We have stayed in two different types of accommodation in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, as a timeshare owner who can trade their week for a week anywhere in the world.
Both are resorts, but different sorts of resorts. The first was a typical RCI resort, where everything is laid back and relaxing, with all the amenities one can expect from a resort.
The other, this one, the Wyndham in Coffs Harbour, is very different, and you notice it when you walk in the front door. You are virtually assaulted by hard-nosed timeshare sales staff who really don’t take no for an answer, and then when you finally escape, ring you every day to make an appointment.
I left the phone off the hook.
Aside from that, the place is excellent, the accommodation very good, and the situation one of the best with what could be called a private beach. There are also a number of bushwalks that cater to old people like me.
As you can see, lakes and greenery, and even a putting green.
And in places, they try very hard to hide the ugly multi-story buildings in amongst the trees
It is only a short walk to the ‘private beach’ and it is sufficiently long enough for a morning walk before breakfast. You could even try to catch some fish for breakfast, though I’m not sure if anyone actually caught anything
Or you can just stare out to sea
And, back in the room, this is the view we had from our verandah
The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.
…
It’s a little more settled this morning, sitting down in front of the laptop and ready to go. The plan is in three different places, which is not what was meant to happen, but at various stages of the development process in the previous few weeks, I had to use different apps on my phone to make notes as ideas came to me.
If only Scrivener came on a Samsung phone!
But I will take the time to sit down and join the disparate pieces together, but as we all know that takes time, and time is of the essence.
So, today, it’s about the intermediate characters. The one I like the most is the police chief, an honest man working under a corrupt government, and military, knowing their foibles, and yet maintaining the ideal that the letter of the law will not be bent by his masters.
It makes for an interesting dynamic.
There are others, but these will be teased out as the story progresses, especially the girl in white who appears almost like an apparition.
Then, of course, there is the international media contingent in the city for the conference, of which some are not necessarily who they say they are.
The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.
…
Today is a day for character development, and especially for Teresa. She is going to be the devil in disguise, or maybe not.
We get to meet her when Quinn picked her out of a list of prospective candidates for partnering our main character, despite the fact he says he prefers to work alone.
Of course, the reason for that is obvious after the last mishap and the fact that the partner was killed. Before that, he didn’t have a problem, but now, the idea of someone getting killed on his watch is not something he wants.
But, he doesn’t know he’s getting a partner. She’ll be turning up on his doorstep, and he will not be in a position to refuse.
She is currently residing in a prison, well, that has something to do with an errant husband who some would say got what he deserved.
Is she innocent? Not everyone in prison is, despite what they say, and she never protested her innocence.
Quinn wants her on the team for two reasons, she is very dangerous, especially skilled in killing, but controllable, and more importantly, to keep our main character guessing why she is there.
Is she a bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks, or labelled such for so-called bad deeds?
It’s time to get on that particular roller coaster.
I have a passion for visiting transport museums, to see old trains, planes, buses, cars, even ships if it’s possible.
This has led to taking a number of voyages on the TSS Earnslaw in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Many, many, many years ago on Puffing Billy, a steam train in the Dandenongs, Victoria, Australia.
The steam train in Kingston, New Zealand, before it was closed down, but hopefully it will reopen sometime in the future.
The London Transport Museum in London England, which had a lot of buses.
The Workshops Railway Museum in Ipswich, Queensland, where once the many steam engines were built and maintained, and now had only a handful of engines remaining.
However, in the quest for finding and experiencing old transportation methods, we came across the Mary Valley Rattler, which runs out of Gympie, Queensland, Australia.
The ride begins in Gympie at the old Gympie Railway station, and as can be seen below, is one of the relics of the past, and, nothing like the new more modern stations. Thankfully.
If you’re going to have a vintage train, then you have to have a vintage station.
The Class of engine, seen below, is the C17, a superheated upgrade to the C16 it was based on, and first run in 1903. This particular engine was built in 1951, although the first of its type was seen in 1920 and the last of 227 made in 1953. It was the most popular of the steam engines used by Queensland Railways.
The C designation meant it had four driving axels and 17 was the diameter of the cylinder, 17 inches. It is also known as a 4-8-0 steam locomotive and nicknamed one of the “Brown Bombers” because of its livery, brown with green and red trimming.
Also, this engine was built in Maryborough, not far from Gympie by Walkers Limited, one of 138.
