Category: blogging

‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view

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 realizes 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.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

Writing a novel in 365 days

Day 3

It’s all about the nuances of mood, of feeling, the little things that bring a character to life, that convey an emotion that we have all felt one time or another.

And if we’re lucky, be able to convey exactly what is going on in the mind of the protagonist, or any of the characters for that matter.

I thought I might write the same story as yesterday from a different point of view.

…

Sally could see Jeremy, sitting in the corner looking decidedly miserable.

Why didn’t he give it up?

Ever since grade school, he had clung to this notion that they could be friends, perhaps more than friends.

Nothing could be more abhorrent.

He was one of those people whom her father despised, the poor who refused to make something of themselves.  Everyone had the same opportunity to make something of themselves.

That’s why it surprised her that Jeremy had elected not to follow his father into plumbing and decided to go to college.

Her college.

“Do you think he’ll give up now?”

Jenny, her best friend and often co-conspirator, saw her glancing in Jeremy’s direction, not for the first time.

“No.”

“But you wish he would?”

Sally’s hesitation spoke volumes.

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re going to have to decide what it is you want because Will isn’t going to wait forever.”

Will was the most eligible of all the boys in college, the boy all the girls swooned over, and out of all of them, he had singled out Sally.  She was flattered, but there was something about him.

Jeremy had told her Will was not all he seemed to be but refused to explain why.  What other reason would he have if not out of pure jealousy?

And she had finally told Jeremy once and for all to leave her alone or she would have him removed from the college.  Her father was a huge donor and could make it happen.

Maybe she still would.

Just then Will, and three of his teammates arrived and filled the remaining seats at the table. 

Time to take her mind off the annoying gnat and focus of what was important.

…

Once again there is a myriad of paths for this story.

But the seeds are there:

– Does Sally have feelings for Jeremy?

– What is it about Will that worries Jeremy, other than jealousy?

Stay tuned…

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

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?

An excerpt from “Sunday in New York”

Now available on Amazon at:  https://amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

Williams’ Restaurant, East 65th Street, New York, Saturday, 8:00 p.m.

We met the Blaine’s at Williams’, a rather upmarket restaurant that the Blaine’s frequently visited, and had recommended.

Of course, during the taxi ride there, Alison reminded me that with my new job, we would be able to go to many more places like Williams’.  It was, at worst, more emotional blackmail, because as far as Alison was concerned, we were well on our way to posh restaurants, the Trump Tower Apartments, and the trappings of the ‘executive set’.

It would be a miracle if I didn’t strangle Elaine before the night was over.  It was she who had filled Alison’s head with all this stuff and nonsense.

Aside from the half frown half-smile, Alison was looking stunning.  It was months since she had last dressed up, and she was especially wearing the dress I’d bought her for our 5th anniversary that cost a month’s salary.  On her, it was worth it, and I would have paid more if I had to.  She had adored it, and me, for a week or so after.

For tonight, I think I was close to getting back on that pedestal.

She had the looks and figure to draw attention, the sort movie stars got on the red carpet, and when we walked into the restaurant, I swear there were at least five seconds silence, and many more gasps.

Even I had a sudden loss of breath earlier in the evening when she came out of the dressing room.  Once more I was reminded of how lucky I was that she had agreed to marry me.  Amid all those self-doubts, I couldn’t believe she had loved me when there were so many others ‘out there’ who were more appealing.

Elaine was out of her seat and came over just as the Head Waiter hovered into sight.  She personally escorted Alison to the table, allowing me to follow like the Queen’s consort, while she and Alison basked in the admiring glances of the other patrons.

More than once I heard the muted question, “Who is she?”

Jimmy stood, we shook hands, and then we sat together.  It was not the usual boy, girl, boy, girl seating arrangement.  Jimmy and I on one side and Elaine and Alison on the other.

The battle lines were drawn.

Jimmy was looking fashionable, with the permanent blade one beard, unkempt hair, and designer dinner suit that looked like he’d slept in it.  Alison insisted I wear a tuxedo, and I looked like the proverbial penguin or just a thinner version of Alfred Hitchcock.

