Category: Writer

The Cinema of My Dreams – It ended in Sorrento – Episode 61

Evan and Juliet are a team

…

It didn’t take long to sort out what we were going to do next.  Alfie, Francesca, and Cecelia were going to look at the remaining properties and find out where the Countess and Mrs Rodby were being held.  Once found, surveillance until I’d done my part.

I didn’t have to tell Cecelia what to do if Francesca caused any problems, but Alfie muttered under his breath, which I took to mean he didn’t like the idea of being a nursemaid.

I had my own problems to deal with.

Juliet and I were going to see Dicostini.  I was not sure how I was going to approach him, but I was hoping the fake countess would be there.

Alfie was surprised that I would take Juliet with me given her history, and the trouble she had caused us in Venice, but I had to admit that a lot of the trouble she got into wasn’t necessarily her fault.

Larry had used her brother as leverage so she would do his bidding.

Vittoria concocted a story that I almost believed myself, so why wouldn’t she want to believe her father might have been a count and not a footman or gardener.

After consulting with the briefing team back in London, they had a set of targets to investigate and left.

While we had been discussing tactics Juliet had gone to have a shower, clean the wound on her head properly and change into clean clothes.  If she hadn’t been the person I knew, and it was for the first time, she would have warranted a second look.

Not that I was interested in having second looks at any woman, including Cecelia, because I had to get my mind back in the game.

“I was listening, you know,” she said after the others had gone.

She picked up the notepad computer with the file of Dicostini and read it.  After five minutes she looked over at me, and said, “This guy is a five-star loser you know.  And five-star losers, when desperate, are very unpredictable.”

“That’s your psychoanalysis of him, is it?”

“It was one of the fields I studied in med school.  And,” she sighed, “that feels like an eternity ago.  Life was so much simpler then, eighteen hours shifts, no sleep, get legless drunk, turn up the next day for more of the same.”

“No shagging in the storeroom?”

“You’ve been watching too many TV shows.  I was not the promiscuous sort, that was the purview of some nurses.  By and large despite the insanity, people behaved.

“No crush on another doctor?”

“Again, TV stereotype, Evan.  And despite what you might think, not with the patients either.  Especially not with the patients because you can’t get emotionally invested and still do your job.  You were an exception, but as you are aware, I broke it off quickly before it got too far.  I’m sorry, but it should not have started in the first place.”

“Was that the start of your spiral?”

“No.  That came later, when one of my patients died, and I was blamed for it.  It wasn’t me.  I got another doctor to cover, but she didn’t stay for the full shift.  Then she lied and got one of the other interns to back her story.  I got suspended, and then it all went to hell in a handbasket.”

“What happened to her?”

“She killed three others before they decided enough was enough.  The truth eventually came out, but they didn’t reinstate me, or offer an apology.  Bastards.”

I could see why anything other than the life she had been handed would be better, but it seemed it just didn’t get any better.

“You don’t have any other dirty secrets waiting to come out of the woodwork, do you?”

“Not today.”

I don’t know whether that was good or bad, whether she was joking or not.

I drove to the Dicostini farm and went back to the surveillance position that Cecelia had set up previously.  I’d brought the sniper rifle and high-powered binoculars.  I gave the binoculars to Juliet.  It would not surprise me if she knew how to use the rifle.

“What are we doing?”

“Watching and waiting.  I want to see if the fake countess is in there, and I suspect this might take a while.  I’d get settled in for a long session.”

“Is this one of those famed stakeouts?  Where are the snacks and coffee?”

“TV stereotype.  There’s water in the bag.”

We took turns to watch the residents, Dicostini, his wife, his children, farm hands, people helping out in the house, and visitors, but not fake countess.

“You think she might have gone to where they’re holding the real one?”  Juliet asked the question I’d been asking myself.

“It’s possible.  It’s also possible she won’t show herself in daylight.”

We both heard the rustling at the same time, and she shrunk back further into the undergrowth.  Someone was coming, whether they were looking for us, or just taking a short cut to the road, or simply patrolling just in case.  I was surprised no one came to check that spot Cecelia had taken.  It was one of two places that had a clear view of the house, without anyone in the house being able to see us.

I got us, and moved silently to a position behind two trees and waited.  If the knew about this spot then they would have to walk past me.

