Day 133 – Why certain books are famous

…

Beyond the Syllabus: Are the Classics Still Worth the Hype?

If you were to walk into any high school English classroom in America, the odds are high that you’d find a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird or The Great Gatsby sitting on a desk. They are the twin pillars of the high school literary canon—books so cemented in our cultural consciousness that we often forget they were once just new novels written by fallible people.

But this ubiquity brings a modern question: Are these books actually deserving of their “Great American Novel” status, or have they simply become victims of relentless repetition?

The Case for the Classics

To understand why these books have stayed at the top of the pile for nearly a century, we have to look past the “assigned reading” label.

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Emotional Anchor

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is rarely praised for its narrative complexity; it is praised for its moral clarity. In Atticus Finch, Lee created the definitive archetype of the righteous outsider.

The book is “deservedly famous” because it serves as a masterclass in perspective. By filtering the ugly realities of systemic racism and injustice through the eyes of a child, Lee forces readers to confront the loss of innocence. It remains relevant not because it solved the problems of the American South, but because it captures the agonising gap between how we view ourselves and who we actually are. It is human-centric, empathetic, and—crucially—very easy to read, which has kept it in circulation for decades.

The Great Gatsby: The Mirror of Aspiration

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a different beast entirely. Where Mockingbird is built on morality, Gatsby is built on atmosphere. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautifully written novels in the English language.

The prose shimmers with a kind of desperate glamour that perfectly encapsulates the “American Dream.” It is famous because it is a tragedy of scale—a critique of wealth, obsession, and the delusion that we can repeat the past. Every time economic inequality spikes or a new generation obsesses over the “hustle,” Gatsby feels freshly minted. It is the definitive autopsy of the American spirit.

The Argument for “Just That”

However, there is a valid counter-argument: Familiarity breeds fatigue.

When we label a book as “The Best,” we often create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because these books are famous, they get taught. Because they get taught, they remain famous. This cycle can make them feel dusty, rigid, or exclusionary.

Critics often argue that these books dominate the conversation at the expense of more diverse, newer, or more challenging voices. Is The Great Gatsby the “best” book about the American experience, or is it just the one that happened to be selected by mid-century literary critics who looked, lived, and thought exactly like Fitzgerald?

If you are forced to dissect every sentence of Mockingbird for a grade, you are inevitably going to grow resentful of the prose. It’s hard to fall in love with a book when you’re being tested on its symbolism.

The Verdict: Are They Overrated?

The truth likely lies in the middle. These books are deservedly famous for their technical mastery and their ability to capture specific, enduring aspects of the human condition. They were influential for a reason, and their impact on the literary landscape is undeniable.

But they are also “just that”—they are just books. They aren’t sacred texts.

The best way to honour these classics is to stop treating them like homework. If you haven’t read Gatsby since you were sixteen, pick it up again as an adult; you might find that the tragedy feels much heavier when you realise you’re closer in age to the characters. If Mockingbird feels like a relic, read it alongside contemporary voices—like Jesmyn Ward or Colson Whitehead—who are expanding on the conversations Harper Lee started.

Ultimately, these books deserve their fame, but they shouldn’t be the end of your reading journey. They should be the starting point. The “Great American Novel” isn’t a static title; it’s a living, breathing conversation—and it’s a conversation that is still being written today.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Day 133 – Why certain books are famous

…

Beyond the Syllabus: Are the Classics Still Worth the Hype?

If you were to walk into any high school English classroom in America, the odds are high that you’d find a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird or The Great Gatsby sitting on a desk. They are the twin pillars of the high school literary canon—books so cemented in our cultural consciousness that we often forget they were once just new novels written by fallible people.

But this ubiquity brings a modern question: Are these books actually deserving of their “Great American Novel” status, or have they simply become victims of relentless repetition?

The Case for the Classics

To understand why these books have stayed at the top of the pile for nearly a century, we have to look past the “assigned reading” label.

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Emotional Anchor

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is rarely praised for its narrative complexity; it is praised for its moral clarity. In Atticus Finch, Lee created the definitive archetype of the righteous outsider.

The book is “deservedly famous” because it serves as a masterclass in perspective. By filtering the ugly realities of systemic racism and injustice through the eyes of a child, Lee forces readers to confront the loss of innocence. It remains relevant not because it solved the problems of the American South, but because it captures the agonising gap between how we view ourselves and who we actually are. It is human-centric, empathetic, and—crucially—very easy to read, which has kept it in circulation for decades.

The Great Gatsby: The Mirror of Aspiration

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a different beast entirely. Where Mockingbird is built on morality, Gatsby is built on atmosphere. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautifully written novels in the English language.

The prose shimmers with a kind of desperate glamour that perfectly encapsulates the “American Dream.” It is famous because it is a tragedy of scale—a critique of wealth, obsession, and the delusion that we can repeat the past. Every time economic inequality spikes or a new generation obsesses over the “hustle,” Gatsby feels freshly minted. It is the definitive autopsy of the American spirit.

The Argument for “Just That”

However, there is a valid counter-argument: Familiarity breeds fatigue.

When we label a book as “The Best,” we often create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because these books are famous, they get taught. Because they get taught, they remain famous. This cycle can make them feel dusty, rigid, or exclusionary.

Critics often argue that these books dominate the conversation at the expense of more diverse, newer, or more challenging voices. Is The Great Gatsby the “best” book about the American experience, or is it just the one that happened to be selected by mid-century literary critics who looked, lived, and thought exactly like Fitzgerald?

If you are forced to dissect every sentence of Mockingbird for a grade, you are inevitably going to grow resentful of the prose. It’s hard to fall in love with a book when you’re being tested on its symbolism.

The Verdict: Are They Overrated?

The truth likely lies in the middle. These books are deservedly famous for their technical mastery and their ability to capture specific, enduring aspects of the human condition. They were influential for a reason, and their impact on the literary landscape is undeniable.

But they are also “just that”—they are just books. They aren’t sacred texts.

The best way to honour these classics is to stop treating them like homework. If you haven’t read Gatsby since you were sixteen, pick it up again as an adult; you might find that the tragedy feels much heavier when you realise you’re closer in age to the characters. If Mockingbird feels like a relic, read it alongside contemporary voices—like Jesmyn Ward or Colson Whitehead—who are expanding on the conversations Harper Lee started.

Ultimately, these books deserve their fame, but they shouldn’t be the end of your reading journey. They should be the starting point. The “Great American Novel” isn’t a static title; it’s a living, breathing conversation—and it’s a conversation that is still being written today.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Day 132 – Writing exercise

He had no reason to trust her

…

The message said “Tropea Cafe, Russell Square, 10am, 4th”.

It just arrived on my cell phone, announced by a short vibration.  Usually, my phone was in silent mode, which would have been the case if I had decided to remain truculent.

I was not happy about having to work with another agent, but I couldn’t argue with Harrigan, my handler, after the last mission went sideways.

His bosses were not pleased, so he wasn’t pleased.  Harrigan hadn’t quite thrown me under the bus, but the difference between had and had not needed to be measured by a hair’s breadth.

The bollocking, he said, was necessary, ‘for appearances’ sake’, and that I had to ‘play the game’.  He had never ‘played the game’, not as long as I’d known him.

Our successes had been measured by our unorthodox, sometimes maverick attitude in finding solutions to unsolvable problems.  Before the last mission, he had said there was a new buzzword filtering through the corridors like a shockwave.

Transparency. 

Politicians were getting nervous.  They had started with ‘accountability’ and had struck ‘plausible deniability’ off their list of excuses.

