Category: Books

The 2am Rant: A door that is always open

My opinions are my own
 
 

It’s always a good thing to get that across, especially if you work for an organisation that could misinterpret what that opinion is, or generally have an opposing opinion.  Of course, by saying your opinions are your own, you’re covering yourself from becoming unemployed, but is this a futile act?

Perhaps it’s better to not say anything because everything you say and do eventually finds its way to those you want most not to hear about it, perhaps one of the big negatives of the internet and social media.

And…

It seems odd to me that more often than not, you can’t have an opinion of your own, even if it is contrary to that of the organisation you work for, and especially if their opinion has changed over time.  An opposing opinion, delivered in a non-derogatory manner, would be expected to spark a healthy debate, but it doesn’t always end up that way.

I’m sure there are others out there that will disagree and use the overused word, ‘loyalty’.   Perhaps their mantra will be ‘keep your opinions to yourself’.

This, too, often arises in personal relationships, adding weight to the statement, ‘you can pick your friends but not your relatives.’

I’m told I have an opinion on everything, a statement delivered in a manner that suggests sarcasm.  Whether it’s true or not, isn’t the essence of free speech, working within the parameters of not inciting hate, bigotry, racism or sexism, a fundamental right of anyone in a democracy?

Seems not.

There’s always someone out there, higher up the food chain, with an opinion of their own, obviously the right one, and who will not hesitate to silence yours.  But, isn’t it strange that to silence you, they have to use leverage, like your job, to get theirs across?

Well, my opinions are in my writing, and whether or not you agree with them or not, I’m sure you will let me know.  In a robust but respectful manner.

Unlike some, my door is always open.

 
 
 
 
 
 

What I learned about writing: The murky art of plotting! (1)

Truth is stranger than fiction

…

Google Maps: More Than Just Directions – A Portal to Phantom Mysteries?

We all use Google Maps. It’s our trusty co-pilot, guiding us through unfamiliar streets, helping us find the nearest coffee shop, and even letting us snoop on our old childhood homes (admit it, you’ve done it!). But what if I told you that sometimes, beneath the familiar satellite imagery, Google Maps offers a glimpse into something far stranger than your aunt’s meticulously manicured lawn?

Lately, chatter has been building around peculiar anomalies popping up on the platform – digital specters appearing where they absolutely shouldn’t. Imagine panning over a dense, untouched forest, far from any airport, only to find a colossal Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 perfectly intact, sitting in a clearing. No missing plane reports, no emergency landings, just a commercial jetliner chilling amongst the trees. How did it get there? And more importantly, why?

This isn’t an isolated incident. There are numerous reports of cars, sometimes multiple vehicles, resting eerily at the bottom of lakes, visible from above. While many of these are indeed phantom images, some chillingly prove to be real. You might recall the story of the car discovered in a lake in Florida, which, upon investigation, contained the remains of a man who had been missing for over two decades. The digital anomaly led to a very real, very tragic discovery.

So, before we reach for our tinfoil hats, there’s a rational explanation for most of these ghostly appearances. The phenomenon is often an instance of image overlay or “ghosting.” Google Maps stitches together countless satellite and aerial photographs taken at different times. When an object, like a low-flying aircraft, is captured in one image over a particular spot, and a later, object-free image of the same spot is layered on top, a faint “ghost” of the original object can remain visible. The plane in the forest? It’s highly probable it was just flying incredibly low when the initial photograph was taken, leaving its digital imprint on the landscape.

Mystery solved, right? Well, mostly.

But what if, just what if, these digital echoes aren’t always mere glitches? What if, sometimes, they are whispers of something more, waiting to be heard?

Mick knew all about those lonely leisure hours when there was nothing else to do. He wasn’t one for idly scrolling social media; Mick was a tramper, a genuine trailblazer. His idea of relaxation was poring over topographical maps, looking for untouched corners of the world, sketching out potential new paths through forests, and dreaming of odd discoveries. Years ago, one such expedition had led him to uncover a lost village of significant archaeological value. He had a knack for finding things.

One drizzly afternoon, with the rain drumming against his window, Mick found himself drifting through Google Maps, exploring remote stretches of a national forest known for its dense, ancient foliage. He zoomed in, panned around, his cursor tracing imaginary trails. He wasn’t looking for glitches, but for inspiration, for the subtle hints of untamed beauty.

Then he saw it.

