Category: Fiction

Harry Walthenson, Private Detective – the second case – A case of finding the “Flying Dutchman”

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What starts as a search for a missing husband soon develops into an unbelievable story of treachery, lies, and incredible riches.

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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.

Even if it almost costs him his life.  Again.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 281

Day 281 – Why great novels are more intelligent than their authors

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Why Great Novels Are Smarter Than Their Authors: Unpacking Milan Kundera’s Bold Literary Claim

“Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.” — Milan Kundera

At first glance, Milan Kundera’s famous assertion sounds paradoxical, if not entirely unfair. After all, how can a creation outsmart its creator? Surely the architect of the plot, the master of the vocabulary, and the orchestrator of the themes must possess a greater intellect than the collection of bound paper they produce.

Yet, when we look closely at the mechanics of great literature—from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to Virginia Woolf and Kundera himself—this provocative quote rings profoundly true.

In this deep dive into the philosophy of fiction, we will explore what Kundera meant, why brilliant essayists often fail as novelists, and how the act of writing fiction taps into a collective wisdom that surpasses conscious thought.

1. The Novel as an Autonomous Entity

When a novelist sits down to write, they aren’t merely executing a pre-calculated mathematical formula. If a book is completely mapped out, controlled, and micro-managed by the author’s conscious intellect, it usually turns out stiff, predictable, and didactic.

Great novels, however, take on a life of their own. Characters begin to make choices that surprise even their creators. Subplots take unexpected turns. The thematic undercurrents evolve beyond the original outline.

As the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur noted, once a text is written, it escapes the author’s absolute control. It enters the public domain of interpretation, interacting with history, psychology, and philosophy in ways the author could never have fully anticipated. In this sense, the novel’s “intelligence” lies in its capacity to hold contradictory truths simultaneously—a feat that often overwhelms the author’s everyday, linear logic.

2. Why “Smart” Authors Often Write Bad Novels

Kundera’s warning—that novelists smarter than their books should change professions—is a direct jab at the intellectual who uses fiction merely as a vehicle for propaganda or philosophical lecturing.

When an author’s ego and intellect dominate the narrative, the book becomes a thesis statement in disguise. We see this in heavy-handed didactic literature where characters exist merely to spout the author’s political, moral, or philosophical views. There is no mystery, no moral ambiguity, and no room for discovery.

Conversely, a truly great novelist sets up a laboratory of human behaviour and steps back. They allow their characters to genuinely disagree with one another, embodying complex worldviews without tipping the scales.

  • Fyodor Dostoevsky was deeply conservative and religious, yet his novels (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment) give voice to brilliant, devastating arguments against faith through characters like Ivan Karamazov. Dostoevsky the man may have had a definitive worldview, but Dostoevsky the novelist created a text smart enough to transcend his own biases.

3. Intuition vs. Intellect: The Unconscious Depth of Fiction

Human consciousness is limited. We are bound by our blind spots, our prejudices, and the constraints of rational thought. But art taps into something deeper: the collective unconscious, intuition, and emotional resonance.

When writing fiction, an author often channels truths they do not yet fully understand in their waking life. They might write a tragic character arc or a toxic relationship dynamic, only to realise years later that it mirrored an unresolved aspect of their own psyche.

In this light, the book knows things about the author that the author doesn’t yet know about themselves. The novel is smarter because it operates on a multi-dimensional plane of metaphors, symbols, and human empathy, bypassing the rigid gatekeepers of the conscious ego.

4. The Novel as an Inquiry, Not an Answer

Milan Kundera believed that the specific wisdom of the novel is ambiguity. In a world obsessed with fast answers, dogmas, and certainty, the novel exists to question.

If a novelist is “too intelligent” in the sense of being overly certain, dogmatic, and keen to provide neat moral conclusions, the book suffers. The best novels leave us with more questions than answers. They invite the reader into a co-creation of meaning.

Think of Franz Kafka’s The Trial or Albert Camus’s The Stranger. These books do not offer neat solutions to the absurdity of existence. Instead, they map out the labyrinth with such breathtaking clarity and depth that the books outlive the cultural moments in which they were written, continuously generating new insights for new generations of readers.

Final Thoughts: The Humility of the True Writer

Kundera’s quote is, ultimately, an ode to literary humility. It reminds writers that their job is not to play God or act as an all-knowing professor imparting wisdom to the masses.