Times were changing, and he agreed on behalf of both of us that for this mission, I would work with another agent.  Without actually saying it, he said I was going to be monitored, and if my performance was in any way outside the ‘new’ operation parameters…well, he didn’t finish that sentence.

That was where he left me to draw my own conclusion.  That holiday shack on Jamaica I had purchased five years ago, after my first major disaster, was looking like it was going to be my forever home sooner than I expected.

…

Sitting on a park bench in Russell Square park with the Cafe in view, reading the Times and considering doing the cryptic crossword, I was caught up in nostalgia about why I was doing this job.

I was thinking about catching bad guys and fulfilling my promise to Annabelle, my sister, after she had been viciously assaulted.

It felt good to beat the living daylights out of each and every one of them and leave them in far worse shape than they left her.  She recovered.  They didn’t.

Then I enlisted.  At a loose end, it was a choice between becoming a vigilante or something more worthwhile.  Which is when, several years into my tour, Harrigan appeared and offered me a job.

Special training, special places, very nasty people, much worse than those I’d sorted for my sister.  How he knew I didn’t ask.

That was how it began, and that was where I was now.  Nearly twenty years, twice almost invalided out, lucky my retirement wasn’t like others, dying alone and all but forgotten.

Another message popped up on the screen.  Dark blue dress and a red rose.  How I would recognise her today.  At the briefing, I had a photograph to memorise, but everything was different from mission to mission, so it was never that easy.

Like adversaries.  Disguised.  Like me.  A chameleon.

She was late.

I should have got coffee in a takeaway cup.

…

“I got the train, and of course, signal failures.”

Gemma, the name in the file, a code name maybe as well as a first name, landed in the seat after I watched her approach me, rather than the other way around.  She was supposed to go to the Cafe.

She came bearing gifts, a croissant and takeaway coffee.  Black, no sugar. My preference.

This had Harrigan’s version of play nice written all over it.

“A man or woman dangling on the end of a rope about to die doesn’t want to know about signal failures when you’re late.”

That was my version of playing nice.  I could see Harrigan in my mind’s eye saying I should have tried harder.

The file said she had been in the firm for three years, but she looked like she was just out of university, all brighter-eyed and full of paper knowledge.

Being in the field and ‘being in the field’ were two separate, mutually exclusive states.  All would be revealed in the first shoot-out.

Her sideways glance was annoyance bordering on anger.  But anger helped no one, and she left it on the shelf.  “You’re right, I should have left earlier.  I’m assuming you’ve been known to turn up late?”

“And cost a good soldier his life.  You don’t forget the ones you lose.”

“I’ve yet to experience that.”

“You hope you don’t have to…”  Lecture over.

There was a minute or so eating a croissant and sipping the coffee, this morning as bitter as I felt before a conversation realignment.

“Now, the rabbit hole we’re jumping into.  Walk with me.”

She recognised the walls had ears, or in this case, the bushes.  I might get to like her yet..

…

There was a difference between briefings in rooms and briefings in a park.  One had a ton of backup paper files with those little things like details.

Parks relied on the imparter’s memories.  Another thing I learned about memories is that they were selective, and the human brain may have the capacity to remember everything, but by its nature, it was selective.

Harrigan’s was very selective.

So was mine when it needed to be.

Gemma’s memory may have been excellent because there were details of the sort Harrigan rarely parted with until I needed to know.

The mission to begin with was simple, Gemma and I would be going to a Charity ball in three days, I as the CEO of an international Import/Export/Shipping organisation, one looking to help in shifting Goods and People around the world.  Gemma was my Principal Private Secretary/Bodyguard.  She promised she would scrub up well.

Then it was two solid days in research to get the back story right.  Names, places, dates.  The history of Bandellan, the 18th-century pirate turned merchant, turned shipping magnate, until today, couriers of everything on anything that moves.

Someone had called about a proposition.

That someone was going to be at the ball.  They would find us.

It surprised me to learn I had been the descendant of a pirate for quite some time.  And despite all the ‘nice’ things being said by Harrigan, my involvement in the project had pre-dated all of it.

It was when Gemma concluded her spiel that she said, “The world works in mysterious ways, but not in our world.  You never know what’s going to happen next.”

I’m sure for her, in the three years in the field, it might feel like that, but for me, quite inexplicably, I knew exactly what to expect.

New boom, new transparency, old excuses swept away: nothing will change. 

By the time the next stuff up reaches the top echelons of government, a dozen horrific deaths and the starting of a war will be ‘an unpredictable event saw a minor skirmish involving [name of country] government soldiers and civilians when testing weapons supplied in a five-point plan to provide unilateral aid. Her Majesty’s Government has been requested by the local authority to investigate the matter as a Commonwealth initiative.’

I’d met far too many Government Department Permanent Heads to know that nothing ever changes other than Ministerial rhetoric and the Minister.

Gemma was naive.  She believed that there was going to be a new world order.  What she didn’t realise was that it wouldn’t protect her when it came to apportioning blame, a blame is something that lands on our doorstep when things go wrong.

It was a simple mission. What could ho wrong

…

A limousine had been arranged.  I had the gilt-edged invitations in my suit pocket, and Gemma had fussed over the dressing and all those things ladies talked about when you stepped into the room

“Are we having an affair?”

“With an employee.  What sort of a shit-show organisation are you running?”

Not this one, imaginary or otherwise.  Good to know, because like it on not, everyone there will be judging.  The answer would be no, but people liked to think otherwise.

I’d seen her dress.  The Limo comes to me, then we collect her.  I said she could change at my place, she said she had seen pictures of my place.

It, to me, was perfect and functional.

She didn’t say I could come to her place, and to me that was a red flag.

I simply dressed and went over to her place.  I was going to wait downstairs outside the car for her to come down.

She asked me to come up.

The concierge, yes, you heard right, took me to the elevator, selected the floor, and saved his magic card.  It whisked me silently and quickly to the 20th Floor of the Canary Wharf building.  I stepped out and immediately had a view of the Thames, and that once with the infamous docklands.

He escorted me to her front door, a brightly lit foyer with realist sculptures, the walls very realistic forgeries of the masters.  The tiles were expensive as you’d expect.

The door itself was a work of art, and each in the floor had a different colour.

If this was hers, she was way above my tax bracket.  If it were a relative or parent, then why had nothing turned up in an identity check?  No, I don’t trust anything I’m given about work colleagues.

With targets, I took the research and did my own.  It was amazing what I found; they didn’t

A girl in a maid’s uniform opened the door, greeted the concierge, sent him back to the ground floor, ushered me in and went towards the back of the apartment.

A voice yelled out from somewhere,” I’m nearly done.  Take in the view, while I take care of the tiara.”

The tiara?  We were not going to a princess’s wedding, instead?

“Too much?” I asked.

“They asked me to have an identifying item.  It’s nothing to write home about.”

“Except the hostess might…”

“Get upset?  Doubtful.  She’ll be wearing a diamond necklace that the Royal Family rejected.  It’s as priceless as the crown jewels.”

“There’ll be security all over, even in the cracks of the wood.”

“Of course.” She came out, and just looking at her was enough, and trying not to notice would be impossible. She would outshine most of those who will be attending.  And attract unwanted attention.

Maybe.

The maid helped her with a pristine white, I hope, fake fur coat and escorted her down to the car.  She waved to the security desk, and they all complimented her.

“You live here?” I asked as we glided across the foyer.

“No.”

“Then…?”

“My father’s apartment for his mistress.  She died, so it just sits here.  It’s closer to the ball than the place.  And there’s a host of dresses and stuff I could otherwise never afford.”

A thought.  Was the mistress and the daughter the same size, and dare I think it, the same age.

