Tag: Creative Writing

Inevitability

There’s nothing more certain that a favourite web site you go to and use often, sooner or later starts charging a subscription ‘fee’.

Like a few weeks ago the NANOWRIMO site had been updated, and the changes look good.  At the moment this site is free, but you do get a lot of emails and requests to purchase products, which I think is a reasonable way to raise money for keeping the site free,

But, how long is this going to last before a ‘fee’ is introduced, and then a ‘fee’ to enter your book?

It’s the airline principle, once it was a flat charge for the ticket, now you pay for this tax, that tax, fuel tax, baggage tax, tax on the tax, and then if that’s not enough, a charge for the food and water.  Soon it will be a charge for toilets, and then the air you breathe.

It’s inevitable, and once these charges start they don’t stop and only get higher with each passing year.

A lot of the sites I use are free.  Some have since started to charge.

I’m not a rich author, so sadly I have to discontinue using these sites.

Perhaps the problem is that the owner of the site has come up with a good idea, thousands of people sign up, and suddenly a small web site becomes a big one, and hosting costs suddenly go through the roof.

Like airlines, it’s the user that pays.

Often I see or get an email from, various people with what looks to be a useful site.  Some start out by giving you a month free to have a look and use the facilities.  In some cases they are quite good, in other, well, there’s a dozen others like it that are still free.

But, after a month, you have to pay.  What gets me with some of them, they are asking somewhere between 50 and 100 US dollars a month, you heard that right, a month, which you can basically double that for me after the exchange rate and a dozen bank fees.

Sometimes there are different levels, but basically, if you look at the fine print, the lowest level set, which gives you very little, is set low.  Say it’s 10 dollars a month.  It’s no different to the free version except they probably don’t have annoying ads and 24/7 help (via an email, no guarantee they look at it more than once a week, if at all).  Money for jam for the site owner, as the saying goes.

Why can’t there be a more reasonable option?

But I get it.  Everyone wants to get rich quick, it’s an objective that’s built into all of us, but it seems I missed the inoculation given the day after you’re born.

I also get it that these people worked hard on coming up with the web sites and facilities, and they deserve a reward for that hard work, but to me it would make more sense if they sold the service for 10 dollars or even 20 dollars a month if the systems were available and they worked.  And flowing from that wouldn’t 20,000 sales at 20 dollars, be better than 2000 at a 100 dollars?

The same seems to go for the so-called decent web site hosts, like WordPress, Wix and GoDaddy.  The free option is good but just for show and tell, but I’m sure they deliberately nobble it so it’s slow and kludgy just the sort of attributes that turn potential visitors off.

I thought if I paid a monthly charge for Wix, and reading the inclusions for what my site could do over the free one was very persuasive, so I signed up.  The site was no better than it was before and half the options that were on the list weren’t available, and still aren’t.  But I suspect if I paid them 100 plus dollars a month or more for their premium package I’d get it.

But, to pay for it I would have to be selling a million books a month, and I doubt, no matter how good my web site is, it wouldn’t attract that kind of business.

Not one of the basic packages, read affordable for me, has the ability to allow downloads after sales.  You can’t even have a sales page where you can actually sell books to people like you were a bookshop.  That’s in all of the premium packages, so they say, and that costs far too much.

GoDaddy were by far the worst, telling me if I signed up to the 60 dollars a month package I could have sales and downloads.  I tried to add it to the web page, which I might add was as difficult to create as all hell, and when it didn’t work, rang up to ask why I couldn’t have downloading after sales and was met with silence.

No, that’s not available at the moment, I was told, and not likely in the future.  What am I paying all this money for?  I don’t have a GoDaddy site any more.  I had a Wix site that I paid for, and I don’t have that any more.  They don’t offer anything useful, and they too, make it virtually impossible to create a useful site, so it sits out there in the ether with disappointment written all over it.

Perhaps others have had better luck, or things have changed in the last few years but I won’t be going back.

Maybe one day someone might understand the needs of the majority who can afford to pay, but just not as much as we are expected to, for very little in return.

What’s that saying, hope springs eternal.

PS Sorry about the rant!

I like to think I know where I’m going, but…

I’ve been on roller coasters, and they actually scare the hell out of me.  It might have something to do with watching the news and hearing about a breakdown.  High up and usually hanging on for dear life upside down.

My fear is it’s going to come off the rails, or that I’ll lose my grip!

A bit like my life really.

I’m in an abyss and free falling.  The first thousand yards is exhilarating.  I’m not sure if everyone has done skydiving, but it’s like that time before you pull the ripcord.

Absolute adrenaline rush.