A minute later a man appeared, one I hadn’t seen before.

He was trying not to disturb the undergrowth and was moving stealthily.  On the edge of the cleared patch, he spotted the rifle, and said, to himself, “I thought I saw a flash.”

Just as he raised his radio, I hit him as hard as I could with the gun, and thankfully he went down and didn’t move.

I quickly got the tape for a gag and rope to tie him before he regained consciousness.  He was big and would be hard to tackle in a fair fight.  Juliet came out to see what was happening.

“Put some tape over his mouth, but not his nose.”

“After hitting that hard, why would you care?”

She ripped off a length of tape and put it over his mouth.

“I don’t.  I didn’t want to upset you, being a doctor and everything.”

“Do I look like a doctor?”

“You will be one for as long as you live Juliet, whether they let you practise or not.”

She glared at me.

“And get eyes back on that house.  It’s getting dark soon and we don’t want to miss her if she’s there.

I tied him to the tree so he couldn’t escape, and reapplied the gag so he couldn’t make much noise.  If he told anyone what he was doing, it wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for him.

…

© Charles Heath 2023

The 2am Rant: Hotels versus the rest

Leave, Vacation, or Holiday – don’t you deserve a break?

Some people we know have come up for a holiday in what could be described as a very touristy location.

But is it for a ‘holiday’?

They have come from one state and are staying in what could be called an apartment, not a hotel.  They are here for a week.

So, they have a kitchen of sorts and can cook their own meals, unlike staying in a hotel room and having to eat out or in the hotel restaurant, and the apartment has a mini laundry.

How much different is this to being at home?

Perhaps we need to have a definition of the word ‘holiday’ and its variations.  A lot of people’s use the term ‘vacation’.  Others use the term ‘leave’.  Leave’s a difficult term because it can cover a number of types such as annual, sick, and maternity.

But whatever we want to call it, is it when you’re taking some time away from work.

Is it when you go ‘away’, that is to say anywhere but home?

You say, ‘I’m going on vacation.”

We say, “Oh, where are you going?”

Some say camping.  Is that any different than staying in an apartment, or even a holiday house?  Still all the same chores, cooking, cleaning, washing.

Is this why so many people are now going on cruises and hotels are so full these days.

There will always those who will go camping and stay is self-serve places like apartments, but for me, a holiday is staying in a five-star hotel where the only worry is where the nearest dry cleaner is.

 

 

 

What I learned about writing – Making sense out of formless rubble

Taming the Chaos: How Art Builds Sanctuaries in a World of Rubble

We’ve all felt it, haven’t we? That creeping sense of overwhelm. The news cycle churns relentlessly, a tidal wave of disconnected events. Our personal lives can feel like a jumble of unfinished tasks and fuzzy anxieties. The world, in its raw, unedited state, can seem like a vast, formless expanse, a “mass of senseless rubble” threatening to swallow us whole.

It’s this very formlessness, this inherent chaos, that I believe lies at the heart of a profound motive for creating art. Whether it’s a sprawling epic novel, a defiant abstract painting, a haunting melody, or even a meticulously arranged bouquet of flowers, art, in its myriad manifestations, is our deeply human act of defiance against the shapeless void.

Think about it. The world, left to its own devices, is a wild, untamed thing. It doesn’t adhere to our neat narratives or our tidy classifications. It’s a messy, unpredictable storm of emotions, events, and experiences – some beautiful, some brutal, and many simply baffling. Trying to grasp it all, to make sense of its sheer scale and complexity, can be an exhausting and frankly, demoralising endeavour.

And here’s where the artist steps in, armed not with a bulldozer, but with a brush, a pen, a chisel, or a musical score. The deep motive, as I see it, is to defeat the formlessness of the world. It’s a declaration that we can impose order, that we can find patterns, and that we can create meaning where none immediately presents itself.

Consider the act of storytelling. A novelist takes a stream of consciousness, a tangle of potential plotlines, a cast of characters with complicated motivations, and weaves them into a coherent narrative. A beginning emerges, a middle unfolds, and an end, however bittersweet, is reached. The chaos of human experience is channelled, shaped, and channelled into a form that we can understand, digest, and even learn from. We read a book and, for a time, the bewildering mess of life is held at bay, replaced by the carefully constructed architecture of a fictional universe.

