Category: Creative Writing

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 280

Day 280 – What’s real and what isn’t

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The Pleasure of Invention: Why Writers Craft Fake Biographies From Life’s Raw Drama

Philip Roth, a master of blurring the lines between fact and fiction, once offered a strikingly honest glimpse into the novelist’s mind:
“Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life. There has to be some pleasure in this job, and that’s it.”

At first glance, it sounds almost confessional – a writer admitting to deceit. But look closer, and Roth isn’t describing fraud. He’s articulating the essential, pleasurable alchemy at the heart of all meaningful storytelling. This isn’t about lying; it’s about the transformative act of taking life’s messy, unresolved drama and shaping it into something that resonates more deeply than mere truth ever could. Let’s unpack why this “fake biography” isn’t a betrayal of reality, but its most honest servant – and why writers find profound pleasure in it.

The Raw Material: Life’s Unfinished Drama

Roth anchors his process in “the actual drama of my life.” This is crucial. Fiction writers don’t start from a blank void; they begin with lived experience – the quiet anguish of a conversation left hanging, the sudden flare of jealousy at a party, the weight of an unsaid apology, the peculiar way light falls on a kitchen floor at 4 p.m. These are the raw, unpolished nuggets of existence. Life, as we live it, is rarely neatly plotted. It’s full of loose ends, ambiguous motivations, and moments that feel significant but lack clear meaning. The writer’s job begins not with invention, but with observation – gathering the scattered fragments of human experience that pulse with potential.

The Craft: Shaping Truth Into Story

Here’s where the “fake biography” and “false history” come in. The writer takes those real fragments and shapes them. They might combine three different arguments into one pivotal scene that reveals a character’s core flaw. They might compress years of gradual change into a single, explosive confrontation. They might invent a detail – a specific song playing, the exact shade of a stranger’s coat – not to deceive, but to unlock an emotional truth that the bare facts obscured. This isn’t falsification; it’s distillation. Like a jeweller cutting a rough gem to reveal its inner fire, the writer selects, emphasises, omits, and invents in service of revealing a deeper psychological, emotional, or thematic truth that the chaotic reality of lived experience often buries.

Consider Roth’s own work. American Pastoral isn’t a biography of Seymour “Swede” Levov; it’s a furious, heartbreaking exploration of how the American Dream disintegrates under the weight of idealism and violence – a truth felt more acutely through Seymour’s fictional tragedy than through any single historical account. The “false history” of Swede’s life becomes a vessel for a very real national anxiety. The pleasure Roth describes lies precisely in this act of creation: taking the confounding, often boring, reality of being human and forging it into a narrative that means something.

The Pleasure: Not Deception, But Discovery

Why does Roth insist there “has to be some pleasure”? Because this process, far from being deceitful, is profoundly creative and revelatory for the writer themselves.

  • Control Amid Chaos: Life is uncontrollable. Writing offers the godlike power to shape causality, to give suffering purpose, to let a character finally understand what eluded us in our own lives. That agency is deeply satisfying.
  • Emotional Honesty Through Artifice: Sometimes, we can only access our own deepest feelings by projecting them onto a fictional construct. Writing a character’s shame might be the only way to confront our own. The “half-imaginary existence” becomes a safe space to explore truths too raw for direct autobiography.
  • The Thrill of Making Sense: Humans are storytellers by nature. We crave narrative to mitigate life’s absurdity. The pleasure Roth cites is the quiet joy of the maker – the moment when a fabricated scene suddenly clicks, revealing a connection between seemingly random events that feels truer than coincidence. It’s the satisfaction of solving a puzzle you invented yourself.
  • Connection, Not Isolation: By crafting these “false histories,” writers don’t withdraw from reality; they reach deeper into the universal human condition. A fictional biography, built from real emotional stakes, invites the reader to recognise their own unspoken dramas in the made-up life. The pleasure is shared.

Why This Matters Beyond the Writer’s Desk

Roth’s insight isn’t just for novelists. It illuminates why memoirs often feel less true than the best autobiographical fiction – the memoirist is constrained by literal fact, while the novelist, freed from strict chronology, can pursue emotional and thematic truth with greater flexibility. It explains why we gravitate toward stories that feel “realer than real”: they’ve undergone this essential transformation. Even in our age of curated social media selves (our own, constant “half-imaginary existence”), we’re engaging in a diluted version of this drive – shaping raw experience into a narrative we hope others will find meaningful, even if the pleasure is often tinged with anxiety rather than Roth’s confident joy.

Embracing the Alchemy

Philip Roth wasn’t confessing to a guilty habit; he was defining the novelist’s sacred task. The “fake biography” isn’t a departure from truth; it’s the most honest path we have to it. Life gives us the clay – the joys, the wounds, the mundane moments that secretly vibrate with significance. The writer’s pleasure comes from the messy, magical act of spinning that clay into a vessel that holds water: a story that doesn’t just reflect life, but helps us live it more consciously, more empathetically, more fully.

So the next time you lose yourself in a novel and feel a startling jolt of recognition – “This is exactly how it feels…” – remember: you’re not encountering a falsehood. You’re witnessing the pleasure of invention, the alchemy where life’s actual drama, touched by the writer’s hand, becomes half-imaginary, wholly true, and utterly necessary. That’s not just the writer’s job. It’s the gift they give us all.