Followed by a single thought.  Will the parachute open?  I’ve seen too many TV shows where ripcords don’t work, and strangely I have actually seen a skydiver whose parachute didn’t open, and it’s one of those moments when your heart is literally in your mouth.

Ok, I get it, if you don’t like the heat in the kitchen …

But, it’s hard to get that thought, that the metaphorical parachute won’t open, and I’m at a point where I’m starting to think about the landing.

You dash headlong into a job, thinking yep, you’ve got it covered, but, what if you haven’t.  What if there are variables you never thought of, what if the people around you, so happy to cheer you on at the start, are now starting to change their tune.

It’s like jumping into an abyss; starting a new job, or the first day after a promotion, your choice of vocation, the sort of lifestyle you want to have, whether you are following a dream that could quite easily become a nightmare, it seems there’s very little difference conceptually.

I think about writing, and it’s an individual thing.

Are we writing for ourselves first, or are we writing simply to make money?  If it’s the latter, it ain’t going to work, at least not until you’re established.  If ever.

But, here’s the thing.  It’s where I feel the most comfortable.

Now, I’d better get back to work.

 

 

In a word: Steal

You know how it goes, somebody breaks into your house and they steal the family jewels, which means, they’ve taken something that’s not theirs.

Baseballers will be well familiar with the term steal a base because that sneaky second base runner is trying to get to third, before the pitcher fires in a curveball.

But then there’s that same thief trying to rob you is stealing his way downstairs.

You come across a bargain, that is the seller doesn’t quite know what they’ve got and assumed it’s junk, that’s a steal.

On stage, one actor can steal the limelight from another.  if a film, an actor with a lesser part, can, if their good enough, steal the scene.

And if you’re lucky enough, you might steal a kiss, or just get slapped.

Then there’s the government, using a certain event to change the laws, and it might just steal your liberty.

This is not to be confused with the word steel, which means something else entirely, like a very malleable metal that’s low in carbon.

Or like most of our heroes, they have nerves of steel, or if they are like us, they need to steel themselves with a suitable fortification, rum is my choice.

But for me, I like the phrase, he had a steely look on his face and it was hard to tell if that was good or bad.

It felt like being lost in the wilderness

Except I was in the heart of suburbia.

Yes, in our city we have parks surrounded by housing, but when you’re in the middle of them, the sounds of suburbia are gone, and in their place the rustling of the leaves, and the sound of wildlfe scurrying across the forest floor.

It’s been dry for a few weeks now, and no rain on the horizon, so everything is quite dry.  That made it easier to hear any animals, and, we came across a wallaby, and I’m not sure who scared who.

For the children, it was an experince because usually when you live in large cities, there are no animals except for cats and dogs.  Of course, if there are any cats on the loose, the animals suffer because of the cat’s predetorial nature.

A wallaby is a bit large for a cat to take down, but that doesn’t man it might be  able to get a hold of a ring tail possum, or any of it’s relatives.

There are supposed to be koalas, but we didn’t see any.  Koalas and suburbia don’t mix, and they are frequently hit by cars, firstly because they can be quite small and un-noticable, and secondly no one has told the koalas about cars so they think they’re just walking across an opening in the forest.

Next we find a lizard, almost camouflaged by the log it’s stranding on.  Not much further along, we find another lizard, green this time, not quite the colour of the forest floor, and we get some great photos.

Of course the writer in me is always on the lookout for something to write into a story, and plots were running thick and fast, a plane crash in the jungle and trying to find a way out, looking for a rebel camp, being separated from the rest of the group on a trek, one tree looks the same as the next, and the next, etc.

Perhaps i should just soak in this little part of natural forest, because before long, some crooked councillor will change the zoning for an equally corrupt businessman to build shoddy apartment blocks on it, each making a killing, and leaving the poor residents to clean up the mess.

Oop, I thinks that’s already happened…

A matter of life and … what’s worse than death – Episode 19

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

Marina drove the truck slowly and carefully, without the benefit of headlights on a night that have become very dark when cloud cover moved in.  A good night to be out on foot, but not in a few tons of metal.

It seemed to take longer to go back to the old factory, if that was what it was, or it may have just been my imagination.  Certainly, it was rather tense in the cabin.

I wondered if what Chiara had said about not trusting me had made Marina have second thoughts of taking me back.  From where we were, I would have no idea where it was, and if she dropped me off, I could not find it again.

And that fear came true a few minutes later when she pulled off to the side of the road, near some trees, and stopped, turning off the engine.

The silence crept over us like a fog.

Such was the atmosphere I found myself whispering, “What’s wrong.”

“Lights.  Appearing briefly and disappearing.  Like someone is following us.”

She sat still for about five minutes, looking intently at the rear vision mirrors, and at times turning around to stare of the small window at the back of the cabin.

