Tag: #amwriting

Short Story Writing, don’t try this at home (4)

This is not meant to be a treatise on short story writing.  Far be it for me to advise anyone on the subject.  I prefer to say how it is that I do it so you can learn all of the pitfalls in one go.

I find inspiration in the most unlikely places.

Shopping malls are great, there is so many things going on, so many different types of people, there’s often enough to fill a journal.

Driving on the roads, you get to see some of the most amazing stunt driving, and it’s not even being filmed, it’s just playing out before your very eyes.

Waiting in hospitals, waiting for doctors, accountants, dentists, friends, hanging around coffee shops, cafes, bistros, restaurants, the list is endless.

But the best source, newspapers, and the more obscure the headline the better, and then just let your imagination run free, like:

Four deaths, four mysteries, all homeless.

This poses a few interesting scenarios, such as, were they homeless or were they made to look like they’re homeless.  Are they connected in any way?

The point is, far from the original story that simply covers four seemingly random murders, a writer can turn this into a thriller very easily.

It could follow a similar headline in another country where three headlines could be found, say, in London, where a man is found dead in an abandoned building, a week after he died, with no obvious signs of how he died.

A woman is killed in what seems from the outset an accident involving two cars, where, after three days, the driver of the second vehicle just simply disappears.

A man is reported missing after not reporting for work when he was supposed to return from a vacation in Germany.

Where an obscure piece says that a man was found at the bottom of a mountain, presumed to have fallen in a climbing accident.

It’s all in the joining of the dots.

 

Am I making any progress?

It’s been a long couple of weeks in which I have been reassessing a number of my writing projects.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of the computer screen, the ever-pervasive cursor flashing on a blank piece of digitized paper, and finding words were not filling the lines, decided to revisit a few previous works.

Perhaps as a change in routine the house might have caught on fire, or there could be a major catastrophe with an earthquake coming out of left field, or family member or friend could have rung and told me they were in dire need of my help.

No one called, nothing happened, so it was back to plan B.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing, because when all else failes I have a series on the go called ‘Being Inspired, maybe’ which takes a photograph and I write about it, or whatever it conjured up in my mind.  I have SomNote on my phone, and when I want to write, whether at home, out sitting in traffic, eaiting for any reason, or idle, I write.

Then there’s my YA novel that I’m writing for my 16-year-old granddaughter, and which I’ve been toiling over for 4 years or so.  The other day I finally drew the quest map and aligned the text already written with it.

It’s finally taking shape and nearing the end.

I find SomNote excellent for just putting words down, emailing it my myself and rehashing it later.  It has basically been used to write the first 37 chapters on the novel.

But as for the other writing?

Strangers We’ve Become, the follow up to What Sets Us Apart, is done and at the editors.

The Things We Do For Love, a little story I wrote many years ago, had undergone a rewrite and is also almost ready for publication.  It will be categorized as Romantic Suspense, along with Sunday In New York.

My other story, the tales of PI Walthenson, private detective, is finished, and through two rewrites, and is now on a final edit before going to the editor.

After Zoe’s first adventure in ‘The Devil You Don’t’, she finds that the past she tried to leave behind had come back to bite her.  The second adventure is called ‘First Dig Two Graves’, because it is about revenge and whether or not it’s best served cold.

And we may or may not find out whether John’s romantic aspirations are fulfilled.

But, the spanner in the works?  NANOWRIMO where I hope to get another story underway.  It is a perfect opportunity to write another raw novel, to compliment the three previously done, and, when there are more hours in the day, I can get around to polishing and publishing.

Past conversations with my cat – 18

20160903_010425

This is Chester, he’s lurking in the shadows.

This is near the front door, so I wonder if he’s waiting for someone, or keeping guard, or he’s spotted something outside.

The grandchildren will be here soon, and I haven’t told him they are paying a surprise visit.  He has a habit of disappearing the days they usually come.

We both hear a noise outside.

He goes into stealth mode.

Then I recognize the sound, of letters being shoved into the mailbox.

He shakes his head.  I think he was expecting a mouse.

I hear the back door rattle and the loud sounds of the grandchildren arriving.

He lifts his head, stands, and bolts.

That’s the fastest I’ve seen him move for a long time.

 

 

 

Conversations with my cat – 57

20160922_162007

This is Chester.  We have a major discussion coming up.

He knows I’m not happy.  We had a discussion about claws and furniture a while back where it was clearly understood that the scratching post was where he worked on his anger management issues.

And for quite some time I thought it was working.

More fool me.

The trouble is, there are certain parts of a room you don’t venture very often, and one of them is that small space behind the chairs in the lounge.  We have a cleaning lady so we don’t venture there very often.

But it’s where we keep our DVD collection, not that we look at DVDs any more, but someone else was looking for one.  That’s where I noticed the damage.  Near the scratching post, on the corner of the lounge chair, clear evidence of the cat’s work.

He thought if he did it out of sight we wouldn’t notice.  He would be right, except for exceptional circumstances.

Now I’m looking for him.  He knows.  Perhaps that was the reason for the fearsome attitude the other day.  Where’s the tiger now?