Key Takeaways for Readers & Writers:

  • Truth in fiction is emotional/thematic, not literal. Seek what resonates, not what matches a checklist.
  • The pleasure is in the shaping. Embrace the process of transforming raw experience into narrative.
  • Your life is the material. Pay attention to the “actual drama” – it’s where all stories begin.
  • Writers aren’t liars; they’re truth-translators. Their “false histories” serve a deeper honesty.

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‘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.

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Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

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The cinema of my dreams – It all started in Venice – Episode 1

When you least expect it

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I was minding my own business, as the saying goes.

Having made my mark on the world, I had retired from a world that I hardly recognized as what had once been.

Pandemics, political games, countries on the brink of disaster, and what could be called a world gone mad seemed to be the new normal, though it was hard to say what the old normal was.

So, I let all flow on past me, like water under the bridge, much the same that I was now standing on, overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, the second to last whistle-stop on what had been a long respite from the real world.

I’d also been lamenting the death of the only woman I’d ever loved and for a long time the only thing that made sense.

She was with me always, in life and in death, reminding me that she would not want me to simply give up on life.  Sometimes those words fell on deaf ears, but today was a good day.

She had always loved Venice and we always came for the Carnival, but this was the first year I’d missed it.  It would not be the same without her.

After a while I moved on, over the bridge, heading back to the apartment, one of several in the major cities we traveled to often, Paris, London, Istanbul, and Vienna to name a few.

I stopped at a Cafe, one we often did when Violetta was alive, and the owner served me himself.  It was, coincidentally, where Violetta and I first met, a story in itself

Then it was back home.

There were certain instincts I had, acquired when I lived in another world, and one was telling me something was not right.

I looked up and down the street but everything seemed normal.  It was part of the city where cars were permitted, though I chose not to have one.

I shrugged.  Perhaps my instincts were wrong, after all, it had been a long time since I’d needed them.

As I approached the front door to the building, I could see a man come from the opposite side of the street, heading towards the same doorway.  He’d timed it to arrive at the same time.

Normally it wouldn’t bother me, but he did not look like a resident or a visitor.

“Mr. Wallace?”

As I went to put the key in the lock, he called out, his timing not quite getting him to the front door.  Perhaps that was because I’d quickened my pace.

I was going to ignore him, but something told me not to.  He seemed familiar.

I turned, just as he reached me.

“Mr. Wallace?”

“Who wants to Know?”

“Alfie Simkins.  Who I work for is irrelevant, but we need to have a short discussion.”

OK, the irrelevant reference told me everything I needed to know.  It was my past, coming back to haunt me.

“About what?”

“Nothing I would care to utter in the street.”

I gave him one of those long hard stares, the one known to unnerve even the hardest of opponents, but he didn’t flinch.

I knew his sort, and he was the last person I wanted to talk to.  But just to make sure he was who he was intimating he was…

“Who sent you?”

“Rodby.”

And there it was.  That blast from the past, a name I had hoped I’d never hear again.

I opened the door and he followed me in, then up the elevator to the third floor.  At the time I could not afford the top floor, but it was comfortable enough, even if the view was somewhat limited.

He’d barely made it through the door before I asked, “I need some proof…”

“That I’m not an assassin, he said you’d require it.  Two words, Alan McWhirter.”

There was a name I hadn’t heard in a long time, almost twenty years, my original name, lost after becoming so many different people.  There had been times when I hardly knew who I was myself.

Now it was only a matter of what Rodby wanted, usually the impossible.

“How is he?  He must be about a hundred years old by now.”  He was close to that when I first met him, oh so long ago.

“Still comes into the office every day, still sharp as a tack as they say.”

The man would never die or lose his marbles.

“So, what’s this about?”

“A recording a surveillance team made and which they thought held no significance.”

“But Rodby did.”

“One of the analysts, you might remember her, Wendy Tucker, thought it might be relevant so she raised a flag.”

I did remember her, and by now she would be as old as I was and probably the only surviving member of the old team.  But my memories of her were for other reasons.

“Yes, and I’m surprised she’s still there.”

“She heard your name, and another, but perhaps I should play the recording and then comment on it.”

He put his phone on the bench and played it.

A male voice accented, eastern European I thought, spoke first.  “I’m told you knew a man named Egan Watts.”

“There’s a name I never expected to hear again.”  A female voice and one I thought I recognized.

“Then you did know him?”

“Briefly, and not all that well.  He and I went to an industry function once after we met in rather unusual circumstances, but whatever it was, it didn’t last long.  He put work before anything else, so we parted.”

“Amicably?”

“Yes.  For a while after we crossed paths, had dinner, you know.”

It had been a time when I’d been in recovery and retraining and had time for such a relationship.  Nothing permanent, but just fun.  She hadn’t been looking for anything permanent either.

“So you would know him now?”

“God no.  It’s been a long time, and last I heard, he was married and traveling the world.”

“His wife died.  Now he’s in Venice.  We’d like you to pick up where you left off.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she said.  “Chances are he’s moved on and forgotten all about me.”

“Be that as it may, this isn’t a request.  We ask you to do, or there will be consequences.”

Silence, perhaps a moment to reflect on exactly what those consequences might be, then, “What for?”

“That’s none of your concern.  All you are required to do is rekindle your relationship.  How you do it is your business, but you better go and pack for a long stay.”

Juliet Ambrose. 

I remembered the voice, and the distinctiveness of its soft Irish accent, almost mesmerizing.

She had been one of the doctors supervising my recovery and she seemed to be out of sorts, so I’d asked her out to dinner, and talk if she wanted to.  She didn’t, but one thing led to another…

That’s where Alfie stopped the recording.

