What starts as a search for a missing husband soon develops into an unbelievable story of treachery, lies, and incredible riches.
…
It was meant to remain buried long enough for the dust to settle on what was once an unpalatable truth, when enough time had passed, and those who had been willing to wait could reap the rewards.
The problem was, no one knew where that treasure was hidden or the location of the logbook that held the secret.
At stake, billions of dollars’ worth of stolen Nazi loot brought to the United States in an anonymous tramp steamer and hidden in a specially constructed vault under a specifically owned plot of land on the once docklands of New York.
It may have remained hidden and unknown to only a few, if it had not been for a mere obscure detail being overheard …
… by our intrepid, newly minted private detective, Harry Walthenson …
… and it would have remained buried.
Now, through a series of unrelated events, or are they, that well-kept secret is out there, and Harry will not stop until the whole truth is uncovered.
Could you write a fantasy story to avoid getting too serious
For years, people used to tell me I was living in my own fantasy land.
What amazed me was that they could see into my mind that I wanted to be a knight in shining armour, a superhero, a billionaire who wanted for nothing, and a spy who beat the bad guys and won over the girl.
Of course, none of this could ever happen in reality, only in my imagination.
With the arrival of three grandchildren and being asked to take up child-minding, came the time to read them stories before they went to bed.
I used to think that the violence that was within those stories would keep any sane person up all night, but I was quick to realise that any sort of cartoon or fantasy story always carried an indecent level of violence.
Perhaps from a young age, we are supposed to be taught that good triumphs over evil and the bad guys always come off second best.
However….
After reading a lot of fairy tales to the girls, I thought to myself I could do better and decided to write my own.
A snotty, egotistical princess is about to be married off to the prince in the kingdom next door, and he isn’t very nice. The thing is, no one likes her, and everyone is glad she’s going away to be with her prince.
She’s been betrothed since they were children, and that notion she could marry for love was dashed many years before.
But…
There’s a legend that comes once in a millennium called ‘the conflagration’, where the firstborn eldest daughter from one of the kingdoms in the realm is selected to become ‘the saviour’, who has to go on a quest to find the twelve pieces of the tablet needed to restore peace and order.
It just happens that after the invasion of her kingdom by another, that of her prince, soon to be husband, the conflagration begins. Her ‘knight in shining armour’ comes to collect her, only it is not marriage he has in mind.
Her father’s trusted Master-at-Arms is sent to save her from the prince and take her on the quest, sent to him in his dreams. The problem is, the king believes the Gods have made a mistake, but trusts his personal knight to guide her in her role.
Of course, the knight doesn’t believe she will get past the first task. For that reason, he doesn’t tell her the real reason why they are heading into the Kingdom of Magic. Not until it’s time to find the first artefact.
There are twelve to find, and by the time she locates the last piece of the puzzle, she transforms from the whiny, self-indulgent brat into a fearless leader.
Everything a saviour needed to be.
By the time the first draft was finished, it was 1,100 pages of the story called The Enchanted Horse.
Well, Mr Disney, I’ve just created your next Disney Princess, The Princess Marigold!
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Of course, prior means gone before, as in past history, or perhaps only a few moments ago; it happened prior to my arrival on the scene.
But it can also mean, quite confusingly, to something in the future, when trying to get out of a meeting by saying I’ve got a prior appointment.
If you are an aficionado of American police dramas then you will be well acquainted with the prior, meaning a previous criminal conviction.
And for something quite different, a prior is a priest of sorts, who to me were named as such in the middle ages. A prior is below an Abbot and is head of a house of friars. By the way, the most notable friar I know is Friar Tuck
A prior could also be a magistrate in the medieval republic of Florence.
It is not to be doubly confused with Pryer or Prier
Someone who pries into another’s business, the most notable prier, the woman across the road from Samantha, in Bewitched.
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
I’ve been reading the latest headlines and picked out a few:
…
The seems to be a currency war,
Oil prices are set to rise in line with a cut in production,
Some tankers will not be plying the Hormuz Strait,
There was a massive power outage in the UK,
Gold prices are rising,
North Korea is shooting missiles into the sea
The USA needs more missiles,
There are Chinese survey vessels in the South China Sea,
In Russia there is an explosion on a secret base with nuclear implications, and,
There might be a global recession coming
…
What do all these events mean? Nothing really when taken individually, but when you start combining them, then the thriller writer in me starts to see all sorts of conspiracies and plotlines for stories.
…
What if….
Take that explosion in Russia, and the fact the word nuclear is attached to it, and then look at the massive power outage in the UK. What if that site was a laboratory, working on small, powerful bombs that can easily be carried, installed, in or around vital infrastructure, and in that quest for smaller and more powerful something goes wrong.
After all, isn’t that what testing is for?
And the fact there’s been one major event involving vital infrastructure, should we be looking for more? Then there are a few problems with bombs being attached to tankers in the Hormuz Strait. Does anyone see the potential for an apocalyptic event coming on?