Not a ghost, not a blur, but what seemed to be distinct wreckage dispersed in a clearing. Glimpses of what looked like metal fragments, incongruous against the deep green canopy. It wasn’t the clean, whole plane of famous internet anomalies, but a scattering, undeniably man-made and out of place. He noted the date of the photograph – nearly a year prior.

A chill ran down his spine. He immediately checked local news archives, aviation reports, anything about missing small planes or crashes in the area. Nothing. Not a single mention. It was too remote for a simple crash to go unnoticed, yet too significant to be naturally occurring.

He kept the location saved, revisiting it over the next few days. It gnawed at him. Was it a trick of the light? A bizarre anomaly of the photo processing? He called a friend, an equally seasoned bushwalker, and explained his digital discovery, asking him to verify it on his own map.

“Right, mate, I’m looking,” came his friend’s voice over the phone a few minutes later. “Where exactly did you say?”

Mick guided him, pixel by pixel. “See it? Right there, by that cluster of three oaks…”

There was a pause. “Uh, Mick? There’s just… trees.”

Mick’s stomach dropped. He clicked back to his own map. The wreckage was gone. The clearing was pristine, just an unbroken expanse of forest. He felt a wave of self-doubt. Had his mind been playing tricks, wanting to find something remarkable, perhaps fabricating the whole thing?

But then he noticed it. The date of the photograph displayed on his screen had updated. It was no longer the nearly-a-year-old image. It was a new one, taken just a few weeks ago.

The digital ghost had vanished, but the seed of a real-world mystery had been planted. With the rain still falling and nothing better to do, Mick knew exactly what his next walking holiday would entail. He wasn’t just going to look at maps anymore. He was going to see what was really there.

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 229

Day 229 – Write a little every day

…

Write a Little Every Day, Without Hope and Without Despair: The Ultimate Mantra for Creative Resilience

“Write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”

Attributed to the brilliant Danish author Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa), this single sentence is perhaps the most liberating piece of writing advice ever committed to paper.

In a modern creator economy obsessed with viral hits, massive word counts, and relentless hustle culture, Dinesen’s words feel like a cool breeze on a fevered brow. They strip away the performance, the anxiety, and the delusion, leaving behind the pure, quiet act of creation.

Let’s unpack this profound philosophy and explore how it can completely transform your relationship with your craft—whether you’re writing a novel, building a blog, or working on any long-term creative project.

The Anatomy of the Mantra

To truly understand Dinesen’s advice, we need to break it down into its three core components: consistency, the surrender of false hope, and the banishment of despair.

1. “Write a little every day…”

The first rule of Dinesen’s philosophy is deceptively simple: consistency over intensity.

Many aspiring writers fall into the trap of the “binge and burn” cycle. You wait for the muse to strike. You clear an entire weekend, chug espresso, write 5,000 words in a manic haze, and then—exhausted and drained—don’t write another word for three weeks.

Dinesen advocates for the compound interest of creativity. Writing 200 or 300 words a day might not feel like much, but over the course of a year, you will have a draft of a book. More importantly, showing up daily builds a creative identity. You stop identifying as someone who wants to write and start identifying as someone who writes.

2. “…without hope…”

This is usually the part that makes people double-take. Without hope? Isn’t hope what keeps writers going?

Dinesen isn’t telling you to be a pessimist; rather, she is warning you against the toxicity of conditional motivation.

  • Hope that this sentence will be a masterpiece.
  • Hope that this chapter will go viral.
  • Hope that this book will get a six-figure book deal and land you on the bestseller list.

When you write with hope (in this specific, transactional sense), your self-worth becomes tethered to the outcome. If the writing is hard today, you feel hopeless. If the external validation doesn’t come, you want to quit. Dinesen urges us to detach from the result. Write because it is what you do, not because you are hoping the universe will grant you a reward for doing it.

3. “…and without despair.”

Just as we must let go of frantic hope, we must also release despair.

Every writer knows the voice of despair. It whispers: This is garbage. You have nothing to say. Everyone else is better than you. Why bother?

Despair paralyzes. It turns a blank page into a terrifying monolith. Dinesen’s antidote to despair is radical acceptance. Some days your writing will be brilliant; other days it will be clunky and mediocre. Both are a normal part of the process. By refusing to despair over a bad writing session, you keep the door open for tomorrow’s session. You remove the emotional drama from the craft.

Why Modern Creators Need This Philosophy More Than Ever

We live in an era of metrics. Every tweet, blog post, and video comes with a dashboard tracking views, likes, and shares. It is easier than ever to fall into the trap of writing for the algorithm rather than writing from the soul.