“Good to know then,” I said, ” it’s time to leave Venice and move on.”  The expression on Alfie’s face told me that was not what was going to happen.  “Or…”

“The man in the conversation is Larry Pomisor, a key figure in the Waterville organization.”

That said, it all came back to me in a flood.  An assignment that specifically targeted Larry’s brother Andre, and how spectacularly it failed.  Andre had been killed, which was the mission objective, but so had his wife and children, which was not, and Larry had sworn to find his killer.

Apparently, he now had.

“Then if he regards me as the perpetrator, then you and Rodby both know Larry is going to honor a promise he made.  Surely this is all Rodby needs to put him behind bars.”  I knew Rodby could not have Larry ‘removed’ like he could once.

“It’s not that straightforward.  If we were to go in with what we know, it would burn our source, so for the time being Rodby wants you to play along, find out what he intends to do, and we’ll swoop in and round them all up.”

The man had enthusiasm, I’ll give him that, but no idea what might happen if it all went wrong; that there will be a lot of pain and suffering involved.  Larry was not a man to miss hitting the first time.

“All good intentions I’m sure, but both of you seem to forget I don’t work for him, or the government, anymore.”

“He never rescinded your file.  As far as anyone knows you’re still on the active list.  It’s just for a short time until we make all the connections.  Clearly, while the girl is courting you nothing is going to happen, and we’ll have eyes on all the major players.  All he’s asking is for you to play a role.”

It seemed to me my whole life had been one long screenplay.  And it was never that simple.

“If I say no?”

“Then I’m sure he’ll arrive on your doorstep and personally ask you to return the favor”

Yes, I’d expected that.  He may have agreed very reluctantly to my retirement, but it had always come with a caveat.

“Just this once then.”  There would be no getting around it.

“Of course.  I assume that we have permission to install eyes and ears here?”

An inconvenience, but necessary.  I nodded.  “But I am considering going to Paris, and then to New York.  She might ask to come with me.”

“Wouldn’t you simply stay put and make them come to you?  Besides, why would you take anyone actively assisting in a plan to kill you anywhere?”

Good point.  “Perhaps we’ll see what happens,  I have to get back home sometime.”

“Then give us the addresses and we’ll take care of the rest.  Oh, and the plane.  Just in case.”

I shook my head.  I guess I could say goodbye to privacy for the next few weeks.

…

© Charles Heath 2022

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

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

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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

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 33

Space is the ultimate getaway…

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Our mission, to explore other galaxies and find, if there was, new life forms, was one that we knew might be a life long mission. It was one of the reasons I signed on; put simply there was nothing back on earth to keep me there.

Everyone had signed on, knowing that it was possible they might never return home, and, indeed, at the start of the voyage, that had been a distinct possibility.

We had not known about the upscaled propulsion, nor the weaponry the ship had, but that, I worked out in the end, was more deliberate on the part of space command. The less people back home who knew of our capabilities, the better.

Having got past the attack, and the discovery of a base on Oberon, one of Uranus’s moons, we were free to go back to our primary mission.

To be honest, I was happy we’d been told to resume our mission. There was a lot of items on the ship that needed fixing, modifying, or upgrading, and it would take time, that time it would take us to get to the first stopover on a long voyage.

And perhaps a little relieved that the Admiral had confirmed my appointment as Captain, not his first choice, but that given experience and time in space, I was certainly the most qualified.

There was something else he was going to say, you know when people stop short, and I though about asking him, but in the end, decided it couldn’t be anything that was a deal breaker.

That first day after leaving Uranus, I gave the speech that the former captain was going to give, and whether he wrote it or not, it seemed fitting, and poignant.

Ftom the outset, it was going to be a voyage measured in years, and it still would be, though not quite as long as first thought.

At the speed of light, it was a four year journey from our planet, to the next known earth like planet in the next galaxy, a planet named Proxima b.

By all accounts it was unliveable, but making observations from 4 and a half light years away was hardly what I would call a thorough review.

Perhaps closer up it might have more redeeming features. It might even support life. We’d find out when we got there.

In that, there was a debate about the true speed of this vessel, and over the ensuing weeks, the subject of a guessing game that all crew members could participate in went from a rumour to reality, except the engineers.

As we approached what might be Pluto’s orbit, it was a strange feeling being so far out from home, and I had expected to see more than just the inky darkness outside the ship, but any impression we might have assumed we would see from watching old Scy Fy episodes of interstellar travel was far from the reality.

In fact, there were times when it hardly felt like we were moving. There were times when it felt like just like being back on earth, except the city was within the confines of a very large ship with no roads out of town.

A holiday was a trip to the virtual reality centre, where it was possible to go anywhere or do anything without leaving your armchair. There were theatres, restaurants, sporting facilities, even a mall. There was a library, a school, and a group of crew representatives who were there to work on issues any member of the crew had.

I played squash and tennis and the occasional game of basketball, and the rest of the time, meetings, inspections, and the watch. My favourite was the night shift, not that there was any distinction between day and night, but one of the crews concerns was that lack of a boundary that designated days, so we instituted a version of day and night, and Engineering marvel at creating a world based on New York’s standard time.

All that took three months before everyone had settled into a routine.

Of course, it couldn’t last.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 15

It’s the obvious items in the photograph that you see first, or that your eyes go to first.

The ocean, the beach, the buildings. You can see a shopping mall with MacDonald’s sign above it.

Yes, it’s late afternoon, and you can see long shadows of the buildings.

So, if I asked you what did you see in this photo, what would your reply be?

