The innocuous explanation for this photo is that I took it at my grand daughter’s little athletics competition, now most sensibly being held on Friday evenings.
For those who don’t know how the weather can be in Brisbane, Queensland, it is generally hot, particularly from November when temperatures are between 35 and 40 degrees centigrade.
But not only is it hot but humidity, the real problem, is around 100 percent.
So at the moment we have reasonably cool evenings, ideal conditions for the young athletes.
But, where a photo could be innocuous there can a more interesting, if not sinister description.
Lurking in the back of my mind, and perhaps a lot of others, that there might be an unidentified flying object somewhere in the sky.
Of course, there might not be any, but it doesn’t mean that we stop looking, or assume, sometimes that a moving light in the sky isn’t a UFO.
And its been said that humans are quite arrogant in thinking that we are the only people in the universe.
Personally, I don’t think we are, and I keep an eye on the sky every time I’m out at night, perhaps the most likely time we might see one.
The only issue I might have is that if I am that lucky to see one, or that it lands nearby, what I would do when confronted by an alien.
The story fleshed out for the second section, discussed in Point of View
Annalisa looked at the two men facing her, a shopkeeper who, despite his protestations, was a dealer, and the other man, a customer scared shitless.
The poor bastard was not the only one scared.
It was meant to be simple, arrive at the shop just before closing, force the shopkeeper to hand over the shit, and leave.
What had happened?
The shopkeeper laughed at them and told them to get out. Simmo started ranting and waving the gun around, then all of a sudden collapsed.
There was a race for the gun which spilled out of Simmo’s hand, and she won. No more arguments, the shopkeeper was getting the stuff when the customer burst into the shop.
This was worse than any bad hair day, or getting out of the wrong side of bed day, this was, she was convinced, the last day of her life.
Her mother said she would never amount to anything, and here she was with a drug addict coming apart because she had been cut off from her money and could no longer pay for his supply, which had led them to this inevitable ending.
She heard a strange sound come from beside her and looked down. Simmo was getting worse, like he had a fever, and was moaning.
If Alphonse had thought his day was going to get any better after the delivery disaster earlier that day, he was wrong.
If he thought he could maintain his real business and his under the counter business with no one finding out, in that he was wrong too. He’s know, inevitably, some useless punk would come and do exactly what Simmo was doing.
It might have been salvageable before the customer came in the door, but now it was not. The customer had heard the words, and given him ‘the look’. A drug addict telling the cops he was a dealer, it was his word against an unreliable addict, but this local chap, he had that air of respectability the cops would listen too.
Damn.
But he had to try and salvage the situation, there was a lot of money involved, and other people depending on him. He looked at the boy, on the floor, then the girl.
“Listen to me, young lady, I have no idea what you are talking about. Please, put the gun down before someone gets hurt. Your friend needs medical help and I can call an ambulance.”
The girl switched her attention back to him. “Shut up, let me think. Shit.”
The storekeeper glanced over at the customer. He’s been in once or twice, probably lived in the neighborhood, but looked the sort who’d prefer to be anywhere but in his shop. More so now. If only he hadn’t burst in when he did. He would have the gun, called the police, and brazened his way out of trouble. Now, that remedy was off the table.
Now he had to deal with the fallout, especially if the girl started talking.
Not much of a revelation when it’s winter, but why is it when you have to go somewhere in a hurry, the universe knows, and tries to throw everything at you so you don’t get there on time?
I like to be punctual.
I’m one of those people who leave home to get to the airport hours before I have to because I know, from past experience, that if you leave at the time where you’d make it with an hour to spare, you would get stuck in the mother of all traffic jams.
I know this to be true. It’s happened more than once to me,
If you’re not in a hurry, you get the best run you’ve ever had. I know that’s true too, because that’s what happens most times.
It’s like when at work you’re in a hurry to get a photocopy. The machine knows if you’re stressed and picks that particular moment to break down. That use to happen to me more times that I’d had hot dinners.
Sorry, I needed to use that expression, which generally means a lot. That photocopy machine, back in the days when they were huge and almost a new fad, my task every Tuesday was to copy a 3 page shipping report, 300 odd times. Not once did I get a clean run, not in the two years it was my job.
But…
Back to the weather.
My day to pick up one of the grandchildren from the railway station. It’s not far from our house, on any other day it would take about ten minutes, but since this is after 3 pm, I have the other school traffic to contend with, the tradies going home, and late afternoon shoppers getting dinner.
