Tag: Fiction

Being inspired, maybe

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

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“He said we were to meet at the bottom car park, and that’s it, right there in front of you, the bottom car park.  And no Davo.  As usual.”

Fred didn’t like Davo.  He didn’t trust him and it was not without good reason.  He’d let us down more than once.

“He’ll be here this time,” I said, in my most soothing tone.

Fred was on the edge of a breakdown.

“What were his exact instructions?”  Maybe there had been a miscommunication.

“He said lower carpark, Turoa.”

And there was the problem.  We were standing all alone at Whakapapa.

 

Being inspired, maybe

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

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“Are you sure Dave said to meet him at the second statue outside ‘the’ building?”

“That’s what the text message said.  I can show you.”  Fred pulled out his cell phone and started pressing buttons.

“Little good that’ll do.  Have you seen how many statues are here that could fit the description?”

Literally any one of a dozen, I thought.

Like I had a minute or so before, Will turned through a 360-degree arc, but at the end of it, he added a groan.  “He’s playing games again, isn’t he?”

And not for the first time.

Being inspired, maybe

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

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I was sitting back taking in the last of the afternoon sun, despite the fact it was only 15 degrees.  It was debatable whether it was a haze or low clouds that were beginning to obscure the mountains, and would no doubt obscure the building on the other side of the lake, where our target was hiding out.

Joe, lying flat on the rock next to me was watching him through high powered binoculars.

Thinking he was in an invulnerable position, our target had made the mistake of coming out into the open, not realizing that it was possible to see him from where we were.

I’d thought that too until Joe informed me otherwise.  And had the photographic proof to go with it.

Now, all we had to do was get there without him knowing we were coming.  Logistical was still working on it, a para drop, overland, or through the mountains.

I didn’t like any of the options, but my suggestion of going in by submarine had fallen, unsurprisingly, on deaf ears.

As for now, all we could do was wait.

 

 

The Devil You Don’t

The introduction of Zoe the assassin.

http://amzn.to/2o7ZtxZ

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.  If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favor for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follows.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

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Being inspired, maybe

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

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I lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desire for revenge render me blind to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

Maybe not.  The car’s gearbox was going to wear the worst of my temper.

 

 

 

 

“One Last Look”, a thriller

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favorite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man?  Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required.  Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

onelastlookcoverfinal2

A strange hour of the night

It’s 1:20 am on this side of the world.

It’s a time where most people are in bed asleep, but it’s the curse of being a writer that I’m sitting here, cursing the keyboard, and wondering where the next word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter is coming from.

Left field?

Maybe it will come down in the next shower of rain, which, by the way, is part of a cell where we have light rain turning into heavy rain turning into torrential rain, then becoming drizzle like before there is no more rain.

Then, repeat.

It’s distracting, it’s peaceful, it is loud, I can hearing pouring down the path beside the house like a babbling brook.

OK, you get it, the rain is distracting.

This time of night is usually productive, a sudden thought that came to me in the shower is now being fleshed out as the next major scene in the book.

Someone is being shot, run over, tortured for information, or laughing in the face of the hero, or heroine, just before he or she learns a lesson in not aggravating the hero or heroine, as the case may be.

Maybe the rain will help, someone is standing outside, in the rain, getting very wet, running surveillance. Maybe they are in a car, and the rain is so deafening they can’t hear themselves think, or their boss on the phone telling them to go home.

Maybe I should just go to bed, and start again tomorrow, oops, in the morning!

Thoughts, Maybe

Reality Television

If I was ever in doubt that there was one medium that could produce a thousand storylines, it’s watching reality television.

It is truly horrible, and is somewhat akin to a ‘train wreck’.  Why, then, do we watch it?

Currently, where I live, we have a show called ‘Married at first sight’.  Going by the title, you can guess the premise, two people are matched by ‘science’ and meet for the first time at the altar.  They then live together, with and without external influences for a number of weeks before deciding if they want to continue after the show ends.

As it happens, the experts here have yet to get it right in a number of series (or, I think they may have succeeded on one occasion).

Whilst the fact it looks to be scripted, a fact the Producers vehemently deny, it is impossible to wrap your head around some of the antics, and especially the words used by the ‘participants’.  Decent people do not ‘act’ in the manner of some of these people, and more often than not, several of the ‘participants’ are labeled by the public as ‘actors’.

I guess, in most reality television, ratings can only be achieved by controversy.

Certainly, the Twitterverse goes off after an episode, championing the good and railing into the bad.  Each will, good or bad, get their fifteen minutes of fame.

And, is it not surprising we have learned one of the participants is going to write a ‘no holds barred’ account of her time in the show.  I was considering doing the same, from an armchair perspective.  Damn, missed my opportunity!

Anyway, if it happens, Fifty Shades of Grey, get out of the way!

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?

http://amzn.to/2CNIW7X

One Last Look

A single event can have enormous consequences.
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favorite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near death experience and forced retirement into a world, he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

onelastlookcoverfinal2