The concierge opened the door, and we crossed out into the cold night air.  It was crisp enough to shock.  I hadn’t worn an overcoat; I didn’t think I’d need one.

We arrived at the venue, the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Lane.  I’d never seen it, but I had heard of it. I thought about staying there, but a one-bedroom suite was slightly out of my price bracket.

It amused me that I was so much as walking inside any part of the Grosvenor. She did not have the same expression of awe.

We were greeted by the organising committee of the Charity, welcomed into the fold as first-time donors.  Harrigan had put up a hundred thousand for the tickets, and later there was bidding on ‘items’.  He suggested it was National secrets, stolen artefacts and art, and novelty items.

He would.  It was more likely attic gems from the old houses of the older rich. 

We mingled.

Small talk in between, making educated guesses as to who our contact was. 

And, I had to ask, “Is your family wealthy?”

At least one of them was.

She treated that question with the disdain it deserved.

I was also watching out for people I used to work with.  Harrigan would not want to take the risk of running a mission in the echelons of power, people who could personally phone the Prime Minister, or the Queen directly.

Given the guest list, I had thought she might turn up, but it was too soon after Prince Phillip’s death..

Because Gemma took a lot of sunshine from the collective female ensemble, she got the stares, appreciative and otherwise, I got the questions.

Most of the guests would not have heard of us; the head office was in Monaco with offices in Geneva, New York, London, Naples, Marseilles and Port Said.  Coincidentally, the offices were located for our division.

Dusty and unapproachable, until you get past the big steel door.  If you were not expected, or didn’t match a photo, you were shot dead in the doorway.

It was the first question I was asked.  Where had I been hiding?  Simple.  Europe. 

Where were we now?  Staying in Florence, on a tour of Italian church’s after having out curiosity fed by the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican. The aesthetic not the religion per see.

For publicity of the sort that would interest any prospective suitors, we dropped about a million Euros the first night of won back slightly more the following.  It didn’t make the papers, but the ears for which it was intended.

I had a short list of prospects, and while we mingled I check where they were, who they were with and where they fitted in the Industrial, Commercial, or Financial landscape.

Or perhaps Philanthropy, though you needed the backing of one of the others.  There was a few of them here as well

I might have been dressed for the occasion, but I felt I didn’t fit, Gemma said it showed. All the better for our cover, if I was viewed as shy, or quiet, the wealth would come across as inherited and not earned and therefore a target to be exploited.

I did not expect to be approached by a woman. She had been watching and waiting until I was alone, in a small group, Gemma had her attention diverted by a familiar face to both of us.

“Rupert Bandellan?”

She came up behind me, but not out of nowhere.  She stood out because she didn’t stand out.  Gemma had noticed her first, because women understand women’s motivations.

I had seen the woman’s companion shortly after Gwmma picked her out. And looked both devilishly handsome and thoroughly evil at the same time.  I didn’t doubt she could take him if she had to.

“I am he.”

My mother had a touch of Italian in her, and my father was Russian.  It gave me the gift of two other languages and English, which could be accented either way if needed.

“You fascinate me.  Descendant of a buccaneer, silently moving in the highest echelons of power and wealth, and yet relatively unknown. Not many here know of you or your organisation.”

“The people who matter do.”

“Pleased to hear it.  Do you have a name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Like the Queen, without a surname.”  I smiled, charming but an irritation, I wasn’t going to make it easy for her.  “What can I do for you?”

“Not talk business, I’m afraid.  We are curious about your personal secretary.  We think, that is to say, I think she must be more than that, a mistress perhaps?”

“If I were married, perhaps she would be, but I am not.  What is the fascination with Arabella?”

“I have seen her before somewhere.,

“She is English.  You are English.  She lived here for 32 years before coming to work with me in Geneva. 
It’s not that large a city that you have not run into each other once or twice over the years.”

“And yet not you.”

‘I don’t believe I’m English, just that I speak it well enough and went to Oxford because my father thought I should.”

“Are you in a relationship?”

“A good question.  I have several women friends, but I don’t believe any one in particular would regard me as their boyfriend.  But, given the nature of my business, I don’t believe I have the time to devote to anyone in the manner they would like.  As my father used to say, a business does not run itself.”

And then I got it.  Elizabeth was a journalist.  The questions were of interest to the ladies her publication catered to.  High-end, no doubt.  I know that research has planted a few rather dubious stories about me in the lower end of the magazine scale, the ones where rich people mess up and find photos of themselves they don’t want published.

When I read them, even I thought I was a scoundrel.
.
“I would like to do a formal interview with you, on the ‘Margaitte’ if possible.  I think you have a story to tell, with the pirate thing.  I hear you have your annual bash coming up in Cannes.”

“Invitation only.”

“Then I shall look forward to receiving mine.”

Perhaps I might, if Harrigan let us, but I rather think he would not.  This was already out of hand on the expenditure scale.

Gemma circled around with the man who had hijacked her from the dance floor. And i would out my money on him as the contact? Though not necessarily the guy we were looking for.

“This is Jake.” 

She introduced the man in a five-thousand-dollar suit and a slippery smile that went nowhere.

The middle man.  I didn’t think it would be that easy to meet up with the contact in circumstances such as those.  Shady people rarely conducted their business in such an environment.

Gemma handed me a card.

There was a name and a cell number.

The name was Brian Mongonery Clarke.

The middleman gave me an untraceable cell phone with one number in it, the same as that on the card.

I rang the number.

A man with an old voice said, “Am I speaking to Rupert Bandellan?”

“You are. People are using my name a lot.  Have I become popular and someone forgot to tell me?”

“I’m sure you try damnably hard not to become popular, Rupert,”

“I’m sure you’re right.  To whom am I speaking?”

“The name on the card.”

“Hmm.  I’m going to hang up now, and don’t call me back until you find out what your real name is.”

“I deal in secrecy.”

“I deal in transparency, particularly with my clients.  Take it or leave it.”

A few seconds of silence, then, “It is Walter Sandstrom.”

“So, Walter Sandstrom, what can I do for you?”

“9am, Monday, in the American Airlines first class lounge at JFK.  I have a proposition you will like.”

“Then I shall see you at the airport.  After we do our due diligence.”

“As you wish.”

He hung up.  I gave the man in the suit his phone and the card and he disappeared.

It left Gemma and me looking at each other.

“That was easy,” she said.

Too easy, I thought.

Then the lights went out.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Day 131 – When you get stuck in a scene

…

The Writer’s Block Breakthrough: Why Writing Nonsense is Your Secret Weapon

We’ve all been there. You’re deep into a scene, the momentum is building, and suddenly—thud. The cursor blinks at you with rhythmic, mocking indifference. You’ve hit a wall. Your characters have gone silent, the plot has evaporated, and you’re convinced that your creative well has officially run dry.

The instinct in that moment is to stop. You lean back, close your laptop, and decide to “wait for inspiration.”

Don’t do it.

Stopping is the death of flow. The longer you sit in the silence, the harder it becomes to jump back into the world you’ve built. If you find yourself stuck, here is the golden rule of professional writing: Write nonsense.

Embrace the “Placeholder Phase”

When you get stuck, your internal editor is usually to blame. That nagging voice in your head that says, “That’s not good enough,” or “This dialogue makes no sense.”

Silence that voice by giving it something to chew on. If you don’t know what your protagonist should say next, write: [They have a really intense argument here about the secret map, but I don’t know what the secret is yet, so they just yell about apples for a paragraph.]

Seriously. Write that.

By putting the “nonsense” on the page, you are tricking your brain. You are telling your subconscious that the scene isn’t finished—it’s just in a “drafting phase.” You are keeping the momentum alive. You are maintaining the rhythm of your writing habit.