The bow tie had been slightly crooked, but just before we stepped out she had straightened it.  And took the moment to look deeply into my soul.  It was one of those moments when words were not necessary.

Then it was gone.

I relived it briefly as I sat and she looked at me.  A penetrating look that told me to ‘behave’.

When we were settled, Elaine said, in that breathless, enthusiastic manner of hers when she was excited, “So, Harry, you are finally moving up.”  It was not a question, but a statement.

I was not sure what she meant by ‘finally’ but I accepted it with good grace.  Sometimes Elaine was prone to using figures of speech I didn’t understand.  I guessed she was talking about the new job.  “It was supposed to be a secret.”

She smiled widely.  “There are no secrets between Al and I, are there Al?”

I looked at ‘Al’ and saw a brief look of consternation.

I was not sure Alison liked the idea of being called Al.  I tried it once and was admonished.  But it was interesting her ‘best friend forever’ was allowed that distinction when I was not.  It was, perhaps, another indicator of how far I’d slipped in her estimation.

Perhaps, I thought, it was a necessary evil.  As I understood it, the Blaine’s were our mentors at the Trump Tower, because they didn’t just let ‘anyone’ in.  I didn’t ask if the Blaine’s thought we were just ‘anyone’ before I got the job offer.

And then there was that look between Alison and Elaine, quickly stolen before Alison realized I was looking at both of them.  I was out of my depth, in a place I didn’t belong, with people I didn’t understand.  And yet, apparently, Alison did.  I must have missed the memo.

“No,” Alison said softly, stealing a glance in my direction, “No secrets between friends.”

No secrets.  Her look conveyed something else entirely.

The waiter brought champagne, Krug, and poured glasses for each of us.  It was not the cheap stuff, and I was glad I brought a couple of thousand dollars with me.  We were going to need it.

Then, a toast.

To a new job and a new life.

“When did you decide?”  Elaine was effusive at the best of times, but with the champagne, it was worse.

Alison had a strange expression on her face.  It was obvious she had told Elaine it was a done deal, even before I’d made up my mind.  Perhaps she’d assumed I might be ‘refreshingly honest’ in front of Elaine, but it could also mean she didn’t really care what I might say or do.

Instead of consternation, she looked happy, and I realized it would be churlish, even silly if I made a scene.  I knew what I wanted to say.  I also knew that it would serve little purpose provoking Elaine, or upsetting Alison.  This was not the time or the place.  Alison had been looking forward to coming here, and I was not going to spoil it.

Instead, I said, smiling, “When I woke up this morning and found Alison missing.  If she had been there, I would not have noticed the water stain on the roof above our bed, and decide there and then how much I hated the place.” I used my reassuring smile, the one I used with the customers when all hell was breaking loose, and the forest fire was out of control.  “It’s the little things.  They all add up until one day …”  I shrugged.  “I guess that one day was today.”

I saw an incredulous look pass between Elaine and Alison, a non-verbal question; perhaps, is he for real?  Or; I told you he’d come around.

I had no idea the two were so close.

“How quaint,” Elaine said, which just about summed up her feelings towards me.  I think, at that moment, I lost some brownie points.  It was all I could come up with at short notice.

“Yes,” I added, with a little more emphasis than I wanted.  “Alison was off to get some study in with one of her friends.”

“Weren’t the two of you off to the Hamptons, a weekend with some friends?” Jimmy piped up, and immediately got the ‘shut up you fool’ look, that cut that line of conversation dead.  Someone forgot to feed Jimmy his lines.

It was followed by the condescending smile from Elaine, and “I need to powder my nose.  Care to join me, Al?”

A frown, then a forced smile for her new best friend.  “Yes.”

I watched them leave the table and head in the direction of the restroom, looking like they were in earnest conversation.  I thought ‘Al’ looked annoyed, but I could be wrong.

I had to say Jimmy looked more surprised than I did.