I can wait.  He has to come out eventually.

“Echoes From The Past”, buried, but not deep enough

What happens when your past finally catches up with you?

Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.

Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.

This time, however, there is more at stake.

Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.

With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.

But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.

http://amzn.to/2F7gqAL

newechocover5rs

 

Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 20

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

A chessboard of players

 

I sighed.  Someone else who wasn’t who they seemed to be.

At a guess, it was a gun in my back.  We were far enough away from anyone else for them to recognise what was happening.

“No need for whatever weapon you have in my back.  I’m neither armed nor dangerous.”

“Why are you following me?”

Should I tell her the truth or tell her a lie.  The latter would be the most expedient, but I needed to talk to her, so I went with the former.

“You know O’Connell.”

“Were you the one who attacked me?”

“I told you I meant you no harm.  What happened to you wasn’t my fault.”

Whatever was in my back was no longer there, so I turned around to face her.  She had changed her look since O’Connell’s flat, not only the change in hair colour and length but also the makeup, making it difficult for anyone to recognise her from a distance.  I’d been lucky.

“What do you want with him?”

“More than likely the same as you.  He made the mistake of thinking you were interested in him, but I suspect your assignment was to get close, and the flat next door was as close as you could get.”

“What are you babbling about?  We were friends.”

“How often did he stay in that flat?  Everything in it still has the price tag on it.”

“You’re loopy.  I’m going now, and I suggest you don’t follow me again.”

“I know where you live remember.  All I want is some answers.”

“There are no answers.  He was a friend, that’s it.  I’m going now.”  She turned and started to walk away.

“If I know who you are, the chances are the others do too.”

She stopped.  Interesting response.  In her shoes, my first reaction, if I was an innocent person, would be to call for a policeman to have me taken away for assaulting her.

She turned and took two steps back towards me.  “What are you talking about now?”

“O’Connell’s flat was like Marks and Spenser this morning.  I came and found another woman claiming to live next door, named Josephine, unconscious on the floor, and I didn’t do it by the way.  She works for a man named Nobbin, McConnell’s direct superior, and whom I think, indirectly I do too, and I suspect she was neutralised by another man named Severin.

“Whatever O’Connell was up to, there are a lot of people who want a missing USB with what I suspect is very interesting, and probably damaging information.  You wouldn’t have it, by the way?”

“Who are you?”

“That’s what I’m not sure about.  Like I said, I think I work for the same man whom O’Connell worked for, but before that, I worked with the people who had him killed for whatever was on the USB.”  It sounded far more horrible out loud than it had a few seconds earlier in my head.  God only knew what she was thinking about it.  “Who do you work for, because a woman who can do the transformation you just did is either a call girl or an agent?”  Another thought just occurred to me, a reason perhaps why she had changed her appearance so radically.  “Your flat was searched too, wasn’t it?”

No need to answer yes or no.  The look on her face was enough.

 

We ordered coffee and sat down.  She was still very wary of me, but since I seemed to know, or presumed to know, what had happened, she was going to ask me some questions I wasn’t going to be able to answer.\

And not because the answers were in the top-secret category, it was simply because I didn’t know.

“So,” I asked, “who do you work for?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“But you were either keeping O’Connell close company by insinuating yourself into his life, or you were maintaining some sort of surveillance.”

She was plating it close, and with a poker face.  She was better at it than I was.

“Where is he, by the way?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?”  

No mistaking that look of fear the flickered on her face, then disappear again into rocky granite.

“Dead.  Seems he came across some information, and it caused his death.  I was there shortly before he died, shot by a sniper, I think, and there was nothing I could do about it.  Any idea what that information was?”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, but either way, if I did or I didn’t the answer would be the same, no.  He told me he was a reporter, working on a really big story, and that he would have to go away for a few days.  I knew that was his cover story.”

“Were you after that same information?”

“Probably, maybe, I don’t know.  Our information was mostly conjecture, a profile built up by our research department, based on his travels, and sightings at a location we know is running a network of agents.  The conclusion was that it was not one of ours, so I was assigned to find out exactly who they were.”

“O’Connell would not have told you.”

“Given the circumstances I find myself in, I’m beginning to think that.  If you worked with him, then he was on the same side as you, so are you good or bad?”

That was a rather interesting question to be asking me at this late stage, and especially after she had told me basically what I needed to know, bar who she worked for, but that, I was beginning to think, was MI6.

“A rather silly question to ask, don’t you think?  It stands to reason that if I was bad, then I would not have left you alive in O’Connell’s flat.”

“Not unless you wanted something from me and set this up as a trap.”

So that was the reason why she kept checking everyone she could see upstairs and monitoring the stairs to see who arrived and left.  We were in the right spot to keep tabs on everyone.  And I knew her gun wasn’t very far from her hand.

“Obviously you don’t have it, so my work is done here.  I suggest you don’t go back to that flat.”  I stood.  “Your location and probably who you are is compromised.  And two men and their attack dogs will be looking for you.  Good luck with that.”

“Aren’t you one of those two men attack dog, by your own admission?”

