Tag: Charles Heath

A day like no other ??

There are good days and there are bad days

Today is a bad day.

You know how it works, the night before you set out everything you’re going to do.

What could go wrong?

All those irritating little things have been taken care of, especially so you could spend this one day so you can ‘stick to the schedule’.

Those re-writes you were working on last night are just not coming together.

The three phone calls, the urgent request for a small job, the family member with a crisis (and how often is that crisis a storm in a teacup) and to top it off, the cat got shut out is now howling at the back door.

Concentration?  Gone!

Picture next morning.

No distractions.

Computer on, pages sitting in front of you, phone off the hook, no annoying calls, ideas are flowing.

You start…

The monitor dies.

Maybe tomorrow…

The writer’s delimma

If I get a headache I can take paracetemol

If I have a sore back I can take ipBrufen.

If I can’t put words on paper … what is there I can take?

Therein lies the writer’s dilemma.

I have been staring at the blank sheet on the computer screen for about an hour now.  I am in the middle of a re-write.  I know what direction I want the story to go.  Yet, for the life of me, I cannot find the words.

Is it writer’s block?

Here’s the thing.

Not four hours ago I had all the words in the world.  The new scene was all but writing itself, the words flowing, the characters were alive and almost bubbling over with enthusiasm.  I could almost feel the mental sparring.

That scene is done.

Now I have to move on from there to the next.

I guess I’m going on a long walk around the neighbourhood, looking but not seeing, thinking but trying not to think, stopping at the café and have a long hot coffee and a cake, perhaps this time a custard tart with whipped cream (OK, I know that can’t be good for me, but it is delicious) and by the time I get back …

Hopefully the words will return.

Sunday in New York

“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!

Sunday In New York

 

 

 

KIndle Edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Sunday-New-York-Charles-Heath-ebook/dp/B012H5AQX6

Thoughts, maybe

I hate editing.

 

Which is surprising I guess for a writer.  I should be happy that the first, second, third, or whatever draft of the novel is complete in some form or other, and it’s now just a matter of cleaning up the loose ends.

Or is it?

Everything was fine till I got to page 201.

Did I really write that?

What can be a problem as the novel progresses, the plot can change as a new idea occurs to you in the shower, in the rain, in a dream, or just sitting in traffic.

It gets written in, and later, when you do that first read through to make sure there is cohesion, and the right number of timely hints that lead to that plot line, you discover it comes out of left field.

Page 201!

OK, backtracking, hints added, story seems right, move on.

Page 345.  Not happy, something is missing, it doesn’t feel right.

Go for a walk in the park, torment the grandchildren, go visit a theme park, jog around the block.  Cook something, anything but think about what’s missing at page 345.

Got it.  We need to add a new section, a few chapters.

And, no doubt, I’ll have to rewrite the end.

Like I said, I hate editing!

 

Thoughts, maybe

Brainstorming

It’s a weird word that describes a process where a bunch of people get together and throw ideas around, though others may have different permutations on what brainstorming is.

Reading through the current blogs sent to my reader, the word ‘brainstorming’ got my attention.

I use it, well, I try to use it.

I’m working on a YA novel, you know the sort, a far off land where there’s kingdoms, kings, queens, princes and princesses, witches, no dragons and the jury’s still out on a unicorn.

I have two grandchildren, both girls, who wanted me to write a story for them.  Not that thriller stuff, or murder, but what sort of life they’d like to have in they could live in a different world.

Fortunately, both still have an imagination, a prime requisite for them to transition through their childhood to young adult, smoothing out the bumps.  They are avid readers, so I have an untapped source of ideas.

Or so you would think.

This is how it started:  I told the eldest, 12 years old, to stop acting like a princess.  She didn’t get the inference because it was an ‘adult’ concept when dealing with children.

What she did say was how she was going to be a princess when she grew up.  I said there were not enough real life princes to go around, a point she took on board with all the aplomb of a 12 year old, so it graduated to becoming a princess in a story.

Somehow she ended up with the name Marigold.

She decided Marigold was going to be a haughty, self indulgent, spoilt brat.  That condescending tone, those flicks of the hair, those sharp put-downs, a princess indeed.   It was as if she had acting lessons from the Disney ‘bad princess’ school of acting.

But …

As all haughty and condescending people do, the princess is taught an invaluable lesson in humility when her Kingdom is invaded, her brother, next in line to the throne, murdered, the king thrown in the dungeons, and her mother stabbed and left for dead.  She flees the castle and her betrothed prince who is leading the invasion of their Kingdom, and is suddenly both unworthy and dangerous

The first few ‘brainstorming’ sessions saw the addition of two sisters (her two cousins, one ten and other six), a healer (another name for a witch as witches are outlawed in her Kingdom), magic spells, and a quest to save her family and the land.