There was that odd moment of silence between us, Jimmy still smarting from his death stare, and for me, the Alison and Elaine show.  I was quite literally gob-smacked.

I drained my champagne glass gathering some courage and turned to him.  “By the way, we were going to have a weekend away, but this legal tutorial thing came up.  You know Alison is doing her law degree.”

He looked startled when he realized I had spoken.  He was looking intently at a woman several tables over from us, one who’d obviously forgotten some basic garments when getting dressed.  Or perhaps it was deliberate.  She’d definitely had some enhancements done.

He dragged his eyes back to me.  “Yes.  Elaine said something or other about it.  But I thought she said the tutor was out of town and it had been postponed until next week.  Perhaps I got it wrong.  I usually do.”

“Perhaps I’ve got it wrong.”  I shrugged, as the dark thoughts started swirling in my head again.  “This week or next, what does it matter?”

Of course, it mattered to me, and I digested what he said with a sinking heart.  It showed there was another problem between Alison and me; it was possible she was now telling me lies.  If what he said was true and I had no reason to doubt him, where was she going tomorrow morning, and had she really been with a friend studying today?

We poured some more champagne, had a drink, then he asked, “This promotion thing, what’s it worth?”

“Trouble, I suspect.  Definitely more money, but less time at home.”

“Oh,” raised eyebrows.  Obviously, the women had not talked about the job in front of him, or, at least, not all the details.  “You sure you want to do that?”

At last the voice of reason.  “Me?  No.”

“Yet you accepted the job.”

I sucked in a breath or two while I considered whether I could trust him.  Even if I couldn’t, I could see my ship was sinking, so it wouldn’t matter what I told him, or what Elaine might find out from him.  “Jimmy, between you and me I haven’t as yet decided one way or another.  To be honest, I won’t know until I go up to Barclay’s office and he asks me the question.”

“Barclay?”

“My boss.”

“Elaine’s doing a job for a Barclay that recently moved in the tower a block down from us.  I thought I recognized the name.”

“How did Elaine get the job?”

“Oh, Alison put him onto her.”

“When?”

“A couple of months ago.  Why?”

I shrugged and tried to keep a straight face, while my insides were churning up like the wake of a supertanker.  I felt sick, faint, and wanting to die all at the same moment.  “Perhaps she said something about it, but it didn’t connect at the time.  Too busy with work I expect.  I think I seriously need to get away for a while.”

I could hardly breathe, my throat was constricted and I knew I had to keep it together.  I could see Elaine and Alison coming back, so I had to calm down.  I sucked in some deep breaths, and put my ‘manage a complete and utter disaster’ look on my face.

And I had to change the subject, quickly, so I said, “Jimmy, Elaine told Alison, who told me, you were something of a guru of the cause and effects of the global economic meltdown.  Now, I have a couple of friends who have been expounding this theory …”

Like flicking a switch, I launched into the well-worn practice of ‘running a distraction’, like at work when we needed to keep the customer from discovering the truth.  It was one of the things I was good at, taking over a conversation and pushing it in a different direction.  It was salvaging a good result from an utter disaster, and if ever there was a time that it was required, it was right here, right now.

When Alison sat down and looked at me, she knew something had happened between Jimmy and I.  I might have looked pale or red-faced, or angry or disappointed, it didn’t matter.  If that didn’t seal the deal for her, the fact I took over the dining engagement did.  She knew well enough the only time I did that was when everything was about to go to hell in a handbasket.  She’d seen me in action before and had been suitably astonished.

But I got into gear, kept the champagne flowing and steered the conversation, as much as one could from a seasoned professional like Elaine, and, I think, in Jimmy’s eyes, he saw the battle lines and knew who took the crown on points.  Neither Elaine nor Jimmy suspected anything, and if the truth be told, I had improved my stocks with Elaine.  She was at times both surprised and interested, even willing to take a back seat.

Alison, on the other hand, tried poking around the edges, and, once when Elaine and Jimmy had got up to have a cigarette outside, questioned me directly.  I chose to ignore her, and pretend nothing had happened, instead of telling her how much I was enjoying the evening.