Instead, the novelist is an explorer. They set sail into the vast, murky waters of human experience, charting territories they cannot fully map. If the journey is successful, the resulting book will return with treasures the captain didn’t even know existed—proving that the greatest stories are always wiser than the hands that wrote them.

What are your thoughts on Kundera’s quote? Can you think of a book that feels infinitely wiser than its author’s public persona? Let us know in the comments below!

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An excerpt from “Mistaken Identity” – a work in progress

The odds of any one of us having a doppelganger are quite high. Whether or not you got to meet them or be confronted by them was significantly lower. Except, of course, unless you are a celebrity.

It was a phenomenon remarkable only for the fact that, at times, certain high-profile people, notorious or not, had doubles if only to put off enemies or the general public. Sometimes we see people in the street who look like someone we knew and make the mistake of approaching them like a long-lost friend, only to discover an embarrassed individual desperately trying to get away from what they perceive as a stalker, or worse.

And then sometimes it is a picture that looms up on a TV screen, an almost exact likeness of you. At first, you are fascinated, and then, according to the circumstances and narrative that is attached to that picture, either flattered or horrified.

For me, one turned to the other when I saw an almost likeness of me flash up on the screen when I turned the TV on in my room. What looked to be my photo, with only minor differences, was in the corner of the screen, the newsreader speaking in rapid Italian, so fast I could only translate every second or third word.

But the one word I did recognise was murder. The photo of the man on the screen was the subject of an extensive manhunt. The crime, the murder of a woman in the very same hotel I was staying, and it was being played out live several floors above me. The gist of the story, the woman had been seen with and staying with the man who was my double, and, less than an hour ago, the body had been discovered by a chambermaid.

The killer, the announcer said, was believed to be still in the hotel because the woman had died shortly before she had been discovered.

I watched, at first fascinated by what I was seeing. I guess I should have been horrified, but at that moment it didn’t register that I might be mistaken for that man.

Not until another five minutes had passed, and I was watching the police in full riot gear, with a camera crew following behind, coming up a passage towards a room. Live action of the arrest of the suspected killer, the breathless commentator said.

Then, suddenly, there was a pounding on the door. On the TV screen, plain to see, was the number of my room. I looked through the peephole and saw an army of police officers. It didn’t take much to realise what had happened. The hotel staff identified me as the man in the photograph on the TV and called the police.

Horrified wasn’t what I was feeling right then.

It was fear.

My last memory was the door crashing open, the wood splintering, and men rushing into the room, screaming at me, waving guns, and when I put my hands up to defend myself, I heard a gunshot.

And in one very confused and probably near-death experience, I thought I saw my mother and thought what was she doing in Rome?

…

I was the archetypal nobody.

I lived in a small flat, I drove a nondescript car, had an average job in a low-profile travel agency, was single, and currently not involved in a relationship, had no children, and, according to my workmates, no life.

They were wrong. I was one of those people who preferred their own company; I had a cat, and travelled whenever I could. And I did have a ‘thing’ for Rosalie, one of the reasons why I stayed at the travel agency. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but one could always hope.

I was both pleased and excited to be going to the conference. It was my first, and the glimpse I had seen of it had whetted my appetite for more information about the nuances of my profession.

Some would say that a travel agent wasn’t much of a job, but to me, it was every bit as demanding as being an accountant or a lawyer. You were providing a customer with a service, and arguably, more people needed a travel agent than a lawyer. At least that was what I told myself as I watched more and more people start using the internet, and our relevance slowly dissipating.

This conference was about countering that trend.

The trip over had been uneventful. I was met at the airport and taken to the hotel where the conference was being held with several other delegates who had arrived on the same plane. I had mingled with several other delegates at the pre-conference get-together, including one whose name was Maryanne.

She was an unusual young woman, not the sort that I usually met, because she was the one who was usually surrounded by all the boys, the life of the party. In normal circumstances, I would not have introduced myself to her, but she had approached me. Why did I think that may have been significant? All of this ran through my mind, culminating in the last event on the highlight reel, the door bursting open, men rushing into my room, and then one of the policemen opened fire.