From a thriller writer or murder mystery writer’s point of view, it’s what you don’t necessarily see.

So, for the purposes of the story, the opening line for the world-weary detective, handing the photo to his partner, “What’s is it you can’t see in this photo?”

A partner that hadn’t been on the job very long, in from the suburbs, and had seen little more than break and enters car theft, and school kids hi-jinks.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“You want to be a detective, or be looking for old ladies cats?”

His partner takes the photo in hand and looks at it again.  There has to be a reason why the old man had given it to him, or perhaps there wasn’t and he was just playing with him again.

No, he thought, there has to be something…

And then he saw it, quite by accident.  A hand, a gun, and following the line of fire, at the end, what looked like someone in the bushes.

In a photo taken from a higher floor of the building over the road, looking down on what was supposed to be a rooftop recreational area.

Only there had been no report of a missing person or a gunshot wound in the last seven days.

“When was it taken?”

“Two days ago?”

“And no reports of a shooting, or a body?”

“No.  And yet the person who took this swears he saw a body, but by the time he came back, there was nothing.”

The detective handed his partner a second photo.  Time-stamped five minutes later.  With no gun and no body.

What will happen next?

What I learned about writing – Book covers are very important

And, of course, the description.

Probably one of the hardest things for a first-time author is not so much the writing but what is needed after the book is written.

You need a good description.  Short, sharp, incisive!

There’s a ream of advice out there, and I have read it all.

And, still, I got it wrong.

Then there is the cover.

I wanted simplistic, a short description to give the reader a taste of what’s in store, and let the story speak for itself.

No.

Apparently, a good cover will attract the reader to the book.

When I tendered my books on various sites to advertise them, sites such as Goodreads, and ThirdScribe, all was well with what I had done.

Then I submitted my books to a third site and they rejected the covers as too simplistic and the descriptions mundane, and wouldn’t post them.

Wow.

There’s a huge blow to the ego.  And just the sort of advice that would make a writer think twice about even bothering to continue.

But…

Perhaps the person who wrote that critique was being cruel to be kind.

At any rate, I am changing the covers, and rewording the descriptions.

Will it be a case of ‘what a difference a cover makes’?

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 279

Day 279 – Writing Exercise

…

We’ve all been there.

When you’re sitting around the table with ops and the briefing teams, you trust that they have researched the subject and checked the details, so when you go in, nothing is left to chance.

Trust.

Except in my experience, you sit there listening to the plan and hearing the confidence they have and the level of detail, and you think, what could go wrong.

For the first few missions, I trusted nothing would go wrong, and it didn’t.  Not majorly anyway.

Then one did, but we were trained to deal with setbacks and disasters mostly from last-minute changes or a single missed detail.

Too many missions, too long in the field, too on edge, approaching burnout

Then the trust turns to hope.

But it’s not until there’s a problem you can’t solve – not immediately – and you get into a situation where the training is there, but it goes only so far.

For me, it was capture.

Berlin, three months ago, in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s only so much you can do or say before the heavyweights come in.

A foreign agent in a place where he should not be, captured and unable to firmly convince the interrogators they’ve made a mistake, ends up in a dark, damp cell, at the end of a week’s conditioning.   Weeks of sensory deprivation and psychological torture.

Before the real interrogation starts.

My breaking point in training was thirty-six days.  We were at sixty.  My mind was swivelling from the overwhelming desire to give in, then to looking for a means of escape.

On the sixty-first day, I was being dragged from the cell to the interrogation room.  The guard team leader had used me as a punching bag before ordering his men to scrape me off the floor.

It was one hundred and thirty-three steps to the interrogation room.  We made one hundred and seven before a figure in black shot the three; then, as the interrogators came out to see what was happening, they were shot too.

Then a whispered in my ear, “Can you run?”

“Try to stop me.”  I didn’t think I could, but that’s what the person in black wanted to hear.

We ran.  Six more guards died.  I made it to a paddock where a helicopter was waiting.  I was literally thrown on board and took off whilst the person in black and the crew member were still climbing aboard.

That was all I could remember.

…

I woke up in the Department C training centre hospital, my handler, Dr Hawkins, sitting across the room doing what I thought was the Times cryptic crossword.

He had sent me into hell, and at least once during each of those sixty-one days in captivity I had devised a new way to mete out a long, slow, excruciating death to him and anyone else who created that fiasco.

The thing was, i knew sooner or later a mission would go south.  We all knew that our number could be up at any time.  After all, we were doing stuff that was technically illegal, and often impossible.

We would do the same to them, that they did to us.  It still didn’t make me feel any better.

He peered over the paper, then put it down.  “Ah, Vance, you’re awake.  Good.”

Like nothing had happened.  To him we were machines: come back damaged, we got sent to the repair shop, sent out for a test run and then back into service.

You didn’t quit and you didn’t retire.  I hadn’t yet discovered what happened to you if you could no longer work.

Right then, looking at his cold, expressionless face, I didn’t want to.

…

Debriefing, deprogramming, call it what you like, was as bad as what came before it.

I may have seemed normal the moment I woke up, but I’d been in captivity for sixty days, and he wanted to know what they had done.

I tried to help.  Unfortunately, all it did was make me cynical, hyper-vigilant, and desperate to prove that I wasn’t broken.

Three weeks, four, Hawkins drew a line under the mess he created and gave me a return-to-light-duty lies ticket.

I could go back to work, but nothing too complicated.  Those were the dream jobs: cushy surveillance, observe and record.