She had her ‘secrets’.  I had mine.

At the end of the evening, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I was physically sick from the pent up tension and the implications of what Jimmy had told me.  It took a while for me to pull myself together; so long, in fact, Jimmy came looking for me.  I told him I’d drunk too much champagne, and he seemed satisfied with that excuse.  When I returned, both Alison and Elaine noticed how pale I was but neither made any comment.

It was a sad way to end what was supposed to be a delightful evening, which to a large degree it was for the other three.  But I had achieved what I set out to do, and that was to play them at their own game, watching the deception, once I knew there was a deception, as warily as a cat watches its prey.

I had also discovered Jimmy’s real calling; a professor of economics at the same University Alison was doing her law degree.  It was no surprise in the end, on a night where surprises abounded, that the world could really be that small.

We parted in the early hours of the morning, a taxi whisking us back to the Lower East Side, another taking the Blaine’s back to the Upper West Side.  But, in our case, as Alison reminded me, it would not be for much longer.  She showed concern for my health, asked me what was wrong.  It took all the courage I could muster to tell her it was most likely something I ate and the champagne, and that I would be fine in the morning.

She could see quite plainly it was anything other than what I told her, but she didn’t pursue it.  Perhaps she just didn’t care what I was playing at.

And yet, after everything that had happened, once inside our ‘palace’, the events of the evening were discarded, like her clothing, and she again reminded me of what we had together in the early years before the problems had set in.

It left me confused and lost.

I couldn’t sleep because my mind had now gone down that irreversible path that told me I was losing her, that she had found someone else, and that our marriage was in its last death throes.

And now I knew it had something to do with Barclay.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

Sunday In New York

The cinema of my dreams – It all started in Venice – Episode 16

A change in plans

…

I couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t the fact that Cecilia was asleep in the next bed, though it was a little unsettling, more it was the series of events that got me to this point.

Something didn’t add up.

I had one of those sixth sense moments, one of the times when I did close my eyes, and in looking down on myself, tied to a chair, with Larry holding a gun to my head screaming it was all my fault.

In that scenario, it had been far too easy for him to take me.  And in the final moments of that reverie, before I opened my eyes, there was a blurred face in the background, the face of the traitor.

Only I could not get a clear view of who it was.

The bottom line, it was a trap.  Everything pointed to it, and while I wanted to believe what I had decided was the right option, Cecilia was right.  I had been out of the game too long’ and Rodby was right to send a set of fresh eyes.

Juliet was a pawn, coerced to do Larry’s will because of her brother, and her note was a story no doubt conceived out of careful planning on Larry’s part.  He was hoping I would treat him like a moron.

And the irrefutable truth of the matter was that Larry was not going to stop, not unless he had a compelling reason to.

It was about 2 in the morning when I got out of bed and shut myself in the bathroom, and sat on the floor seemingly staring into space, but running scenarios, like I used to. 

An hour later, I had a plan.

The first call was to Alfie who was, by a quirk of fate, still awake.

“This had better be good.”

Awake, but in a cranky mood.

“Larry’s in Sorrento with his family isn’t he?”

“Wife and eldest daughter.  The son is in Milan at the moment visiting another relative.  Why?”

“You’re going to have them picked up and taken to a place where we can talk.”

“Are you mad?”

“Quite sane, I assure you.”

“Rodby warned me this might happen.  Taking them is nigh on impossible given their security.”

“Not where I’m intending you pick them up.  Just assemble a team and wait for my text on where and when.”

“Rodby will never OK this.”

“Tell him it’s an opportunity not to be missed and to send his best interrogator.”

Without another word, he hung up. 

Rodby might think I was a little radical, and at times I was, but my successes outweighed the failures, and he had always wanted to get Larry into a one-on-one to answer some questions.  If he tried not to overthink it, this could turn out to be a genuine opportunity.

The second call was to Larry’s mother.  She had always been a night owl and I suspected she might be at a party somewhere given the rowdy background noise on her phone when she answered.

