This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
Coming soon!
Tag: Charles Heath
Conversations with my cat – 65
This is Chester. We both agree that summer has come early.
But that’s about all we can agree on. I’m going to start calling him a cranky cat.
For the last week or so the temperature has been hovering in the low 30-degree Celcius mark, and we have been subjected to the constant aroma of smoke from bushfires raging north and south of us.
Normally, the hot weather doesn’t arrive until after the middle of November, and then the temperatures are around 30 degrees with moderate humidity.
Now, it is hot, with Sunday being about 36 degrees Celcius, and not a day to venture outside the airconditioning.
And, that’s where the cranky cat and I disagree.
He likes to sit at the back door and collect the breeze that flows from the front door to the back door and hates it when I run the airconditioning because I have the doors closed.
When that happens, he comes into the office and sits on the table next to the printer with his angry face on.
I figure using the printer might disturb his protest, but it doesn’t.
And to ignore him is at your own peril because, after a few minutes of silent protest, he comes over and starts pushing keys on the keyboard.
One day I expect he will type ‘you are a very bad servant’ for that I am.
Now, where’s the food he really hates!
Searching for locations: Queenstown, New Zealand
Queenstown is as much about skiing in Winter as it is hiking in Summer or any other time. It is, in fact, the ideal place for a holiday any time of the year.
We have stayed there simply to relax, though with all that scenery, and stuff to do, it’s nearly impossible to stay indoors all the time.
Usually, we stay in a place called Queenstown Mews, not far from the lake, and it gives us the perfect opportunity to walk down to the lake and follow the shoreline around to the town, and have coffee and cake as a fitting reward for the exercise.
Along the way, there is the view of the Remarkables:
And, further around, behind the park and gardens, a spectacular view across the lake towards Walter Peak farm:
To get to the farm you can either drive a very, very long way or take the T.S.S. Earnslaw, otherwise known as the ‘Lady of the Lake’.
This vessel plies Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown to mostly Walter Peak Farm but has been known, on occasions, to go to Kingston or Glenorchy.
Here it’s sitting at the pier at Queenstown, ready to depart for Walter Peak Farm.
And this is it returning to Walter Peak Farm to take the visitors back to Queenstown.
We have been to Walter Peak Farm for Afternoon Tea and Dinner, and both occasions were an amazing experience. You can also get up close and to the animals
There are other experiences to be had in Glenorchy. and the views whilst driving there are every bit as spectacular, especially as late afternoon settles in:
And in visiting the Lord Of the Rings filming locations.
Then there is Kingston, where the road follows the lake and you are literally between the mountains and the lake:
Kingston used to have a train running, which then became a tourist attraction, but for the moment does not seem to be running currently.
But for me, the real experiences is travelling on the vessel.
Not bad for 103 years old.
NANOWRIMO Day Eighteen
The problem of the day before are gone, and I get back to the plan.
Today I have concentrated on the side excursion I’d come up with the other day and thought it could wait, but I’m at a point, further on, where I need to have this written in order to feed into the main story.
I’m in two minds how this should be written because I had two sketched out two possible outcomes, and one leads to quite a different ending.
The plan, son, the plan!
I write it as it should be, and the other outcome gets crossed out, and the outline sent to the ‘to be written sometime in the future’ pile. It’s a strong enough ending to power it’s own story.
I might even become a sequel.
Hang on, don’t get carried away. Get this one finished first.
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 election interference by the Russians scandal in the United States.
Of course, that’s not the only country interested in having an influence in elections, there’s the Chinese in Australia, though in our case it might see some improvement in the childing behaviour of our politicians.
But in the first instance, 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.
I don’t think the stacking of the Supreme Court with conservatives is the main objective unless you want to keep your tax returns under wraps and keep out legitimate immigrants, called ‘dreamers’, but it might have far wider ramifications.
I sat this, 50% of the population is female, and I don’t think they’ve lost the right to vote, yet!
But I digress.
The blurb reads on.
The president, recently elected in what could only have been described as an impossible result, suddenly realizes that the American people are now waking up to the possibility of his election victory was not as impossible or legitimate as originally thought, and has his closest aides scrambling for anything to grab the people attention away from the truth.
A person who is suspected of being 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 trade and military fronts, so everyone’s attention will be diverted by what seems senseless tariffs and endless attacks on 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.
I’d like to write a political thriller
But, I don’t understand politics.
The question is, do you really have to?
I mean all you have to do is read the papers and read between the lines. It doesn’t take much imagination to find something worth writing about
For instance,
How could it possibly happen that a leader of a very powerful country become a spy for another?
It doesn’t seem plausible, but is it possible?