It never used to be like that. The road was a single lane that used to be blocked by floods when it rained, there was no shopping centre, and no new estates. In 30 years everything has arrived, the road expanded to two lanes either side, and almost continual traffic jams.
There’s a story there somewhere, but for the moment I have to take on the traffic. Maybe once I get to the station I might have time to consider it.
First drafts are always a little messy. The words spill out onto the page, and it’s rare that any or all of them are perfect. Sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time you don’t.
That’s why there’s revision, or by the more dreaded name, editing.
Editing conjures up a lot of different images in my mind, from completely re-writing, to cutting the mss down in size. Or where you discover the main character’s name has changed from Bill to Fred after a bad night.
Usually, though, as stories progress, they go through a number of rewrites, and sometimes because of what follows. It depends on how long a period the story is written. Some of mine take days, others quite a lot longer.
This is the rewrite of the first section of the short story I’m undertaking, adding some new details:
Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.
He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.
He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp. His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.
It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation.
Young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack. He recognized the gun, a Luger, German, relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.
Jack to another second or two to consider if he could disarm her. No, the distance was too great. He put his hands out where she could see them. No sudden movements, try to remain calm, his heart rate up to the point of cardiac arrest.
Pointing with the gun, she said, “Come in, close the door, and move towards the counter.”
Everything but her hand steady as a rock. The only telltale sign of stress, the beads of perspiration on her brow. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.
Jack shivered, and then did as he was told. She was in the unpredictable category.
“What’s wrong with your friend?” Jack tried the friendly approach, as he took several slow steps sideways towards the counter.
The shopkeeper, Alphonse, seemed calmer than usual, or the exact opposite spoke instead, “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score. At the end of his tether, my guess, and came to the wrong place.”
Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation. She didn’t look like a user. The boy on the ground, he did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.
“Simmo said you sell shit. You wanna live, ante up.” She was glaring at Alphonse.
The language, Jack thought, was not her own, she had been to a better class of school, a good girl going through a bad boy phase. Caught in a situation she was not equipped to deal with.
If she did not walk through the door when she did then Jack would have walked away.
From the policewoman’s perspective:
She crossed the street from the corner instead of remaining on the same side of the street as she did every other night. When she reached the other sidewalk, she was about 20 yards from the nearest window of the store.
As she crossed, she got a better view of the three people in the store and noticed the woman, or girl, was acting oddly as if she had something in her hand, and, from time to time looked down beside her.
A yard or two from the window she stopped, took a deep breath, and then moved slowly, getting a better view of the scene with each step.
Then she saw the gun in the girl’s hand, and the two men, the shopkeeper and a customer facing her, hands up.
It was a convenience store robbery in progress.
She reached for her radio, but it wasn’t there. She was off duty. Instead, she withdrew, and called the station on her mobile phone, and reported the robbery. The officer at the end of the phone said a car would be there in five minutes.
In five minutes there could be dead bodies.
She had to do something, and reached into her bag and pulled out a gun. Not her service weapon, but one she carried in case of personal danger.
Guns are dangerous weapons in the hands of professional and amateur alike. You would expect a professional who has trained to use a gun to not have a problem but consider what might happen in exceptional circumstances.
People freeze under pressure. Alternately, some shoot first and ask questions later.
We have an edgy and frightened girl with a loaded gun, one bullet or thirteen in a magazine, it doesn’t matter. It only takes one bullet to kill someone.
Then there’s the trigger pressure, light or heavy, the recoil after the shot and whether it causes the bullet to go into or above the intended target, especially if the person has never used a gun.
The policewoman, with training, will need two hands to take the shot, but in getting into the shop she will need one to open the door, and then be briefly distracted before using that hand to steady the other.
It will take a lifetime, even if it is only a few seconds.
Actions have consequences:
The policewoman crouched below the window shelf line so the girl wouldn’t see her, and made it to the door before straightening. She was in dark clothes so the chances were the girl would not see her against the dark street backdrop.
Her hand was on the door handle about to push it inwards when she could feel in being yanked hard from the other side, and the momentum and surprise of it caused her to lose balance and crash into the man who was trying to get out.
What the hell…
A second or two later both were on the floor in a tangled mess, her gun hand caught underneath her, and a glance in the direction of the girl with the gun told her the situation had gone from bad to worse.
