Category: Books

The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 14

It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

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 the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

 

It was the smell, all hospitals seemed to smell the same.  Antiseptic.

And the first face I saw was Breeman’s.

How?

If  I could speak, which for some reason I knew I couldn’t, the first question would be, ‘Where am I?’

“Welcome back,” Breeman said.  “You gave us a few days of grave concern at the crash.  You’re in the base hospital, and lucky to be alive.”

OK, a few days missing, but lucky to survive?  I got out without a scratch, or did I?

I looked sideways and down.  Nothing but bandages, and, yes, plaster.  Broken bones?

“How you survived being thrown from the wreckage is anyone’s guess.  A search party found you last night, almost dead.  Broken legs, shattered shoulder, ribs, even a skull fracture.  The doctors are astonished.  So am I.”

She was holding my hand, a very unlike commanding officer thing to so, and it looked like a tear in her eye.  Perhaps our so-called casual fling was a little more than that.

“But you rest.  I’ll come back later when you’re better.”

Last I remember, except for some sore ribs, I’d been intact, and unharmed from the jump out of the helicopter.

Now, it appeared, I was the very epitome of a crash victim.  What the hell had happened to me from the time I was in the cell, getting that injection, and now?

Clearly, the people in the other camp didn’t want me to die.  But, surely they realized I would tell Breeman about my experiences at the camp.

Or not.  If anything, what I would have to tell them would be considered the ramblings of someone in very bad condition, mind wandering in the desert while fighting for his life, and then on return, ramblings fuelled by very high doses of painkillers.

And the fact none of it could be corroborated.  It was unlikely any flyover would locate the base if anyone was foolish enough to fly in the no-fly zone.

And, pushing the paranoia limits, I guessed that they would have someone in the base who was feeding them information, that’s how they knew so much about what was going on here.

I would have to lie low and choose my friends carefully.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

The novel ‘Echoes from the Past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The Birthday’.

My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.

Thus, the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.

So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.

So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.

I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.

And like all rewrites, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.

There was motivation.  I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample.  I was going to give them the re-worked short story.  Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’

Originally, it was not set anywhere in particular.

But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself.  We were there for New Year’s, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.

One evening, we were out late and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow; it was cold and wet, and apartment buildings were shimmering in the street light, and I thought, “This is the place where my main character will live.”

It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected.  I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.

I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went, so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.

Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller Centre is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.

The original main character was a shy man with few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party.  I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble.  No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.

Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule and begins a relationship?

But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

…

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

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The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 36

Juliet has a secret identity

…

It bothered me that Juliet was not quite as fazed about being shot at as she should be.  Ordinarily, being shot at would bring on a bout of hysterics at the very least, but she was unmoved.

Was that because, after being coerced into criminal activity by the likes of Larry, and possibly others, she had been expecting something to happen, just not when.  Or did she know that it was quite possibly her mother that was gunning for her?

To me, I would take a less active approach and try to come to some arrangement with the possible heir to a very large estate.  There was no possible way her mother could get it, other than to marry and then kill, Alessandro, after taking care of the countess.  Or gain favour with her daughter and split the proceeds, after killing the other parties.

It seemed a lot of work, to me, and with no guarantees she could remain anonymous.  After all, we knew about her, how many others did?  I was still thinking about how quickly she had recovered from the attack.  I know my heart was still beating quite fast.

“After what happened back at the conference centre, do you think it’s possible we might be gunned down in the street?”

I had been thinking that exact same thought, not moments before, and it would be so easy, without the possibility of being caught.  I had been looking around to make sure there was no one, or anything, suspicious.

We had almost reached the underground station to take us to Russell Square, near where her apartment was.  I was hoping there would be a nearby restaurant where we could get dinner.

“Do you want to be a victim of a possible drive-by shooting?”

“No, but it is possible.  It’s the sort of thing that happens to other people, isn’t it, like real criminals.”

“That only happens to people who double cross or snitch on their bosses or fellow gang members.  Unless you are part of a gang, or thinking of ratting someone out, I’d say that was a result of reading too many crime novels.  I doubt you could classify yourself as a real criminal.”

“Perhaps not anymore, but you know that I was caught up in something I had no control over, at least not the last time.  I can promise you I don’t do stuff like that anymore.  I have a legitimate job, and a lot of respect from my fellow coroners.”

“Then why are you sounding concerned?  What is more concerning is why this isn’t bothering you?”

“Perhaps it’s because as much as I don’t want it to be, it seems that stuff like this happens to me.”

OK, what did she mean by that?  “Has it happened before?”

