Category: NaNoWriMo

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 5

…

The Fourth Son

…

If Ruth is going to join the prince, for whom it is decided that he must now go home, his time of freedom is over.

However, it’s not because of the media. It is because the King’s health is failing quicker than expected, and the new king is about to be crowned.

An abdication, a coronation, and a reshuffling of Royal responsibilities.  Our prince had been hoping his escape could have been longer.

Now, there is just one small problem

Ruth’s family. They live out in the Midwest, and a telephone call to say she’s marrying a prince and moving halfway across the world is just not good enough.

Of course, the prince is an old school person. He would like to ask permission from the father to marry the daughter.

A visit he’d arranged.

Another small problem is that mother and daughter are at war.

Well, which mother and daughter are not regularly at loggerheads over everything?

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 4

…

The Fourth Son

…

There are some things troubleshooters can’t easily troubleshoot, and not one of the methods of solving the problem is shooting the problem.

Being an egregious member of the media might warrant such action, but foreign nationals are not immune from prosecution diplomatic immunity or not.

Our runaway prince in hiding could only do so if he remains with a personal body guard, a member of the Royal Guard, Cherise.

She keeps him safe and out of trouble, but this time, the mess is too big to handle using the usual methods.  She allows the two to have their moment in the restaurant, and then it is off to a safe house

There will be no going home because if the media can find him at a restaurant, then home is no longer safe.  The principality had a consulate and a private residence for the king on state visits.

There, Ruth will have to decide if this is the life she wants.  Notoriety, no such thing as privacy, hounded by the media, and no secret left hidden.

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 3

…

The Fourth Son

…

Where does he come from?  Of course, it’s a little principality in Europe where there is scope for so many and now so few.

It’s in the mountains, home to a family and a group of people who had been exiled because of certain beliefs, long since forgotten, bordering one side with Germany and the other France.

Interestingly, indeed, when taking into account world wars and neutrality and its history, it had some fascinating tales which no one has ever been able to verify and never will

What they are will have to wait until you read the story.  But is it incidental to the tale? Yes, but in a way no one could ever imagine.

Oh, and just yo make things interesting. There are two, the other, sharing a border with Italy and Switzerland with a history that is far more sinister and equally as unverifiable.

It was fun creating them.

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 2

…

The Fourth Son

…

So here’s the thing.

Our protagonist’s parents have decided they want him back home, and he’s not playing the game

They talk to some reporters, and a large weekend spread about the royal family is published with photographs.

If he’s not coming back, then everyone should know who he is, and the media will then hound him into returning.

Royal parents are like that.

Of course, there is always one reporter who puts two and two together, one who had no compunction in hounding the victim to the ends of the earth for a story, and one who does.

Confronting him and his girlfriend, in his favourite restaurant, on the day he decided that it was time to make his intentions known.

Even knowing that ousting was going to be sooner rather than later, it’s still a shock, to him and his girlfriend Ruth, who is very dismayed at the braveness of the media on pursuing their pretty.

But the jig is up.  No matter how many denials, the truth is the truth, and now a whole restaurant full of diners is left to wonder.

His charmed life till now is gone.

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 1

…

The Fourth Son

…

It is sometimes quite strange where the ideas for a story come from.

This one started with a man on the roof of an apartment block with a telescope, a place where he can seek refuge from work and people.

Being in New York, of course, made it all the more impossible to get a clear night and a clearer sky, but perhaps it was more about the solitude.

Then I read about the planets lining up, which doesn’t happen very often, and you know the saying, when the planets line up, maybe. .

So, I had my protagonist.

Now, I needed someone to interrupt the solitude and then focus him on the notion that when one door closes, another opens.

Of course the protagonist who is hiding something out of the ordinary, someone with a secret, and someone who has feelings for another who in the greater schene of things in his life, is someone who would not be ‘the right choice’.

Except his position allows him the freedom to choose whom he wants.

A scare finds him beginning to realise that he can not remain behind that veil of anonymity for much longer, and one way or another, it is going to be exposed.

But, by the time he decides to make his feelings known, his secret is no longer a secret.

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 0

…

The Fourth Son

…

This store started out as When The Planets Align.

I had this cute idea forming in Mt head as a short story for the A to Z blog, about a man of Royal blood living anonymously in America, away from the mechanations of a Royal life.

After all, he was the fourth son, and reading and hearing so much about Prince Harry being a ‘spare’, I wondered what it would be like if you were the third spare.

So far down the inheritance ladder that you were basically worthless for anything but donning a suit and smiling.  There was only one king, the eldest son.  Any chance of everyone dying so he could take the throne was unbelievable.

It could never, ever happen.

Could it?

And yes, you can guess where this is going.

Never say never ..

Do you ever feel like you’re teetering on the edge of a precipice?