I said, “It’s been a while.”

Silence.  I had the awful feeling for a moment that she might either dismiss me or simply hang up.

Then, with a lot less background noise, she said, “nnn, how lovely to hear from you again.  I was sorry to hear about Violetta.  I came to the funeral but thought it best not to intrude.”

I had not seen her but I knew she would have come.  And she was right, I was in no fit state of mind that day to address anyone.

“I appreciate that.  Thank you.”

“Now, I know this is not a social call because my son is here and I’ve been waiting for a call.”

“Sorry.  I should have called you sooner but it’s been difficult especially to talk to those who knew her, and yes, it’s about Larry.  For some reason he’s decided to come after me, blaming me for his brother’s death.”

“No surprise to me, though.  It’s become his latest obsession.  The reason is obvious, especially to family.  The provisions of his fathers will come due in three weeks’ time, and if it’s proved that one brother killed the other, then he forfeits his half of the inheritance, and we are talking a lot of money and property.”

“You know the truth about his bother as well as I do.”

She had asked me to try and convince Fabio, Larry’s younger brother, not to join the family business and I had convinced him that it was his mother’s wish for him to go back to Italy where her family lived. 

That was when Larry stepped in and forced him to do one last job.  Larry should have been at the delivery, not send his brother in his place, and it did occur to me that Larry knew it was going to go bad.

I followed Fabio there, and witnessed the deal fall apart, the buyers were expecting Larry, not his brother.  But that was not the worst of it.  An armed gang came out of the shadows and started shooting.  I tried my best to protect Fabio, taking out the armed gang, but Fabio had been hit, but not fatally and even I left him, before the paramedics arrived, he was alive or conscious.

What happened from the moment I left him and he arrived dead on arrival at the hospital was only something Larry could explain.  I had provided his mother with physical proof of Fabio being alive at the meeting, and she too had questions that Larry had never adequately answered. 

“He will not believe me, and because if who I am, he has turned the others against me.  He has become smarter in the last few years.”

“Who’s helping him, I can’t believe he’s capable of doing all this on his own.”

“He says it is, actually bragging about it.”

“I was surprised Brenda and Valentina came with him.  She hates you.”  Brenda was his American wife, the daughter of Mafia Don, Valentina the daughter.

“And, that’s the hell of it.  You know the saying misfortune makes strange bedfellows, well, she tells me he’s having an affair, but I got the boys to have a look into the matter and it’s not an affair.  She is the head of a rival gang that’s been incrementally taking over our turf and now I know why.  She’s got him dangling in a string.”

A lot can happen in a few years.  The only rival gang that I could think of was the DeBortino’s.  If this woman was a problem perhaps the seeds of my plan could be extended slightly to help her with her problem and get rid of mine

“I want to get Larry off my back, and you want to be a good mother-in-law so perhaps we can help each other.”

“What do you have in mind.”

I told her, and at least she didn’t snort at the idea.

Then, after thinking about what Larry’s mother had said I sent a text message to Alfie asking for a deep dive into her life and business, and if she had any dark secrets.

Another idea had come to mind.

© Charles Heath 2023

Writing a book in 365 days

Day 17

Today’s topic is Words of Wisdom.

Can you find the words to describe what you think fiction means to you? Or even what it is for a particular novel?

One opinion, Russian, is that it’s aesthetic bliss. To me, most works by Russian writers tend to go on and on and on. Fyodor Dostoevsky is a case in point. I grant you that if you can sit through the novel, which is very good, your opinion might be a little different. Not so much Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and some of his works.

In my younger days of reading when a large book never fazed me, a thousand plus pages (And Quietly Flows The Don – War and Peace) to a few hundred (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) to mid-range five hundred pages (Doctor Zhivago) they all could tend to be tedious, though I have to say Doctor Zhivago as a book was fascinating, the film by David Lean, captivating, and the stage play, boring beyond words.

That is to say once you for past the Russians, there were British authors like Charles Dickens who could get up to that magic number of pages, and whose works could reach that lofty thousand. They were however perhaps more interesting, and most having been made into mini series for television, far more interesting as a spectacle than in reading the book.