I replayed that last scene again, trying to see the face of my assailant, but it was just a sea of men in battle dress, bulletproof vests and helmets, accompanied by screaming and yelling, some of which I identified as “Get on the floor”.

Then came the shot.

Why ask me to get on the floor if all they were going to do was shoot me? I was putting my hands up at the time, in surrender, not reaching for a weapon.

Then I saw the face again, hovering in the background like a ghost. My mother. Only the hair was different, and her clothes, and then the image was going, perhaps a figment of my imagination brought on by pain-killing drugs. I tried to imagine the scene again, but this time it played out without the image of my mother.

I opened my eyes and took stock of my surroundings. What I felt in that exact moment couldn’t be described. I should most likely be dead, the result of a gunshot wound. I guess I should be thankful the shooter hadn’t aimed at anything vital, but that was the only item on the plus side.

I was in a hospital room with a policeman by the door. He was reading a newspaper and sitting uncomfortably on a small chair. He gave me a quick glance when he heard me move slightly, but didn’t acknowledge me with either a nod or a greeting, just went back to the paper.

If I still had a police guard, then I would still be considered a suspect. What was interesting was that I was not handcuffed to the bed. Perhaps that only happened in TV shows. Or maybe they knew I couldn’t run because my injuries were too serious. Or the guard would shoot me long before my feet hit the floor. I knew the police well enough now to know they would shoot first and ask questions later.

On the physical side, I had a large bandage over the top left corner of my chest, extending over my shoulder. A little poking and prodding determined the bullet had hit somewhere between the top of my rib cage and my shoulder. Nothing vital there, but my arm might be somewhat useless for a while, depending on what the bullet hit on the way in or through.

It didn’t feel like there were any broken or damaged bones.

That was the good news.

On the other side of the ledger, my mental state, there was only one word that could describe it. Terrified. I was looking at a murder charge and jail time, a lot of it. Murder usually had a long time in jail attached to it.

Whatever had happened, I didn’t do it. I know I didn’t do it, but I had to try to explain this to people who had already made up their minds. I searched my mind for evidence. It was there, but in the confused state brought on by the medication, all I could think about was jail, and the sort of company I was going to have.

I think death would have been preferable.

…

Half an hour later, maybe longer, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. A nurse, or what I thought was a nurse, came into the room. The guard stood, checked her ID card, and then stood by the door.

She came over and stood beside the bed. “How are you?” she asked, first in Italian, and when I pretended I didn’t understand, she asked the same question in accented English.

“Alive, I guess,” I said. “No one has come and told me what my condition is yet. You are my first visitor. Can you tell me?”

“Of course. You are very lucky to be alive. You will be fine and make a full recovery. The doctors here are excellent at their work.”

“What happens now?”

“I check you, and then you have another visitor. He is from the British Embassy, I think. But he will have to wait until I have finished my examination.”

I realised then she was a doctor, not a nurse.

…

My second visitor was a man, dressed in a suit, the sort of which I associated with the British Civil Service.  He was not very old, which told me he was probably a recent graduate on his first posting, the junior officer who drew the short straw.

The guard checked his ID but again did not leave the room, sitting back down and going back to his newspaper.

My visitor introduced himself as Alex Jordan from the British Embassy in Rome, and he had been asked by the Ambassador to sort out what he labelled a tricky mess.

For starters, it was good to see that someone cared about what happened to me.  But, equally, I knew the mantra, get into trouble overseas, and there is not much we can do to help you.  So, after that lengthy introduction, I had to wonder why he was here.

I said, “They think I am an international criminal by the name of Jacob Westerbury, whose picture looks just like me, and apparently, for them, it is an open and shut case.”  I could still hear the fragments of the yelling as the police burst through the door, at the same time telling me to get on the floor with my hands over my head.

“It’s not.  They know they’ve got the wrong man, which is why I’m here.  There is the issue of what had been described as excessive force, and the fact that you were shot had made it an all-around embarrassment for them.”

“Then why are you here?  Shouldn’t they be here apologising?”

“That is why you have another visitor.  I only took precedence because I insisted on speaking with you first.  I have come, basically, to ask you for a favour.  This situation has afforded us an opportunity.  We would like you to sign the official document, which basically indemnifies them against any legal proceedings.”

