Tag: #amwriting

Plots ripped from newspaper front pages

Sometimes the headlines are ripped from the blurb of an international best-selling novel

Take for instance the latest event generated from the political interference by the Russians scandal in the United States

How would it read?

Take what appears to be an ordinary student in an American University, who has the ability to find and seduce various men with apparent political clout for the purpose of subverting election results. 

This would be rather startling if it was not in the United States because everyone from the national rifle association down knows any politician federal state or local can be bought.  There’s also the fact the femme fatale is not all that good looking, but on the other hand, men can always be seduced

In fact, you would have to question the legitimacy of any elected official in that country because anything to do with politics is susceptible to bribery and corruption, from any number of lobby groups the doyen of which is the NRA.

Just look what they’ve managed to achieve.  Any madman and his dog can now print a gun without restriction and go on a killing rampage.  The Russians are the least of US citizens problems

But I digress.

The blurb reads on.

The president recently elected in what could only have been described as an impossible result realized that the American people are now waking up to the possibility of his election victory was not as impossible or legitimate as originally thought has his closest aides scrambling for anything to grab the people attention away from the truth.

A Russian spy has been dragged out of the shadows and put on display.  Fearing that is not enough a plan is hatched to go to war with the rest of the world on the trade and military alliance front with solutions to coming crises in the bank for when everyone started to be affected by what seems senseless tariffs and endless attacks from those who were once allies.

But what’s really going on.  Has the president been bought by the Russians, or does he have a darker and more sinister plan afoot?  Are his battles with Russia, China, and North Korea merely diversions?

The balance of power is on a knife edge and only one man [or woman] can save a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

You have to admit it’s a hell of a plotline.

“What Sets Us Apart”, a mystery with a twist

David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.
Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.
They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?
When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.
When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.
Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.

http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

whatsetscoverwhatsetscoverwhatsetscover

Forgive me, for I have …

I’m sitting at my desk surrounded by any number of scraps of paper with more storylines, written excepts, parts of stories, and a number of chapters of a work in progress.

Does this happen to anyone else?

The business of writing requires a talent to keep focused on the one project, and silence all the other screaming voices in your head, pouring out their side of the story.

But it’s not working.

I try to be determined in my efforts to edit my current completed novel, after letting it ‘rest’ in my head for a few months.

I planned to have so time off, but all of those prisoners in my head started clamoring for my attention.  A story I started some time ago needs revising, another story I wrote last year of NANOWRIMO has come back to haunt me, and characters, well, they’re out in the waiting room, pacing up and down, ready to tell me their life stories.

Is the temporary cure coffee or wine?

Now I think I really do need a holiday

Or a trip to the asylum.  Thank God this is not the early 20th century, or I might never return.  And if it’s named Bellview, it would be just another story to be written.

The Author that went Bonkers!

Does it ever end?

 

 

 

The Things We Do For Love – Coming soon

Like Sunday in New York, this is another attempt at writing a romance novel.  I’m one of those deluded fools who believe in happy endings.

I guess that was a ‘spoiler’!

This is the description I’m currently working with.

 

Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters.

For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself.  Tonbright, a small village by the sea, is one such a place, but he never expected to find another, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.

Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something had happened.  Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.

A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone.  To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.

But can love conquer all?

It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.

 

The cover, at the moment, looks like this:

lovecoverfinal1

 

I don’t like Mondays

I don’t like Mondays – a song lingering on the periphery of my memory, and I’m not sure who sung it.

But it’s official, I don’t like Mondays.

I’ve been procrastinating since last Thursday, telling myself I have to get the next part of one of my stories written, but I keep putting it off.  I have to go to Africa, the Niger Delta to be exact.  It can wait, I’m not ready for the steaming jungle and hostile villagers yet.

I didn’t do anything on Sunday, and, as a writer, I guess that’s not very good.  I’m supposed to be writing a page, or a hundred or thousand words a day, just to keep the juices flowing.

I’m not in the mood.  I sit and stare at the computer screen, and nothing is coming.  Is this the first sign of writer’s block?

I dig out several articles on how to overcome it and start putting their suggestions into action.  No.  No.  Maybe.  No.  I don’t think it’s writer’s block.

Perhaps I need some inspiration so I go to my tablet playlist, spend 10 minutes trying to find the headphones carelessly discarded by one of my grandchildren the last time they were here.

And, yes, the tablet was left in the middle of playing a Minecraft video which has drained the battery.  Now I can’t find the charger!

Back at the computer, holding a dead tablet, and a pair of headphones, inspiration is as far away as the mythical light at the end of the tunnel.  Today it is an oncoming express train.

