Now that I’ve gone through the story and made quite a few changes, it’s time to look at the story
…
Jack exchanged a look with the shopkeeper, who in return gave him a slight shrug as if to say he ‘we tried and failed’.
And she was clearly scared of something, and it looked to him like it might be the shopkeeper. He had no idea what happened before he burst into the shop, but from the tenseness in the air, it had nothing to do with the boy on the floor.
He could see the girl was not strung out on drugs, in fact, she did not like a user at all. If she had been, Jack was positive they’d both be on the floor, dead, or almost dead.
Another rumour just came back to him, this was apparently not the first time the store had been robbed, but by the time the police arrived, the would-be robbers were gone.
What was different this time?
Was it the fact the girl was just the unfortunate partner of a boy who was on drugs and had found herself in a dangerous position, one that couldn’t be dealt with or explained away to the advantage of the shopkeeper?
Beth, his wife, had told him she didn’t like nor trust the shopkeeper and that her friend in the same apartment block had told her he had been seen selling drugs to youths who hung around just before he closed. She had warned him it would not be safe, but he had ignored her.
It was a bit late to tell her she might be right.
He took a half step towards the door, judging the distance and time it would take to open the door and get out.
Too far, and he would be too slow, and his reward for running would be a bullet in the back.
Perhaps another half step when she wasn’t looking.
It’s been a long morning, and I sleep in. I think the extra time is warranted because I wrote until there was nothing left in the tank. Then, I let the plot unfold in my mind as I slept.
I had a dream.
I have IT experience. I know the how hard it was, in the early days of networking, to get it right. And all of the factors that have to be in place to keep it working.
I become Bill Chandler.
Servers, server software, wiring, Ethernet. Internet, WAN, LAN, hub, switch, meltdown. The days when desks had terminals, not personal computers, and then the sudden disappearance of the mainframe, to local area networks.
The bottle of Scotch in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet (in the days when occupational health and safety was not so strictly enforced) for celebrations when it worked, or commiserations when it didn’t.
So, today I’m expanding on the plot lines:
Chandler, recently divorced and now on his first holiday on his own, contemplated what he’s going to do. It doesn’t last long and is recalled to the office to manage a crisis.
Back in the office, Benton is unavailable, so Chandler goes to see Aitchison, the Security chief. There, he learns of Richardson’s murder, which suicide, the police theory, the least likely cause, and that of Halligan, whose death is also questionable. There is also a question over the computer network and that of another running within their current system. This is something Chandler knows nothing about. There is a way of finding out if such a network existed. Meanwhile, the implications are frightening, and Aitchison is clearly afraid of something.
OK, another character has popped up, Halligan, but we’ll worry about that later.
Back on familiar territory, Chandler gets down to the job of finding out what information he can. Before beginning the physical search, he is questioned closely by Gator, the policeman, on external communications involving their computer systems.
OK, that’ll need a bit of background on Gator and what information he has.
After Gator departs, Chandler goes to find Jennifer. By now, the entire network is down, and they have discovered that several servers have been tampered with; in fact, the very ones believed to be the gateway to the ‘hidden’ network. Alas, the evidence had been removed.
Deciding there was nothing that could be done because the maintenance contractors had been called in, Chandler and Jennifer went to lunch. Chandler runs into a very frightened Aitchison, who cryptically says he fears for his life. About the same time shots are fired, Aitchison is killed, and Chandler is seriously wounded.
Wow, I’m getting better at this planning stuff, though it’s early days yet. There are several ideas about the ramifications of Bill getting shot, but that can wait till later.
Time to flesh this plotline out in words.
Doesn’t look like Sunday is going to be a day off.
Alone, and awaiting your fate, minutes become hours, hours become a lifetime
Now that I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, it’s time to find out what sort of trouble is waiting. It might be hot in the desert, but I think it’s going to get hotter in the underground lair.
…
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, your choice.”
There was always a choice, I’m sure, but at the end of the day, it always ended up being the hard way.
It had been a long, and somewhat sleepless, night, pondering the whys and wherefores of what just happened.
I’m guessing I was supposed to die, like the pilot; now I was a thorn in their side.
The two men sent to collect me were purposefully selected for terror value, a sign that if I was contemplating anything other than full co-operation, these were the sort of men I would have to deal with.
The reality, on the other hand, was sometimes completely different.
I still hadn’t got proof that this was an enemy or rogue unit, so no point panicking yet.