I did too, but I couldn’t see anything, nor had I, but I hadn’t thought to look in the rear vision mirrors because I thought we were safe.  How wrong I was, to assume that.  If there was one lesson I should learn from what I was doing, was that I should know what’s going on around me and that at no time could I ever believe I’m safe.  The moment I did and let my guard down, I would be dead.  I’d been told that in London, and in a relaxed moment, I’d forgotten it.  How many others had done the same and died?

A shake of her head, she got out of the truck, and quietly closed the door.  I did likewise and joined her at the rear.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m going to check back over the road, see if there’s anyone following us.  There have been too many instances of lights for it to be coincidental.”

“Since we left the church?”  In thinking that, it meant that either Chiara or Enrico may have inadvertently, or deliberately, told someone about the meeting.

I hope it’s just my imagination, but it was shortly after we left I saw the first light.”

“Could be a local farmer stumbling around at night.”

“It could, but no one is that silly to be caught out after dark.  There was a curfew, and most of us like to believe there still is.”

She looked back down the road, but all I could see was inky blackness.  The moon was still hidden by dark clouds above, and it looked like there was going to be rain.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You’d be better off staying here.  The last thing I need is a soldier stomping around in the dark.”

Thanks for the compliment, I thought.  “Then I’ll have to be quiet, and try not to stomp.”

Even in the darkness I could feel rather than see the scowl on her face.

“As you wish, but don’t get in my way, and don’t make me shoot you.”


Short and wiry, she was built for stealth and speed, unlike the bulky soldier I was.  Not that I was overfed and fat, but I was still a larger target than she was.  I could just see her outline in front of me, and she was moving very quietly.

I was trying very hard to emulate her.

Then I saw it.  A light going on briefly, then off, definitely in the direction we had just come from.

She had stopped and I nearly ran into her.

“You were right,” I said quietly.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be.”

So had I.  The last thing we needed was trouble, trouble that would have to be eliminated.  She couldn’t have anyone else knowing about their hiding places, and meeting points.

A few minutes further along, we both heard a strange sound at the same time.

A wheel scraping against a fender?  There was no engine noise.  It became louder, then we saw what it was.  Someone riding a bicycle.  Close to the edge of the road so as to remain hidden from view because of the turns in the road, which would account for seeing the light at odd times.  At the front, there was a light that was taped to show only a thin slit of light.

I saw her look around, then take hold of a long branch that had recently fallen off one of the trees, pared it down, and then waited.  I could see what she was going to do.

When the bike came alongside, moving slowly because it was up a hill, and the rider was labouring hard, she poked the stick through the spokes of the front wheel, the rider just seeing her at the last moment, and not being able to avoid her.

The result was predictable, the rider went flying over the handlebars and crashed into the hard ground with a thud and a loud grunt.  

My role was to jump on the rider so he, or she, couldn’t escape.  Marina was right behind me and jammed a dirty rag in the persons mouth as I held them very tightly under me.

“Now what?”

This was not going to work for very long as the person under me was beginning to kick and thrash about.  In a few seconds, the gag would be spat out and the silence would be shattered.

I heard the gun before I saw it, a whooshing sound near my ear just before it hit the head of the captive, and suddenly there was no more movement or sound.

“A moment’s silence.”

We rolled the figure over, and looked at the face, just visible in the near darkness.  We had just been blessed with a shard of moonlight for a few seconds.

A man.

“You know him?” she asked.

Another look, just as the clouds shut off the light, and I thought so.

“One of the soldiers from the castle.  How would he know we were meeting at the church?”

“He might not.  Nor might he be following us, but just unlucky.”

“How so?”

“Chiara sometimes entertains men from the castle.  Part of our eyes and ears.  She was not part of the resistance when Fernando was in charge so they would just use her like any other enemy soldier would.”

“So this was a mistake.  If he doesn’t return, then they’ll get the wrong idea.”

“Unfortunately.  He has to be dealt with.”

“Killed?”

“No time to get squeamish on me.  He’s an enemy soldier.”

An enemy I preferred to be some distance away from before shooting to kill.  Up close and personal makes it so much harder.

“Come on.  Grab his shoulders.  There’s a gully over there, so we can make it look like he ran into a tree, tipped off the bike and hit his head on a rock.”

“Or a gun.”

“A few hits with a rock will fix that.  I’m sure there’s no one up there that can do autopsies on bodies.”

No, there wasn’t.  I just hoped I was not going to be the one that had to hit him.


Ten minutes later it was done.

We carried him to the gully, and at a suitable place laid the body as if it had landed off the bike and onto the rocks, where Marina picked up a large one and hit him several times with a lot of force the last making a sickening sound, and the blow that killed him.