When you apply Dinesen’s “without hope and without despair” rule to the digital age, it acts as a powerful shield:

  • Algorithm changes? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.
  • A piece bombs and gets zero engagement? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.
  • A piece goes viral and your inbox is flooded? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.

This mindset keeps you grounded. It reminds you that the work is the reward, and the validation (or lack thereof) is just noise.

How to Apply Isak Dinesen’s Wisdom Today

If you want to integrate this legendary writing advice into your daily routine, here are three practical steps to take right now:

  1. Lower the Bar: Commit to a ridiculously small daily goal—say, 150 words or 15 minutes. Make it so easy that you can do it even on your worst days.
  2. Separate Creating from Editing: When you sit down to write your daily quota, turn off your inner critic. Do not judge the quality. Just get the words on the page. You can fix bad writing; you cannot fix a blank page.
  3. Audit Your Motivations: Notice when you are writing for applause versus writing for the joy of expression. Gently steer your focus back to the simple act of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys).

Final Thoughts

Writing is a marathon through a fog. You rarely know where you are going, and the destination is always changing. But if you can learn to put one foot in front of the other—to write a little every day, without hope and without despair—you will not only survive the journey; you might just find joy in the mist.

What did you write today? Let’s keep moving forward, one small word at a time.

…

In a word: Flight

There is a saying, if God wanted us to fly then he would have given us wings.

Unfortunately, he didn’t, so we do not get to know what it’s like to be in flight,

Unless…

We take an aeroplane, which usually has a flight number such as QF607, or in conversation, ‘I’ll be taking the 6 o’clock flight’.

If someone runs away, then we say they have taken flight.

If we roll back a few years, say about 80, to World War 2, flight tales on a whole new meaning.

It refers to a group of planes, in one case a number of spitfires, or,

The man in charge, a flight lieutenant, also colloquially known as ‘flight’.

This is not be confused with the word flite which has several very obscure meanings,

First, it means to quarrel or argue, or engage in a debate, and

Second, to make a complaint.

But one that sticks in my my mind is Flyte, from Brideshead Revisited.  they were a very interesting family.

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself, as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters, Harry and Alison, other issues are driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact that he has a beautiful and desirable wife, his belief that she is the object of other men’s desires, and, in particular, his immediate superior’s.

Between observation, the less-than-honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, and she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, is that nothing is ever what it seems.

…

Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

…

With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction.  He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from the eye socket to the mouth, and he was wearing a black shirt with a red tie.

That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.

He apologised as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.

I kept my eyes down.  He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognise later in a lineup.  I stepped to the other side, and so did he.  It was one of those situations.  Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I went towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.

Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic.  I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone.  I shrugged and looked at my watch.  It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.

Wait, or walk?  I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station.  What the hell, I needed the exercise.

At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’.  I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light.  As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tyres.

A yellow car stopped inches from me.

It was a high-powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini.  I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.

Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car.  It was that sort of car.  I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him.  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on.  The moment had passed, and everyone went back to their business.

My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter.   Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.

At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure.  I was no longer in a hurry.

Next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring.  I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road.  I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.

At the next intersection, I realised I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar.   It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.

I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did.  There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me.  It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.

Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me.  As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger was a large man with a red tie.

Now my imagination was playing tricks.

It could not be the same man.  He was going in a different direction.

In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long, cold winter.  I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.

I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in.  I would have a few drinks and then leave through the back door if there were one.

Just in case.

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

newechocover5rs

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 229

Day 229 – Write a little every day

…

Write a Little Every Day, Without Hope and Without Despair: The Ultimate Mantra for Creative Resilience

“Write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”

Attributed to the brilliant Danish author Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa), this single sentence is perhaps the most liberating piece of writing advice ever committed to paper.

In a modern creator economy obsessed with viral hits, massive word counts, and relentless hustle culture, Dinesen’s words feel like a cool breeze on a fevered brow. They strip away the performance, the anxiety, and the delusion, leaving behind the pure, quiet act of creation.

Let’s unpack this profound philosophy and explore how it can completely transform your relationship with your craft—whether you’re writing a novel, building a blog, or working on any long-term creative project.

The Anatomy of the Mantra

To truly understand Dinesen’s advice, we need to break it down into its three core components: consistency, the surrender of false hope, and the banishment of despair.

1. “Write a little every day…”

The first rule of Dinesen’s philosophy is deceptively simple: consistency over intensity.