It depends I’m guessing, on power and wealth, well, perhaps not so much the power, but it is true that money and wealth are great motivators.
How could it happen when the leader is in the public eye nearly all of the time? And even if that leader has closed-door conversations, which is doubtful he would be on his own, the red not really be an opportunity to sell out to the other side.
Even an exchange of gifts, like apartments or dacha, wouldn’t be enough of an incentive, well, not for me anyway. But a clear path to investment in a rival country, maybe.
Perhaps then rather than becoming a spy, the leader could adopt a policy of appeasement. We have history to tell us how well that works, and the fact giving concessions to another county only emboldens it to take advantage of apparent weakness, and then, hey presto, we have another war.
So…
What do we really have?
A lot of speculation and conjecture. It’s easy to construe what might be the truth from a set of circumstances and behavioral patterns of the individuals involved.
It could be likened to two cats circling each other in a cage before the fight begins.
The waters can be muddied by a constant stream of incendiary tweets which fire the readers’ imagination, all intended as a smoke screen, or feelers to see which was the wind is blowing.
Is that leader masterful and clever or is he a naive fool?
My political thriller might have a working title of,
‘Which Way Does The Wind Blow’
I don’t usually have a title for any of the books until after the first draft, or sometimes something might spring out as it’s being written.
But, for now, let’s sit back and see which way the wind is blowing.
There is never enough time for reading
And the point is, there should be.
To me, reading is an essential part of a writer’s life. We see what others write, we see how others write, and we see what they write about.
It is an education in itself on the genre we eventually want to write for. Call it homework, or very pleasant homework.
But…
Between everything else I have to do around the house, the time set aside for writing, the time set aside for maintaining social media, the time set aside for family, is there any time left?
About an hour before I go to sleep, though that time is considerably shortened if the book is boring.
Fortunately, quite often they are not.
The other problem is the intervals between new books from my favorite authors is getting less as they take on co-writers, such as James Patterson and Clive Cussler. And even more are now getting co-authors which means my to be read list is getting longer and longer.
It seems the only time I can steal more than an hour away is when I go away on holidays. This we try to do several times a year, and this year we’ll be going to Canada and the United States.
There’s only one other problem involved, the fact books are so much cheaper there, and I’ll be buying more.
Damn. It’s a never-ending cycle.
But, at the moment, the list reads like this,
James Patterson, Murder House, Black Book
Clive Cussler, Fire Ice, White Death
Edward Rutherford, New York, quite apt since we will be going there soon if the ice hockey dates line up
Steve Berry, the 14th Colony
David Baldacci, Memory Man
And, of course, about a hundred others.
As odd as it sounds I’m looking forward to the 20 odd hours in the plane. There’s one book read going there and one book read going back. And a chance to pick up a lot of bargains in New York too.
NANOWRIMO Day Seventeen
One of the hazards of writing can be being continually critical of your own work. I’m guilty as charged.
But in writing to a plan and in only 30 days having to write 50,000 words there is no time to be critical.
Except….
So far down the track, I should be writing not being critical.
But the thing is, I’m finding that I have to go back three chapters and read them through to pick up the thread. Its not because it’s changed in any way from the plan, it’s just that I’m finding it hard to write to a plan, when usually I fly by the seat of my pants.
The trouble with doing that, it gives rise to considering changes, and right now there’s no time for change.
I have 13 days to hold it together.
And 13 is an unlucky number, isn’t it?
Is this really English … American?
Ever since I heard Ray Romano say, in an episode of his TV show when they visited Italy, ‘does anyone here speak American?’ I’ve often wondered if, being an English speaker, there were two very distinct different versions of the language.
Spelling wise, there is.
You say color, I say colour, you know the sort of thing.
But then there are words like ‘heater’.
Yes, like a lot of people I thought the word means a device that warms you up in winter, or when it’s cold.
Apparently not, and this is where it pays to know a little about the American language, though maybe not necessarily that one Ray was talking about.
For instance, a heater – is a gun apparently, and an expression used often during the 1930s through 1950s, particularly in films.
Quite loses all of its magic though when you yell out to your friend, throw me a heater will you, and it’s not the gun!
Give him a heater, no, not because the recipient is cold, but it is an instruction from the catcher to the pitcher – yes, it’s another name for a fastball.
And what do you know, all three definitions turn up in an American dictionary, the one referring to the gun being labeled ‘dated’, and, yet another adds the notation ‘slang’.
I’m betting Humphrey Bogart used the term more than once in a gangster film.
There are other definitions, but none so colorful as that for the gun and the fastball, except perhaps for the short winning streak at the casino.
“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.