I went back and collected the bicycle and staged it to meet the crash criteria, and then left.

For all intents and purposes, he had died falling off his bike after wandering off the road in the dark.

Both of us hoped it would not cause Chiara any trouble.

And, it was the first person I’d seen killed up close, and I doubted, in the coming days it would be the last.  It was not a sight I was going to forget in a hurry.

© Charles Heath 2019

What the hell time is it anyway, and why should I care?

And why is a coyote baying?

Oh, that’s right, were in Canada, and the ice hockey channel is running in the background while I’m trying to work.

it’s an interesting concept, the movement through time zones, and how it is possible to live the same day for nearly two days, as close as I’m going to get the ‘Groundhog Day’.

It’s not something that I’ve considered when writing stories because usually we are grounded in one particular time zone, or if we’re travelling, we just go from one chapter to the next, each a different location, and the reader is no wiser.

Except the editor is and pulls me up when it appears I think it’s during the day, when in reality it’s really 3am.

But, just to illustrate my point, the following is what I wrote last Christmas, and boy was it confusing at times.

 

Alright, we’ve arrived in Lake Louise from Kamloops, and there’s been a time change.  Being from Australia, we lost or gained so many hours I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.

Yes, I left on the 26th December, travelled around half the planet, and it’s still the 26th, after a stopover in Shanghai where it was the 27th.

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?

Today it is the 30th.  Yesterday was my wife’s birthday in Australia and we got a number of calls on the 29th, which was amusing, to say the least.

Now, we’ve gone from Kamloops to Lake Louise, and apparently now that we are in Alberta, it’s an hour later.

The rental car we’re driving didn’t get it, and we’re still an hour behind.

My phone didn’t get it, but it is understandable because I didn’t connect it to the Canadian network to give us an internet connection because it will cost money.

It did on my wife’s phone which is connected to the network and it’s the only device we have that tells the correct time.

And why do we really need to know what time it is?

So we make the plane the day after tomorrow, from Calgary to Toronto.

I never realized that time was so important, and I wonder how people who travel the world remain sane with all the changes to the time zones.

 

Just how do road warriors get on?

“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

I still hate editing!

It’s that story again, you know, the one from the 1970s or around that period.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

But before we get into that, I always thought that editing was exactly that, editing, removing the slack, the bits a story could do without, tightening up the plot.

At times, I think I’ve lost the plot!

So, Chapter Twenty Nine used to be Chapter 19.  Yes, you heard it right, I’ve added new chapters, more words, and expanded the story from 340 pages to 386, as it stands at the moment.

I just finished working on page 202.

I took what is one of the pivotal moments in the story and practically re-wrote it.

But…

You know how it goes.  That first critical rewrite doesn’t sit too well, and for the next twenty-four hours, it mulls around in your head, where there’s a ferocious debate going on.

It was right the first time.

It was too wordy and too repetitive and needed amending

Did the slash and burn go too far

What is being sold here?

24 hours, and a headache and a half later, I look at it, and it’s bugging me.

Yes, I went through it again, line by line, and reworked it, shed words, added words, and dropped a page.  It now ends on page 201.

And yes, I might just read it again tonight, dammit.

But that’s my problem.  There is always one chapter that causes me no end of trouble and sometimes takes a month, even two before I get it right.

It still doesn’t feel right.

Maybe I’ll leave it and move forward, see what that brings.  Perhaps somewhere in my mind is the answer, that I’ve forgotten something important that needs a hook back here.

Pardon me while I get a couple of paracetamol for this headache.

More tomorrow, maybe.

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

In a word: Port

So, I wonder if it’s true, any port in a storm, except perhaps Marsailles

Or, if you are a lothario type sailor, you would have a girl in every port.

Yes, the most common definition of a port is a place where ships dock.

And, while talking of ships we don’t call the sides left and right, we call them port and starboard.  Just in case you didn’t know, port is the left side of the ship when facing forward.

And of course, ships have portholes, ie windows, traditionally round and rather small.

 

It could be an alcoholic drink, imbibed mostly after dinner with coffee and cigars, though no one seems to smoke cigars any more.

There is still coffee, for now.  No doubt sometime in the future someone will link it to death and dying, and it will fall out of favour, like sugar, weedkillers and asbestos.

The best port seems to come from Portugal, strange about that.

 

You can port a program (app in phone speak) from one platform to another, which basically means from Android to Apple IOS, but not without a reasonable amount of work.

It can also be an outlet plug on a computer that accepts cables from other devices (USB) and many years ago, a printer port, and a serial port.

 

In certain places in the world a port is a child’s schoolbag, a definition I was not aware of until we moved to a different state.

I’m still having a problem with it 30 years on.