It didn’t require briefing teams, just ops one-on-one with a purple folder.

The brief:  stationed in a quiet, rain-swept Scottish seaside village.  The assignment was, if anything, laughably simple: to observe a low-level embassy clerk suspected of leaking minor logistical data decades ago.

It was purely meant to decompress me, and ease my way back in.  I read the file, threw what I would need in my backpack, along with a few dog-eared paperback spy novels and headed to Port Crudon, the village by the sea, to join the winter tourists.

Instead of a hotel room, I had a small cottage.  The day I arrived, the air had the mixed aromas of sea salt, damp wool and peat smoke.

Parked outside and sitting in the battered Volvo, the sort of car an absent-minded professor would own, I looked out through the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers at my new home.

My grip on the steering wheel was so tight my knuckles were white, and I was consciously flouncing my breaths, in four, hold four, out four, a CBT technique Hawkins had given me to combat sensory flashbacks.

That wasn’t the worst of it; I had acquired a hyper-awareness of everything around me: the number of fishing boats in the small harbour, seven, the precise angle of the rear-view mirror, the ticking of the analogue watch.  The silence that surrounded me felt heavier than the noise.

I hadn’t told him the true nature of what I was experiencing, or I’d still be back in the hospice.

It took five minutes to get out of the car.  Gull’s Rest was an apt name.  There was a dozen on the roof, watching him.  A small, whitewashed cottage with a slate roof, it overlooked the rocky shoreline.

Home away from home.  That’s how it was described to him.

He assumed the neighbour to the left was out, and the one on the right had a light on.  And was that a gentle brush of the curtain?

Before going in, I did a sweep of the perimeter, something that was instilled in us and automatically done without thinking.

Escape routes up and down the road, the houses nearby and who, if anyone, was in them, and how far to the village itself, and most importantly, a cafe where he could have breakfast, and a restaurant for dinner, a shop for supplies.

And the pub for a drink.

He grabbed his duffel bag, and after another intense stare up and down the road, he pushed open the squeaky gate, noting the picket fence was leaning in places and in need of repairs, and passed through.

The front door was solid and recently repaired.  The key was under the flowerpot, as advised, and the door opened silently.  It belied an external facade that looked neglected.

He shook his head.  There are no conspiracies.

Just the same, the scan of the cottage was instinctive and compulsive, checking the floorboards for weight traps, examining the door and window locks, possible entrances and exits, and sight measured the drop from the bedroom window to the ground.

I stopped when I realised I was checking behind a painting that hadn’t been moved for years, looking for a hidden microphone.  I forced a small laugh and said quietly to myself, “Relax, you’re just a tourist now.”

But was I?  I sat down and looked around.  Could I ever be just a tourist?  I swallowed and could still taste the copper and adrenaline left over from those sixty days of captivity.

A sharp, erratic knock at the door broke the silence and my thoughts with a jolt.  On my feet in a second, reaching for my gun and realising I didn’t have it, a momentary sense of utter shock was replaced with adopting a defensive stance.

A deep breath, exhale, then I opened the door.

It was an elderly woman huddled under a faded wool tartan shawl, holding a steaming ceramic bowl.  She shivered slightly, emphasising the cold air that rushed past her and inside when he opened the door.

“My name is Gable, Molly to friends.  I feel we will be,” she said in thick, warbling Scottish dialect.  “It’s cold, late, and you will be hungry.  I brought some hot cock-a-leekie soup to ward off the coastal chill.”

She ended it with a lopsided smile.

Habit taught you things you never stop doing, and as she spoke, I discovered a threat assessment.  He lopsided stance meant she’d been in an accident and possibly limped; she had thick cataract glasses that made her eyes impossibly large, and her hands had a slight tremor after she handed him the pot.

A harmless, eccentric local.

He smiled as he took the soup and thanked her.

“Come for the sea air?”

“Rest.”  He almost added recreation, making him sound like a soldier, or worse, a spy on sabbatical.

Gentle interrogation.

“We all need that every now and then.  You’ve come to the right place.  Perhaps we’ll run into each other.  Its a small village.  She smiled and left, definitely displaying a limp, slight but there.

He put the bowl on the table, quickly checking for foreign objects out of pure habit, and then had a small taste.  It tasted delicious, and best of all, hot.

It was a shame he didn’t have any bread to go with it.

…

The next morning, after a fitful night and a battle to light the fire in the bedroom, I got to work.  Dressing casually and looking touristy.

My cover story was that I’d been a manager in a large factory on stress leave after a breakdown.  It was almost true, the breakdown part anyway.

I walked to the village’s only pub, The Rope and Anchor, aptly named, as the inside was a collection of anchors and rope knots, and pictures of sailing ships adorning the walls.  Despite the hour, I ordered a pint.  I was not the only one and received a few dismissive looks.  I doubt I was the first southern stranger to wander in.

Mt Target, old Arthur Pindleton was already there, propping up the bar, hunched over his pint, and didn’t bother looking up when I stood beside him to order mine.

He looked like the frail, retired embassy clerk, a man who looked like he couldn’t copy a grocery list let alone state secrets.

Of course, I could be wrong, and appearances were deceptive.  And my mission was to watch him.

I went over to a corner by the windows that looked out over the street where I could see everyone coming, going, and padding by.

He sees a man with a plot and a bucket of tools walk over to the shop opposite.  A window cleaner.  He potters, then goes inside to fill the bucket, and a chat with the owner

Business is slow.