Keep Moving at All Costs

Think of your story like a car. If you stop the engine every time you come to a challenging stretch of road, you’ll never reach your destination. If you keep idling, you’ll be ready to accelerate the moment the path clears.

When you write nonsense, you aren’t just filling space; you’re staying in the zone. You’re keeping the “writer’s muscles” warm. It’s much easier to turn “nonsense about apples” into “a gripping revelation about a map” when you are already sitting in the chair, typing away, than it is to start from a cold, blank page.

Trust the Process (It Will Come)

The magic of writing isn’t that we have all the answers from the start; it’s that we find them through the act of doing.

Often, those nonsense placeholders turn into something brilliant by sheer accident. Perhaps while writing about those absurd apples, you realise why your character is so desperate to hide the truth. You might stumble upon a perfect metaphor, a sudden character motivation, or a plot twist you hadn’t planned.

If you hadn’t kept moving, you never would have reached that discovery.

The Takeaway: Just Get Words on the Page

Perfection is the enemy of progress. You cannot edit a blank page, and you certainly cannot find inspiration by waiting for it to strike from the heavens.

So, next time you hit that dreaded wall:

1. Acknowledge the block.
2. Accept that the next few sentences might be utter garbage.
3. Write them anyway.

Get the words on the page. Keep the momentum moving. Trust that the story is in there, waiting for you to clear the path. Your future self—the one holding a finished draft—will thank you for it.

Day 131 – When you get stuck in a scene

…

The Writer’s Block Breakthrough: Why Writing Nonsense is Your Secret Weapon

We’ve all been there. You’re deep into a scene, the momentum is building, and suddenly—thud. The cursor blinks at you with rhythmic, mocking indifference. You’ve hit a wall. Your characters have gone silent, the plot has evaporated, and you’re convinced that your creative well has officially run dry.

The instinct in that moment is to stop. You lean back, close your laptop, and decide to “wait for inspiration.”

Don’t do it.

Stopping is the death of flow. The longer you sit in the silence, the harder it becomes to jump back into the world you’ve built. If you find yourself stuck, here is the golden rule of professional writing: Write nonsense.

Embrace the “Placeholder Phase”

When you get stuck, your internal editor is usually to blame. That nagging voice in your head that says, “That’s not good enough,” or “This dialogue makes no sense.”

Silence that voice by giving it something to chew on. If you don’t know what your protagonist should say next, write: [They have a really intense argument here about the secret map, but I don’t know what the secret is yet, so they just yell about apples for a paragraph.]

Seriously. Write that.

By putting the “nonsense” on the page, you are tricking your brain. You are telling your subconscious that the scene isn’t finished—it’s just in a “drafting phase.” You are keeping the momentum alive. You are maintaining the rhythm of your writing habit.

Keep Moving at All Costs

Think of your story like a car. If you stop the engine every time you come to a challenging stretch of road, you’ll never reach your destination. If you keep idling, you’ll be ready to accelerate the moment the path clears.

When you write nonsense, you aren’t just filling space; you’re staying in the zone. You’re keeping the “writer’s muscles” warm. It’s much easier to turn “nonsense about apples” into “a gripping revelation about a map” when you are already sitting in the chair, typing away, than it is to start from a cold, blank page.

Trust the Process (It Will Come)

The magic of writing isn’t that we have all the answers from the start; it’s that we find them through the act of doing.

Often, those nonsense placeholders turn into something brilliant by sheer accident. Perhaps while writing about those absurd apples, you realise why your character is so desperate to hide the truth. You might stumble upon a perfect metaphor, a sudden character motivation, or a plot twist you hadn’t planned.

If you hadn’t kept moving, you never would have reached that discovery.

The Takeaway: Just Get Words on the Page

Perfection is the enemy of progress. You cannot edit a blank page, and you certainly cannot find inspiration by waiting for it to strike from the heavens.

So, next time you hit that dreaded wall:

1. Acknowledge the block.
2. Accept that the next few sentences might be utter garbage.
3. Write them anyway.

Get the words on the page. Keep the momentum moving. Trust that the story is in there, waiting for you to clear the path. Your future self—the one holding a finished draft—will thank you for it.

Days 129 and 130 – Writing Exercise

…

The thing about being no one and wanting to be someone is that you have to learn to be someone first.

My father had always been a con man.

It was odd to me that he would put in so much work in becoming that person to run the con; he never once realised he could be that person with a little extra effort.

All it took was the same amount of time he took to learn the role. 

He had been an Accountant, a Doctor, an Engineer, a prospector, and a Chief Executive Officer, and performed it so accurately that he could have been a real one.

I asked him once why he just didn’t knuckle down and do the work.

No thrill in doing the same thing day in and day out.

That he was a con man meant that I would always be a con man too.  I didn’t know any different.  I didn’t know who my mother was; she had left a long time ago, when she discovered who my father was.

It must have hurt him because he would never talk about her, good or bad, just that it was a special time, and that he had me to remind him of her.

It was an interesting life, continually living a lie or sometimes a lot of lies.  I got good at it, so good, I forgot who I really was.

Then, just before I turned eighteen, my father was killed by a nervous policeman.  Of course, pretending he had a gun and that he would shoot didn’t help his cause.  Or save him from dying from a fatal gunshot wound.

I was arrested.  No one witnessed us together as I had been hiding, waiting to spring the trap.  My father always said one day the cops would catch up with him.

Today was that day.

…

Getting arrested wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that day.

Watching my father die was. 

Had I not broken cover, I would have got away.  Somehow it seemed wrong to leave him there, bleeding out on the cold, wet cobblestones alone.

It was also the second time I had cried.  The first was when my mother left.

I stayed until they dragged me away, too me to the police station and locked me in a small, windowless room.  The chair was hard, the table solid, and I was handcuffed to the table.

It was my first time in the interview room.

Next would be a cell, perhaps with a few gardened criminals, who would not treat me well. At least my father had taught me to defend myself.

I couldn’t get the start image of my father lying dead on the cobblestones.  He hadn’t stood a chance.

Just when I was beginning to think they had forgotten me, the door opened, and a lady detective came in.  She seemed surprised to see a boy.

My father said I had to grow up quickly, but I hadn’t.  I read somewhere that teenagers should try to enjoy their youth because once it was gone, it was gone.

I didn’t feel as though I had anything.  School had been little more than a detention centre, and books were stories of someone else’s life.

I felt sorry for the kids who wanted to be rocket scientists. 

“James Pontville?”  It was asked politely as if I didn’t look like that hardened criminal I was supposed to be.

Perhaps when I spoke…

“It is my name today.”

Her expression changed.  Another smart-ass to deal with in a day filled with smart-asses.

She sat.  A thin folder she was carrying landed on the desk.  “Then enlighten me.  What is the name you were originally given?”

Good question.  “I have no idea.  My father kept changing it so often, I have no idea.”

“How can you not know your real name?  Are you trying to annoy me?  If you are, this is not the time to do it.”

I thought about it, trying to remember what he used to call me, what my mother called me, but nothing was there.  I couldn’t even remember what my mother looked like any more.

That hurt more than anything else.

“I’m not trying to annoy you.  I just don’t know any more.”

“Where do you live?”

“Anywhere and everywhere.  We had no house.”  Not after the landlord tossed us out of the apartment, my father said rats wouldn’t live in it. That was a year back.

“Most recent place?”

“The old telephone exchange down on Bloom Street.”

“Where the junkies get off?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.  It was dry and warm enough.  They don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

She opened the folder and looked at a sheet of paper.  Arrest report?

“The dead guy, your father or someone else?”

The way she said it made my skin crawl.  She was not the first to imply he was one of ‘them types’. “He was my father.”