Curious.  What sort of opportunity was he talking about?  Was this a matter that could get difficult and I could be charged by the Italian Government, even if I wasn’t guilty, or was it one of those hush-hush type deals, you do this for us, we’ll help you out with that?  “What sort of opportunity?”

“We want to get our hands on Jacob Westerbury as much as they do.  They’ve made a mistake, and we’d like to use that to get custody of him if or when he is arrested in this country.  I’m sure you would also like this man brought into custody as soon as possible, so you will stop being confused with him.  I can only imagine what it was like to be arrested in the manner you were.  And I would not blame you if you wanted to get some compensation for what they’ve done.  But.  There are bigger issues in play here, and you would be doing this for your country.”

I wondered what would happen if I didn’t agree to his proposal.  I had to ask, “What if I don’t?”

His expression didn’t change.  “I’m sure you are a sensible man, Mr Pargeter, who is more than willing to help his country whenever he can.  They have agreed to take care of all your hospital expenses, refund the cost of the Conference, and travel.  I’m sure I could also get them to pay for a few days at Capri or Sorrento, if you like, before you go home.  What do you say?”

There was only one thing I could say.  Wasn’t it treason if you went against your country’s wishes?

“I’m not an unreasonable man, Alex.  Go do your deal, and I’ll sign the papers.”

“Good man.”

…

After Alex left, the doctor came back to announce the arrival of a woman, who had announced herself as the publicity officer from the Italian police. When she came into the room, she was not dressed in a uniform.

The doctor left after giving a brief report to the civilian at the door. I understood the gist of it: “The patient has recovered excellently, and the wounds are healing as expected. There is no cause for concern.”

That was a relief.

While the doctor was speaking to the civilian, I speculated on who she might be. She was young, not more than thirty, conservatively dressed, so an official of some kind, but not necessarily with the police. Did they have prosecutors? I was unfamiliar with the Italian legal system.

She had long, wavy black hair and the sort of sultry looks of an Italian movie star, and her presence made me more curious than fearful, though I couldn’t say why.

The woman then spoke to the guard, and he reluctantly got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. She checked the door and then came back towards me, standing at the end of the bed. Now alone, she said, “A few questions before we begin.” Her English was only slightly accented. “Your name is Jack Pargeter?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You are in Rome to attend the Travel Agents Conference at the Hilton Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“You attended a preconference introduction on the evening of the 25th, after arriving from London at approximately 4:25 pm.”

“About that time, yes. I know it was about five when the bus came to collect me, and several others, to take us to the hotel.”

She smiled. It was then that I noticed she was reading from a small notepad.

“It was ten past five to be precise. The driver had been held up in traffic. We have several witnesses who saw you on the plane, on the bus, at the hotel, and with the aid of closed-circuit TV, we have established you are not the criminal Jacob Westerbury.”

She put her notebook back in her bag and then said, “My name is Vicenza Andretti, and I am with the prosecutor’s office. I am here to formally apologise for the situation that can only be described as a case of mistaken identity. I assure you, it is not the habit of our police officers to shoot people unless they have a very strong reason for doing so. I understand that in the confusion of the arrest, one of our officers accidentally discharged his weapon. We are undergoing a very thorough investigation into the circumstances of this event.”

I was not sure why, but between the time I had spoken to the embassy official and now, something about letting them off so easily was bugging me. I could see why they had sent her. It would be difficult to be angry or annoyed with her.

But I was annoyed.

“Do you often send a whole squad of trigger-happy riot police to arrest a single man?” It came out harsher than I intended.

“My men believed they were dealing with a dangerous criminal.”

“Do I look like a dangerous criminal?” And then I realised if it was mistaken identity, the answer would be yes.

She saw the look on my face and said quietly, “I think you know the answer to that question, Mr Pargeter.”

“Well, it was overkill.”

“As I said, we are very sorry for the circumstances you now find yourself in. You must understand that we honestly believed we were dealing with an armed and dangerous murderer, and we were acting within our mandate. My department will cover your medical expenses and any other amounts for the inconvenience this has caused you. I believe you were attending a conference at your hotel. I am very sorry, but given the medical circumstances you have, you will have to remain here for a few more days.”

“I guess, then, I should thank you for not killing me.”

Her expression told me that was not the best thing I could have said in the circumstances.

“I mean, I should thank you for the hospital and the care. But a question or two of my own. May I?”

She nodded.

