Tag: Author

Do you ever feel like you’re teetering on the edge of a precipice?

I am teetering on the edge of a precipice.

Of course, literally, that might mean I’m standing at the top of a craggy cliff looking down at a bed of rocks.

One that would hurt a lot if I landed there.

But there are many ideas of what that precipice might be, metaphorically.

It might mean, in an argument, you’re about to say something you’ll regret or can’t take back.

It might mean you are one action away from turning your parent. or someone else, into a green-eyed monster, and do something you thought you’d never do.

Pushing them to the precipice.

It might mean you are one thought or idea away from solving a problem.

Like the title of your next book.

Or the formula to create a warp drive.

Or perhaps a simpler problem like where the money is coming from to pay next weeks bills.

My precipice?

The next plotline for my current NaNoWriMo project.

And, no, I’m not usually one of these writers who plan the whole novel before writing it.

But ideas like this, they just happen.

I usually write my stories in the same manner it would be for the reader, not knowing what will happen next, but it’s hard not to.

It’s cold and wet at the top of the cliff …

Damn!  Just had an idea.  Got to go.

Searching for locations: Siena, Italy

The Piazza del Campo is one of the greatest medieval squares in Europe. 

It is shaped like a shell.

This is where the Palazzo Publico and the Torre del Mangia are. 

At 102 meters (334 feet), the bell tower is the city’s second tallest structure. 

When it was built in 1848 it was the exact same height of the Duomo to show that the state and church had equal amounts of power.

Around the edges of the Piazza are a lot of restaurants, where you can sit in the shade, have a plate of pasta and sip on a cold limonata.

NANOWRIMO Day Seven

Part two is proceeding.

What can be a bother is that when you’re writing, even to a plan, that ideas come out of left field, and can leave you scratching your head.

So, I’ll be honest, I’m not used to writing to a plan, more that i write by the seat of my pants. But I’m determined to stick to the plan and see how it goes.

On the ‘we’ll look at it later’ pad i write down the latest curve ball, then push it to the side of the desk again. It might get a look in during the first rewrite.

I’m still looking at part three, and while it’s the part where we bring the two together for the first time, that might happen sooner. I was scribbling down a loose outline that was leaning towards a meeting briefly after she was released.

It’s a difficult point and I think I will let the writing go where the storyline leads.

More on this tomorrow

Not your average to be read list

A long time ago, when I was 17 or 18, I used to do a lot of reading.  It was a long ride in on the train from home to work, and back again, and I did, then, have the time to read.

Having my own money, I was able to buy my own books, and these generally ran to mysteries and thriller, and naval stories.  The later took my interest for a while because I had notions of becoming an Ensign until I realized I needed better educational qualifications and a higher level of fitness.

So much for those aspirations, so I just read about what it would be like.

However…

I worked with a number of interesting characters, including one, a chap who was about 25, really old and wise to a 17-year-old, who deplored my reading choices.

It seemed Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Brian Callison, Hammond Innes, and Alistair Maclean didn’t quite fit the reading profile he thought I should follow.

Well, I hadn’t been to university, and I hadn’t realized there was such a thing as English, or any other, literature.  He was adamant that if I wanted to call myself a ‘man of books’ I had to read ‘proper’ books.

So, what eventuated, was a reading list.

If I wanted to converse with him on literature, I had to read every book on the list.

And I wanted to appear, at least, slightly more sophisticated, that the reader of penny dreadfuls.  I didn’t know what that meant, and in those days there was no internet, so it remained for a long time a phrase of mystery.

But, the reading list,

‘Hard Times,’ and ‘Bleak House’ by Charles Dickens

‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by T.E. Lawrence, yes, that famous man who was better known as Lawrence of Arabia

‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy, which fuelled a desire to read most of Hardy’s books

‘The Day of the Triffids’, by John Wyndham, a rather strange addition to the list since it was science fiction.  I suspect he was a closet Trekker.

‘To the Lighthouse’, by Virginia Wolff

‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen

‘And Quietly Flows the Don’ by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov.  I had great fears that I would have to learn Russian, but that wasn’t the only shock, so was the size of the book

‘War and Peace’, talking about long books, by Leo Tolstoy

‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and thereby concluding the Russian classics

Of course, your definition of literature can change, and as a result of reading all of these books, and it took quite some time, and this led to selecting a more interesting collection of books to read, which he, in some small measure, took the credit for.

I discovered R.F Delderfield, and the trilogy, ‘A Horseman Riding By’, which led to ‘The Headmaster’, ‘The Avenue’, and ‘God is an Englishman’

C.S. Forester and the Hornblower series, but who also wrote several mysteries

F. Scott Fitzgerald and ‘The Great Gatsby’ as well as several other classics

Eric Ambler, master of thrillers from the ’30s and ’50s, particularly spy novels, and was probably the one who introduced me to the world of espionage

and last but not least, Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’.

 

 

In a word: Story

All of us writers know what this is, the sort of combination of words that all come together as a story.  A tale about anything whether it is true or just plain fiction.

A story can be long, or it can be short.  It could be a magazine or newspaper article, it could be what a child tells his or her mother or father when they get into trouble.

Come to think of it, I think that’s where I got an interest in writing stories because as a child I was always in trouble.

Of course, if you are telling certain types of stories,, then it’s bound to be a lie.  And made even worse if it is gossip!

That story might even be my interpretation of events, and as it happens, it’s possible no two stories are the same, especially if I and others had witnessed the same event.

This is not to be confused with the other version, storey, which is a single level in a building, one that might have thirty or more stories.

And, just to add to the confusion, living in Brisbane in Australia we have the Storey Bridge.

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

NANOWRIMO Day Six

The first section or part is done. I think.

I had intended it to be longer, but as it pans out what follows belongs to the second part, and I have begun working on this.

There are 8 chapters so far in Part One.

This may change depending on what happens in the second part.

Of course, there are moments while I’m working on this part, and checking the plan, I can see a fork in the road coming up. It feels quirky, but then I just dropped a huge plot twist and will play this out and see what happens.

At the same time, after completing my day’s quota, I have to resist the urge to write more, but that’s just a fear in the back of my mind that I might run out of words and be staring at a blank page tomorrow.

So, looking at the plan, the third section looks like it might need a rework, and I’m playing around with several angles that might be pursued.

I think it’s time to stop overthinking it.

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.

 

 

 

 

Past Conversations with my cat – 23

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This is Chester.   He had asked the question; why doesn’t he get to go on holidays

I think we both know the answer to that.

It’s not the first time he’s asked, but this ‘simply forgetting he’s asked before’ is a ruse.

If he asks enough times, maybe…

But…

A few questions first,

Do you often find the sunniest spot, lie down and have a nap?

Hmmm, thinking

Do you only turn up in the dining room at meal times expecting the food to be ready?

Hmmm, thinking

Do you sleep in every morning?

Hmmm, thinking

Do you find your self thinking more about relaxing and less about working?

Same questions as the last time, and same no answer.

I think we both know you’re already and have been for a while, on holiday!

 

 

“Sunday in New York”, it’s a bumpy road to love

“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.

When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.

From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.

There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.

Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.

Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?

Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?

Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?

As they say in the classics, read on!

Purchase:

http://tinyurl.com/Amazon-SundayInNewYork

Sunday In New York