This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
Coming soon!
Tag: #amwriting
Questions, sometimes without answers
#Creative Writing, #Blog, #Writing
At what point does a writer become a journalist?
Quite often journalists become writers because of their vast experience in observing and writing about the news, sometimes in the category of ‘truth is stranger than fiction’.
I did journalism at University, and thought I would never get to use it. I had to interview people, write articles, and act as an editor. The hardest part was the headlines.
How much does that resemble the job of coming up with a title for your book?
Well, several opportunities arose over the last few months to dig out the journalist hat, put it on, and go to work.
Where?
Hospital. I’ve had to go there a few times more in the last few months than I have in recent years.
And I’d forgotten just how hospitals are interesting places, especially the waiting room in Emergency.
After the second or third visit, I started to observe the people who were waiting, and ran through various scenarios as to the reason for their visit. None may have been true, but it certainly was an exercise in creative writing, and would make an excellent article.
Similarly, once we got inside the inner sanctum, where the real work is done, there is any number of crises and operations going on, and plenty of material for when I might need to include a hospital scene in one of my stories.
Or I could write a volume in praise of the people who work there and what they have to endure. Tending the sick, injured and badly injured is not a job for the faint hearted.
Research, if it could be called that, turns up in the unlikeliest of places. Doctors who answer questions, not necessarily about the malady, nurses who tell you about what it’s like in Emergency on nights you really don’t want to be there, and other patients and their families, all of whom have a story to tell, or just wait patiently for a diagnoses and then treatment so they can go home.
We get to go this time about four in the morning. Everyone is tired. More people are waiting. Outside it is cool and the first rays of light are coming over the horizon as dawn is about to break.
I ponder the question without an answer, a question one of the nurses asked a youngish doctor, tossed out in conversation, but was there a more intent to it; what he was doing on Saturday night.
He didn’t answer. Another crisis, another patient.
I suspect he was on duty in Emergency.
“The Devil You Don’t”, be careful what you wish for
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favor for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favor’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follows.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
Purchase:
Past Conversations with my cat – 1
This is Chester.
Don’t be fooled by the benign expression, I’m getting the ‘your conversation better improve, and quickly’ look.
I guess it’s the talkative Tonkinese in him, tempered by the crabby Siamese part.
But …
We were talking about the state of the world, and he agrees it isn’t looking good, especially for travelers in Europe. Of course, he is averse to either of us leaving him alone for any length of time, so he would say it was unsafe and we’d better stay at home.hat
I suppose that selfish part comes from the Burmese in him.
However …
I have scratched Germany, Austria, France and England off the list for the time being and consider it’s time to see a lot more of Italy.
We’ve been there several times, to Rome, in summer, to look at the Ancient ruins (Chester was rather impressed when I showed him a picture of the Collosseum), to Florence several times, just for the ambiance, and to Venice simply because we love it.
Then, we have also spent a few days in Tuscany, in an apartment very close to the town center of Greve in Chianti.
Chester, of course, was dismissive, but, he says, if we agree to take him with us …
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, I decided to make them into a book, and, in doing so, I have gone through each and revised them, making some longer, and almost a short story.
50 photographs, 50 stories. I’ve called it, “Inspiration, Maybe”
It will be available soon.
It’s a long hard road …
Self-published authors are fully aware that perhaps the easiest part of the writing journey is the actual writing. Well, compared to the marketing aspect I believe it is.
I have read a lot of articles, suggestions and tips and tricks to market the book to the reading public. It is, to say the least, a lot harder to market eBooks than perhaps their hard or paper covered relatives. This is despite the millions of eReaders out there.
Then there is that other fickle part of the publishing cycle, the need for reviews. Good reviews of course. As we are learning, reviews can be bought. Currently, Amazon is out there seeking out these reviews and reviewers and it will be interesting to see the result of their actions.
All the advice I have seen and read tells me that reviews should not be paid for, that reviews will come with sales. It might be a difficult cycle, more reviews means more sales, etc. And getting those first sales …
Therein lies the conundrum. It is a question of paying for advertising or working it out for ourselves. I guess if I were to get more sales, I could afford the advertising … yes, back on the merry-go-round!
And yet, the harder the road, the more I enjoy what I do. It is exhilarating while writing, it is a joy to finish the first draft, it is an accomplishment when it is published, but when you sell that first book, well, there is no other feeling like it.