It’s been done before, but this is without the Knight in shining armor, and where a young girl who has never had to fend for herself, has to come to grips with a completely alien environment, and the fact none of her companions believe she is going to be of any help whatsoever.

Several sessions later we came up with the quest.

What has surprised me, for a generation of children brought up with video games, endless violence, and the endless pressures on youth these days against what I had in my day, they have this amazing ability to take a step back and see themselves in such a different light.

I’ve always had an overactive imagination borne from a time where we didn’t have any of the facilities children have these days.  We had to make our own adventures, not live them out on TV and in video games.

I dragged them into my world, and now, together, we have a bond that will never be shaken.  I am the storyteller, they are Marigold, Ophelia and Nerida, princesses.

They are as different as chalk and cheese.  Ophelia wants her own story, the princess who battles against the magic within her.  Nerida has a quite simple aim in life, having been taught swordplay by her brother, she wants to slay a dragon.

The first story is not even one third finished, and I was told the other day, there’s at least another ten stories yet to be told.

I guess it’s time to go back to ‘brainstorming’.

 

 

Thoughts, maybe

Why is it ideas come at the least expected and most inconvenient time?

I thought I’d trained my thoughts to assemble when I was having a shower.  It seems that has not worked so well, and now the telephone rings instead.

Don’t you hate that?

I wasn’t casting around for an idea for a new book.  When I sit down, listening to Ravel, or some other classical music, I close my eyes and drift along to the music, waiting for the imagination to kick in.

Can’t force it, can you?

But, five minutes to three, after a frantic call announcing yet another storm in a teacup, I’m racing out the door, setting the alarm, locking the door, and …

… bing …

The idea is there, out of left field, in front of me.

 

Here’s the pitch:

Detroit, ghost town, a nightwatchman, formerly a high flyer on Wall Street, is doing the rounds.

Yep, different location, same story as a dozen others, you say.

Pitch on:

With him, his work partner, from Mexico, a woman with a checkered past, maybe an illegal, maybe not, but who would work for the kind of pay they got if there was not something they were either running or hiding from?

A man and a woman thrown together by fate.  Seriously?

Pitch on:

They’re guarding a large factory, looking exactly the same as it had been the last time it had been working, only there are no people, no work, no likelihood of it reopening.

It’s night.  It’s dark.  Only the security lighting casts a dim glow over everything, casting shadows.  The walls and roof creaks the building moves, as all do in a wind.

From here it could go anywhere, ghosts, thrills, murder, mayhem, or …

Pitch on:

Every night is the same, go to point B, the extent of the guard’s run, and no further.  Punch a card to say you’ve done the check, then back to the office.

That’s it.

As for the rest of the factory, don’t worry.  They were told It was taken care of by another team.  It was a large factory, and neither had questioned their orders.  A job was a job in a city where jobs were at a premium.

Six months, from the office to point B and back.

Of course, the story has to suddenly come alive, like when you’re sitting alone in a dark room watching a horror moving, and the music hypes the fear factor to 1000% and you nearly jump out of your skin.

Not so easy to do in writing, but we try.

Pitch on:

Six months and one day later, it was time to find out what was beyond point B.

What they found was to change the fabric and course of their lives.

 

That’s as much as I wrote down for the initial idea, and since then it has developed into half an outline, with an ending.

When I get time, the rest will become a new book.

PI Walthenson

A character that came to me one night in what might have been a nightmare, but I’d been writing around the edges of a gumshoe for some time, and this is what popped out.

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 1930’s, 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

http://tinyurl.com/PIWalthenson01

To read the latest episode:  http://tinyurl.com/PIWalthenson74

 

My blog:  https://aloysius5.wordpress.com/

 

Enjoy

Thoughts, maybe

It’s been a long time, or what seems to be a long time.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of the computer screen, the ever pervasive cursor flashing om a blank piece of digitized paper, and that was as far as I got.

No, the house didn’t burn down, mo major catastrophe, or family member or friend was in dire need of my help.

I just didn’t know what to do next.

But, I have been writing but not necessarily in the normal sense.  I have SomNote on my phone, and when I’m waiting, usually for doctors or n Government offices, I write.

A bit of this, a bit of that, but usually the YA novel I’m writing for, and not necessarily about, my 12 year old grand-daughter.

I find SomNote excellent for just putting words down, emailing it my myself and rehashing it later.  It has basically been used to write the first 37 chapters on the novel.