The girl had swung the gun around and aimed it at her and squeezed the trigger twice.
The two bangs in the small room were almost deafening and definitely disorientating.
Behind her, the glass door disintegrated when the bullet hit it.
Neither she nor the man beside her had been hit.
Yet.
She felt a kick in the back and the tickling of glass then broke free as the man she’d run into rolled out of the way.
Quickly on her feet, she saw the girl had gone, and wasted precious seconds getting up off the floor, then out the door to find she had disappeared.
She could hear a siren in the distance. They’d find her.
If the policewoman had not picked that precise moment to enter the shop, maybe the man would have got away.
Maybe.
If he’d been aware of the fact he was allowed to leave.
He was lucky not to be shot.
Yet there were two shots, and we know at least one of them broke the door’s glass panel.
I’m back to writing, sitting at the desk, pad in front of me, pen in hand.
The only thing lacking is an idea.
It’s 9:03 am, too early to start on a six-pack.
I need a distraction.
Blogging, websites, Twitter, and Facebook, all of these social media problems are swirling around in my mind.
The more I read the more it bothers me that if I don’t have the right social media presence if I do not start to build an email list, all of my efforts in writing a book will come to naught.
Then I start trawling the internet for information on marketing and found a plethora of people offering any amount of advice for anything between a ‘small amount’ to a rather large amount that gives comprehensive coverage of most social media platforms for periods of a day, a week or a month. I don’t have a book so it’s a bit early to be worrying about that.
I move on to the people who offer advice for a cost on how to build a following, how to build a web presence, how to get a thousand Twitter followers, and how to get thousands of email followers before the launch.
The trouble is I’m writing a novel, not a nonfiction book, or have some marvellous 30 page ebook on how to do something, for free just to drive people to my site.
I’m a novelist, not a handyman so those ideas while good are not going to help me.
Yet another problem to wrestle with along with actually creating a product to sell in the first place.
Except I’m supposed to be writing for the love of it without the premeditated idea of writing for gain or getting rich quick.
What am I missing here?
So should l be writing short stories and offering them for free to drive people to my site? These would have to be genre-specific so it needs time and effort and fit into a convenient size story that will highlight or showcase my talent.
Or should I create a website for the novel and set up pages for the characters and get some interaction going that way?
It will be difficult without giving the whole plot away so if I do it will have to be carefully managed.
I don’t think I will have a good night’s sleep again with all of these social media problems I’m going to have.
Oh well, back to the book. It’s time to have a nightmare of a different sort!
I’m back to writing, sitting at the desk, pad in front of me, pen in hand.
The only thing lacking, an idea.
It’s 9:03 am, too early to start on a six-pack.
To be honest, the last thing I needed was a distraction, and, having forgotten to put my cell phone on silent, it starts buzzing, indicating there are new messages, or notifications from all those social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger…
Then the advice from all the so-called marketing gurus starts to swirl around in my head, and instead of writing, I’m now fretting over my social media presence.
The more I read the more it bothers me that if I don’t have the right social media presence if I do not start to build an email list, all of my efforts in writing a book will come to naught.
That’s when I start trawling the internet for information on marketing and found a plethora of people offering any amount of advice for anything between a ‘small amount’ to a rather large amount that gives comprehensive coverage of most social media platforms for periods of a day, a week or a month.
I move on to the people who offer advice for a cost on how to build a following, how to build a web presence, how to get a thousand Twitter followers, how to get thousands of email followers before the launch.
The trouble is I’m writing a novel, not a nonfiction book, or have some marvelous 30-page ebook on how to do something, for free just to drive people to my site.
I’m a novelist, not a handyman so those ideas while good is not going to help me.
Yet another problem to wrestle with along with actually creating a product to sell in the first place.
Except I’m supposed to be writing for the love of it without the premeditated idea of writing for gain or getting rich quick.
What am I missing here?
So should l be writing short stories and offering them for free to drive people to my site? These would have to be genre-specific so it needs time and effort and fit into a convenient size story that will highlight or showcase my talent.
Some time ago I created a website on one of those so-called free sites, but it’s rather basic and not great. Of course, if I want it to be better, all I have to do is hand over a great wad of money I don’t have to make it better. So much for free!
I don’t think I will have a good night’s sleep again with all of these social media problems I’m having.