“Let’s try the easy way first,” I said, getting off the stretcher and standing.
One remained outside the room, the other, after unlocking the door, ventured as far as the doorway. He seemed disappointed at my choice.
I walked between them further into the labyrinth until we reached another doorway, this with an opaque glass window, and through it I could see there was someone already in the room.
He opened the door, ushered me in, giving that little push in the back that was to remind me of the controlled force he had and would unleash. A nod in the direction of the room’s occupant, he withdrew and closed the door.
The occupant was an older man, in his 60s, the sort one would mistake as a university professor, but on reality was a master torturer in the guise of an interrogator.
We had them, I’d heard about them, but this was a first.
“Sit, Mr James.”
All this politeness was a front; it had to be, designed perhaps to take me off my guard.
There was a table on one side with two chairs opposite each other. It wasn’t much of a table, and the chairs looked cheap and uncomfortable for both of us.
There was nothing else in the room and nothing on the table. The discussion, no doubt, would be recorded, or perhaps the man had a very good memory.
To make a good first impression, I sat.
For five minutes, I could feel him looking at me, trying to make me feel uncomfortable. It was disconcerting, but I had decided to speak when spoken to.
It may have been amusing back when I was a child, stepping through a broken mirror and imagining i had gone back in time, to an age when the house was a beautiful old mansion.
Once it was a landmark, a place with many rooms and a sprawling, manicured garden surrounding it, with a maze and a lake with fish.
Now it was a frightening outline against a dark, lightning-filled sky, surrounded by townsfolk who wanted the eyesore demolished.
The city authorities had issued a repair order on the house and gardens, and failure to comply would see it declared unfit for habitation and a demolition order.
The thing is, my grandmother, a very sprightly 90-year-old, was determined to fight them and everyone else, often brandishing her trusty old blunderbuss at anyone who dared to breach the front gates.
The mayor’s brother wanted the land so he could finish his condominium conversion and fulfil his promise to the other condo holders that the noise would be gone and a golf course and swimming pool, along with a clubhouse and cinema, would be built.
She was fighting a losing battle.
She didn’t have the money to do the repairs or to fight any more court battles.
My mother didn’t see the point. The developer had offered five million, enough to get a new house somewhere else. Gran wanted twenty million, what it was worth. The authorities were going to resume it for one million.
Such machinations were beyond my comprehension. I might be older now, but it was still a fairytale castle. Just the duel curved staircase from the foyer to the first floor was magic.
I had seen my sister descend that staircase in her prom dress like a princess, and could imagine all who came before her.
Standing in the middle of the ballroom, it was not hard to imagine the dances held there, the people doing a synchronised waltz as I had done once when learning it for my prom, the school orchestra playing, and all the boys and girls dancing.
And the parties it once hosted.
Now dusty, abandoned, silent except for the odd creaking of purported ghosts.
There were eighty rooms, sixty of them bedrooms, in two wings over three floors. Fifteen families were living in the house: my grandmother, each of her eight children, of which my mother was one, twenty-three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
None of the family left the city where they were born, lived, and most likely would die. None had ever seen the need to leave.
Until now.
I was sitting on the bottom step of the elegant but decrepit staircase, contemplating whether it would be safe to slide down the banister, when Aunt Ruby skipped down the stairs and plonked herself down next to me.
Aunt Ruby was always in Halloween costumes, or so I thought. She kept saying she was a Goth, but I had no idea what that meant.
She was also a computer hacker, and I knew what that was. Every day, we were waiting for the FBI or the CIA to turn up at the front door.
“Guess what?”
“The cops are coming to take you away?”
It was a running joke.
“No. Cracked it. We’re rich.”
Until the cops came and took her away.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She handed me a piece of paper. It had the name of a bank that I had never heard of in the Cayman Islands, in the name of some corporation no one could pronounce.
The sum of money $22,176,328.76.
“You are this corporation?”
“After it slushes through forty-three shell companies that will keep whoever it is used for a year. It’s on its way to a Swiss numbered account, then Cloverville will be born.”
“Cloverville?”
“My money, my name.” She jumped up and ran off to tell Granny.
…
Of course, having the money and deciding what to do were two very different things. Everyone had a very different idea.
My parents wanted their room, already palatial, to be even more so. I wanted my room to be bigger with my own bathroom, now very tired of being last in line. Maybe if I got up earlier…
Everyone wanted a cafeteria and kitchen separate, modelled on the dining room at the Savoy, but my grandmother liked the current kitchen with a wooden stove that kept us all warm in winter and boiling in summer, and we were all together around a large table.
