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.
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.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in.
It took almost an hour to recover. Monroe didn’t come looking for me, so I think they knew it would take some time for me to get my legs back.
And it felt good to stand under the hot shower for twenty-odd minutes, letting the warmth of the water sink into my bones and clear my head.
And think.
How long had Bamfield have an eye on me? It was a question that sprung to mind the moment I saw him in the desert camp. I’d heard if you were transferred to one of his commands, at some point, it was not because it was another posting, it was because he wanted you there.
I’d been specially selected by Bamfield personally, out of the preliminary training camp, to further my military career under his oversight. I’d made it very clear from the outset that I was not interested in a commission, that I preferred the lower ranks. Officers were a different breed, and I’d not been cut from that cloth. Bamfield had admitted as much when I was first interviewed by him, and several other’s on what I soon discovered was his selection panel.
They were charged by him to find the best of the best.
And at that first interview, I’d disagreed with his assessment. I’d been in trouble before, and the military was the only place I could go if I didn’t want to serve a stretch in jail. Perhaps it was that innate ability of mine to seek out and become embroiled in trouble that caught his attention.
Certainly over time he and his instructors had honed those skills to a more refined set that, in civilian life, would set me up for a long stay in prison. It begged the question of what I was going to do with myself after the military had finished with me, a question I hadn’t really thought about until I’d been shunted to my last post in a training school of sorts.
I realised now that it had been Bamfield sidelining me until an operation crying out for my particular talents came along.
That disastrous operation with Treen.
Was it his? Or was it someone else who pulled it together, and he just provided the manpower. It had been the first major active offshore operation I’d been on. There’d been a few skirmishes along the way, but that was the first, and in a zone where I don’t think we were meant to be operating.
That had, I thought, been the sole purview of the CIA, and if I looked back on what had happened, there was no doubt the two agents we were supposed to pull out were CIA operatives, it had got too hot for them to stay, and they had clandestinely called for help.
It begged another question, was Bamfield CIA or working with the CIA, with or without the military hierarchy knowing?
The thing is, if it had been pulled off, as expected, no one would be any the wiser in that country, but once they found out, by whatever means it happened, the proverbial had hit the fan. It goes hand in hand with trusting people on the ground who were purportedly working against their country’s regime, for better or worse.
That country had a ‘friendly’ government, that had been ‘supported’ and then been deposed in the usual coup by the military, and, afterwards, the new hardliners got the benefit of those times when the country was a friendly and had military hardware and knowledge to wage war clandestinely or otherwise with its neighbours, given willingly.
Lessons hadn’t been learned after a particular middle east debacle. Maybe lessons would never be learned. Just look at the number of times had relations turned sour after a coup and agents had to hastily withdraw. It seems that my visit had been at the end of another of those ‘diplomatic’ missions that had gone wrong.
The drive down to Sorrento was interesting, not only for the stilted conversation with Francesca but the fact we were being followed. I found it hard to believe they didn’t trust her.
Or, it might be something, or someone, else.
I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to scare her.
Later, we could have branched off to go to Naples or Pompei, I would certainly want to go to the latter, but time was of the essence. Instead, I drove directly to Sorrento, and it took about three and a half hours, with one small stop on the way for more coffee. And to check out the person who was following us.
I would have liked to look at the scenery but couldn’t.
I had another go at small talk. “Where do you come from?”
She looked round at me with a frown. Was I interrupting her sightseeing? She blinked a lot, so I assumed she was nervous. She didn’t have the red spots on her cheeks now, but I wondered it that was a sign she was angrier.
Then having decided, on what I didn’t know, she said, “Milan. I wanted to be a model, but it didn’t work out.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
“My mother thought it best I get married to a nice man and have children. It seems women, to her, are meant only to be dutiful wives. I had no such aspirations.”
“Then what stopped you?”
“The awful man I picked to be my agent. Wanted me to sleep with him before he took me on. I taught him a lesson he’ll never forget.”
“How did you get to be an art historian?”
“I liked going to art galleries and looking at paintings. I wanted to know more, got into university, and it was fun.”
“And working as a private detective?”
“A friend of my father heard I knew something about old paintings and asked me to come and look at some that had been recovered from a robbery. He thought they were fakes, which they were. Offered me a job, gave me the training, just in case I wanted some variety, and here I am.”
“You just need to work on your surveillance skills and maintaining a low profile.”
“For such a so-called good agent, you were easy to pick up at the airport.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide. There are two ways I could have arrived, the first is so that no one knew I was coming. The second, make a splash, identify the surveillance, and then remove it.”
“And if two men come up to you in the street, throw you into a white van, and drive off…”
“Always be aware of your surroundings.”
“Is that a hint that I should have been looking for anything unusual while on this road trip. If it is a subtle dig, then I would not be surprised if you have already picked up the man in the yellow Fiat three cars back. He;’s been there for a while.”
“Not one of yours?”
“No. Why would there be?”
“Your boss still thinks you’re not clever enough to outwit me.”
“Or I’m smarter than he thinks I am. I’m with you, you’re not considering me a problem, I get to see and do everything you do, that’s pretty smart don’t you think?”
I had to admit if you were to put that spin on what she was doing, it was. I hoped her boss wasn’t an ungrateful sod.
Conversation over, she went back to her phone and worked on a crossword. She changed the radio station to classical music, and I didn’t change it back. It was Ravel’s Bolero, and for some reason it made me think of Cecelia.
“Do you think we should play cat and mouse with our tail?”
“Why would you want to do that.” She gave me a sideways glance that I interpreted as ‘Are you stupid?’
“Just say I have a strange sense of humour.”
With that, I slowed down and pulled off onto the side of the road, and being such a sudden move, my tail didn’t have time to do likewise, and if he did, he would have given himself away.
I watched him drive by, noting that he glanced in our direction as he passed.
I pulled out from the side onto the road after several cars passed, then settled in to follow him. I expected him to pull over and stop, just to see what I would do, but he didn’t.
“What exactly did you achieve?” she said.
“Nothing yet, but the day is young. Once we get to Sorrento, I will not be letting him know where we’re going.”
Or that’s what I keep telling myself, struggling to stay awake and write the next sentence, then the next sentence, and the one after that.
Long after I should have gone to bed.
Does that sound like your life?
Of course, it doesn’t. The rest of the world is sane, goes to work, comes home, has dinner, watches a little television or plays with the children, or maybe not, then goes to bed.
None of this writing business, trying to finish the page, the scene, the chapter while the ideas are fresh in your mind.
Only your mind isn’t fresh, it’s been a long day, an argument with the significant other, a bigger argument with the cat, there’s the washing, the cooking, the cleaning…
When do I get five minutes for myself?
At the dead of night, when everyone else has gone to bed, getting their eight hours of sleep.
In the dark with only the screen to light the keyboard, I’m trying to find the way around the keyboard and turn out what has to be the next international best-selling thriller.
The dog next door barks; it means the cat got out and is terrorising it.
A door slams, it’s old Joe getting home late from the pub, probably drunk again.
Yep, right on target, the vitriol of a bitter woman, and I have to say, I don’t blame her.
Then I hear it, that voice from the deep, “Poppy.”
The youngest of the grandchildren was the very devil to get to sleep.
Writing for the night is over, time to read other people’s stories.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 