Oh well, back to the book. It’s time to have a nightmare of a different sort!
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.
West Lake is a freshwater lake in Hangzhou, China. It is divided into five sections by three causeways. There are numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and artificial islands within the lake.
Measuring 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) in length, 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles) in width, and 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) in average depth, the lake spreads itself in an area totaling 6.5 square kilometers (2.5 square miles).
The earliest recorded name for West Lake was the “Wu Forest River”, but over time it changed to two distinct names. One is “Qiantang Lake”, due to the fact that Hangzhou was called “Qiantang” in ancient times. The other, “West Lake”, due to the lake being west of the city
It’s about to get busy, with a number of activities planned, and the warmth of the day is starting to make an impact.
The tour starts in the car park about a kilometer away, but the moment we left the car park we were getting a taste of the park walking along a tree-lined avenue.
When we cross the road, once again dicing with death with the silent assassins on motor scooters.
We are in the park proper, and it is magnificent, with flowers, mostly at the start hydrangeas and then any number of other trees and shrubs, some carved into other flower shapes like a lotus.
Then there was the lake and the backdrop of bridges and walkways.
.
And if you can tune out the background white noise the place would be great for serenity and relaxation.
That, in fact, was how the boat ride panned out, about half an hour or more gliding across the lake in an almost silent boat, by an open window, with the air and the majestic scenery.
No, not that boat, which would be great to have lunch on while cruising, but the boat below:
Not quite in the same class, but all the same, very easy to tune out and soak it in.
It was peaceful, amazingly quiet, on a summery day
A pagoda in the hazy distance, an island we were about to circumnavigate.
Of all the legends, the most touching one is the love story between Bai Suzhen and Xu Xi’an. Bai Suzhen was a white snake spirit and Xu Xi’an was a mortal man.
They fell in love when they first met on a boat on the West Lake, and got married very soon after.
However, the evil monk Fa Hai attempted to separate the couple by imprisoning Xu Xi’an. Bai Suzhen fought against Fa Hai and tried her best to rescue her husband, but she failed and was imprisoned under the Leifeng Pagoda by the lake.
Years later the couple was rescued by Xiao Qing, the sister of Baisuzhen, and from then on, Bai Suzhen and Xu Xi’an lived together happily.
The retelling of the story varied between tour guides, and on the cruise boat, we had two. Our guide kept to the legend, the other tour guide had a different ending.
Suffice to say it had relevance to the two pagodas on the far side of the lake.
There was a cafe or restaurant on the island, but that was not our lunch destination.
Nor were the buildings further along from where we disembarked.
All in all the whole cruise took about 45 minutes and was an interesting break from the hectic nature of the tour.
Oh yes, and the boat captain had postcards for sale. We didn’t buy any.
Lunch
At the disembarkation point there was a mall that sold souvenirs and had a few ‘fast food’ shops, and a KFC, not exactly what we came to China for, but it seemed like the only place in town a food cautious Australian could eat at.
And when tried to get in the door, that’s where at least 3 busloads were, if they were not in the local Starbucks. Apparently, these were the places of first choice wherever we went.
The chicken supply by the time we got to the head of the line amounted to pieces at 22.5 RMB a piece and nuggets. Everything else had run out, and for me, there were only 5 pieces left. Good thing there were chips.
And Starbucks with coffee and cheesecake.
At least the setting for what could have been a picnic lunch was idyllic.
Can you actually say you know the exact moment a story is done, finished, and that’s it?
For me, the end never quite seems to be the end, that point where you finally draw a line in the sand and say, that’s it, I’m done, step away from the typewriter.
But are we ever satisfied the story is done, can we not make one more change, it’s just a little tweak, it won’t take long.
Please!
My editor tolerated three ‘minor’ changes.
Firstly, a change of name for a character
Secondly, consistency of word use, such as times and contractions
Thirdly, I wasn’t happy with the overall story, and it needed some more action. More writing, more editing, more prevaricating.
It took three weeks to sort out all of those issues, and last night I send the final draft to the Editor.
It’s like watching your child go to school on their first day. Not knowing what will happen but expecting everything will be fine.
This morning I sat in front of the computer, a blank sheet of paper on the screen. I know it’s not a matter of starting the next story from scratch; I have so many started and finished, sitting in the wings to be ‘tinkered with’.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 