Category: #amwriting

Searching for locations: Queenstown Gardens, Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown Gardens are not far from the center of Queenstown.  They are just down the hill from where we usually stay at Queenstown Mews.

More often than not we approach the Gardens from the lakeside during our morning walk from the apartment to the coffee shop.  You can walk alongside the lake, or walk through the Gardens, which, whether in summer or winter, is a very picturesque walk.

There’s a bowling club, and I’m afraid I will never be that sort of person to take it up (not enough patience) and an Ice Arena, where, in winter I have heard players practicing ice hockey.

I’m sure, at times, ice skating can also be done.

There is a stone bridge to walk across, and in Autumn/Winter the trees can add a splash of color.

There is a large water feature with fountain, and plenty of seating around the edge of the lake, to sit and absorb the tranquility, or to have a picnic.

There are ducks in the pond

and out of the pond

and plenty of grassed areas with flower beds which are more colorful in summer.  I have also seen the lawns covered in snow, and the fir trees that line the lake side of the gardens hang heavy with icicles.

Skeletons in the closet, and doppelgangers

A story called “Mistaken Identity”

…

How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.

In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.

I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.

Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.

There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.

Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.

It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.

For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!

And a great idea for a story.

That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.

NANOWRIMO – 2024 – Day 5

Behind the Green Door

…

Michael knows the Management was always interested in Elsie, his wife until a few years ago.

Elsie came from another facility, as part of an exchange program. She was the daughter of a woman who married one of their men. Elsie was a geologist or so Michael was told by her and others.

They met when Michael was being inducted into the ‘Brainstrust’, ostensibly a group of people with specific skills who used their knowledge for the betterment of the facility, but not exactly in the way management thought they were.

But, then. management was suspicious of everyone and everything. They knew there was some form of resistance going on, they just didn’t know who was behind it or who made up the team.

Michael was only in the Brainstrust because of his father, a man who was disaffected by management when they took his wife (strangely from the same facility that Elsie came from) as a suspected spy. Overzealous interrogators killed her.

And not by the ordinary police, but the secret police.

People that no one ever saw, or if they did, could not give an accurate description, no one knew where they came from, where they went, or where their headquarters were.

Michael didn’t meet Elsie until later in life, and they had about 20 years together, and no children. Elsie didn’t like the idea of bringing up a child in such an environment.

Michael knew that Elsie had secrets, these secrets being discovered during the investigation of a number of cases he was given.

He knew that she was not faithful, and that after various assignations, following her, she met with fellow scientists, and others, deducing that she was not just a geologist. One time she ran into the secret police, and rather than being arrested, he discovered she was a member of management, brandishing a special ID card, and a management only communication device.

He never told her knew, but it was the moment he stopped sharing information with her.

When she died, he questioned the way she had died, not believing the circumstances described by his boss, and since had carried out his own investigation.

Now in his last week, he would press the counsellor to tell him the truth.

…

Word written today 1,104, making a total of 7,415 words

In a word: Order

I gave the order to my assistant to order the supplies we needed in order to maintain stock levels.

Oh, yes, the word order is one of my favourites, because it can confuse the hell out of many people in its simplicity and yet complexity.

I gave the order, it’s what happens in the armed forces, and a lot of other places, but mostly we would associate it with organisations that have hierarchical authority.

The military, for one, cut orders, the means of sending one of its minions to another place, or to do a specific job.

Order supplies, well, just about anyone can order something from somewhere, usually on the internet, and sometimes require or are given an order number so it can be tracked.

In order to maintain, in order to get what I want, in order to get elected, this is just another way of using the word, with the aim of achieving something, though I’m sure there’s probably a better way of expressing these sentiments.

Law and order, well, doesn’t everyone want this, and doesn’t it always turn up in an election campaign, and seems to be the first thing sacrificed after the election.  The thing is, no one can guarantee law and order.

There is the law and there is administering it.  There is no order that comes with it, we just hope that order is maintained, and deplore the situation when it isn’t.

Perhaps in order to maintain law and order, we might need more police.

Then, of course, there is alphabetical order, and numerical order, where things can be designated from A to Z, like this challenge, or from 1 to 10, or more.  We can sort words alphabetically, numbers numerically and data items by keys or an index.

This is naturally called a sort order.

Then there is my car, or bike, or washing machine, or mixmaster.  They are currently in good working order, though that might not last.

And lastly, in deference to all those out there who are thinking of becoming dictators, it’s always possible, one day, there will be a new world order.  They might actually be in their own particular order, whose intellect might be (?) of the highest order.

Surely that is one order too many.

“The Devil You Don’t”, she was the girl you would not take home to your mother!