The visual artist does something similar. They stare at a blank canvas, a lump of clay, or a digital void, and begin to impose their vision. They choose colours, shapes, textures, and compositions. They translate the abstract feelings and observations that swirl within them into tangible forms. A Rothko painting, with its vast fields of colour, doesn’t necessarily depict a specific object, but it evokes an emotional landscape. It gives form to the ineffable, allowing us to engage with feelings that might otherwise remain formless and elusive.

And this act of creation isn’t just about imposing order on the external world; it’s profoundly about cheering oneself up by constructing forms out of what might otherwise be a mass of senseless rubble. When we feel lost, overwhelmed, or insignificant, the act of creation is an act of empowerment. It’s taking a piece of the formless, the chaotic, the seemingly senseless, and wrestling it into something beautiful, something resonant, something that serves as a small, but potent, sanctuary.

Think of the artist who, after experiencing profound loss, picks up their instrument and composes a lament. They aren’t erasing the pain, but they are giving it a shape, a melody, a rhythm. This act of formalising grief can be incredibly cathartic, transforming raw emotion into something that can be shared, understood, and perhaps, in time, healed. It’s building a small, sturdy structure of sound against the howling wind of sorrow.

In our own lives, we don’t all need to be professional artists to tap into this motive. Organising a messy desk, planning a meal, or even meticulously tending a garden are all small acts of form-making. They are ways of bringing order to our immediate surroundings, of saying, “This chaos will not defeat me.”

So, the next time you find yourself staring at the bewildering vastness of the world, feeling a bit lost in the rubble, remember the power of form. Remember that art, in all its glorious diversity, is our innate human response to that formlessness. It’s our way of building beautiful, meaningful sanctuaries, one carefully crafted line, one resonant chord, one poignant word at a time. It’s our quiet, persistent, and ultimately triumphant declaration that even in the face of overwhelming chaos, we can create. And in that creation, we find not only order, but also a much-needed dose of cheer.

Searching for Locations: The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Sorry, reminiscing again…

It was a cold but far from a miserable day.  We were taking our grandchildren on a tour of the most interesting sites in Paris, the first of which was the Eiffel Tower.

We took the overground train, which had double-decker carriages, a first for the girls, to get to the tower.

We took the underground, or Metro, back, and they were fascinated with the fact the train carriages ran on road tires.

Because it was so cold, and windy, the tower was only open to the second level. It was a disappointment to us, but the girls were content to stay on the second level.

There they had the French version of chips.

It was a dull day, but the views were magnificent.

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A view of the Seine

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Sacre Coeur church at Montmartre in the distance.

Another view along the river Seine

Overlooking the tightly packed apartment buildings

Looking along the opposite end of the river Seine

In a word: High or is it hie

When the boss says jump, the question is usually ‘how high’.

Not that it’s possible for many of us with a challenging centre of gravity to get much elevation.

High generally means height, how far something rises above ground level, is above our heads.

That plane flies very high in the sky.

Then there’s another meaning, increased intensity, such as a high temperature, a high fever, but my favourite is, a high dudgeon.

I’m still to get a definition on what a dudgeon is.

We have secondary schools here that we call high schools. Make of that what you will

And in the idiomatic world, flying high means we are very happy, and when were left high and dry then not so much. Unless it related to a ship, in which case a lot of people would be unhappy.

We can use high just about everywhere, high hopes, high ceilings, feelings that run high, a high chair for toddlers of course, high speed which may cause s crash and land you in a high security prison.

This is not to be confused with just plain hi which is a universal greeting.

But there is another, hie, which has a more obscure meaning, to hasten or go quickly.

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

Searching for locations: Paris, France: Place de la Republique

Whilst a rather important place for the French, for us visitors, it has a convenient hotel located just behind the square, and an underground, or Metro station, underneath.

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Added to that was equally convenient cafes, one of which, The Cafe Republique, we had dinner every night.  The service and food were excellent, and we had no problems with the language barriers.

At the top of the monument is a bronze statue of Marianne, said to be the personification of France.

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Surrounding Marianne is three more statues, representing liberty, equality, and fraternity.