I am inspired.
Now, where are those notes for the next story …
Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 9
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.
An interrogation and a revelation.
I think I just about reached that same conclusion just seconds before she uttered it. But, I didn’t think this was the time to air my own thoughts on the matter.
The question I did ask was, “It appears our service has been compromised.”
She glanced at me almost condescendingly. “It appears so. Have you got your cell phone?”
I had it with me and gave it to her. I had it ready because I knew they would ask for it. It had a record of orders given, and phone conversations made, before, during, and after the operation.
For a review, or in this case, a search for the guilty.
I watched her put in the passcode, and go to the messages, and bring up the one sent to me, to attend the briefing. It was all in order, no different to the previous five, with all the right designations and protocols.
“There was no reason to suspect it was anything but a real callout.”
Another glance at the screen, she put it on the desk next to the file. “No, it looks real enough.”
Thought best kept to myself; how the hell did someone outside our organisation, know so well our inner workings? I wanted to ask the question but refrained from doing so.
It also explained, now that I thought about it, the reason why the target had said he was one of us. We had been hunting him so someone else, and enemy organisation perhaps, so they could kill him. The question was, why? Had he made a discovery, the evidence he was referring to that a certain Alfred Nobbin might have.
Perhaps a good idea, for the time being, to keep that snippet of information to myself. After all, this new person in front of me could be one of Severin’s people.
Where I was sitting was not a familiar place to me, though I had been to the building before, which is why I knew where to go for this interview. AS for the people, everyone I’d met so far, other than the other team members, bar one, I’d known from training.
So, now another expected question from me, or at least, if I was on the other side of the table, it’s one I’d expect to be asked. “Just who was I working for, if it was not for us?”
Assuming she was one of us.
“That’s what we intend to find out. Who was the target?”
I gave her the description we’d been given, and a copy of his photograph that had been circulated at the briefing. I’d kept one of them, and luckily no one noticed it missing. It was fortuitous that’s I’d copied the photo before I had to give it to her, which was right then.
There was not a flicker of recognition in her eyes.
“So, not one of us?” I asked.
For an interrogation, she wasn’t asking many relevant questions.
She looked up. “Why would you say that, if your mission was to keep him under surveillance?”
“Which we now know was not sanctioned, so we have to assume that we had been persuaded to find and track one of our own agents. You look as though you didn’t recognise him?”
“I don’t try to remember every agent we have in the field, here and overseas. There a few too many for that. But I’ve got a request out for his identity. He didn’t say who he was?”
“No.”
“Anything at all that might be useful?”
“That he was one of us, who’d made a mistake, and feared we’d set the dogs on him.”
“Yes. Someone definitely did that.”
© Charles Heath 2019
Another Short Story
From the days of wandering the remote country towns of New South Wales in Australia.
At The End of the Road
The man who had said that we would never make the distance was right.
It had been my idea to go ‘troppo’, forsake everything, hop on a motorbike and go around Australia. I was, at that stage fed up with everything and, catching Harry in one of his low spots, he decided there and then he would join me.
For the first few days we believed we were stark staring mad and talked about calling it quits, but perseverance made all the difference. After two months we were glad we had the resolve to keep going, and in that time we had managed to see more of the Australian countryside than we’d seen all our lives.
That was until this particular morning when we arrived in Berrigum, what could have been called a one-horse town. It consisted of one hotel, one general store (that sold everything from toothpicks to petrol) and an agricultural machinery depot. It also had a station and some wheat silos, and this appeared to be the only reason for a town in this particular spot in the middle of nowhere.
And it was the railway station that interested Harry, who was, by this time, getting a little homesick and fed up with his motorbike.
After coughing and spluttering for the last week it had finally died, and the five-mile walk to Berrigum had not helped either his temper, or his disposition, and had only served to firm his resolve to return home.
It was hot but not unbearably so, unlike a hot summer’s day in the city, and even worse still in public transport. For miles around as we tramped those five miles all we could see was acres and acres of wheat, but no sign of life. It was the same when we reached the town. It appeared all the people were either hiding or had left. Harry suspected the latter given the state of the road, and the buildings, more or less the epitome of a ghost town.