When he returns, he sees the man glance towards the pub, and I instinctively shrink back.  Moments later I could hear the squeak, squeak followed by the tap-tap of the squeegee.

I could feel a flash of fear running through me.  My mind instantly went back to the damp concrete floor in Verlin, the blinding overhead light, and the precise Morse code tapping on the pipes outside his cell, U-R-M-G.  Compromised

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and panic was setting in.  My vision blurred.  Jesus.

I gripped the edge of the wooden table, glanced at the old frail clerk and then back at the harmless windows cleaner.  I shook my head and relaxed, quietly laughed to myself, just loud enough for the bartender to glance at me in concern.

I smiled in his direction, and he went back to polishing glasses.

I whispered to myself, “It’s just a squeegee, Alec.  You’re not losing your mind yet.”

Just the same, it was once said during training that sometimes it was the little things that could bring you down.

I looked at the barely touched pint, shrugged and took a dip.  It had to be residual effects from the last mission, and it was up to him to bury the past and believe not everything was part of a conspiracy.

…

That would have been the case if…

His mind had been finely tuned to trust no one or anything.  There were no such things as coincidences, and over the years he had proved that time and time again.

And if it just been the window cleaner, he would have eventually dismissed it.

Unfortunately, it was not.

On his third pint, noting that Prindleton only stirred to take a drink and spoke only when he needed a refill.  He spoke to no one else, and they didn’t speak to him.

An oddity in itself, unless being English made them all ostracise him.  For that matter, they didn’t approach me either, simply because I was new, and new in a place like this usually attracts attention.

That it didn’t, ran another red flag up the pole.

I looked out the window and saw a Royal Mail delivery van.  I looked at my watch, an old surveillance habit, and it was 11:14.  Then, as it approached the intersection to turn, the driver stepped on the brake three times.

Something in my mind clicked.  The three flashes were the Stasi-era emergency abort signal, the one he had recently used in Berlin.  And if that didn’t set his mind down a dark path, the 1114 was the exact registry number of the ambulance used by his captors to abduct him.

He laughed inwardly.  As if the postman was an ex-KGB operative.

I had to stop looking for ‘clues’.

It had to be that exact moment that the pub’s background music started up, filling the eerie silence with an odd assortment of atmospheric jazz, pleasant, drone-like, and utterly forgettable to the average patron.

An employee’s playlist, except…

His heart missed a beat.

The track that was playing right now included a subtle, low-frequency hum, the exact white noise frequency used in the sensory deprivation tank where I spent two gruelling weeks.  It was meant to trigger a mild panic attack.

What the hell is going on?

I went over to the bar and ordered another pint, desperately trying to not show how badly my hands were shaking.

I stayed until Prindleton went to the fish and chip shop and then went home.  I went to the bakery and bought a loaf of sourdough to have with what was left of the soup.  It was delicious.

When I got home and went to cut some slices, the flour dusted on the crust had been scored with a specific crosshatch pattern.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, then hoped I wasn’t seeing what I thought it was seeing: the story was a replica of the grid coordinates of the Berlin Safehouse where I was tortured.

I mean, seriously.  It was just bread.

He shoved it in the toaster.

…

Just as the sun set, I called it a day.  I wasn’t going to watch Prindleton 24 hours a day.  A man could not drink that much and then go out all night doing spy stuff.

If he was a spy, those days were over.

I just managed to get the fire on in the lounge room and think about what I was going to do for dinner.  Go out, perhaps the fish and chips shop.

That thought was arrested by a knock on the door.  When I opened it, it was the Gable woman, different oversized jumper, same glasses, same lopsided stance, and a grin, perhaps knowing she was irritating me.

“Mrs Gable.”  I thought I’d better address her properly.

She had another porcelain container.  “Lamb stew.  Went crazy making food.  There is enough for you, so I brought it over.”

“I can cook.”

She rolled her eyes, or her best attempt at it.  “Most, no, all of the men I know can’t, or do not want to.  I’m happy to cook for two again.”

“You’re not married?”

“Not anymore; the lying, cheating bastard took off with my younger sister.  She can have him.  It’s a lot quieter without him.”

I took the bowl.  “Thank you.  It’s greatly appreciated.”

She smiled.  “Storms are coming.  Keep an eye on the weather when you’re out.  It can get nasty very quickly.”

“I will.  Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

…

After making more toast and dismissing the crosshatch grid as my imagination going wild, I turned in and started my surveillance early.

Something was not right about Prindleton.  Years of observing and reading body language told me Prindleton was not quite what was portrayed to be.

The fire kept the room warm, and as comfortable as the bed was, I didn’t sleep.  My mind was not going to let go of the coincidences.  One or two, maybe, but four.  That was stretching it.

Still half asleep, I heard the radio cut out, having left it on to use the classical music as an aid to sleep, followed by three short clicks, the old Soviet dead drop confirmation signal.  Faulty wiring?

I was up before the sun came up and left just as dawn was breaking.  No movement from one neighbour, but Mrs Gates, she was up, and I could swear her eyes were boring holes in my back.

Could she have been a spy back in her younger days?  There was something about her I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The lights were on in his cottage, and there was movement behind the curtains.  A half hour in that early morning freeze had me so that I nearly missed him leaving, and that stride to the front gate was not that of a retired Embassy clerk.

He left the cottage at precisely 08:37 am, and if I thought about it, it was the same as my cell number when in captivity, but perhaps it was just a cruel mathematical coincidence.

Mental notes to store away.

I followed a fair distance from him so it would not look like I was following him.  I followed him to the cafe.  He ordered a coffee and a croissant and sat near the door.

