge: If My Life (and Your Attention) Depended On It…
Let’s play a dangerous game, shall we?
Imagine, for a fleeting moment, that the weight of an ancient dynasty rests on your shoulders. The Sultan, broken by betrayal and consumed by cynicism, has vowed to take a new bride each night and execute her by dawn. And then, there’s you. A single, fragile life against the tide of his despair, with only one weapon: a story.
Not just any story. A story so compelling, so intricate, so profoundly human, that it can outwit the executioner, melt a frozen heart, and stretch the boundaries of time itself. Your very survival, the fate of all women in the kingdom, hinges on your ability to spin a tale that leaves the Sultan hanging on your every word, desperate for the next sunrise to reveal its continuation.
Now, take a deep breath. We’re not in a dusty, lamp-lit palace, and (thankfully) my head isn’t on a literal chopping block. But as a writer in this wild, wonderful, and wonderfully noisy digital age, there are still stakes. My “Sultan” is you, dear reader, scrolling through an endless bazaar of content. My “dawn” is the moment you might click away, drawn by the siren song of another tab. And my “life” (or at least, my creative soul and my ability to connect with you) depends on telling an amazing story.
So, if I were Scheherazade, faced with that impossible mandate, what tale would I weave?
It wouldn’t be a simple adventure, nor a flat romance. It would need layers, heart, and a message so subtle yet profound that it could soften the hardest of souls.
My Life-Saving Story: “The Loom of Whispers and the Cartographer of Hidden Threads”
My story would begin in a city unlike any other, not built of stone and mortar, but of stories themselves. Let’s call it Aethelgard, the City of Echoes. Its streets are paved with forgotten proverbs, its buildings rise from ancient legends, and the very air hums with the whispers of every life ever lived within its bounds.
Our protagonist would be Elara, not a warrior or a princess, but a reclusive Cartographer of Hidden Threads. Her unique gift (and burden) is that she can see the invisible, iridescent threads that connect every living being in Aethelgard. Each thread represents a shared experience, a glance exchanged, a kindness given, a betrayal suffered, a dream whispered in unison. Most people only see their own thread, a solitary line stretching from their heart. But Elara sees the entirety: a magnificent, terrifying, ever-shifting tapestry of countless lives interwoven.
The story would begin with a creeping malaise. Aethelgard, once vibrant, is losing its colour. Its echoes are fading. People are growing isolated, suspicious, convinced their own struggles are unique and paramount. The threads, once brilliantly intertwined, are fraying, even breaking. Elara knows the city is dying because its people are forgetting how deeply they are connected.
Her quest is not to slay a monster, but to mend the tapestry. She must journey not across lands, but through the stories themselves.
Each night, I would begin one of Elara’s “thread-following” expeditions:
Night One: She follows a flickering, almost invisible thread from a lonely old baker who believes no one cares for him. The thread leads her back through generations, revealing how his great-grandmother, a woman he never knew, once saved a merchant’s fortune with a single, anonymous act of kindness, and how that merchant’s lineage later funded the very orphanage where the baker himself found refuge as a child. The baker’s life, he would discover, was built on an ancient, forgotten thread of generosity.
Night Two: Elara traces a taut, angry thread between two feuding families, their hatred centuries old. As she follows it, she uncovers the true origin: not a grand slight, but a misinterpreted joke, a stolen flower, and a series of escalating misunderstandings, each fueled by pride and a refusal to truly listen. But she also finds faint counter-threads – moments of shared joy, unspoken longing for peace, nearly-forgiven transgressions – that still hum beneath the surface.
Night Three: She investigates a vibrant thread of innovation and creativity, discovering it’s not the solitary genius of a famous artist, but the culmination of countless, unacknowledged inspirations: a child’s forgotten drawing, a beggar’s hummed tune, a weaver’s discarded pattern, each contributing a vital, invisible strand to the masterpiece.
Through Elara’s journey, the Sultan (and you, dear reader) would witness the profound irony of human existence: we are all singular, yet inextricably bound. Our greatest joys and deepest pains are rarely our own alone. Every act, every word, every silence sends ripples through the great tapestry.
The “cliffhanger” each night wouldn’t be a sword fight, but a dawning realisation. Elara would be on the verge of revealing a crucial, heart-wrenching, or profoundly beautiful connection that implicates seemingly disparate characters, perhaps even hinting at the Sultan’s own lineage, his own perceived isolation, as being a part of this vast, interconnected web.
The story would be a mirror, reflecting the Sultan’s own life back at him – not judging, but revealing. It would show him that just as a breaking thread in the farthest corner of Aethelgard could unravel the entire city, so too did his own actions send tremors through the lives of everyone around him. It would demonstrate that true power comes not from severing connections, but from understanding and honouring them.
By the final night, the Sultan wouldn’t just be entertained; he would be transformed. He would see himself not as an isolated ruler, but as a vital, powerful weaver in the Loom of Whispers. And with that understanding, perhaps, the desire to cut threads would vanish, replaced by a profound respect for the intricate, beautiful, and utterly inescapable tapestry of life.
What about you? If your life depended on it, what story would you tell? And what hidden threads would you uncover?