But as for the other writing?

Strangers We’ve Become, the follow up to What Sets Us Apart had taken a new direction.  As this is the next book to be published, I should have been working on it, but instead, some of it was still swirling around in my head.

Last week I went back to it.

Now, except for one chapter, possibly two, it’s done and so much better than the original.

Never let anyone tell you there’s not something else to be done after 10 edits, and re-writes.

The Things We Do For Love, a little story I wrote many years ago, was resurrected almost intact, and is also almost ready for publication.  It will be categorized as Romantic Suspense, along with Sunday In New York.

Look for those to be released in August or September this year.

My other story, the tales of PI Walthenson, private detective, had taken a back burner for a while, as I try to get a handle on where it is going.  It is a story now that is so very different that when I originally started it.  I suppose that’s what happens when you start writing with no idea what the end it.

I do now, and it’s going to be fun getting there.

Look for Episode 74 in the next few days.

This is a link to the last episode here:

http://tinyurl.com/PIWalthenson73

After that, Zoe will be back.  After the trials and tribulations in The Devil You Don’t, she finds that the past she tried to leave behind had come back to bite her.

The second adventure is called First Dig Two Graves, because it is about revenge and whether or not it’s best served cold.  And whether or not John’s romantic aspirations are fulfilled.

I will get back to the short story, Trouble in Store.  There is more on the development of that work in progress.

Now, I guess, it’s back to work!

Thoughts, maybe

It’s Monday again.

Or on this side of the world, it’s actually Tuesday morning.

Very, very early in fact.

Very cold too, which is strange for a city near the tropics.

I survived another week, still contemplating the job of working on the next edit of my sixth novel.  You’d think it was easy by now, routine.

Outline the story.

Write the chapters.

Bundle it all up and let it stew in the back of your mind.

Come back and do the first edit, find all the grammatical errors, fix holes in the plot, make sure the sub plots don’t take over, or minor characters steal the limelight.

Or, as in this case, after the seventh, yes, you heard right, the seventh edit, I decided there was a big hole and had to fill it.

If it was a murder mystery, it would be a body.

I was missing character motivation.  The main character was drifting, much like I am, and I realized there was a little of my circumstances coming across to the story.

Cut, slash, burn.

OK, wrote the new part and I’m happy with it now.

All I have to do is make sure there is sufficient hooks in the earlier part to make it seem like a natural progression.

Piece of cake.

I’ll start first thing tomorrow.

Perhaps I might be better off selling used cars!

Maybe not.

I think I’ll stick to writing.

Thoughts maybe

It was Tuesday.

It was also a Monday night to forget, though that will be a little difficult.

I had chest pains and difficulty breathing, so my daughter called an ambulance.  I’ve been taking a raft of pills for rheumatoid arthritis and although they’re not doing much for the arthritis, their certainly contributing to other problems, like breathing.

There was a momentary suspicion that it might be an impending heart attack, but no, I haven’t seen this months electricity bill yet.

Two things stood out:  the quick arrival of the ambulance from the time the call was made, it was a matter of minutes, and the efficiency and professionalism of the ambulance staff.

Heart attack ruled out, they still considered it wise to go to the hospital for a more rigorous check.

One never turns down an offer to ride in an ambulance, it is a better way to get to see a doctor in a hospital without having to wait hours in the emergency waiting room.

Wrong.

It was mad Monday at the hospital, and people were arriving by ambulance on the same scale as buses delivering children to schools.

I was about third of fourth in line.  The triage section was full.  We were parked in the passage, an hour wait for a bed.

Not the hospitals fault, it was just emergency overload, and a lack of beds from the weekend admissions not having been discharged.  After all, the hospital, as large as it is, has to service a lot of people.

A bed became available two hours after arriving, the ambulance people can now get onto the next job.  Several more severe cases were ahead of me, and next door, a suicide watch patient.

The nurse was very efficient and sorted out the details, took blood for tests, monitored heart rates and asked all the appropriate questions.  I was one of five or six she was attending to.

Then the suicide patient went ballistic, and for a few minutes while restrained by security, she was sedated.  It provided an insight into what hospital staff have to contend with, aside from the usual minor problems, like mine, car accidents, drug addicts who want to fight everyone, and drunks caught up in fights or falls.

I guess Monday was not a night to get sick.

Five hours after arriving I was discharged.  The doctor had recommended I stay, but there were no beds available, and it had already been a long night.

As I left another two patients were arriving, the emergency waiting room was half full, it was midnight, and it was only going to get worse.  To be honest I was glad to escape, one of the lucky ones to walk out under my own steam.

I could only hope things were going to get better.