After a few minutes, I followed him in and ordered a coffee but not a croissant.  I sat a few tables away.

I did my usual scan and noticed the man sitting at the corner table.  Nothing unusual about him, other than the usual office types: young, eager, new suit.

Keen to make his mark.

Except…

After he turned the pages, I could see a distinct hand-drawn symbol in the margins, the same duress cypher my captors used in Berlin to signal an impending execution.

I felt my heart go into overdrive.  I told myself it was my fractured mind connecting dots that weren’t there, that it was a textbook post-traumatic flashback.

The coffee had gone cold, but Prindleton was on the move.

Next stop the grocery store when something else caught his eye, the knots used to tie up the grocery crates were the same one his captors used to tie his wrists months ago.

If I wrote everything my mind was telling me was an omen, or that I was suddenly living in the middle of a living nightmare, Dr Harrison would have me thrown out in a heartbeat.

I could not tell anyone he was seeing ghosts, but there had to be a reason why I was seeing this stuff.  It had to be my mind playing tricks.

This went on for a week, in various locations, but each signifying an event that all led back to that period in captivity. It was almost a form of mental torture in itself.

By that time I was almost at the end of my tether and finally realised it was Mrs Gates keeping me from completely immersing myself in the conspiracy.  She brought hot food. And then during the day, she asked me over for a cup of tea and cake on the pretext that she hated dining alone.

She didn’t invite me to dinner, though.

At the end of that week, Mrs Gates did not turn up with food, and I missed her. I always felt better after she had gone.  My paranoia hit fever pitch, so I decided on a course of action.

I followed Prindleton to an alley behind the pub today’s; he had used it before, and it struck me that it was for clandestine movements that no one else knew about.

I was going to break protocol and confront Prindleton directly.  A street back from entering the alley, he went straight; I turned left.  And ran.

Three minutes later, it was standing in front of Prindleton.  Or whoever it was, because this was not an old man.

“What’s going on here?”

He looked startled when I stepped out from the corner and neatly barrelled into me.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“This is some sort of operation the department is running.”

“You’re mad.  I have no…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black car stop just back from the entrance to the alley.  I stepped forward, and suddenly the man fell backwards, blood staining his shirt, the result of a sniper shot.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

It was a set-up.

…

I disappeared up the alley, shouting and footsteps behind me.  I had five minutes before they reached the cottage.  I could get there in two.

One minute later, I found the digital recording device behind the bathroom window, a high-end, department-issue digital recording unit.

Then I found three others.

This wasn’t a mission; it was a stress test to test the first stress test.  And based on all my reactions, if I were calling the shots, I’d be put in an asylum.

Only with me it was a little more complicated than that.  I vaguely remembered Harrison telling me about stress triggers, and that I might experience some, all very explainable considering my last few months, and that he expected me to report them at the end of each week.

I didn’t, for obvious reasons.

Jesus.  I felt like a cornered rat, and for a second, I didn’t know what to do.  I was astonished that I had lasted this long.

The horrifying truth dawned on him in that moment: this was never a decompression assignment.  The entire village, the civilian anomalies – it was all a controlled environment constructed by his own department.  They weren’t trying to heal him; they were stress-testing him to see if his psychological breaking point in Berlin was permanent, using his own trauma triggers against him.

He slid down the wall, laughing almost hysterically at the absurdity of it, echoing through the cottage, so close to cracking.

Except…

The kitchen door swung open.  What he believed was one of the department’s sweep team operatives stepped in, uniform immaculate, weapon drawn.  But instead of shooting, the operative kicked the door, pulled off a highly realistic silicone throat piece, and spoke in a familiar voice.  “Keep laughing, Alec, make them think you’ve completely lost it.”

Maya.  Last he was told she had died in Berlin.  He hadn’t believed them; she was too good an operative.

“Haven’t got much time, but you’re not the only one in this chicken coop.  They’re stress testing all the top agents to see how much they can take before they break. They tried it on me.”  She smiled.  “You were saved by some deft cooking.  I’ll explain later.  We have to go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here.”  She held out her hand.  “Come.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Top 5 sights on the road less travelled – Paris

Escape the Crowds: Paris’s Top 5 Hidden Gems (That Deserve Your Visit)

Paris. The City of Lights, romance, and… endless queues? While the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre are undoubtedly must-sees, experiencing the best of Paris doesn’t have to mean battling shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of fellow tourists.

If you’re looking to explore distinctive Parisian culture and history without the notorious bottlenecks, we’ve uncovered five incredible visitor attractions. These spots boast unique charm, fascinating features, and best of all: relative tranquility.

Pack your walking shoes, grab your camera, and prepare to discover a side of Paris few tourists ever see.

1. Musée Rodin (The Gardens)

While the Musée Rodin itself—home to iconic works like The Thinker and The Kiss—is popular, the vast, sculpted gardens surrounding the mansion are often overlooked as a place to linger, making them a true, peaceful escape.

Distinctive Features:

  • Sculpture Meets Serenity: The three-hectare garden is an open-air gallery, where Rodin’s profound bronze figures are set against lush lawns, rose bushes, and towering hedges. It creates one of the most sublime atmospheres in Paris.
  • The Reflection Pool: A large, tranquil pool reflects the 18th-century Hôtel Biron (the main museum building), providing stunning photographic opportunities and a space for quiet contemplation.
  • The Workshop: You can catch glimpses of the former studio spaces, helping you connect directly with the creative process of one of history’s greatest sculptors.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: You get world-class art without the crush of a major museum, allowing the beauty of the artwork and the landscape to truly sink in.