Rupert follows Worthington and Arabella to and from the concert, and then observes them over dinner, wondering what it is that’s missing in his life until they go back to the room for the night.
To him, it seems like it’s just a sex weekend with cultural embellishments.
Until he spies Worthington on the move at two am, leaving the hotel on foot. It turns into a meeting between him and two other men in the park before Worthington returns to the hotel, business concluded.
It has to be something to do with John and Zoe; otherwise, the meeting would have been in the hotel, not the deep recesses of the park. Rupert has photographs and gives them to Sebastian for identification.
At least they now know the reason for Worthington being in Vienna. Arabella just makes it look more casual.
John breaks his plan to Zoe over breakfast, and she is surprised. It’s a good plan, and once she had dealt with the problems, it would be a go.
And, she added quite sombrely, if they all survive.
The bad news was that she would be leaving the next morning to visit an old friend, Dominica, who probably isn’t so friendly now, to get information. And, no, she was not sure what would happen after that, but if she could, she would call him.
With the two men identified and the danger they presented, Sebastian had to move to plan B and set it up. He deliberately doesn’t tell either of them because he knows they would strenuously object.
The plan: sniper to shoot them from a building across the road, not to kill, but to slow them down. It would be difficult to be out plotting when in the emergency ward of a hospital.
But, as usual, things don’t quite go to plan. Worthington is hit and wounded, though not severely as Sebastian had hoped, but Arabella moved slightly just before he pulled the trigger, and he couldn’t see what happened, but what he could see, it looked very, very bad.
A teacher will mark a test in order to give the student a mark out of 100. Yes, to mark a test means to ascertain right and wrong answers and score it accordingly, and getting a mark out of 100 could determine a great many different outcomes at school.
Whereas a mark on your clothes could mean you’ve been playing with fire, rolled in the mud or if much older having a salacious affair with an unexplainable lipstick mark on your collar.
A mark is someone that a con man believes will be easily deceived.
A mark is a catch in certain types of football.
You can have an identifying mark on some item of property.
it’s literally the x marks the spot for someone who cannot write, i.e. make your mark
There can be a mark on a rope that indicates the depth of water.
And many, many more…
But not to be confused with marque, which could be the make or model of a particular type of car
Or marc which is the refuse of grapes after being pressed
We visited the falls in winter, just after Christmas, when it was all but frozen.
The weather was freezing, it was snowing, and very icy to walk anywhere near the falls
Getting photos is a matter of how much you want to risk your safety.
I know I slipped and fell several times on the ice just below the snowy surface in pursuit of the perfect photograph. Alas, I don’t think I succeeded.
The mist was generated from both the waterfall and the low cloud. It was impossible not to get wet just watching the falls.
Of course, unlike the braver people, you could not get me into one of the boats that headed towards the falls. I suspect there might be icebergs and wasn’t going to tempt the fate of another Titanic, even on a lesser scale. The water would be freezing.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, I came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level that she, the youngest of the group, would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing her down for the last three months, and if she noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one; no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact that she had to entertain more, and frankly, I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then that she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it was something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked who, where, and when.
A world-class newspaper in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember just shrugging and asking if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost the intimacy we used to have, where she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker, but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior was instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position, he had not taken advantage of the situation like some might. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use-by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me; you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. At the beginning, it’s a slow, easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships; they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, followed by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come out of the final turn, and we were braking so that it would stop at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in the new job, the last thing she’d want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends, new life.
We packed her bags, threw out everything she didn’t want, a free trip to the op shop with stuff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming; that moment, the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning, there had been 6 different types of planes departing, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just to see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Rupert follows Worthington and Arabella to and from the concert, and then observes them over dinner, wondering what it is that’s missing in his life until they go back to the room for the night.
To him, it seems like it’s just a sex weekend with cultural embellishments.
Until he spies Worthington on the move at two am, leaving the hotel on foot. It turns into a meeting between him and two other men in the park before Worthington returns to the hotel, business concluded.
It has to be something to do with John and Zoe; otherwise, the meeting would have been in the hotel, not the deep recesses of the park. Rupert has photographs and gives them to Sebastian for identification.
At least they now know the reason for Worthington being in Vienna. Arabella just makes it look more casual.
John breaks his plan to Zoe over breakfast, and she is surprised. It’s a good plan, and once she had dealt with the problems, it would be a go.
And, she added quite sombrely, if they all survive.
The bad news was that she would be leaving the next morning to visit an old friend, Dominica, who probably isn’t so friendly now, to get information. And, no, she was not sure what would happen after that, but if she could, she would call him.
With the two men identified and the danger they presented, Sebastian had to move to plan B and set it up. He deliberately doesn’t tell either of them because he knows they would strenuously object.
The plan: sniper to shoot them from a building across the road, not to kill, but to slow them down. It would be difficult to be out plotting when in the emergency ward of a hospital.
But, as usual, things don’t quite go to plan. Worthington is hit and wounded, though not severely as Sebastian had hoped, but Arabella moved slightly just before he pulled the trigger, and he couldn’t see what happened, but what he could see, it looked very, very bad.
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you?
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realises his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters, cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times, taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice, where, in those back streets, I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all, a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 