“Did you catch this Jacob Westerbury character?”

“No. In the confusion created by your arrest, he escaped. Once we realised we had made a mistake and reviewed the closed-circuit TV, we tracked him leaving by a rear exit.”

“Are you sure it was one of your men who shot me?”

I watched as her expression changed to one of surprise.

“You don’t think it was one of my men?”

“Oddly enough, no. But don’t ask me why.”

“It is very interesting that you should say that, because in our initial investigation, it appeared none of our officers’ weapons had been discharged. A forensic investigation into the bullet tells us it was one that is used in our weapons, but…”

I could see their dilemma.

“Have you any enemies that would want to shoot you, Mr Pargeter?”

That was absurd because I had no enemies, at least none that I knew of, much less anyone who would want me dead.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then it is strange, and will perhaps remain a mystery. I will let you know if anything more is revealed in our investigation.”

She took an envelope out of her briefcase and opened it, pulling out several sheets of paper.

I knew what it was. A verbal apology was one thing, but a signed waiver would cover them legally. They had sent a pretty girl to charm me. Perhaps using anyone else would not have worked. There was potential for a huge litigation payout here, and someone more ruthless would jump at the chance of making a few million out of the Italian Government.

“We need a signature on this document,” she said.

“Absolving you of any wrongdoing?”

“I have apologised. We will take whatever measures are required for your comfort after this event. We are accepting responsibility for our actions and are being reasonable.”

They were. I took the pen from her and signed the documents.

“You couldn’t add dinner with you on that list of benefits?” No harm in asking.

“I am unfortunately unavailable.”

I smiled. “It wasn’t a request for a date, just dinner. You can tell me about Rome, as only a resident can. Please.”

She looked me up and down, searching for the ulterior motive. When she couldn’t find one, she said, “We shall see once the hospital discharges you in a few days.”

“Then I’ll pencil you in?”

She looked at me quizzically. “What is this pencil me in?”

“It’s an English colloquialism. It means maybe. As when you write something in pencil, it is easy to erase it.”

A momentary frown, then recognition and a smile. “I shall remember that. Thank you for your time and cooperation, Mr Pargeter. Good morning.”

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2021

The cinema of my dreams – It all started in Venice – Episode 2

An old acquaintance

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I had three questions that needed answers.

First, how did Larry find out I was the one behind his brother’s death?

It begged the question of whether there was a leak in Rodby’s organization because he was the only one other than the logistics team who knew anything about that mission.

It could be that he assumed that being part of the team sent to neutralize a problem, that I was the perpetrator or I knew who was.  Either way, I didn’t like my chances of surviving an interrogation.

Or someone had been taking photos of the crime scene, even though I’d taken precautions not to be recognized, slipped up, but that would assume he had photos of everyone on the team.  I made a note to ask about the health of the other team members.

I would have to compile a list of questions to ask Larry when we finally met, what one might call a fly on the wall moment.

The second, how did Larry know of my association with Juliet.  She was a respected doctor in a respectable hospital when I last saw her.

To be known to Larry, she had to have fallen from that pedestal.  Given what the Waterville organization was known for, all of the branches of crime seemed far removed from who and what she was.

Some investigation was needed, and I sent a message to Alfie on the burner phone he left me.  It had a few other tricks up its sleeve like recording conversations and taking photos that were automatically sent back to base, and an app that detected recording equipment like those used by the security services.

If Juliet was wired, I’d know.

And speaking of Juliet, the third question was how she going to orchestrate a casual meeting between us, and could I muster the necessary surprise when we finally crossed paths.

When a message arrived later in the day in response to my query, it had a current photo and an abbreviated resume of her life since the last time I saw her.

The first sentence that caught my eye was that she was no longer a doctor.  Well, not a practising doctor.  It seemed the stress of working endless hours in the hospital led to an accident when she had been overtired, which led to an addiction to painkillers when led to self-medicating to making a mistake.

That led to seeking other means of fulfilling the addiction, and that was a slippery slope.  Without reading the fine print, it was a simple connection from ex-doctor to addict to a soul depended on a person the likes of Larry.  To him, a doctor of her calibre would be useful in patching up criminals who couldn’t go to hospitals to be patched up after committing a crime and getting injured if not shot in the process

Now, Larry had another use for her.