And, of course, there is Jane Austen. Need I say more.

But there are times when you pick up a book and start reading the first page, and then stop. It tells a budding author that on the one hand it’s not going to be your genre, and on the other, that the opinion of the book is in the eye of the beholder.

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 13

I came across this photo:

This is like so many roads off in what is known as the Gold Coast hinterland, that tract of land between the ocean and the mountain range that runs along the eastern side of the country, known as the Great Dividing Range.

This is the road that runs behind where friends of ours live, and runs on down into a valley where a river runs, and when the rains come down, floods.

It’s hard to imagine that a few hundred years ago all of this would have been tropical jungle, and intrepid explorers would be making their way north or west, just to see what was there.

I imagine in another 100 years, all of this will be gone, given over to housing, shopping malls, and factories, and anything that resembles country living will have been moved out to far beyond the mountain range and towards the what is called the ‘red’ centre.

Or over that time there is a reckoning with mother nature, and if there is, I know who I’d put my money on.

But, as for a story…

…

It was quite literally the road to nowhere.

You just had to follow it until it disintegrated into a dirt track, and then for another 20 miles before you finished up at a rusty gate attached to a dilapidated fence that surrounds the a house that was cleverly hidden behind a grove of trees, the only place I knew as home. We had no phones, no television or radio, no real contact with the outside world.

Until, one day, my fairy godmother came and rescued me.

Yes, it felt like that.

Little had I realized that there were any other people in our family, and it took until the death of my parents to find out I had grandparents, and a much larger extended family.

There had been, according to my father, no reason to leave. Or for anyone else to come, and the few that ventured to end of the road, found there was nothing to see, and no reason to stay.

For all intents and purposes we didn’t exist, and, oddly, I was content with that.

Until I decided to venture further afield, run into two people, a man and a woman, both of whom said they were related to my father, and ask me to take them back with them to meet my father,

A bad choice, but I didn’t know it at the time.

Not until my father ran them off at the point of the gun he always had with him.

He knew who they were, and it surprised me to see the change in him, from the strong silent type, to a man greatly afraid, though he would not tell me of what.

He just told me to lock myself in my room, and not to come out for anything.

I heard him leave, but not come back.

It took three days before I left that room, to find I was completely alone in the house. Outside, it was a different story. There, half way between the back door and the barn were the two people I’d brought home, both dead. A little further away were my parents, also dead.

And another man, who was leaning over my father.

I stopped when he looked up in my direction.

“You must be Jake.”

How did he know my name? I nodded, warily watching him in case I had to run.

He went from body to body, checking to see if they were still alive, then stood and turned around to look at me.

“Do you know what happened?”

“No.”

“Do you know who the other two are?”

I assumed he was referring to the visitors.

“No. The man said he was a relative, asked me to bring them here.”

“How did you…”

Escape? “My father told me to hide and not come out.” If this man was associated with the other two…

Perhaps he saw my trepidation.

“I’m a friend of your father’s, a policeman. You were supposed to be safe here.”

We were, until I brought the harbingers of death. “Not any more,” I said.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

Writing a novel in 365 days

Day 2

We get to write today, 200 words, though the subject is pretty straightforward, it could take me in any direction.

Doesn’t everyone have an aggravating friend?

For a woman, it could be that friend with a heart of gold but an acid tongue, who sometimes doesn’t have any filter.

For a man, the first girl he ever fell madly in love with but it was unrequited, who parked him in the friend zone, well, the outer rim, and not averse to throwing him under the bus.

Been there, and you don’t learn but keep returning for more, hoping one day…

So, let’s run with it.

…

“When will you ever learn?”  Larry slid into the seat next to me with another odd assortment of dishes he would call ‘sampling the wares’.

The cafeteria was abuzz with lunchgoers.  I was sitting in a corner, as far away as anyone I knew, licking my wounds after the latest humiliation.

“She just isn’t worth the effort.  Just look at the fool she has as a boyfriend.”