Perhaps a pen and paper will work.

An idea pops into my head…

 

Is it possible the passing of a weekend could change the course of your life?  An interesting question, one to ponder as I sat on the floor of a concrete cell, with only the sound of my breathing, and the incessant screams coming from a room at the end of the corridor.

It was my turn next.  That was what the grinning ape of a guard said in broken English.  He looked like a man who relished his job.

What goes through your mind at a time like this, waiting, waiting for the inevitable?  Will I survive, what will they do to me, will it hurt?

The screaming stops abruptly, and a terrible silence falls over the facility.

Then, looking in the direction of where the screams had come from, I hear the clunk of the door latch being opened, and then the slow nerve tingling screech of rusty metal as the door opens slowly.

Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, no.

 

No writer’s block.  But I have to stop watching late night television.

 

 

 

 

“The Devil You Don’t”, a thriller

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:

http://tinyurl.com/Amazon-TheDevilYouDont

newdevilcvr3

“Echoes From The Past”, a thriller

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

 

Burning the midnight oil

It’s an interesting phrase, one that means someone is working overtime at the office till late at night, or early next morning.

You know, “Been burning the midnight oil again, Frank?”

It prompted me to look up its real meaning.  It goes back to the days before electricity where a worker toiled into the night using only an oil lamp or candles.

In my office, I now have LED lights that are reasonably bright, not like the neon lights I used to have that made me feel like I was in a television studio.  Either way, it’s not quite the atmosphere needed when looking for inspiration.

That inspiration might be better attained in a more subdued atmosphere, perhaps even using candles.  In one of the other rooms, we have a wood fire and that projects a very soothing glow, as well as providing warmth, and there I sit sometimes, Galaxy Tab in hand, writing.

But all of that aside, those hours leading up to and after midnight are the best time for me to write.

At times the silence is deafening, another rather quaint but relatively true expression.

At others, there are what I call the sounds of silence, which for some reason are much easier to hear than during the daylight hours.

The bark of a dog.

The rustle of leaves in the trees.

The soft pattering of rain on the roof.

The sound of a train horn from a long way away.

The sound of a truck using its brakes on the highway, also a long way away.

The sound of people talking in the street.

I’ve never really thought about it until now, but it will be something I can use in one of my stories.

Perhaps it will be the theme of another.

Damn, sidetracked again!

Going Down?

It’s like getting into an elevator at the Empire State Building, 80 odd floors, going down.

Only I’m still in free fall.

This is the point where your life starts flashing before your eyes, where you start thinking you could have made better choices.

Ah, the benefit of hindsight eh?  If only we knew what a mess of our lives we were going to make when we were 10.  Things would be different?

Or not?

My youngest granddaughter is 8.  I remember when I was 8.  And I don’t want to remember when I was 8.  All I can say is the worst things that happen to you are caused by other family members. and at that age sometimes parents think you have too active an imagination.

I know now I didn’t.

Primary school was great, but secondary school was about bullying and toughening up.  My father often said it was ‘a cruel world out there’.  It was.

But, now for the best part, meeting and marrying the most wonderful girl in the world.

She pulled me out of the abyss the first time around.

We have two boys, they have three girls.

Pity this isn’t a cartoon where I could start slowing down, and then tread air, walk over to the side and start climbing back up.

I look up.  There’s daylight and hope.

And six smiling faces willing me to come back and get on with that novel I promised I’d write the girls.

And, dammit, there are not going to be any unicorns.  They are so yesterday!

 

 

Living in a winter wonderland, not

Living in a more tr temperate climate where the days of winter are anything from 18 to 23 degrees Celsius, sunny, or overcast, without a hint of rain.

Rarely is it so cold that a combination of wind and rain can chill you to the bone, as it does in the southern states of this country, Australia.

Today is one of those days, sunny and with an almost cloudless blue sky.

Yet I love winter, the real winter where the temperature is so cold your face starts to freeze, an experience I had one January in Chicago, or where the temperature is hovering just above freezing and there is snow everywhere.

New Yorkers I discovered do not like this very much, understandably so because it interferes with their daily lives and livelihood, but to us tourists from those warmer climes it is manna from heaven.

3-foot snow drifts in Central Park, a place where a child can easily make a snow angel, these are aspects of winter we may never see where we live.

The closest we are going to get is a classic wood fire, where we can sit by and watch the flames dance while it keeps us warm.  Nights here do get cold.

But as for a white Christmas, we have to travel to the other side of the world for that.  Good thing then that their winter coincides with our Christmas and generally the hottest days of the years.

In fact, we’re coming your way this year

I can hardly wait.