“Not much of one getting himself killed.”

It would be useless to say he was protecting me.  “He didn’t have a gun.”

“Unfortunate, but he had a choice.”

“Like we all have choices?”  I hated the smugness in her tone.  It was the same for anyone who had a place to go and knew where their next meal was coming from.

She gave me a look of pity.  Or maybe it was just contempt.

“What were you doing there?”

“He was waiting for someone.  He never really tells me what he’s doing.  I just hide until it’s done.”

Best not to tell the truth.  I needed less trouble, not more.  I could see where this was going.  I was going to end up in the System.  It was, he had said, if I got a choice, better than jail.

“What did he usually do?”

“Sell stuff he stole.”  I knew they’d find a watch on him.  It was his.  They didn’t need to know that.

“For what?”

“Food.  Never enough for a room, or clean sheets, even a blanket.”

She made a note on the sheet.  “Do you have any relatives?  Somewhere you can go?”

I had a name and an address.  A woman I had stayed with before, when he got taken away by the police.  I didn’t know if she was an aunt or just a friend, but she was nice to me.

I dragged a piece of crumpled paper out of my pocket and gave it to her.

She wrote the details on her sheet and gave it back to me.

“Is this person your mother?”

“No.  She lit out a long time ago.”

“Who is she?”

“A friend of my father’s.  Stayed there the last time he was in jail.  Been there a few times.”

“So if we take you there, she’ll know who you are?”

I hoped so.  “Yes.”

She closed the file.  “I’m giving you one chance.  I see you again, it’s jail.  OK?”

“OK.  Thanks.”

…

A policeman took me in his car to the address on the piece of paper.  It was an apartment on the third floor of a run-down apartment building with a nasty superintendent. 

Maybe he was gone this time.

The policeman knocked on the door, and after a minute, Elsie, the lady’s name, opened the door, still on the latch.

It was that kind of neighbourhood.

“Yeah?”  She had a raspy voice from an old, smoking habit.  She had to give it up when cancer struck.

“You know this little scruff?”

She peered through the crack as the policeman dragged me into her view.  “James?”

I nodded.

“Where’s your Dad?”

“Shot and killed.”

“You want him?” the policeman asked.

She opened the door.  “Of course.”  She stood to one side and let me pass.

“Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

He stomped off down the passage.  She looked up and down, then came in and closed the door.

“What happened?”

“Picked the wrong mark.  It was a cop.  Dad pretended he had a gun, and the cop shot him dead.”

Her face softened.  “You poor dear.  I’m sorry for your loss.  What are you going to do?”

“I can’t stay here.  Dad said you were struggling too.”

“We all are dearie.  But you’re welcome to stay until you get sorted.  We’ll manage.  Your Dad left some money in case you came.”

Money.  He gave me what we had for me to carry in a special pocket in my jacket.  He said some of it was for her to look after me, if it came to that.  I would give it to her later.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not today.”

“Then give me a few minutes, and I’ll make us some dinner.  Have a chat.  Tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time.”

…

My father may have been a con man, but I like to think he was a philosopher.  He had a wide range of views on everything.  He read a lot, magazines, newspapers and books

He said knowledge was everything, and had made sure I could read.  The trouble was, I didn’t understand a lot of it.

That was the memory of him I had the next morning when I woke, in a small room, on a mattress that had a clean sheet and a blanket.  I felt warm, warmer than I had for a while.

Sleeping in a derelict building wasn’t the best place to be when winter was coming.

A head came through the crack between the door and the wall.  “Morning, sleepyhead. Coffee is on.”

Elise, Elsie’s daughter of about my age, had just got home from her job, working the graveyard shift at the hospital.  Elsie would be gone, a cleaner at the same place.

The work was steady, they had uniforms and got meals while working during their shifts.

I dragged myself out of bed and out into the small dining area next to a smaller kitchen.  The smell of coffee was amazing.  It was, for me, a luxury.

She gave me a hug, affection I had not been given since my mother left.  She was like the sister I never had.
“Mum told me about your Dad.  I’m so sorry.  It must have been terrible.”

I still hadn’t processed it, and it was just another bad thing among a hundred more, all piled on top of each other.

I shrugged.  “It was inevitable.  He had been lucky, if it could be said someone like him, or us for that matter, could be.”

“What are you going to do?”

She pottered about, making toast.  The aromas from that kitchen were making me hungry.  Any other day, I would have to put those pains aside.

“Don’t know.  Get a job, I guess.  Watching him die like that, I think it’s time I found a new way to live my life.  Trouble is, I’ve got no education and no skills.  My father often said I should go back to school, but it takes money, money we didn’t have.”

“Well, the only way that can happen is if you decide to make it happen.  I remember your father telling me, back when I got busted for shoplifting, that I was the mistress of my own destiny.  I thought he was a pompous ass, but he was right.  You are the master of your own destiny.  No one is going to pave the path in front of you.  That’s your job.”

She put coffee and toast in front of me, and smiled.  “I’m glad you came.  It’s very nice to have a man about the house.  The landlord and his creepy super have been hassling Mom.”

Elise needed to get some sleep.  She was on the graveyard shift as a kitchen hand.  Elsie was a cleaner.  Before she disappeared into the small room, the one with the mattress on the floor for visitors and a bed for the daughter, she told me to go see Vinnie at the hospital.  He would find me a job, no questions asked, and help with the paperwork.

My father said paperwork was the same for every businessman, and that he liked to work in a paperless office.  He said it in a way that made me think he knew everything about running a business.  Believable, sincere, and lies.

But the paperless meant I had no birth certificate or a thing called a SSN number, and without one if those, I didn’t exist.

Bonnie wasn’t surprised.  He had forms.  Lots of forms with long names and mysterious codes.  He said often it was hard for people like me who didn’t have an address.  Itinerant.

But he didn’t look down his nose at me.  He knew Elsie and Elise.  I think he liked Elise a lot.  He said there was work if I wasn’t fussy.  I said I wasn’t, so he gave me a uniform and told me to come back at 6am the next morning.  Then he gave me twenty dollars and said it was for food and whatever else I might need.

…

Something else my father told me, among many that as he often said went in one ear and came out the other, people would often surprise you, but in a bad way, not a good.

If he were here now, I would tell him he was wrong.

Until one morning, Elsie and I got home from a graveyard shift, tired and cold.  The snow had arrived, and the streets, early morning before the sun came up, were at their coldest; the building super was lurking.

Elise was right.  He was creepy.

Elsie had no desire to talk to him, but he blocked her way.

I stayed back.  I had met people like him.  In a position of power, he was not afraid to use it.  He had a son, a mirror image of his father, and I didn’t like the way he looked at Elise.

“Who’s your boyfriend.  Bit young for you.”  It was a sneer.

“My sister’s kid.  She died and left me a child, not the fortune I was hoping for, so I could get out of this dump.”

“You can always leave.”

She laughed in a way that made my skin crawl.  “Of course I can.  I’m secretly a billionaire researching how the other half live.”

“Extra body staying, a hundred bucks a month rent increase.”

I knew enough to know that rents could only be fixed by the landlord, and in accordance with city regulations in places like this.  This man was extorting her.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“I can do anything I like.  Of course, there are other ways to pay.”

I knew what he was intimating.  Elsie was angry, but riling him wasn’t going to help.

“You got to the end of the week.”  He leered at her as she went past, but put his hand back to block me.

“This is my domain, sonny.  Don’t get any fancy ideas.”

My father said showing fear was a weakness that could be exploited.  He had taught me this thing called the poker face, and one other, an expression that could cause fear.

I put it on and looked straight into his eyes.