“Three times in the last month, if I let my imagination run wild.  Two weeks ago, a car came up on the footpath and I thought it was because the driver was trying to avoid a dog.  Very nearly ran me over.  Last week, another car didn’t stop at a pedestrian crossing, an old man, I thought it might be a medical incident.  Today just put those incidents into another perspective.  I’m sure you’ll tell me why eventually.”

I chose not to speak any more about the subject and got her to tell me about the presentation at the conference if only to take her mind off working on a barrage of difficult questions.

That consumed the train trip and the walk to an Italian Restaurant a block from her apartment.  It was reasonably empty before the later dinner rush which suited me; we could sit where I could keep an eye on everything.  I didn’t expect trouble in the restaurant, but maybe later when we left.

If they, whoever they were, knew where she lived.  I still hadn’t seen anyone following us, but it was London, and there were a lot of people about.  And I was still a little rusty.

After we ordered I could see she had been patient enough.  “So, tell me, why are you here?”

I shrugged.  There was no simple way around asking.  “What can you tell me about your mother?”

“My birth mother or my adoptive mother?”

If she was trying to surprise me, it didn’t work.  That she decided to be truthful did.  Given that I had seen the photo of her with Vittoria when she was about thirteen at Sorrento, how did that fit into the two-mother thing?  I guess it was just another question among many.

“Birth mother to begin with.”

“Not as much as I would like.”

“As in you’ve never known, no one told you, or you didn’t want to know?”

“As in I was never told her name, just that she lived in a large house in Italy, and that my father had been someone very important.  It was a condition that I should not be told because she didn’t want me to know.”

“A condition imposed on your adoptive mother?”

“Yes.  She was an Englishwoman who had been a servant in that large house in Italy, a friend of my mother.  My adoptive mother had found me in her room one morning, with a letter, telling her that I would be better off in her care.”

“Did you see your real mother again?”

“Yes.  Once.  When I was a teenager, we were holidaying in Italy.  We went to the large castle or chateau near Sorrento, and I met her and no one else, though my adoptive mother didn’t tell me it was her until after we left.  I have a photograph, the only thing I have of her.”

“Have you ever wanted to find out who she is?”

“Of course, I’ve been to Italy many times, even staked out the house, but I never saw her again.  You said it was possible I could inherit a lot of money.  It is from those people in that house?”

“Do you know who they are?”

“A family called Burkehardt I think.  Are you telling me I’m one of them?”

© Charles Heath 2023

The 2am Rant: There are days when everything annoys you

I wanted to write a bit about how my day was going, and then I got angry.  It was a slow fuse because most of what I was angry about I’d been reading this morning.

And, yes, it’s about political leaders, those in power and those in opposition, and how inept they are in a crisis.

Listening to our opposition leader, briefly before I turned him off to watch a rerun of McHale’s Navy, it annoyed me that he had no answers to offer, only criticism.

Unfortunately, he’s not alone in the world.

Political leaders tended to blame everyone else for problems of their own making, whether it was when they were once in power, which happens a lot, or once they’re in opposition, conveniently forgetting they, too, hoped that by ignoring the problem, it might go away.

Or that the long-suffering public will have forgotten.  That’s why we have pugnacious journalists who remember for us.

The incompetence of the people who are supposedly in charge beggars belief.

Oh, God, I’m back on my soapbox.

Forgive me.

I’ll shut up about it now.

I’m trying to imagine what it’s like in the cold because it’s the height of summer here.  It’s not helping my imagination,  so let’s try…

It’s cold today, about 14 degrees Celsius, when it’s usually 27 degrees Celsius.  The sun is letting us down, and I suppose I should be grateful that we are not suffering from an ice age.

To be honest, I was seriously considering lighting the log fire.  Instead, we have reverse cycle air-conditioning, which is probably, in the long run, cheaper.

Have you seen how much it costs to buy wood?

But…

That could have made it difficult to write.

Not to come up with inspiration, but literally write, because my office is colder than a chiller room.  My beer in storage out here is colder than it is in the fridge.  Well, that sounded better in my head than on paper, but you get what I mean.

So, instead of writing, I sat down and binge-watched Sweet Magnolias, a light-hearted series from Netflix, which is of the same vein as Chesapeake Shores, etc, and more the sort of program I’d expect from Hallmark.

It was good.  It hooked me.

Three sets of lives intertwined in a large town in middle America perhaps.  I heard Charleston mentioned so perhaps it was in South Carolina.

The good thing about it?  Not one mention of political stupidity.

Just good old-fashioned heartache and trials and tribulations of trying to live your life, bumping up against the obstacles life throws up at you.

The town was called Serenity, so there’s a pun in there somewhere.

Maybe I’ll get some writing done tomorrow.