2. Butte-aux-Cailles

Forget the tourist trap boutiques of Montmartre; head instead to the Butte-aux-Cailles in the 13th arrondissement. This small, elevated neighborhood feels like a secret village preserved within the modern city, rarely appearing on mainstream tourist itineraries.

Distinctive Features:

  • Village Atmosphere: The area escaped the sweeping renovations of Baron Haussmann in the 19th century, leaving behind narrow, cobbled streets (like Rue des Cinq Diamants) lined with low, charming houses and hidden courtyards.
  • Art Nouveau Architecture: Look out for beautiful examples of brick and stone façades and original lampposts.
  • Street Art Hub: While peaceful, the Butte-aux-Cailles is also a discreet, vibrant center for Parisian street art, featuring colorful, high-quality murals and stencils often tucked away on small side streets.
  • The Artesian Wells: The area is famous for its natural hot springs, and you can still find the historic communal swimming pool—Piscine de la Butte-aux-Cailles—fed by underground water.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It offers an authentic glimpse into local Parisian life, complete with wonderful traditional bistros and quiet cafés, far removed from the noise of the center.

3. Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

When most visitors think of Parisian parks, they picture the Tuileries or the Luxembourg Gardens. But for truly dramatic landscapes and peaceful seclusion, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement is unbeatable.

Distinctive Features:

  • Dramatic Topography: Built on a former gypsum quarry and landfill, the park features steep cliffs, grottoes, artificial waterfalls, and a large central lake.
  • The Temple de la Sibylle: Perched atop a sheer, 50-meter-high cliff (known as the Belvédère Island) is a miniature Roman-style temple offering one of the most spectacular, yet uncrowded, panoramic views of Paris, including Sacré-Cœur in the distance.
  • Rustic Charm: Unlike the manicured symmetry of other parks, Buttes-Chaumont embraces a rugged, romantic English garden style, complete with a charming suspension bridge designed by Gustave Eiffel’s company.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It is a breathtaking feat of landscape architecture, providing dramatic views and quiet walking paths that make you forget you are in a major European capital.

4. The Archives Nationales (Hôtel de Soubise)

Tucked away in the historic Marais district, the Archives Nationales houses France’s national historical archives. While the documents themselves are fascinating, the primary draw is the opportunity to wander through one of the most beautiful and best-preserved 18th-century aristocratic residences in Paris, the Hôtel de Soubise.

Distinctive Features:

  • Rococo Masterpieces: The most stunning features are the magnificent state rooms, particularly the oval salons, which are considered peerless examples of French Rococo interior design. The intricate gilded woodwork, ceiling frescoes, and elaborate ornamentation are breathtaking.
  • Courtyard Grandeur: The cour d’honneur (main courtyard) immediately transports you back to the age of Louis XV, showcasing the sheer scale and opulence of Parisian high society.
  • Historical Significance: Visitors can tour selected exhibits showcasing pivotal documents from French history, offering a deep dive into the nation’s past within a spectacular setting.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: You get to explore hidden architectural gems that rival the palace interiors of Versailles, but without the mandatory entry lines and huge tour groups.

5. Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life)

The name truly says it all. Located in the residential Nouvelle Athènes neighborhood (near Pigalle), this delightful museum occupies two charming small buildings and a lush garden courtyard that celebrate the artistic and literary life of the 19th-century Romantic era.

Distinctive Features:

  • Intimate Scale: Housed in the former home of painter Ary Scheffer, the museum is dedicated to the works of George Sand, Ernest Renan, and other Romantic figures. It feels more like visiting a well-preserved family home than a traditional museum.
  • Literary History: Artifacts include portraits, jewelry, and personal items associated with the writer George Sand, offering a deeply personal look at her life and times.
  • The Best Tearoom in Paris: The garden courtyard transforms into a glorious, ivy-covered tearoom (operated by Café Renoir) during the warmer months. It is hands-down one of the most idyllic spots in Paris for a restorative coffee or lunch.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It offers a deeply atmospheric and gentle cultural experience. It is the perfect antidote to the high-intensity visit of a major museum, wrapped up in Parisian charm and elegance.

The magic of Paris extends far beyond the well-trodden paths. By seeking out these distinctive, less-crowded attractions, you can enjoy the city’s profound history, stunning architecture, and unparalleled beauty at your own pace. Happy exploring!

In a word: Deal

Deal or no deal.  That was a game show on TV once, involving briefcases.

Then, if you win…

It’s a big deal!

Or, of course, it is if you get in on the ground floor, which is to say, you’re one of the original investors, it becomes a great deal; it’s meaning, taking part in a financial transaction.

The word ‘deal’ along with big, great, tremendous, and once in a lifetime, feature prominently, but if you are like me by the time you invest the pyramid is about to collapse!

Then you’re in a great deal of trouble, meaning a lot of trouble — at the time, it feels catastrophic.

Or you’re working impossibly long hours to enrich the others above you, it a good deal of effort on your part for no reward.

Or deal with a problem, which is to say cope with or control, though if it’s a problem child, good luck with that.

But enough of the depressing descriptions,

When you play a card game, the first thing to happen is to deal the cards.

The second is to ask yourself if the dealer is dealing from the bottom of the deck, even if it looks like the top.

My father called these dealers ‘card sharps’.

Then there is a piece of wood commonly called deal, usually thin and square though not always so; it can also be a plank of pine or fir.