Standing at the end of what could have been called the main street with only our own dust for company, one look took in the whole town. In a car, one wouldn’t have given it a second look, if one had time to give it a first. I didn’t remember seeing neither any speed restriction signs nor signpost advertising a town ahead.
And since no amount of argument could sway him from his resolve, the first objective was to get a train timetable, if such a thing existed, and make arrangements for Harry’s return.
The station was as deserted as the town itself, and a quick glance in the stationmaster’s office showed no sign of life.
Leaving the bikes on the platform outside the office, we headed for the hotel for both a drink and make enquiries about rail services. Being a hot day and the morning’s tramp somewhat hot and dusty, we were looking forward to a cold glass (or two) of beer.
The hotel looked as though it was a hundred years old though there was no doubting a few relentless summers would reduce it to the same state. It was as bad inside as out, though the temperature was several degrees lower, and we could sit down in what appeared to be the main bar. We were the only occupants and still to find any sign of life. Overhead, two fans were struggling to move the hot air around.
More than once Harry reckoned it was a ghost town and I was beginning to believe him when, after five minutes, no one arrived.
After ten, we stood, ready to leave, only to stop halfway out of our chairs when a voice behind us said, “Surely you’re not going back out there without refreshment?”
“I was beginning to think the town was deserted,” I said.
“It is during the day, but when the sun goes down…”
I didn’t ask. We followed him to the bar where he had stationed himself behind the counter. “The name is Jack.” He stretched out his hand towards us. “We don’t bother with last names here.”
“Bill,” I said, shaking it, and nodding to Harry, “Harry.”
Harry nodded and shook his hand too.
“The first one’s on the house.” He poured three glasses and put ours in front of us. “Cheers.”
In all cases, it went down without touching the sides (as they say) and he poured a second, at the same time asking, “What brings you to our little corner of the earth?”
“Just passing through,” I said, “Or at least for me.”
“And you?” Jack looked at Harry.
“I can’t hack the pace. I can truthfully say I have thoroughly enjoyed the trip so far, except for a few mishaps, but for me, it’s time to get back to the big smoke. My ‘do your own thing’ has run out of momentum. Do you know if there is a train that goes anywhere important?”
The publican looked at him almost pityingly. “Important, eh?” He rubbed his chin feigning thought. “You make it sound like you are in purgatory.”
“Aren’t we?”
I suppose one could hardly blame Harry for his attitude. After all, in the beginning, he had numerous accidents, caught a virus that stayed with him (and a couple of torrential downpours had done little to help it), and now his motorbike had finally died. No wonder his humour was at an all-time low.
For a moment I thought the publican was going to tell Harry what he thought of him, but then he smiled and the tension passed. “Perhaps to a city fellow like you it might be,” he said. “The mail train which has a passenger carriage comes through once a week, and, my good man, you’re in luck. Today’s the day.”
“Good. How do I get a ticket?”
“You’d have to see the Station Master.”
“And where might he be at the moment? We were at the station a while back and there was no sign of life.”
“Nor will there be until the train comes. Meanwhile, there’s time enough for lunch. I’m sure you will stay?” He looked questioningly at us.
I looked at Harry, who nodded.
“Why not.”
Over lunch, we talked.
I remember not so long ago when I had to attend a large number of lunches where the talk was of business, or, if anything, mostly about subjects that I had no interest in. It was always some posh restaurant, time seemed important, the atmosphere never really relaxed, and to get into a relaxed state it took a large amount of alcohol to deaden the despair and distaste of those one had to fete in order to secure their business.
How different it was here.
We talked about the country, and, after seeing as much of it, and worked on it as we had to fund our odyssey, we could talk about it authoritatively. And, most of all, it was interesting.
The atmosphere too was entirely different than it had been in the city. Out here the people were always friendly, people always willing to stop and talk, particularly farmers; share a drink or some food.
There was none of this carefree purposefulness in the city, and more than once I’d thought of the fact one could travel in the same train with the same people for year after year and still not know any of them. It was the same at work. Even after five years I still hadn’t known three-quarters of the office staff, and most of them probably didn’t want to know me. Harry was virtually the only real friend I’d had at work.
But here, in ‘the middle of nowhere’ as Harry had called it, I felt as though I’d known the publican all of my life instead of the few short hours.