“I’m new and not cynical enough to shoot people out of hand.  You’re probably lucky in that regard.  And if someone like me can find you, then think what a seasoned professional would be able to do.  Have a nice life, what you have left of it.”

© Charles Heath 2019

Writing can be, should be, ok, why can’t it be a breeze?

It’s Friday again.

Or on this side of the world, it’s actually Saturday morning.

Very, very early in fact.

Very cool too, which is strange for a city near the tropics in early spring.  Also, it’s raining for the first time in a month or so, and we really need the rain.

I survived another week, still working on priorities, and the fact I’m juggling too many stories at once.  You’d think it was easy by now, finding something that resembles a routine.

First, stick to one story at a time, then

Outline the story, write the chapters, bundle it all up and let it stew in the back of your mind for a few months.

In that time, write the blog, work on the 3,4,5, or is it 6 stories being written as episodes.  I wanted to get a feel for what it was like for Charles Dickens all those years ago, writing stories in parts.

Then, after doing that and clearing the mind,

Come back and do the first edit, find all the grammatical errors, fix holes in the plot, make sure the subplots don’t take over, or minor characters steal the limelight.

It’s where a character mysteriously changed name, went from being a son to a nephew, or an aunt was an aunt from the wrong side of the family.  A car that was red is suddenly blue, a man who smokes cigars now hates them, and the Mercedes changed model five times, about the same times as the age of the mother in the story.

Who said art imitates life?

Or was it that I was missing character motivation.  The main character was drifting, much like I am, and I realized there was a little of my circumstances coming across to the story.  Time to push those thoughts to the curb, and fill him with someone else’s ego.

So they’re fixed.  Now it’s the time to cut, slash, and burn.

Back to the blog and episodic stories for another month or so, just to let those new changes swill around.

Piece of cake.

I’ve got this writing thing down!

What story was I working on again????

Being Inspired – the book

Over the past year or so I have been selecting photographs I’ve taken on many travels, and put a story to them.

When I reached a milestone of 50 stories, I decided to make them into a book, and, in doing so, I have gone through each and revised them, making some longer and into short stories.

50 photographs, 50 stories.  I’ve called it, “Inspiration, Maybe”

It will be available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

Conversations with my cat – 56

20161008_135142

This is Chester.  It’s going to be an interesting morning.

When I finally make it out to the writing room, I find him sitting on my desk, next to the keyboard, with a rather benign expression.

Remembering that cats can’t have expressive expressions, it worried me that he’s working overtime to make me think he has one.

I can feel his eyes boring into me, following me around the room, watching and waiting.

Waiting for what I wonder.

I also remember that cats are hunters and killers.  If he was a lion or a tiger I’d be in a great deal of trouble now.  He’d pounce, and that would be the end.

Is this we hat he’d be doing if I let him outside?

Is he sending me a warning?

I finish what I’m doing on the other side of the room and come over to the seat.

Are you done giving me the death stare? I ask him.

A slight shake of the head, and if I wanted to write anything into it, that would be a no.

A few seconds pass, then he jumps down to the floor and walks off.

Job done, I suspect he’s thinking.

Back to his least favourite dinner tonight, I’m thinking.

Short story writing, don’t try this at home! (3)

This is not meant to be a treatise on short story writing.  Far be it for me to advise anyone on the subject.  I prefer to say how it is that I do it so you can learn all of the pitfalls in one go.

My main characters are quite often me.

Not the real me, because I’m boring.  No, those characters are what I would like to be, that imaginary superhuman that can do everything.

Until, of course, reality sets in, and the bullets start flying.  In reality, we should be looking to run or at the very least get under cover, not walk into a hail of bullets, with a huge grin, staring down the enemy.

Hang on, that never happens except in superman comics.

What’s really needed here is a little vulnerability, a little humility and a lot of understanding, qualities at times I don’t have.

So, in order to create a more believable character, I start dragging traits from others I’ve met, or know, or really don’t want to know.  In a writer’s environment, there are a plethora of people out there that you can draw on for inspiration.

Like a piano player in a restaurant.  It was not so much the playing was bad, it was the way he managed to draw people into his orbit and keep them there.  The man has charisma, but sadly no talent for the instrument.

Like an aunt I met only twice in a lifetime, and who left a lasting impression.  Severe, angry looking, speaking a language I didn’t understand, even though it was English.  It was where I learned we came from England, and she was the closest thing I came to as an example of nineteenth-century prim and proper.  And, no, she didn’t have a sense of humour or time for silly little boys.

Like one of my bosses, a man of indeterminate age, but it had to be over 100, or so it seemed to my sixteen-year-old brain, who spoke and dressed impeccably, and yes, he did once say that I would be the death of him.

I can only hope I wasn’t.

Like a Captain of a ship I once met, a man who didn’t seem to have time for the minions, and a man who reeked authority and respect.  I’ve always wanted to be like him, but unfortunately, it was not in the genes.

Those are only a few, there are thousands of others over the years, a built-in library, if you will, of characters waiting to be taken off the shelf and used where necessary or appropriate.  We all have one of these banks.

You just have to know when to use them.