What I learned about writing – Inspiration can strike you anywhere, even on a bus…

It’s amazing how quickly you discover the imperfections of road makers.

As odd as that sounds, a recent trip on a bus, actually earlier today in fact, got me thinking about just how bad some of our roads really are.

Why?  Because an idea just came to mind and I have a note-taking app on my phone…

But, as you know, it’s difficult at the best of times to get your fingers to move over the keyboard except…

As any writer will tell you, that half an hour or so on the trip to work or home is just waiting for a few lines to be written on your phone or on your tablet.  I venture to suggest a laptop computer just might be a little difficult, and prone to stray eyes from the people sitting or standing near you.

And the tightness of the space available to you.  I know, I’ve tried.

Of course, the alternative is a pen and a notepad, not a large one, but adequate.  First, the pen had run out of ink or was on its last three words, so take a pencil, but make sure it’s not one where the lead can break easily.  Then try writing on a bus.  Ugh!

But, if you’re not in the mood to research, I did a little of that too, by the way, the desire to write is tempered by the movement of the bus and your ability to type coherent words on a small keyboard in a very large, rocking, metal thing.

I have to say I have a large streak of jealousy for those people who can hammer out large texts to their friends while riding the bus, and in the most awkward of conditions, using both thumbs, and carrying 26 bags of groceries and dry cleaning, as well as having a full-on political discussion with the person sitting/standing next to them.

Even when the bus hits a pothole, it does a sudden lurch that sends the unsuspecting sprawling.

With my interactive word completer turned on, it is astonishing what words finish up in my small attempt at writing as my fingers fail to find the right letters and create what can only be described as the ramblings of a madman.

Perhaps I might have better luck tomorrow.

Or better still, the idea will wait until I get off the bus.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – My Second Story 17

More about my second novel

…

There’s a certain air of inevitability in the air that the bad guys are going to succeed in tracking down Zoe, using the very person who wants to keep her safe.

It’s not exactly the result of a sneaky plan using lies and deception to get what Worthington wants; it’s more a fact that the woman he is about to use had already made a bed for herself that others would hardly want to lie in.

Arabella was not a woman who understood or practised monogamy.  She was always a rebel, always had more than one man on the go, and had only married for the convenience, the money and the lifestyle that went with it.

Having children had been a bore, and once they were delivered, they were someone else’s problem.  She was then able to go back to her jet-set lifestyle, touring and cruising the world.

It was also a world in which Worthington and his brother had moved in, and Worthington had been and still was, one of her lovers.  It was what made it so easy for him to enlist her, though she was not really interested in what her son John was up to.  He was too much like his father, and she needed little reminder of him.

For Worthington, he could not believe his luck, for a second time.  It was as if the Gods were lining up the ducks all in a row for him.

But she agreed to a weekend in the best hotel, eating the best food and going to a very exclusive concert, where they would be mingling with ‘almost’ royalty.  She loved to drop names.

However, the secret was not a secret the moment she was seen with Worthington by Sebastian, all be it by chance.  Sebastian would have to find John and alert him to the dangers that were about to present themselves in the benign form of his mother.

Could things get any more complicated?

Searching for locations: The Pagoda Forest, near Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, China

The pagoda forest

After another exhausting walk, by now the heat was beginning to take its toll on everyone, we arrived at the pagoda forest.

A little history first:

The pagoda forest is located west of the Shaolin Temple and the foot of a hill.  As the largest pagoda forest in China, it covers approximately 20,000 square meters and has about 230 pagodas build from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Each pagoda is the tomb of an eminent monk from the Shaolin Temple.  Graceful and exquisite, they belong to different eras and constructed in different styles.  The first pagoda was thought to be built in 791.

It is now a world heritage site.

No, it’s not a forest with trees it’s a collection of over 200 pagodas, each a tribute to a head monk at the temple and it goes back a long time.  The tribute can have one, three, five, or a maximum of seven layers.  The ashes of the individual are buried under the base of the pagoda.

The size, height, and story of the pagoda indicate its accomplishments, prestige, merits, and virtues. Each pagoda was carved with the exact date of construction and brief inscriptions and has its own style with various shapes such as a polygonal, cylindrical, vase, conical and monolithic.

This is one of the more recently constructed pagodas

There are pagodas for eminent foreign monks also in the forest.

From there we get a ride back on the back of a large electric wagon

to the front entrance courtyard where drinks and ice creams can be bought, and a visit to the all-important happy place.

Then it’s back to the hotel.

In a word: Under

Under by itself is a rather boring word, you know, under the moon, under the sea, under the influence, which is not hard to be if you’ve been hypnotised or after a few drinks.

Under is anything beneath something else.

But let’s add it to some other words like,

Underrated, which means it is better than what others give it credit for.