Some hours later and after much argument, where Jack and I tried to talk Harry into staying (Jack said he knew someone who could fix anything including Harry’s bike), Harry remained unconvinced and resolute. Jack, to round off the occasion (we were the first real guests from outside he had had in a week) provided another on-the-house ale and then saw us to the station. “After all”, he had said, “I’ve nothing else to do at the moment.”
By that time the station was showing a little more life than it had before. A station assistant, moving several parcels with a hand trolley, slowly ambled towards the end of the platform.
And whether it could be called a platform was a debatable point. It was a gravel and grass affair that looked more like part of a cutting through a hill than a station.
At the station, Jack portentously announced he was also the stationmaster and would be only too happy to take care of Harry’s requirements. It would be, he added, “the first passenger ticket sold for several months.” Certainly, the ticket he handed Harry bore witness to that. It had yellowed with age.
One would have thought with the imminent arrival of the train there would be more people, but no. The only event had been the station assistant’s stroll to the end of the platform and back. Now both he and Jack had disappeared into the office and we were left alone on the platform. Very little in the whole town stirred, nor had it the whole time we’d been there.
“Well,” I said to break the silence. “I’m sorry to see you going through with it. I thought I might have been able to talk you out of it…” I shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“I’m sorry to be going too, but a body can take only so much bad luck, and God knows that’s all I’ve had.”
“Yes.” I couldn’t think of much else to say. “But it’s been good to have your company these last few months.”
“And you. When do you think you’ll get back?”
“When I get sick of it I suppose.”
“Look us up then when you get back.”
“I will.”
Thankfully the appearance of the train in the distance broke off the conversation. I had begun to think of what it was going to be like out on the road with no one to talk to but myself. The thought was a little depressing and I tried not to let it show.
We said little else until the train pulled in, three flat cars, seven enclosed wagons, a passenger carriage and the guard’s van. The train stopped with only part of the passenger carriage and the guard’s van at the station.
The guard took aboard the parcels the station assistant had left for him earlier, and then put those that were for Berrigum on the trolley.
I shook Harry’s hand and said I’d see him around. Then he, the motorbike, and the guard were aboard and the train was off, disappearing slowly into the afternoon haze.
The station assistant then repeated his amble to the end of the platform to collect the hand trolley.
“Staying or moving on.” Jack had come up behind me and gave me a bit of a start.
“Staying I guess, until tomorrow or maybe later.”
“I had heard one of the farm hands is leaving tomorrow heading back to Sydney. There could be a vacancy.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“I could put in a word for you.”
“Thanks.”
Jack just grinned and we headed for the hotel.
© Charles Heath 2016-2019
A Short Story
I’ve been toiling away and this is the result. My stories are usually longer, but I thought I’d try my hand at writing a piece of short fiction.
The Price of Fame
I looked at the invitation, a feeling of dread coming over me. It was not entirely unexpected but like a great many things that had suddenly come into my life it caused equal measures of fear and excitement.
The gold edging and the perfect script displaying my name in the exact centre of the envelope made it almost unique. Very few people ever received such an invitation.
I held it in my hand for a longer than necessary, then put it down on the desk carefully, as if it would explode if I dropped it.
My first instinct, driven by fear, was not to accept.
But, fear or not, there was no question of me not attending. Circumstances had painted me into a corner; I’d agreed to go a long time ago when I thought there was no chance it would come to pass.
Way back then, I had been compared to the aspiring painter in an attic having to die before I made any sort of impression. In those days people thought it amusing. I thought it was amusing. Kirsty, in particular, had thought it was as impossible as I had.
Now it was not amusing. Not even remotely.
My life was once quiet, peaceful, sedate, even boring. That didn’t mean I lacked imagination, it was just not out on display for everyone to see. Inspired by reading endless books, I had the capacity to transport myself into another world, divorced from reality, where my boring existence became whatever I wanted it to be.
It was also instrumental in bringing Kirsty into my life. In reality, I thought she’d never take a second look at me, let alone a first. So I pretended to be someone else. Original, witty, charming, underneath more scared than I’d ever known.
And yet she knew, she’d always known, and didn’t care.
As we spent more time together, she discovered I liked to write, not finish anything, just start, write a hundred pages, then lose interest. Like everything I did. Start, and never finish.
Why not? It would never be published. It would never succeed.
So she bribed me. If I didn’t finish my first book and send it away, I couldn’t marry her. It didn’t matter if it was rejected, all I had to do was finish a book, and send it.