This photo was taken as the train returned from Amamoor, a trip that takes up to an hour.
The locomotive is detached from the carriages, then driven to the huge turntable to turn around for the return journey to Amamoor.
This is the locomotive heading down to the water station, and then taking on water. After that, it will switch lines, and reverse back to reconnect the carriages for the trip to Amamoor.
The carriages are completely restored and are extremely comfortable. It brings back, for me, many memories of riding in older trains in Melbourne when I was a child.
The trains, then, were called Red Rattlers.
This is the locomotive climbing one of the hilly parts of the line before crossing over the Mary River on a trestle bridge.
This is the engine at Amamoor near the picnic area where young children and excited parents and grandparents can get on the locomotive itself and look inside where the driver sits.
And, no, I didn’t volunteer to shovel coal.
This particular locomotive spent most of its working life between Townsville and Mount Isa and was based in Cloncurry, Charters Towers, and Townsville, before being sent, at the end of its useful days in the late 1960s, to the Ipswich Railway Workshops.
The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.
…
Today is a day for character development, and especially for Teresa. She is going to be the devil in disguise, or maybe not.
We get to meet her when Quinn picked her out of a list of prospective candidates for partnering our main character, despite the fact he says he prefers to work alone.
Of course, the reason for that is obvious after the last mishap and the fact that the partner was killed. Before that, he didn’t have a problem, but now, the idea of someone getting killed on his watch is not something he wants.
But, he doesn’t know he’s getting a partner. She’ll be turning up on his doorstep, and he will not be in a position to refuse.
She is currently residing in a prison, well, that has something to do with an errant husband who some would say got what he deserved.
Is she innocent? Not everyone in prison is, despite what they say, and she never protested her innocence.
Quinn wants her on the team for two reasons, she is very dangerous, especially skilled in killing, but controllable, and more importantly, to keep our main character guessing why she is there.
Is she a bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks, or labelled such for so-called bad deeds?
It’s time to get on that particular roller coaster.
The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.
…
It’s a little more settled this morning, sitting down in front of the laptop and ready to go. The plan is in three different places, which is not what was meant to happen, but at various stages of the development process in the previous few weeks, I had to use different apps on my phone to make notes as ideas came to me.
If only Scrivener came on a Samsung phone!
But I will take the time to sit down and join the disparate pieces together, but as we all know that takes time, and time is of the essence.
So, today, it’s about the intermediate characters. The one I like the most is the police chief, an honest man working under a corrupt government, and military, knowing their foibles, and yet maintaining the ideal that the letter of the law will not be bent by his masters.
It makes for an interesting dynamic.
There are others, but these will be teased out as the story progresses, especially the girl in white who appears almost like an apparition.
Then, of course, there is the international media contingent in the city for the conference, of which some are not necessarily who they say they are.
This is the famous clock tower of the Flinders Street Station (the main train station for suburban trains) in Melbourne.
We were staying in a hotel (The Doubletree) directly opposite to the station and our room overlooked the station and the clock tower. I took photos of it during the day:
and this one, at night. It came out better than I thought it would.
The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.
…
The story, in the planning stages, has a secondary theme running, that of the players involved in the events leading up to the assault on our main character, one that his handler was not aware of.
Why was he marked for execution, along with his previous partner?
That’s another story, one that will be teased out in this secondary theme and will run full circle and have some bearing on what happens at the end of the story.
Or not.
I’m not sure I will include any of this, and it might just become part of a novella that will stand on its own. For the most part, a lot of this story is about, and driven by, people he’s never met, but know of him, and his work.
It would be too easy to say he saw something he shouldn’t, because that’s not the case. It has to do with people he has worked with and been responsible for in the past, and whether or not there had been a conversation, without understanding the relevance of what might have been discussed at the time.
That part is nebulous at best, and you can see why it might not make the final cut.
It simply depends on how the main story goes, and the word count at the end. The rough plan calls for about 80 chapters and about 70,000 words, but I’m not one for sticking to plans.
Today’s work centres around the partner his handler has chosen for him, one that he’s not going to like when he finds out, the target he’s been tasked to watch over, and the location of the conference.
Of course, getting back to work after what happened to him is not as easy as saying he’s fine, but getting him to admit it’s anything but fine will be like getting proverbial blood from a stone.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 