I am teetering on the edge of a precipice.

Of course, literally, that might mean I’m standing at the top of a craggy cliff looking down at a bed of rocks.

One that would hurt a lot if I landed there.

But there are many ideas of what that precipice might be, metaphorically.

It might mean, in an argument, you’re about to say something you’ll regret or can’t take back.

It might mean you are one action away from turning your parent. or someone else, into a green-eyed monster, and do something you thought you’d never do.

Pushing them to the precipice.

It might mean you are one thought or idea away from solving a problem.

Like the title of your next book.

Or the formula to create a warp drive.

Or perhaps a simpler problem like where the money is coming from to pay next weeks bills.

My precipice?

The next plotline for my current NaNoWriMo project.

And, no, I’m not usually one of these writers who plan the whole novel before writing it.

But ideas like this, they just happen.

I usually write my stories in the same manner it would be for the reader, not knowing what will happen next, but it’s hard not to.

It’s cold and wet at the top of the cliff …

Damn!  Just had an idea.  Got to go.

We are taught not to be selfish, but…

Today I decided to take some time out and read a few blogs, to see what the rest of the world is doing leading up to CampNaNoWriMo, and sometimes read some news that’s usually a few days old, not that I’m complaining.

And still working on the James Bondish piece that set my mind on fire.  Last I heard, he has almost completed a successful, almost suicide, mission.  There’s just a small matter of a rebel helicopter with air-to-air missiles trying to shoot down the escape plane.

I try to keep away from the news if it’s possible, but it comes at you from everywhere.  My browser somehow decided to allow notifications and every few minutes a little popout slides out from the bottom right corner and tells me what’s gone wrong.

Never any good news by the way.

And yes, I have Windows 10, but I can’t be bothered reading the manual to find out how to stop them.  Maybe, subconsciously, I don’t.

I never thought one man could generate so many headlines.  We had one, given the nickname, the human headline, but Trump, he is in a class of his own.

I used to like watching him on The Apprentice, believe it or not.

But again I digress…

I saw the word selfish popup in a number of posts, and it reminded me that, at times writers have to be.  There are only so many hours in a day, and after emails, blogs, reading, news, life, there’s very little time left to write.

So, we need to be selfish at those times.  I am because when I sit down to write, there shouldn’t be any distractions.  As a writer, I’m not seeking popularity, maybe one day that will come, but I’m in this writing thing because I have stories to tell and I want to get them down.  Nobody may ever read them, I may never rise above mediocrity, but I am doing something I love, and very few of us out there can say that unequivocally.

Most of us have a day job or something else that consumes a great deal of our time.

Oh to be a successful author like James Patterson?  But how does he do it?  I guess it comes down to hard work, and a little bit of luck.

And maybe, one day, if I work hard enough, some of it might come my way.

“Opposites Attract” – The Editor’s second draft – Day 30

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the second revision and release to beta readers.

…

The end or is it the beginning.

…

It’s always fun to get to the end of the story.

This one, at times almost wrote itself because the elements were such a joy to write.

It started in a dance, two people who knew deep down they were in love with each other, they just either didn’t want to acknowledge it or didn’t think it was possible the other would ever see it.

How many of us sometimes look wistfully at the one we love and know it will never happen?

I’ve been there, and I know that feeling.

And then, when it is recognised, in a mad moment of realisation, you go from not having it to having it and not wanting to mess it up or wanting it to end.

Love is one of those emotions that is very hard to understand, control, or manage, and as it is often said, the heart does what it wants to do and you sometimes have to go along for the ride.

And sometimes put yourself out there and be damned to the consequences.

It’s going to hurt, one way or another, and we can only hope it’s a good hurt and not a bad one.

But will it help to go from relatively poor to very, very rich?

That of course is another story.

…

“Opposites Attract” – The Editor’s second draft – Day 30

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the second revision and release to beta readers.

…

The end or is it the beginning.

…

It’s always fun to get to the end of the story.

This one, at times almost wrote itself because the elements were such a joy to write.

It started in a dance, two people who knew deep down they were in love with each other, they just either didn’t want to acknowledge it or didn’t think it was possible the other would ever see it.

How many of us sometimes look wistfully at the one we love and know it will never happen?

I’ve been there, and I know that feeling.

And then, when it is recognised, in a mad moment of realisation, you go from not having it to having it and not wanting to mess it up or wanting it to end.

Love is one of those emotions that is very hard to understand, control, or manage, and as it is often said, the heart does what it wants to do and you sometimes have to go along for the ride.

And sometimes put yourself out there and be damned to the consequences.

It’s going to hurt, one way or another, and we can only hope it’s a good hurt and not a bad one.

But will it help to go from relatively poor to very, very rich?

That of course is another story.

…