He was right.  He had always been right, but it was that old adage ‘hope springs eternal’ that kept me going back to the well.

We could both see her and three of her friends flirting with members of the football team. 

He patted me on the back.  “Time to go in a new direction.  Eloise’s cousin is over from San Francisco and Wendy and I are taking her on a tour.  You’re welcome to come with us, and to be honest, I would make a lousy tour guide.”

Perhaps it was time to give up those foolish notions and move on.

“OK.  When?”

“Tomorrow.  We will pick you up at eight.”

If I could have predicted the consequences of that single offhand decision, I would have stayed in bed and wallowed in that sea of self-pity.

…

This story can go in so many different directions.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Searching for locations: The Silk Factory, Suzhou, China

China is renowned for its exquisite silk, so naturally, a visit to the Silk Spinning Factory is part of today’s tour.

After that, we will be heading downtown to an unspecified location where we’re getting a boat ride, walk through a typical Chinese shopping experience, and coffee at a coffee shop that is doubling as the meeting place, after we soak up the local atmosphere.

The problem with that is that if the entire collective trip a deal tourists take this route then the savvy shopkeepers will jack up their prices tenfold because we’re tourists with money.  It’ll be interesting to see how expensive everything is.

So…

Before we reach the silk factory, we are told that Suzhou is the main silk area of China, and we will be visiting a nearly 100 years old, Suzhou No 1 Silk Mill, established in 1926.  Suzhou has a 4,700-year history of making silk products.  It is located at No. 94, Nanmen Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.

Then we arrive at the Silk Factory, another government-owned establishment with a castiron guarantee of quality and satisfaction.

The look and feel of the doona cover certainly backs up that claim

And the colors and variety is amazing (as is the cost of those exquisite sets)

We get to see the silk cocoon stretched beyond imagination, and see how the silk thread is extracted, then off to the showroom for the sales pitch.

It isn’t a hard sell, and the sheets, doonas, pillows, and pillowcases, are reasonably priced, and come with their own suitcase (for free) so you can take them with you, or free shipping, by slow boat, if you prefer not to take the goods with you.

We opt for the second choice, as there’s no room left in our baggage after packing the Chinese Medicine.

Is it a problem to get lost in your make-believe world for a while?

It seems that we can be completely focused on a single task to the detriment of all else, and, when that task is complete, suddenly we feel totally drained.

That’s how I feel right now.

The current year is almost half over…  Where did the time go?

All I have to do is get past the publication of my next two books, take some time away from writing, and then I should be invigorated.  Perhaps COVID will have something to do with it because it will be more of the same, rather than a brave new world, we will be counteracting new surges and variations with resultant isolations, so it will be more of a case of head down, tail up, with nowhere to go, no travel to plan, and not able to go anywhere other than the shops, the doctor or the chemist.

This is despite our fearless leaders telling us that COVID is no longer a problem.  Sadly, for people with compromised immune systems, it is, and we are being thrown under the bus for the sake of getting the economy going again.  What are a few lives for the greater good, eh?

And for computer programmers who never leave their semi-darkened lair, ordering pizza and Coke, it must have been a Godsend.

Given that I prefer to be at home, working on any number of stories, it usually is for me too.

But, have I been working too hard, and it’s finally got to me.  I mean, you can only write so much before the brain starts to fry?

But, at the very least. I have been working on the two novels that needed to be completed, and they are finally there, and other than NaNoWriMo which saw another go through the mill I’m still writing a few pages a night, and another two that I have been working on here and there are now ready for the first edit.

This has all happened to the detriment of my episodic stories, which have lain idle since almost a year ago, but in recent weeks I picked up one or two and wrote two or three more episodes, just to keep it ticking over.  Another has five episodes I hope to publish soon.  The last I’ve finally finished and I am feeling pleased with myself.  My editor has it now.

Something else that pleases me, and is entirely unexpected, is that I have sold a number of copies of my books in the last few months or so.  I know I’m not about to be vying for the top of the bestseller list, but it’s still satisfying.