“They should have told that to the last person who said that to me.  You’ve got a boy, I’ve seen him skulking around like a rat looking for a pathetic human to bite.  It’s your domain, sir, until it isn’t.”

Those eyes went from arrogant to fearful.

“Y-You threatening me?”  Fear betrayed by the slight stutter.

“No.”  I looked at his arm blocking my way.  “Do you know what a dislocation feels like?  I got one once, and it hurt like hell.  Weakens the joint forever after, and one day, when you’re walking, or maybe pushed, down the stairs, you lose your grip.  In a death trap like this place, that could be fatal.  Just a friendly reminder, something you should be taking care of, as a Super.

“I can have you lot kicked out.”

“You could.  But as I’m new at work they won’t give me the time off to come to your funerals.  So, let’s agree to disagree and leave things where they are.  We’ll talk to the landlord about the increase.”

He lost the staring match.  My father said it was never about the loudest voice in the room, that I could be far scarier speaking just above a whisper and through clenched teeth as an effect.

Men like the super had the power if you gave it to them.  I wasn’t going to.  But he was going to be trouble.

“This isn’t over.”  He moved his arm.

“No.  But it will be.  Sooner than you think.”

Then I smiled, that evil smile my father taught me, and patted him on the shoulder.  “You’ve got a nice gig here.  Don’t screw it up.”

I followed Elsie up the stairs, and she had the door open when I got there.

Once inside, she leaned against the door and sighed.  “You shouldn’t have done that.  Now it’s just going to bring trouble to our doorstep.”

“I’m sorry, but he was out of line.  He had no right to demand money that isn’t his to demand.  And that disgusting threat…”

“It’s not the worst.”

“Elise?”

“That kid of his.  Calling him a rat is insulting to rats.”

“I’ll pay the extra if it comes to that.  I owe you everything.  But I will fix it.  You don’t have to live in fear of people like him.”

…

A week later, there was a knock on the door, and I saw Elsie cringe.  It was what she had been waiting for.  Retribution.

She opened the door, and the landlord, in his five-hundred-dollar suit and Italian shoes, looked every bit the Lothario Elsie had described him.

The aftershave brought tears to my eyes, and I was ten feet away.

“Mrs Blake.”

Behind him was an enforcer.  He was here to collect the monthly rent.

He looked past her at me, standing like a PFC on parade, waiting for the Master Sergeant to bark orders.

My father taught me the soldier’s stance.  Attention, and at ease.  To swell the chest out, to look like you’ve done ten tours of Afghanistan or Iraq and killed a million of the enemy single-handedly.

I saw the expression change.  He had come here to lay down the law.  Perhaps he might have revised that.

“May I come in?”

Elsie said he usually barged his way in.

She stood to one side.

I said, “Leave the goon outside.”

He was going to say something, the mouth opened and then closed.  A nod in the goon’s direction, then he came in.  Elsie closed the door.

“You serve?” He asked.

“I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t like.”

Never admit to anything, but out of respect to those who had, never take credit for something you didn’t do.  My father had the utmost respect for those who lay down their life in the service of their country.  That rubbed off on me.

“You staying long?” he asked me.

“As long as it is necessary.  My aunt is a kind lady who helps even when it is difficult.”

He looked at her.  “Greyson has apologised for causing you some distress.  I believe he said there would be a rent increase.  I think in this case it’s not necessary.  You are an exemplary tenant, not like some in the building.”

She counted out the notes, a collection of worn notes, a bit like we all felt.  He recounted them, thanked her, gave me a last look, and left.

She waited a minute, leaned against the door, then asked, “What did you do?”

I wanted to tell her I took the Super out the back and ripped his arm out of its socket, and if he approached Elsie again in such a manner, I would do something to him far worse, but that would sound brutal.  I thought I might tell her that I found the son and told him that if Elise said she had been assaulted, I would come find him and cut his manhood off with a blunt knife, but that might offend her.

I went with a simpler explanation.  “We had a friendly chat over a bottle of beer.  I paid.  I explained my circumstances, that the good Lord uplifted those who helped the helpers, and he understood.  All men can be reasonable when they see the light.”

“How do you explain his visit to the hospital emergency department with a mangled shoulder?”

I forgot she worked in the hospital, and her reach might be in places like the Emergency room. I shrugged.  “A man like that, I’m sure, has managed to upset people less understanding than we are.”

The crossed arms and the frown told me I was skating on very thin ice.

“Your dad said you did training for the National Guard.”

“That or juvenile detention.  Might as well be the same thing.  The instructor was bullying.  Learned to defend myself against IEDs, though.”

She shook her head.  “Thanks.  I’ll leave it to the Good lord to decide whether you deserve to go to heaven or hell.  Elise and I have Italian food on Thursdays once a month.  You’re welcome to join us.”

“That would be greatly appreciated.”

…

Several months later, I dreamed of my mother.  I was not sure how old I had been when she left, but it must have been before cognitive memories kicked in.

But even so, there were memories, like her perfume, her laugh, her smile, and the look in her eyes when she held me in her arms.

I wanted to think it had been very difficult for her to leave me behind, but I guess the horror of living with a liar and cheat like my father was far worse.  But I never quite understood why she had kept me behind.

When I woke, there was an image of her, clear as day, in my mind, and the ache of missing her was very painful.  It was like she was there, almost within reach.

Something had prompted these memories.

Elise had come home after the graveyard shift and made toast and coffee.  She was humming to herself, a sign she was happy.  I wondered if she had struck up a friendship with a nice boy; she had mentioned a few in the past, but we both knew our prospects were low.

Still, as Elsie would say, hope springs eternal.

And the frost and snow would soon abate into spring, and everything would come back to life.  I was looking forward to the warmth.

My shift was going to start in the cancer ward, where I had spent the last week cleaning the floors until they gleamed.  Of course, the tiles were tired and scuffed, but I did my best.

The head nurse in Ward A was a dragon, and she was always complaining that the cleaning should be at night.  I actually agreed with her, given the daytime foot traffic.  Patients, nurses, doctors, auxiliary staff, visitors. It was like rush hour on the subway.

But I had my instructions.

Nurse Bleeth, perpetually angry, came out of the elevator and sighed.  She was not the dragon; she was an hour away from ending her early morning shift.

“Your boss is trying to irritate us; isn’t he?”

He had complained to the Superintendent that his workers were being impeded, and that it was not his fault that the management had decided to implement twice-daily cleaning.

His attitude was to make it fast; I maintained we had to do it properly.  No one was going to win this battle.

Did I simply do the job, work around the obstacles, and couldn’t wait for breaks? Yes.

“I don’t make the rules.”

“No, but the people that do often forget it’s the small things that make this all work, and at the moment it’s not working.  But it’s not my problem, I’m told.  That’s a matter for Nurse Andrews.”

She was the dragon. It was amazing how little things suddenly turned into big problems.

“Make it quick as you can.”  She smiled and carried on that harried sort of way, like she was expecting the sky would fall in.

If it had been the dragon, it probably would.

I’d just about finished the passageway and was about to go around the corner when a woman’s voice yelled out, “Don’t you dare speak to your father like that,” followed by a retort, “He’s not my father,” in that stricken tone that people used when the truth landed on them like a brick.

A youngish boy came bemusing out of the room not ten feet from me, and in such a blind hurry to escape, crashed into me, sending us both sprawling.

Two things I noticed in that split second before the crash: he had the look of a spoiled rich brat, and the second was that he looked exactly like me.

Only healthier and stronger.

While we tried to get off the floor, a woman came out of the room, saw the two of us and went over to him.

The other boy was on his feet. I used the rail to pull myself up.  My arm hurt where I landed on it, totally unprepared. I turned to look at the woman, to admonish her over her child.