Then the North Koreans are firing test missiles, and the US calling for more missiles to add to their arsenal. Are they using North Korea as an excuse? Or is there something more sinister going on with Chinese survey vessels in the South China Sea? What if they’re not survey vessels?
Then there’s a small matter of rising oil prices. Whilst the same report might say that the rise is due to OPEC cutting output, there could be other reasons, such as the currency war that’s about to erupt, and will this pre-emp a global recession. A good indicator of impending disaster, wars, and other maladies is the rising price of gold.
The gold market goes into overdrive when currency starts to lose value, recessions are coming or have arrived, or there is about to be a war, or there is one. The US and China are facing off, the US and half the middle east are a disaster waiting to happen, and, hang on, North Korea is being provocative, and in late development, India and Pakistan are facing off over Kashmir.
Are we surprised people are turning to gold?
Maybe I should go back to doing the crossword and ignoring the news.
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester. Our discussion about me going away is not finished.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
I’ve been trying to make the bed, fully aware of the icy stares I’m being given. The old age issue is still very raw, and I found him back in his bed, frumping.
You do realise, comes the plaintiff cry, that no one ever remembers to come and refresh the water and food.
News to me. Every time we go away, he has a constant stream of people coming to see him.
Old age, I say, is making you forgetful.
And when you sent me away to your brothers, I could barely tolerate that cat of his. Common alley cat if there ever was one.
Class distinction, I didn’t see that coming.
We’re not all just cats, you know.
Perhaps not, but over the years, we’ve had a variety of different cats, but not a purebred like Chester. I’m not sure how that came to pass, but I think I preferred the non-fussy, undisdainful, and easily pleased ‘alley cats’.
Would you like me to send you to my brother’s then?
No, I didn’t think so. Bed made, the discussion is over.
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
…
Now, there’s this thing called continuity, but it covers a whole range of writing sins, most of which I eventually get caught out. Films sometimes miss a few items, like back in the roman days, there are plane trails in the sky, in a 1920’s period piece, there’s a mobile phone sitting on a desk.
Like one minute the hero has a gun, and the next he’s fighting for his life with a knife, and, hey presto, there’s that gun again. The error might not be that big but you can’t pull out a weapon you don’t have or wasn’t there in the first place.
Similarly, the hero pulls out a mobile phone, but there’s only one problem, it’s 1980, and there are no mobile phones. Our problem might be that we are so used to doing and using certain things that we might forget, for a minute or two, that were not available in the past.
Then there’s places like hotels and restaurants, both of which change hands and close and reopen with a different owner like someone changes their socks. There’s no substitute for checking, on the internet of course, whether a Hilton Hotel was in 6th Avenue, New York, in 1920.
The answer is no. The first Hilton Hotel was in Waco in 1927. The New York Hilton opened in 1963.
The same goes for the fashion of the day.
I’m no fashion guru, but I have to rely on Google once again to fill in the gaps.
And my all-time favourite, getting the right make and model of car.
Oh, and just for good measure, back in the old days they used acoustic couplers to attach to phones via a serial port to dial-up not a server, but a BBS, Bulletin Board Service, at a rate of 300 baud, or a little while later, 1,200 baud.
There was no internet in general use. If you wanted to call the office when out, use a telephone box. Or carrier pigeon.
And the use of language, there’s a lot of stuff relevant today that was not used back then, and there was a lot of stuff back then that isn’t tolerated now. Some of it might be hard to get your head around.
It isn’t for me, because I can remember the 1970s and 1980s, but I’m not too sure about allowing some of what happened then to creep into my work.
So, you get the picture. Try to use the past as the past, or leave it in the past.
Unless it’s a book about time travel, then all bets are off.
Nearly every city has a high building, a tower, or a large Ferris wheel.
London had the London eye Paris has the Eiffel tower The Galata in Istanbul The CN Tower in Toronto The towers of San Gimignano Pisa has a leaning tower
We’ve managed to see all of the above bar the Galata in Istanbul. One day we might get there.
But, on this side of the world, there are two, the Sydney Tower, and the Sky Tower in Auckland, which we just visited recently.
It’s not a tall tower, but it definitely gives great vies of Auckland, particularly to the north
The mountain in the background at the top of the photo is of a volcano on Rangitoto Island. When we were visiting, there were reports that it might become active again.
To give a height perspective, it didn’t seem all that far down to the apartment building and gardens nearby.
We were staying at the Hilton and advised there would be a large cruise liner berthing next to the hotel. There was the Arcadia.
This is the view from the other side of the hotel. Where our room was, we could almost walk onto the aft end of the ship.
We were also told this was a rather extraordinary day because there were two cruise ships in the port. particularly because it was near the end of the cruising season.
The other ship was two berths along, the Sun Princess.
Not as big as the Arcadia, up close it was still very impressive.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 