It also meant that we all wanted servants, but as Aunt Ruby said, people didn’t have servants these days, and we had to do our dirty work, like cooking and cleaning, and she would not be employing servants. Gran could remember the day when there were servants, and she said they had never been treated very well or taken for granted.
People were doing it now, so people could keep doing it after the renovations.
Everyone wanted their own TV, and of course, it was going to be like a motel. A TV in every bedroom. Maybe. Aunt Ruby said the children were not getting a TV; they would get an iPad, and that was it. Parents could go to the Cinema Room.
What Cinema Room?
The basement was being cleared out of 200 years of clutter, and it was going to be a cinema, holding about 100 or so people.
I was surprised Aunt Ruby didn’t want to take over the bedroom that my parents were in. That’s when I learned she was taking up residence in the north tower.
I think that most authors are their own worst enemies!
Just when you think that the story is done, and you’re on the third re-read, just to make sure…
Damn!
I don’t like the way that chapter reads, and what’s worse, it’s about the tenth time I’ve looked at it.
It doesn’t matter the last three times you read it, it was just fine, or the editor has read it, and the chapter passed without any major comment.
I think the main problem I have is letting go. For some odd reason, certain parts of a story sometimes seem to me as though they are not complete, or may be missing a vital clue or connection for the story’s continuity.
That, of course, happens when you rewrite a section that is earlier in the story, and then have to make ongoing changes.
Yes, I hear the stern warnings that I should have made a comprehensive outline at the beginning, but the trouble is, I can change the ending as I’m writing it and then must go back and add the hooks earlier on. Not the best method, but isn’t that what an editor is for, to pick up the missed connections and out-of-the-blue events that happen for no reason?
I find that often after leaving a finished story for a month before the next reading, the whole picture must formulate itself in my head, so when I re-read, there was always a problem, one I didn’t want to think about until the re-read.
Even then, it might survive a second pass.
I know the scene is in trouble when I get to it, and alarm bells are going off. I find anything else to do but look at it.
So, here I am, making major changes.
But at least now I am satisfied with where it’s going.
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 just 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 down of her for the last three months, and if 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 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 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 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 where who, 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 I just shrugged and asked 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 that intimacy we used to have when 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 and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. 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. On 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, follows 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 or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops 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 t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff 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’s been 6 different types of plane depart, 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 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.
It may have been amusing back when I was a child, stepping through a broken mirror and imagining i had gone back in time, to an age when the house was a beautiful old mansion.
Once it was a landmark, a place with many rooms and a sprawling, manicured garden surrounding it, with a maze and a lake with fish.
Now it was a frightening outline against a dark, lightning-filled sky, surrounded by townsfolk who wanted the eyesore demolished.
The city authorities had issued a repair order on the house and gardens, and failure to comply would see it declared unfit for habitation and a demolition order.
The thing is, my grandmother, a very sprightly 90-year-old, was determined to fight them and everyone else, often brandishing her trusty old blunderbuss at anyone who dared to breach the front gates.
The mayor’s brother wanted the land so he could finish his condominium conversion and fulfil his promise to the other condo holders that the noise would be gone and a golf course and swimming pool, along with a clubhouse and cinema, would be built.
She was fighting a losing battle.
She didn’t have the money to do the repairs or to fight any more court battles.
My mother didn’t see the point. The developer had offered five million, enough to get a new house somewhere else. Gran wanted twenty million, what it was worth. The authorities were going to resume it for one million.
Such machinations were beyond my comprehension. I might be older now, but it was still a fairytale castle. Just the duel curved staircase from the foyer to the first floor was magic.
I had seen my sister descend that staircase in her prom dress like a princess, and could imagine all who came before her.
Standing in the middle of the ballroom, it was not hard to imagine the dances held there, the people doing a synchronised waltz as I had done once when learning it for my prom, the school orchestra playing, and all the boys and girls dancing.
And the parties it once hosted.
Now dusty, abandoned, silent except for the odd creaking of purported ghosts.
There were eighty rooms, sixty of them bedrooms, in two wings over three floors. Fifteen families were living in the house: my grandmother, each of her eight children, of which my mother was one, twenty-three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
None of the family left the city where they were born, lived, and most likely would die. None had ever seen the need to leave.
Until now.