Now only $0.99 at https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.

Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.

If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.

At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.

That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.

Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

newdevilcvr6

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt — Episode 71

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

Back at the hospital with Boggs

…

Nadia dropped me off at the hospital where Boggs had been taken.  She offered to come in with me, but I said Boggs might not be too receptive to any Cossatinos given the circumstances of where we found him, adding I was not trying to be disrespectful until I found out what happened.

It was still possible he had ended up on the beach after being dealt with by her father, brother, or some of their gang.  I could have expressed myself better because there was no mistaking that look she gave me.

Coming on top of the admission she almost forced out of me, about trust, I got the impression that the rapport we had built up was slipping away, much like sand through fingers.

Watching her drive off, I wondered if that might be the last time we spoke.  It was, I had come to the conclusion on the way back from the beach, a relationship fraught with many problems, in my case, being with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and in hers, well, I was not sure what her expectations were.

If only she wasn’t a Cossatino.

I went in the main entrance, asked at the admissions counter where Boggs was, giving my name, and stated the fact I was his best friend.  I was expecting to be told the only visitors could be direct relatives.

It elicited a phone call which on any other occasion I might have dismissed as hospital protocol, but in this instance, and the grave expression on the admission clerk’s face told me this was different.

When she hung up the phone she told me to sit, someone would come to get me.  Several minutes later the Sheriff came out of the doors leading into the emergency department.

It looked serious if the sheriff was involved.  I was hoping Boggs had not succumbed to his injuries, even after the medics has said his survival prospects were good.

“Sam.  I was hoping you would come to see Boggs.”

“How is he?”

“Uncooperative to the extent of truculent.”

“He’s awake then.”

“Aside from exposure, and a thorough shaking up, there’s little wrong with him a night or two won’t fix.  But, there’s a small problem with the Cossatinos.  They claim he stole a document from their residence, and they want to charge him with trespassing and theft.  He had nothing with him when they brought him here.”

“Maybe they were chasing him and he hid it somewhere.”

“Maybe, but he’s not talking.  Perhaps you could persuade him to tell you because we need a statement, or I’ll have to charge him, pending an investigation.”

“I’m not exactly his best friend at the moment.”

“Because of Nadia?”

News traveled fast in this town, or was it like the sheriff once told me another time I’d got into trouble, nothing happened in his town that he didn’t know about.  Or my mother told him to tell me she was bad news, which was the most likely scenario.

“She is not the sort of girl you want to be with.  You know as well as I do what the Cossatinos are like, and that’s all of them, Sam, without exception.”

My mother had spoken to him because those were her words.  The sheriff had to be more diplomatic.

“What happened to cutting people some slack?  Have you considered she might be different?”

“She has a file, Sam.”

It was all he needed to say.  I wanted to believe her, but discounting all the rumors and stories I’d heard about her was not going to justify overlooking the obvious.

“Message received and understood.  Is Boggs up to taking visitors?”

“Yes.  Follow me.”

We went through the doors leading to the emergency department, down a corridor where ambulance patients in various stages of distress were lined up waiting to be processed, it was a busy night.  At the end, we turned right where there were several rooms, one of which had a policeman standing outside.

A nod from the sheriff and the policeman opened the door and I went in.  The sheriff didn’t follow me.

Boggs was almost sitting up, staring out the window, until the door closed when he turned to see who had come into the room.  When he saw me, he turned back to the window.

Then I noticed a girl sitting in the chair beside the bed, almost obscured from view.  It took a moment to recognize her, Charlene, the sheriff’s daughter.

What was she doing here?

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 1

I’d been on the starship for almost three hours when…

…

The captain was coming up from the earth station by transport, not wanting to trust the transporters, and I’d just finished the orientation of the ship by the second officer, and had arrived on the bridge to see various crew members hunched over their consoles.

The captain had told me, before stepping onto the transport, that we would be leaving the dock shortly after he arrived.

Nothing I’d seen so far had led me to believe it would be going anywhere, anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the crew briefing had run smoothly, the second officer assigned to correlate the complaints/problems list, and everyone else had taken their assigned positions. 

I was waiting for the captain, standing beside the ‘chair’, ready to hand over.  In any other situation, we would be off to an illustrious start.

Until the dulcet tones of the Chief Engineer rang through the bridge, uttering those fateful words, “the warp coil has had a catastrophic failure”.

This was at odds with another statement he had made earlier when I was in Engineering, and given I was told the Chief Engineer was prone to hyperbole; his statement ‘they just don’t make warp coils like they used to’ hadn’t exactly filled me with confidence, but I had been expecting we would be ready to depart.