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At the base is a lion guarding what is said to be a ballot box.

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

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself, as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters, Harry and Alison, other issues are driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact that he has a beautiful and desirable wife, his belief that she is the object of other men’s desires, and, in particular, his immediate superior’s.

Between observation, the less-than-honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, and she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, is that nothing is ever what it seems.

…

Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 38

Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.

 

“So, Jacobi, tell me what I don’t know.”

I was taking the track slowly and keeping within a short distance of the cars behind me.  The road was little more than a dirt track, and in places, there were almost un-navigable ruts.  We would not have got a truck down this road.

He looked sideways at me.  “You know as much as I do.”

“That’s not possible.  I know nothing.  You set this up.  Tell me about the leader of this group.  Is he the heard of his own militia group?”

“An area commander of a larger group spread out across the top of the Republic, bordering onto Sudan.  They get their guns and other military hardware across that border.  Where we’re going, it’s their main camp in this location.”

“How many men will be here?”

“Twenty, thirty.  Sometimes they train new recruits.”

“Those militia back there, were they his people?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do, Jacobi.  And I think if you want to come out of this alive, you might consider giving me all the facts.  If they were his men, there could be ramifications if they don’t report back, especially if he was expecting to add to his payday.”

“Even if they were, there’s no communication lines out here.  They would have to report back to the camp first.  And then there’s the possibility with all the money they were supposed to collect, there might be a detour.  It’s why I think they asked for 10,000 rather than the 5,000.  The commander was going to take a cut.  Loyalty only goes so far in these places.”

“No likely surprises?”

“None that I’m aware of.  You killed them all anyway.  Dead men do not get up, walk back to come and inform.”

No, they didn’t.



A mile to go I saw the rear car stop for a few seconds and Monroe and Stark get out and disappear into the bush.  The chances were they could walk through the bush faster than we could drive on the track, and beat us there.

And, then, the checkpoint was in sight, a pair of empty petrol drums with a piece of wood across the road, each end resting on a drum.  Behind the barrier were three men, one I presumed to be the commander, the other two, guns at the ready, his guard.  Behind them was a clearing with several buildings and to one side several huts that might belong to some villagers.  There were a truck and two Toyota tray utilities parked to one side.

All in all, I could see about ten men.

When I reached the barrier, I stopped but left the engine running.  Just before we arrived, I gave the order to hide the hand weapons.  It was risky going in unarmed, but the chances were they’d take the guns if we were wearing them.  This way, if we needed them, there was a slight chance we might be able to retrieve them.

Both Jacobi and I got out.  I left my door open.  Jacobi closed his.

“Sergeant James, I presume.”  Good English, beaming smile, friendly manner.

“I think I know how Dr. Livingston felt.  I am he.”

A puzzled look for a moment, then the resumption of good nature.  He didn’t understand the nuances of British history in Africa.

There was no handshake, none was expected.  Jacobi stepped forward.  “I assume the packages are here, and in good condition.”

“Of course.  I assume that you have brought the exchange material.”

“We have.  Now, if we can just park these cars, we can get on with the exchange.”

“In a hurry, Jacobi?  Somewhere else to be?”

“Yes, as it happens.  I’m a busy man, as you are aware.”

Politeness disappeared from his face as quickly as the sun sometimes went behind a cloud.

The commander looked over towards a hut just back from the road, one I hadn’t seen from the car because it was hidden by a grove of bushes.  Two men came out.

“Move the barrier.”

As they did, he said to me, “Tell your men to get out of the vehicles and come slowly up the track.  My men will bring the vehicles into the camp.  Tell them also not to make any sudden or suspicious moves, or there will be trouble.”

A glance back showed another four of his men, also armed, appearing out of the bush towards the driver’s side of the cars.

I’d brought the radio and gave them the instructions the commander had given me.

Five minutes later, we were standing outside one of the huts, the cars were parked neatly in a row, and each of us had been frisked as I thought we would.  The four who acted as drivers were now our guards, not with weapons trained on us, but they could be very quickly.

The commander waited until the guards at the checkpoint had replaced the barrier, then came striding towards us.  I could see he was counting heads and seemed perplexed by the time he reached us.

“Men are missing.  Where are they?”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2020