Many aspiring writers fall into the trap of the “binge and burn” cycle. You wait for the muse to strike. You clear an entire weekend, chug espresso, write 5,000 words in a manic haze, and then—exhausted and drained—don’t write another word for three weeks.

Dinesen advocates for the compound interest of creativity. Writing 200 or 300 words a day might not feel like much, but over the course of a year, you will have a draft of a book. More importantly, showing up daily builds a creative identity. You stop identifying as someone who wants to write and start identifying as someone who writes.

2. “…without hope…”

This is usually the part that makes people double-take. Without hope? Isn’t hope what keeps writers going?

Dinesen isn’t telling you to be a pessimist; rather, she is warning you against the toxicity of conditional motivation.

  • Hope that this sentence will be a masterpiece.
  • Hope that this chapter will go viral.
  • Hope that this book will get a six-figure book deal and land you on the bestseller list.

When you write with hope (in this specific, transactional sense), your self-worth becomes tethered to the outcome. If the writing is hard today, you feel hopeless. If the external validation doesn’t come, you want to quit. Dinesen urges us to detach from the result. Write because it is what you do, not because you are hoping the universe will grant you a reward for doing it.

3. “…and without despair.”

Just as we must let go of frantic hope, we must also release despair.

Every writer knows the voice of despair. It whispers: This is garbage. You have nothing to say. Everyone else is better than you. Why bother?

Despair paralyzes. It turns a blank page into a terrifying monolith. Dinesen’s antidote to despair is radical acceptance. Some days your writing will be brilliant; other days it will be clunky and mediocre. Both are a normal part of the process. By refusing to despair over a bad writing session, you keep the door open for tomorrow’s session. You remove the emotional drama from the craft.

Why Modern Creators Need This Philosophy More Than Ever

We live in an era of metrics. Every tweet, blog post, and video comes with a dashboard tracking views, likes, and shares. It is easier than ever to fall into the trap of writing for the algorithm rather than writing from the soul.

When you apply Dinesen’s “without hope and without despair” rule to the digital age, it acts as a powerful shield:

  • Algorithm changes? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.
  • A piece bombs and gets zero engagement? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.
  • A piece goes viral and your inbox is flooded? Without hope, without despair. You keep writing.

This mindset keeps you grounded. It reminds you that the work is the reward, and the validation (or lack thereof) is just noise.

How to Apply Isak Dinesen’s Wisdom Today

If you want to integrate this legendary writing advice into your daily routine, here are three practical steps to take right now:

  1. Lower the Bar: Commit to a ridiculously small daily goal—say, 150 words or 15 minutes. Make it so easy that you can do it even on your worst days.
  2. Separate Creating from Editing: When you sit down to write your daily quota, turn off your inner critic. Do not judge the quality. Just get the words on the page. You can fix bad writing; you cannot fix a blank page.
  3. Audit Your Motivations: Notice when you are writing for applause versus writing for the joy of expression. Gently steer your focus back to the simple act of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys).

Final Thoughts

Writing is a marathon through a fog. You rarely know where you are going, and the destination is always changing. But if you can learn to put one foot in front of the other—to write a little every day, without hope and without despair—you will not only survive the journey; you might just find joy in the mist.

What did you write today? Let’s keep moving forward, one small word at a time.

…

Inspiration, maybe – Volume 1

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:

lookingdownfromcoronetpeak

And the story:

…

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discreet distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road we were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places, just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three-thousand-foot fall down the mountainside.

Good thing then, I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner, we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication of where he had gone.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2026

…

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”, available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 18

As we all know, writing by the seat of your pants is almost the same as flying by the seat of your pants, a hazardous occupation.

As it happens, I like writing this way because like the reader, I don’t know what to expect next.

And equally, at times, you can write your self into a corner, much like painting, and then have to go back, make a few changes and//or repairs and then move forward.

It’s part of the writing process, only in this case, the changes occur before you’ve finished the novel, if you finish.  Quite often a lot of writers get only so far, then the manuscript hits the bottom drawer, to be brought out on a distant rainy day.

Or your cat has mocked your writing ability one too many times.

Therefore, we’re winding back to Episode 16, and moving forward once again, from there.  This is episode 18 revised…

…

Ever had the heart-stopping feeling when you’re in the wrong place, and someone has interrupted you?  Especially if you shouldn’t be there, or that you have no right to be there.