I had been looking at the screen, an overlay of the window that looked out over space, or at this moment, the space dock, where there was a representation of the planets that were ‘out there’.

I had been curious about M75, but the helmsman, a rather taciturn chap who seemed to resent the fact he was assigned to this ship, just shrugged and said, “it’s something, somewhere, but not of much interest,” then went back to his console.

If this was Star Trek, we’d be ejecting the warp coil by now, but in the space dock, that didn’t seem to me to be a viable option.

“How long before we can get this bucket of bolts moving,” I ask the Chief.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

Yes, words ripped right out of the script of a Star Trek episode, I thought. A sad case of life imitating art.

A strange whistling sound emanated from the speakers, then the whoosh of the elevator just before the doors opened. OK, new ship, squeaky doors, another item to be put on the ‘look at’ list after the shakedown cruise.

The Captain had arrived.

“Why are dock workers still on the ship, Number One.”

For a moment there, I thought I was talking to John Luc Picard.

“Faulty warp coil. You know how it goes, save a billion by outsourcing to the cheapest supplier.”

The captain didn’t appreciate my sardonic humour, or my apparent disdain in outsourcing what we had once built ourselves.

He gave me a frown, a slight shake of his head, then said, “I’ll be in my quarters. Let me know when we’re about to leave.”

He didn’t wait for acknowledgement and disappeared through another squeaky door. More repairs.

The Chief’s voice then came over the speaker. “I can give you impulse speed, warp speed will take a little longer.”

“Doesn’t that refer to miracles over the impossible,” I ask.

“Perhaps.  But in the meantime, I need a specific spanner and the replicators are down. So, now we have to fix them first, before moving on. Might take a while.”

I look around the crew, seeing their expectant faces drop with disappointment.

Outer space was going to have to wait a little longer.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 60

What story does it inspire?

…

…

What does a photograph of a wall conjure up?

If it’s a bad day, then the answer to that is nothing. Looking at a bare wall is like examining the whys and wherefores of writer’s block.

Some days the ideas just can’t find their way to the surface. Other days, they come out of left field, and some, well, you have to wonder where they came from.

For instance…

There is that eternal device in stories that fuels many a story, how does a person get murdered in a room with no windows, a single door, and it is locked from the inside, with the key in the lock.

The simple answer, there has to be a hatch, in the floor or in the wall.

Yes, there’s a secret panel – or on thorough checking, there is not. But there has to be, and so we just about pull the wall apart looking for the secret entrance.

Maybe if there were shelves in front of the wall, we could have the classic shelf door.

Is it possible that the murderer could somehow pass through the wall? We could have people postulating that the killer was able to rearrange their molecules so he or she could pass through.

Scientifically impossible.

But, there again, we are writing fiction. Anything is possible.

I like my idea better, the killer arrived in a time machine. I’ve often wondered just how much damage we could do if we could travel in time, backwards or forwards, but the more I think about it, time travel could only be into the past, because the future hasn’t been written yet.

So that’s my premise, as the main character, as the detective. The story is trying to convince everyone else, and that I’m not stark staring mad.

NANOWRIMO – 2024 – Day 6

Behind the Green Door

…

Michael gets to interact more with the guidance counsellor, Miranda, who he had asked if she knows she is a robot. Michael has had interaction with another robot a year or so back when he was sent to find her, and then did his usual life signs check to discover there was something odd about her,

She says she is self-aware, and also programmed to learn. Michael is not quite sure what to make of that, but in the back of his mind, the notion that AI might be slightly out of control.

But…

Is she really a robot? As far as he can tell, Miranda is not displaying any of the tell-tale signs that she is not human.

However…

If she is a robot with a large amount of digital storage, she would be privy to everything he has been involved with. In the upcoming discussions, she would be able to ask random questions and record answers, mannerisms, and attitudes for others who want to observe and communicate with her.

In that instance, it was a brilliant idea on behalf of Management, and it meant that if it was true he would have to be very careful around her.

On the other hand…

It was not possible for the programmers to have her respond appropriately to every nuance, and it would be interesting to see what her responses were under certain circumstances.

…

Word written today 2,711, making a total of 10,126 words

Searching for locations: Mount Ngauruhoe, New Zealand

Mount Ngauruhoe is apparently still an active volcano, has been for 2,500 years or so, and last erupted on 19th February 1975, and reportedly has erupted around 70 times since 1839.

The mountain is usually climbed from the western side, from the Mangatepopo track.

This photo was taken in summer from the Chateau Tongariro carpark.

In late autumn, on one of our many visits to the area, the mountain was covered with a light sprinkling of snow and ice.

On our most recent visit, this year, in winter, it was fully covered in snow.

It can be a breathtaking sight from the distance.