The thought of marrying her had not entered my mind, because I hadn’t thought she would. Incentive enough, I picked out one of the unfinished manuscripts and humoured her. She read bits of it, not saying a word. Sometimes she’d put a note or two on the manuscript, her equivalent to sweet nothings, and with it I gained an inner confidence in my own ability, not only to write, but in many other aspects of my life.
When it was finished, it was Kirsty who sent it off. She read it, packaged it, addressed it, and sent it, before I had a chance to change her mind. Once gone, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was done. That was, as far as I was concerned, the end of it.
It was not possible that one letter could change a person’s life so dramatically. I came home to the all knowing smile, and mischievous whimsicality that had always suggested trouble.
Trouble indeed!
My book was accepted. With a cheque called an advance. For more money than I knew what to do with.
This was followed not long after by publication. And a dramatic change to my life, one I didn’t want. To become a public person, to face an enormous number of people, people I didn’t know.
I went back to being scared.
Kirsty smiled at me, and told me how wonderful I looked in my monkey suit. Why couldn’t I go in jeans and a dress shirt? All the best actors in Hollywood did it.
“This is not Hollywood. You’re not an actor.” It was a simple, practical, answer.
The hell I wasn’t. I could act sick, dying, fake a heart attack, anything. “What am I going to say?”
“You could talk about books.” Quiet, efficient, oozing the confidence I didn’t feel.
She didn’t fuss. She took it in her stride. She dressed in her usual simple elegance, in a manner that made me love to be seen with her. I couldn’t tie my tie, so she did it for me. She straightened my jacket, because I couldn’t do that either. Nerves. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Or was that a reference to wives, or mistresses, or something else?
The palms of my hands were sweating. Meatball hands, I thought, the sort of palms that betrayed the pretenders. Me, I was the pretender. My neck felt too large for the shirt. Beads of sweat formed on my brow. Where was a sponge when you needed one?
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.”
We hadn’t even left the hotel yet.
“How long before the execution.”
She looked at me with her whimsical smile. “Long enough for me to give you a hard time.”
I lost count of the number of times I had to go to the bathroom, for one thing or another. Nerves I said. Perhaps a dozen Valium or something similar. Did I have any? Had she hidden them? Why did she keep smiling?
In the car, I looked at my watch at least a dozen times. I couldn’t breathe. It was too hot, too cold. She held my hand, and it served best to stop the trembling that had set in. Why did I agree to this? Why?
We were greeted by the Events Manager, who was polite and genuinely interested. He took us inside where he introduced the interviewer, another woman who oozed confidence and charm, who went over the format, and generally tried to set me at ease.
I didn’t let Kirsty’s hand go. Not yet. She was my lifeline, the umbilical cord. When it was severed, I knew I was going to die.
Bathroom? Where was the bathroom? Hell, five minutes to go, and I felt like passing out. No, Kirsty couldn’t come in. Comb my hair. Straighten my tie, no it was straight. Maybe I could hide in here? I looked around. No, maybe not.
Time.
The cue man was standing beside me, hand gently on my back. He knew the score. He knew I would turn and run the first chance I got. Kirsty was on the other side, smiling. Did she know too?
Then the announcement, my cue to walk on.
The gentle shove, the bright lights, the deafening applause, the seemingly endless walk to the chair, dear God, would I make it without tripping over?
How many times had I made this trip? I stood, facing the audience, waved, then sat. It was the fifteenth. You’d think I’d learned by now.
There was nothing to it.
© Charles Heath 2016-2019
A case for Harry Walthenson PI, a new episode
How thrilled Harry Walthenson, Private Detective, had been to see his name painted on the translucent glass window in the door to his office.
Located in Gramercy Park, in an old building full of atmosphere, he had a space renovated to resemble that of Spade and Archer in a scene right out of the Maltese Falcon.
His desk had an antique phone like those used in the 1930s, and a lamp that cast eerie shadows at night. Along one wall was a couch, his bed for more nights than he wanted to remember, and on the other a filing cabinet, waiting for the big case files.
Up till now it had been missing cats and dogs.
Then, everything changed…
Starts at episode 1 – The Wrong Place, The Wrong Time
Episode 91 – Not necessarily an explanation
Enjoy
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 