One look and I nearly fell down again.  The nurse who had come from the station came over to see if we needed help.  A doctor passing had stopped, seeing me almost faint.

It was not from the crash.

The perfume, the expression, the eyes.

And the boy.  He was looking at me, then her, then back at me.  “David?”

David?  Was that my name from a very distant past?  My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, what I was feeling, like there was a connection between us, which was impossible.

Then I passed out.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Days 129 and 130 – Writing Exercise

…

The thing about being no one and wanting to be someone, you have to learn to be someone first.

My father had always been a con man.

It was odd to me that he would put in so much work in becoming that person to run the con; he never once realised he could be that person with a little extra effort.

All it took was the same amount of time he took to learn the role. 

He had been an Accountant, a Doctor, an Engineer, a prospector, and a Chief Executive Officer, and performed it so accurately that he could have been a real one.

I asked him once why he just didn’t knuckle down and do the work.

No thrill in doing the same thing day in and day out.

That he was a con man meant that I would always be a con man too.  I didn’t know any different.  I didn’t know who my mother was; she had left a long time ago, when she discovered who my father was.

It must have hurt him because he would never talk about her, good or bad, just that it was a special time, and that he had me to remind him of her.

It was an interesting life, continually living a lie or sometimes a lot of lies.  I got good at it, so good, I forgot who I really was.

Then, just before I turned eighteen, my father was killed by a nervous policeman.  Of course, pretending he had a gun and that he would shoot didn’t help his cause.  Or save him from dying from a fatal gunshot wound.

I was arrested.  No one witnessed us together as I had been hiding, waiting to spring the trap.  My father always said one day the cops would catch up with him.

Today was that day.

…

Getting arrested wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that day.

Watching my father die was. 

Had I not broken cover, I would have got away.  Somehow it seemed wrong to leave him there, bleeding out on the cold, wet cobblestones alone.

It was also the second time I had cried.  The first was when my mother left.

I stayed until they dragged me away, too me to the police station and locked me in a small, windowless room.  The chair was hard, the table solid, and I was handcuffed to the table.

It was my first time in the interview room.

Next would be a cell, perhaps with a few gardened criminals, who would not treat me well. At least my father had taught me to defend myself.

I couldn’t get the start image of my father lying dead on the cobblestones.  He hadn’t stood a chance.

Just when I was beginning to think they had forgotten me, the door opened, and a lady detective came in.  She seemed surprised to see a boy.

My father said I had to grow up quickly, but I hadn’t.  I read somewhere that teenagers should try to enjoy their youth because once it was gone, it was gone.

I didn’t feel as though I had anything.  School had been little more than a detention centre, and books were stories of someone else’s life.

I felt sorry for the kids who wanted to be rocket scientists. 

“James Pontville?”  It was asked politely as if I didn’t look like that hardened criminal I was supposed to be.

Perhaps when I spoke…

“It is my name today.”

Her expression changed.  Another smart-ass to deal with in a day filled with smart-asses.

She sat.  A thin folder she was carrying landed on the desk.  “Then enlighten me.  What is the name you were originally given?”

Good question.  “I have no idea.  My father kept changing it so often, I have no idea.”

“How can you not know your real name?  Are you trying to annoy me?  If you are, this is not the time to do it.”

I thought about it, trying to remember what he used to call me, what my mother called me, but nothing was there.  I couldn’t even remember what my mother looked like any more.

That hurt more than anything else.

“I’m not trying to annoy you.  I just don’t know any more.”

“Where do you live?”

“Anywhere and everywhere.  We had no house.”  Not after the landlord tossed us out of the apartment, my father said rats wouldn’t live in it. That was a year back.

“Most recent place?”

“The old telephone exchange down on Bloom Street.”

“Where the junkies get off?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.  It was dry and warm enough.  They don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

She opened the folder and looked at a sheet of paper.  Arrest report?

“The dead guy, your father or someone else?”

The way she said it made my skin crawl.  She was not the first to imply he was one of ‘them types’. “He was my father.”

“Not much of one getting himself killed.”

It would be useless to say he was protecting me.  “He didn’t have a gun.”

“Unfortunate, but he had a choice.”

“Like we all have choices?”  I hated the smugness in her tone.  It was the same for anyone who had a place to go and knew where their next meal was coming from.

She gave me a look of pity.  Or maybe it was just contempt.

“What were you doing there?”

“He was waiting for someone.  He never really tells me what he’s doing.  I just hide until it’s done.”

Best not to tell the truth.  I needed less trouble, not more.  I could see where this was going.  I was going to end up in the System.  It was, he had said, if I got a choice, better than jail.

“What did he usually do?”

“Sell stuff he stole.”  I knew they’d find a watch on him.  It was his.  They didn’t need to know that.

“For what?”

“Food.  Never enough for a room, or clean sheets, even a blanket.”

She made a note on the sheet.  “Do you have any relatives?  Somewhere you can go?”

I had a name and an address.  A woman I had stayed with before, when he got taken away by the police.  I didn’t know if she was an aunt or just a friend, but she was nice to me.

I dragged a piece of crumpled paper out of my pocket and gave it to her.

She wrote the details on her sheet and gave it back to me.

“Is this person your mother?”

“No.  She lit out a long time ago.”

“Who is she?”

“A friend of my father’s.  Stayed there the last time he was in jail.  Been there a few times.”

“So if we take you there, she’ll know who you are?”

I hoped so.  “Yes.”

She closed the file.  “I’m giving you one chance.  I see you again, it’s jail.  OK?”

“OK.  Thanks.”

…

A policeman took me in his car to the address on the piece of paper.  It was an apartment on the third floor of a run-down apartment building with a nasty superintendent. 

Maybe he was gone this time.

The policeman knocked on the door, and after a minute, Elsie, the lady’s name, opened the door, still on the latch.

It was that kind of neighbourhood.

“Yeah?”  She had a raspy voice from an old, smoking habit.  She had to give it up when cancer struck.

“You know this little scruff?”

She peered through the crack as the policeman dragged me into her view.  “James?”

I nodded.

“Where’s your Dad?”

“Shot and killed.”

“You want him?” the policeman asked.

She opened the door.  “Of course.”  She stood to one side and let me pass.

“Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

He stomped off down the passage.  She looked up and down, then came in and closed the door.

“What happened?”

“Picked the wrong mark.  It was a cop.  Dad pretended he had a gun, and the cop shot him dead.”

Her face softened.  “You poor dear.  I’m sorry for your loss.  What are you going to do?”

“I can’t stay here.  Dad said you were struggling too.”

“We all are dearie.  But you’re welcome to stay until you get sorted.  We’ll manage.  Your Dad left some money in case you came.”

Money.  He gave me what we had for me to carry in a special pocket in my jacket.  He said some of it was for her to look after me, if it came to that.  I would give it to her later.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not today.”

“Then give me a few minutes, and I’ll make us some dinner.  Have a chat.  Tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time.”

…

My father may have been a con man, but I like to think he was a philosopher.  He had a wide range of views on everything.  He read a lot, magazines, newspapers and books

He said knowledge was everything, and had made sure I could read.  The trouble was, I didn’t understand a lot of it.

That was the memory of him I had the next morning when I woke, in a small room, on a mattress that had a clean sheet and a blanket.  I felt warm, warmer than I had for a while.

Sleeping in a derelict building wasn’t the best place to be when winter was coming.

A head came through the crack between the door and the wall.  “Morning, sleepyhead. Coffee is on.”

Elise, Elsie’s daughter of about my age, had just got home from her job, working the graveyard shift at the hospital.  Elsie would be gone, a cleaner at the same place.