I stood quietly on the inside of the door and hoped whoever the visitor was would go away.  No answer meant no one was home, didn’t it?

Unless…

I heard a key in the door, and it turn in the lock.

I moved quickly to the other side of the door so I would be shielded when the person came into the room.  Too late to get out, I was of two minds what to do.  Hit the visitor over the head and flee, or ask them what they were doing, before they asked me that same question.

Then nothing.

Until a few seconds later I heard a voice, a man, say, “Jan, you’re back.  How was the visit to Philadelphia?”

I heard the slight rattle of Jan taking her hand off the handle and moving away from the door.  “Sad, as all funerals are.  Now, we are left with the house, and my father’s stuff; a huge collection of mostly junk over a long period of time.  Seems he never threw anything out.”

Jan?  Did she live here, with O’Connell?

“Yes, “I’m a bit like that.”

Another tenant, or the building super?

“I made sure Herman was looked after while you were away.  I don’t think he missed you at all?”

She laughed.  “He’s a cat, Fred.  We belong to them, not the other way around.”

“True.  Your friend has not been in for a week or so.”

“I know.  The last message I got from him, he was in Prague, lucky bastard.  He was going to take me with him, but at the last moment, they changed his itinerary.  Perhaps next time.  I was just going to make sure everything was OK, before going home myself.”

“I could look in if you want?”

“No.  Thanks anyway, but last time I was here I left a jacket behind.  Thanks, Fred.”

A moment later I could hear his footsteps heading away, and Jan moved back to the door, and opened it.

I heard the light switch, and then, suddenly, the room was filled with bright light.

The girl was unassuming, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her.  Before she could take a step, I put a hand over her mouth and an arm around her neck and started squeezing.

Instinctively she started to struggle and call out for help.

I whispered in her ear, “I mean you no harm, but if you struggle, or yell out, it could turn out very bad for you.”

We had been taught how to subdue people without killing them, but that always didn’t go to plan.  There was that instinct to fight back in everyone, and it was sometimes hard not to apply excessive pressure which could, depending on the severity of resistance, see the target asphyxiated, or end up with a broken neck.

She was still struggling, which mean I had to exert more force.

“Stop fighting me or you will harm yourself,” I said, this time in a more forceful whisper.

It had an immediate effect, but I don’t think it was her obedience that caused it.  I gently lowered her to the floor and felt for a pulse.  Unconscious, not dead.  I sighed in relief.  I took a good long look at her so that I would remember what she looked like.  At some point, I was going to have to talk to her.

Then footsteps outside the door.  What else could go wrong?

Then knocking on the door.  Short and sharp.  Followed by, “Jan, are you in there?”

Fred, whoever he was.  What did he want?”

Another knock on the door, this time more urgent.  Damn.  O’Connell’s flat was like a busy store.

I looked around for an escape now there would be no going out the front door.  Not unless I had to disable another person, and assuming if he was the building super, he would not be a small man, so it would take a greater, and noisier, effort to subdue him.

A fire escape, all buildings usually had one down the side of the building, in case of fire.  I went over and checked the windows and found it.  The window needed a little force to open it, but the sound of a key in the door motivated me.

Out the window, close the window again, I made it down the stairs far enough that when I looked up, no one was following me.

That was close.  Too close.

© Charles Heath 2019-2022

First Dig Two Graves

A sequel to “The Devil You Don’t”

…

Revenge is a dish best served cold – or preferably so when everything goes right

Of course, it rarely does, as Alistair, Zoe’s handler, discovers to his peril. Enter a wildcard, John, and whatever Alistair’s plan for dealing with Zoe was dies with him.

It leaves Zoe in completely unfamiliar territory.

…

John’s idyllic romance with a woman who is utterly out of his comfort zone is on borrowed time. She is still trying to reconcile her ambivalence after being so indifferent for so long.

They agree to take a break, during which she disappears. John, thinking she has left without saying goodbye, refuses to accept the inevitable and calls on an old friend for help in finding her.

After the mayhem and being briefly reunited, she recognises an inevitable truth: there is a price to pay for taking out Alistair; she must leave and find them first, and he would be wise to keep a low profile.

But keeping a low profile just isn’t possible, and enlisting another friend, a private detective and his sister, a deft computer hacker, they track her to the border between Austria and Hungary.

What John doesn’t realise is that another enemy is tracking him to find her too. It could have been a grand tour of Europe. Instead, it becomes a race against time before enemies old and new converge for what will be an inevitable showdown.