I was sitting on the bottom step of the elegant but decrepit staircase, contemplating whether it would be safe to slide down the banister, when Aunt Ruby skipped down the stairs and plonked herself down next to me.
Aunt Ruby was always in Halloween costumes, or so I thought. She kept saying she was a Goth, but I had no idea what that meant.
She was also a computer hacker, and I knew what that was. Every day, we were waiting for the FBI or the CIA to turn up at the front door.
“Guess what?”
“The cops are coming to take you away?”
It was a running joke.
“No. Cracked it. We’re rich.”
Until the cops came and took her away.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She handed me a piece of paper. It had the name of a bank that I had never heard of in the Cayman Islands, in the name of some corporation no one could pronounce.
The sum of money $22,176,328.76.
“You are this corporation?”
“After it slushes through forty-three shell companies that will keep whoever it is used for a year. It’s on its way to a Swiss numbered account, then Cloverville will be born.”
“Cloverville?”
“My money, my name.” She jumped up and ran off to tell Granny.
…
Of course, having the money and deciding what to do were two very different things. Everyone had a very different idea.
My parents wanted their room, already palatial, to be even more so. I wanted my room to be bigger with my own bathroom, now very tired of being last in line. Maybe if I got up earlier…
Everyone wanted a cafeteria and kitchen separate, modelled on the dining room at the Savoy, but my grandmother liked the current kitchen with a wooden stove that kept us all warm in winter and boiling in summer, and we were all together around a large table.
It also meant that we all wanted servants, but as Aunt Ruby said, people didn’t have servants these days, and we had to do our dirty work, like cooking and cleaning, and she would not be employing servants. Gran could remember the day when there were servants, and she said they had never been treated very well or taken for granted.
People were doing it now, so people could keep doing it after the renovations.
Everyone wanted their own TV, and of course, it was going to be like a motel. A TV in every bedroom. Maybe. Aunt Ruby said the children were not getting a TV; they would get an iPad, and that was it. Parents could go to the Cinema Room.
What Cinema Room?
The basement was being cleared out of 200 years of clutter, and it was going to be a cinema, holding about 100 or so people.
I was surprised Aunt Ruby didn’t want to take over the bedroom that my parents were in. That’s when I learned she was taking up residence in the north tower.
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.
Now that I’ve gone through the story and made quite a few changes, it’s time to look at the story
…
It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.
People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.
The one they scraped off the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them bad news for a while. Someone else could deal with the problem next time.
That was her day.
So far.
At the end of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.
Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.
It was not. The lights were still on.
She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight and long past closing time. She looked through the window, but from the other side of the street, she could only see three heads and little else.
Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out.
She was aware of the rumours, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the station, rumours she hoped were not true.
I hate it when other characters are drawn in, and without a proper introduction, the reader gets confused.
Well, let me tell you, the writer can get confused too.
The introduction of Jennifer cannot go without the introduction of Ellen Bill’s ex-wife, and we have talked a little about her background before.
She has a role, one that will have a major impact later on, but every now and then she is going to appear, adding to the backstory between her and Bill. There is no real animosity between them, their parting amicable because both knew it was time to end.
Bill’s problems were brought about his military service, and her father has a part to play in the story, though I’m not sure how to weave this in yet. But it’s not so much what Bill remembers of his service, but of what he has forgotten, or more to the point buried.
That will eventually rise to the surface.
However, at this time, it’s still at the part where the narrator has to introduce Jennifer.
There are three distinct stages to this relationship between the two most important characters, and as it happens it’s Ellen unknowingly that brings Bill and Jennifer together,
…
Then Ellen, my estranged, and sometimes difficult wife decided she wanted a divorce. I had no objection, and that was most likely the problem. Perhaps she had expected me to fight for her, but she had made it clear, many years before, that she was no longer interested in preserving the marriage and was only keeping it up until our two daughters were old enough to fend for themselves.
That time had come.
I found myself in a situation where I needed someone to talk to. I was not one of those people who made friends easily, nor did I spend much time seeking the company of other women. I had my work, and it had been enough.
But Ellen’s request for a divorce, for some reason, had shaken me, and the day I got the phone call, Jennifer has bustled into my office as she always did, dumping the pile of log file printouts on my desk, and instead of leaving, perhaps she had seen my look of dismay, or more to the point, utter shock, and stayed.
It caused a slight change in our relationship.
…
I’m still working on it, but there will be more.
Or perhaps fewer words, after all, it’s only meant to be a brief introduction.
See how simple things become complicated, very quickly.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 