Underwear is what you would wear underneath your clothes.

An understudy is a person who takes over a lead role when the lead is incapacitated. And how many understudies are guilty of harming the lead, in order to get a big break?

And not get away with it?

Understood, an agreement that might or might not be in writing that something will happen, that is, it is understood that I will be the next president.

Or not. Who on earth would really want to be president of anything?

So in the spirit of trying to confuse everyone all of the time, I have a conundrum in the form of a question, what is the difference between under and underneath?

To me there is none, you can be under the sea or underneath the sea, or under the table or underneath the table, but then there’s another, you can be under the influence but not underneath the influence, though technically you could, if you wanted to use confusing English.

And, just to add to the confusion further, I can say that the submarine sailed under the sea, underneath the sea, but, in actual fact, it doesn’t.

What is under the sea is the sand, or sea bed, and a submarine does not plough its way through the sand, does it?

What we really should be saying is that a submarine moves through the water.

Just saying…

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.

His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

Searching for locations: Shaolin Kung Fu, near Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, China

After leaving the hotel in Zhengzhou, which was once one of the eight ancient capitals of China, we are going to Dengfeng city, the home of China’s most famous martial art – Shaolin Kung Fu.

The Shaolin Temple nearby is the origin of Chinese Zen Buddhism, and the Songyang Academy, called “the Centre of Heaven and Earth” is located 87 Km from Zhengzhou, or, as we were advised, a 2-hour drive.  It will be scenic because we are heading towards the mountains.

As one of the four ancient Song Dynasty Academies, Songyang Academy is one of many schools in the province.  It is both on a large scale, is quite spectacular, and is a comprehensive Wushu training base where students are trained to spread the Shaolin Wushu Kung fu style at home and abroad.

There is a 500-seat demonstration hall where you are able to observe 30 minutes of various martial arts in shows starting on the hour.

Outside there is a specific area that generally has about 600 trainees learning kung fu elements during the day but can hold 5,000 people when outdoor performances are required.

The kung fu school

The thing you notice most about the kung fu school is its size and then the number of buses which tells you that it is a popular tourist stop.

And with that size comes long distances between the car park and the venues we need to go to, the first of which is about half a km, and that’s just to get to the ticket plaza.

But, it is pleasantly set out and is quite a large number of shops for both souvenirs and food

We pass by some of the students going through their paces

From there it’s another long, long walk to the show arena, where we’re supposed to see various kung fu elements on display.  We watched this for a few minutes, then headed off towards the hall for a more intense demonstration of kung fu, and because there is limited seating we have to start lining up at the head of the queue to get a seat.

But…

Everyone else has the same idea and we join the throng which then becomes a ride, and true to the Chinese they start finding ways to push in, even using the imaginary friend somewhere ahead in the queue.

The doors open and then it’s open slather, with the hoards pushing from behind and sliding up the side to get in first.  We go with the tide, and manage to get in and find a seat though we were separated from three of our group.

It was an interesting show even though not one word of English was spoken, which from our point of view was a disappointment because we had no idea what was going on.

However…

It wasn’t hard to follow

What the performers were doing was relatively self-explanatory, and quite fascinating, especially the guy who broke a sword over his head, and the guy who stopped two spears penetrating the neck, both examples of very disciplined men.

Boys gave a demonstration of kung fu moves, and intensity and age increased as this progressed to the end.

Next, we were taken in hand by an instructor in Tai chi or an equivalent, I was not quite sure what it was called, and went through the twelve or maybe more moves that constituted a morning or afternoon exercise session or it could be just for relaxation.  I lasted the first session but it was a little difficult to do with my sore limbs and a bad back.

Not that I could remember any of it now other than hands overhead, hands in front, bent knees, and a few gentle kung fu hand moves.

Perhaps when I get home I might seek out someone to show me the moves.

Whilst the others were following their training instructor, I wandered about, finding a large statue

 
And some smaller statues

Lunch in the Zen Restaurant

After all that exercise it was time to have lunch purportedly the same food as the king fu masters.
It’s in the Zen restaurant, aptly named, and the food when it came, came thick and fast, but some of it wasn’t very nice, meat with bones, tofu, a tasteless soup, but some good dishes like the vegetables and noodles with meat, without bones.

The only problem was nothing to drink except a pot of hot water.  No tea, no cold water, and if you wanted a cold drink you had to pay for it.  After paying 550 yuan why should we have to pay more for a drink when we have not had to so far.

But no cold water?  That was just not on, and when we brought this to the attention of the tour guide she just simply ignored us.  We just didn’t get anything.

That basically tainted the whole experience.

After lunch, there was the Shaolin Temple and the Pogoda Forest to visit.