The current photo of her showed a woman who had aged more than normal, perhaps as a result of drug abuse, thinner than I remembered her, and with straw blonde hair replacing the rich burgundy she used to have.

Her recent resume was more of a horror story than the life she may once have expected for herself, but desperation often led people down paths the least desired, and saying they had choices were not always true.  It would be interesting to learn if she would be willing to tell me about any of it.

There was also a footnote that told me where and when would be arriving, the airport, the following day, and I decided to go and check her out, to make sure I’d recognise her when the time came.  As she was now, I didn’t think, without the photograph Alfie had sent me, I would have recognized her on the street.

…

© Charles Heath 2025

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 34

A brief moment of respite

…

The simulation of nighttime on board the ship was as realistic as I remembered it when back on earth.

I was on my usual rounds after midnight, with the 2IC of security, Nancy Woolmer, who had been a NY detective until a better offer came along.

This ship.

Like me, she had little to keep her back home, her husband who had also been a detective, had been killed on the job, and that had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Not blessed, or as she put it, cursed, with children, her parents had passed on, and any family left were not enough to keep her home.  This ship, she had said, would be her savior.

But she had the look of a person running away, and that, one day, would come back to bite her.  In the meantime, if we ever needed a detective, she was it.

“They’ve really got this night thing going, haven’t they.  You could almost imagine you’re in a leafy suburb out for a walk at night.”

“I doubt the streets would be as safe.”

The world we had left behind was in crisis, where there were deep divides between those in work and those who were not, and those with wealth and those without, and a bigger fight between countries over the space program.  It had started out with good intentions, but people being people, it didn’t stay that way.  

We had an international crew, but there was always the lingering doubt of what some people’s intentions were.  Out in space where everyone depended on everyone else, a small problem could become a big one very quickly.

“No, perhaps not.  But it’s good to hear the breeze rustling in the trees.”

Though the simulation lacked real trees, the projection on the passage walls of what either side of a street. With pavements, trees and houses, and for the night, the eerie glow of street lamps, was close enough.

The once around the perimeter passage on each deck took about two hours at a leisurely pace, considering there were ten decks.

I could have passed the job onto one of the watch officers, but it was about the only time I got to see the crew, those that were basically out of sight, keeping the ship running.  

I had set the lofty goal of meeting every one of the over 2,000 crew members within the first year, but a few months in, that was looking unlikely.

There was a sudden vibration emanating from the deck, followed by the sort of movement I would have associated with the ship coming off speed, like the jerk in a car when taking the foot off the accelerator.  The dampeners were designed to handle that and make increases and decreases in speed unnoticeable, but there was still an indication it had happened.

Ten seconds later my communicator vibrated.  I didn’t like the ring tone built-in, but it was more likely because most calls were bad news.

“What happened,” I asked, knowing it would be the duty officer of the watch

“Engineering are reporting a glitch, sir.”

There’s a word I hadn’t heard for a long time.  My father used to refer to anything that went wrong around the house as a glitch.

“Serious?”

“Don’t know, but you’re within a stone’s throw, so I thought you might want to pay them a visit.”

He was right, I was on that deck, and not far from the central control room.  The bridge must be tracking me, even though I’d asked them not to.  Standing orders dictated all officers and important personnel whereabouts were known at all times, I’d been told.

“I will.”

To Nancy, “You might want to continue on without me, and I’ll try to catch up later.”

She smiled.  “Tell them they should have bought the premium quality rubber bands.”

Previous conversations had highlighted a certain cynicism towards the fixtures and fittings, some of which were quite shoddy, which was disappointing but there was no doubt corners were cut in order to get the ship into service.

We all just hoped that cost-cutting didn’t extend to the main items, and if there were, it had been picked up in the trials.

As I stepped into the control room, a brightly lit room with banks of control panels and engineers sitting at them, there were a number of people huddled around one in particular, including the chief engineer.

The conversation was quite lively, and one voice stood out above the others, “… and had the builders rep actually listen to someone who knows what they’re talking about, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

It was the same voice I’d heard in the captain’s day room my first day aboard, pontificating, as the captain put it, over a list of problems he was having with the shipbuilders representative.

“We’re in this situation,” the Chief Engineer said, “because everything we have here is new, and some of it untried.  If you’re going to push boundaries, then sometimes there’s a problem.  Rather than complain, find a resolution.”

The group broke up, and the Chief saw me coming over.  He met me halfway.

“Half this new breed they’ve sent me and more teaches rather than hands-on, always on about the code or some such.  Good, maybe, for diagnostics, but not for problem-solving.  I suspect it’s tainted coolant, seems the original batch wasn’t cleaned out after the first run, and it’s overwhelmed the filters.  It’s down to the bowels I’m afraid, and we’ll be up and running before those nincompoops work out the real problem.”

“Good.  Just let the bridge know when you’re done.”

One last look at the nincompoops, and I headed back out to resume rounds.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

What I learned about writing – Trying not to get into a ‘rut’

I feel like I’m on the outside looking in at this poor fellow struggling to work out what needs to be done, and in the end, getting nothing done.

Writing had suddenly become all that more difficult to do, not because I can’t, there’s an endless supply of ideas running around in my head, it’s just wanting to sit down and do it.

What are my expectations? 

I had set a list of projects I wanted to work on, more episodes for the three continuing stories, and a start to the next episodic story, ‘motive, means, and opportunity’, though for this story I have brought together all the writing I’ve been doing in past few months.

Then there is the completion of ‘the things we do for love’ which at long last now has a completed second draft with a lot of updates and changes to properly reflect the situation of the characters.  I have also got ‘strangers we’ve become’ to a point where it can finally get editorial sign-off. Publishing is not far away after that.

It would be easy to blame COVID 19 for the delays or the lack of commitment to the task, but that’s not the problem.  I’ve been home and had the time, but there have been a number of distractions, and ideas for new stories always seem to divert my attention from what I should be doing.

It’s not writer’s block.  It’s not laziness.  It seems that I just don’t have the time to work on them, and that might be because my subconscious is telling me there are problems with the narrative, and I’m just not ready to address them.

What has got my attention then?

I’m not sure how or why, but something triggered the idea of passing through a portal into another time, in the past.  I think I might have been looking for photographs to write another photo/story, and I came across a covered bridge, and which led to looking for photographs of ghost towns.  What topped it off, there was an old western in black and white, High Noon, which provoked a whole lot of memories of many westerns I’d seen in the past.

What other reason do you need to write your own story?

Then, when visiting my grandchildren, we just happened to do some stargazing, using Google Sky Map, picking out the planets.  Somehow I managed to take a photo, and looking at it, took me back to the days of Star Trek, and the many series, which sort of gave me an idea for another story, which has been running off and on over the last few months.

Equally, I’m always on the lookout for photo opportunities that I can use to write short stories, and these continue apace, the latest, number 150.  These are being formed into anthologies, stories 1 to 50, and stories 51 to 100.  The first has been assembled into book form and is awaiting the editor’s first reading and report.  I’m still working on the second.

And, now there is the next, stories 101 to 150.

Perhaps some of the time has been spent keeping up with Twitter, where over the last six months, and more recently, sales of my books on Amazon have been increasing.  Not to best-seller numbers, but people are reading my stories, and the reviews have been very good.

It has, of course, pushed me to work harder on marketing and that has consumed some of my time, which unfortunately takes me away from writing.  It sometimes feels like a self-defeating exercise, but it is the same for all of us.

Oh, and something else that cropped up this month, my brother has been digging into our family history, and around the middle of the month, he found some interesting revelations about some family members, including a pseudo-Luddite that ended up in Tasmania of all places, and then later on, when chasing down the places that we, as a family, lived, and this brought out some very interesting information about our father.

I’m discovering for what I’d always assumed was an ordinary man, he had done a lot of very interesting things in his life, and not only that, I’ve been fictionalizing the story.  I have potted pieces written over various stages, and, one day, it might come together as a sort of biography.  It is astonishing just how much you don’t know about your family, until much later on, at least for some of us.  Our relatives have always been a mystery to me, and it’s fascinating as each one is brought to life with a new detail here and there.

Looking back on what I’ve just written, perhaps the passing of time had been more productive than I first thought.  It just seems like nothing major has happened.

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 280

Day 280 – What’s real and what isn’t

…

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.

…

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally, it was not set anywhere in particular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

…

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

newechocover5rs

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

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

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 280

Day 280 – What’s real and what isn’t

…

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.

…