The work was steady, they had uniforms and got meals while working during their shifts.

I dragged myself out of bed and out into the small dining area next to a smaller kitchen.  The smell of coffee was amazing.  It was, for me, a luxury.

She gave me a hug, affection I had not been given since my mother left.  She was like the sister I never had.
“Mum told me about your Dad.  I’m so sorry.  It must have been terrible.”

I still hadn’t processed it, and it was just another bad thing among a hundred more, all piled on top of each other.

I shrugged.  “It was inevitable.  He had been lucky, if it could be said someone like him, or us for that matter, could be.”

“What are you going to do?”

She pottered about, making toast.  The aromas from that kitchen were making me hungry.  Any other day, I would have to put those pains aside.

“Don’t know.  Get a job, I guess.  Watching him die like that, I think it’s time I found a new way to live my life.  Trouble is, I’ve got no education and no skills.  My father often said I should go back to school, but it takes money, money we didn’t have.”

“Well, the only way that can happen is if you decide to make it happen.  I remember your father telling me, back when I got busted for shoplifting, that I was the mistress of my own destiny.  I thought he was a pompous ass, but he was right.  You are the master of your own destiny.  No one is going to pave the path in front of you.  That’s your job.”

She put coffee and toast in front of me, and smiled.  “I’m glad you came.  It’s very nice to have a man about the house.  The landlord and his creepy super have been hassling Mom.”

Elise needed to get some sleep.  She was on the graveyard shift as a kitchen hand.  Elsie was a cleaner.  Before she disappeared into the small room, the one with the mattress on the floor for visitors and a bed for the daughter, she told me to go see Vinnie at the hospital.  He would find me a job, no questions asked, and help with the paperwork.

My father said paperwork was the same for every businessman, and that he liked to work in a paperless office.  He said it in a way that made me think he knew everything about running a business.  Believable, sincere, and lies.

But the paperless meant I had no birth certificate or a thing called a SSN number, and without one if those, I didn’t exist.

Bonnie wasn’t surprised.  He had forms.  Lots of forms with long names and mysterious codes.  He said often it was hard for people like me who didn’t have an address.  Itinerant.

But he didn’t look down his nose at me.  He knew Elsie and Elise.  I think he liked Elise a lot.  He said there was work if I wasn’t fussy.  I said I wasn’t, so he gave me a uniform and told me to come back at 6am the next morning.  Then he gave me twenty dollars and said it was for food and whatever else I might need.

…

Something else my father told me, among many that as he often said went in one ear and came out the other, people would often surprise you, but in a bad way, not a good.

If he were here now, I would tell him he was wrong.

Until one morning, Elsie and I got home from a graveyard shift, tired and cold.  The snow had arrived, and the streets, early morning before the sun came up, were at their coldest; the building super was lurking.

Elise was right.  He was creepy.

Elsie had no desire to talk to him, but he blocked her way.

I stayed back.  I had met people like him.  In a position of power, he was not afraid to use it.  He had a son, a mirror image of his father, and I didn’t like the way he looked at Elise.

“Who’s your boyfriend.  Bit young for you.”  It was a sneer.

“My sister’s kid.  She died and left me a child, not the fortune I was hoping for, so I could get out of this dump.”

“You can always leave.”

She laughed in a way that made my skin crawl.  “Of course I can.  I’m secretly a billionaire researching how the other half live.”

“Extra body staying, a hundred bucks a month rent increase.”

I knew enough to know that rents could only be fixed by the landlord, and in accordance with city regulations in places like this.  This man was extorting her.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“I can do anything I like.  Of course, there are other ways to pay.”

I knew what he was intimating.  Elsie was angry, but riling him wasn’t going to help.

“You got to the end of the week.”  He leered at her as she went past, but put his hand back to block me.

“This is my domain, sonny.  Don’t get any fancy ideas.”

My father said showing fear was a weakness that could be exploited.  He had taught me this thing called the poker face, and one other, an expression that could cause fear.

I put it on and looked straight into his eyes.

“They should have told that to the last person who said that to me.  You’ve got a boy, I’ve seen him skulking around like a rat looking for a pathetic human to bite.  It’s your domain, sir, until it isn’t.”

Those eyes went from arrogant to fearful.

“Y-You threatening me?”  Fear betrayed by the slight stutter.

“No.”  I looked at his arm blocking my way.  “Do you know what a dislocation feels like?  I got one once, and it hurt like hell.  Weakens the joint forever after, and one day, when you’re walking, or maybe pushed, down the stairs, you lose your grip.  In a death trap like this place, that could be fatal.  Just a friendly reminder, something you should be taking care of, as a Super.

“I can have you lot kicked out.”

“You could.  But as I’m new at work they won’t give me the time off to come to your funerals.  So, let’s agree to disagree and leave things where they are.  We’ll talk to the landlord about the increase.”

He lost the staring match.  My father said it was never about the loudest voice in the room, that I could be far scarier speaking just above a whisper and through clenched teeth as an effect.

Men like the super had the power if you gave it to them.  I wasn’t going to.  But he was going to be trouble.

“This isn’t over.”  He moved his arm.

“No.  But it will be.  Sooner than you think.”

Then I smiled, that evil smile my father taught me, and patted him on the shoulder.  “You’ve got a nice gig here.  Don’t screw it up.”

I followed Elsie up the stairs, and she had the door open when I got there.

Once inside, she leaned against the door and sighed.  “You shouldn’t have done that.  Now it’s just going to bring trouble to our doorstep.”

“I’m sorry, but he was out of line.  He had no right to demand money that isn’t his to demand.  And that disgusting threat…”

“It’s not the worst.”

“Elise?”

“That kid of his.  Calling him a rat is insulting to rats.”

“I’ll pay the extra if it comes to that.  I owe you everything.  But I will fix it.  You don’t have to live in fear of people like him.”

…

A week later, there was a knock on the door, and I saw Elsie cringe.  It was what she had been waiting for.  Retribution.

She opened the door, and the landlord, in his five-hundred-dollar suit and Italian shoes, looked every bit the Lothario Elsie had described him.

The aftershave brought tears to my eyes, and I was ten feet away.

“Mrs Blake.”

Behind him was an enforcer.  He was here to collect the monthly rent.

He looked past her at me, standing like a PFC on parade, waiting for the Master Sergeant to bark orders.

My father taught me the soldier’s stance.  Attention, and at ease.  To swell the chest out, to look like you’ve done ten tours of Afghanistan or Iraq and killed a million of the enemy single-handedly.

I saw the expression change.  He had come here to lay down the law.  Perhaps he might have revised that.

“May I come in?”

Elsie said he usually barged his way in.

She stood to one side.

I said, “Leave the goon outside.”

He was going to say something, the mouth opened and then closed.  A nod in the goon’s direction, then he came in.  Elsie closed the door.

“You serve?” He asked.

“I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t like.”

Never admit to anything, but out of respect to those who had, never take credit for something you didn’t do.  My father had the utmost respect for those who lay down their life in the service of their country.  That rubbed off on me.

“You staying long?” he asked me.

“As long as it is necessary.  My aunt is a kind lady who helps even when it is difficult.”

He looked at her.  “Greyson has apologised for causing you some distress.  I believe he said there would be a rent increase.  I think in this case it’s not necessary.  You are an exemplary tenant, not like some in the building.”

She counted out the notes, a collection of worn notes, a bit like we all felt.  He recounted them, thanked her, gave me a last look, and left.

She waited a minute, leaned against the door, then asked, “What did you do?”

I wanted to tell her I took the Super out the back and ripped his arm out of its socket, and if he approached Elsie again in such a manner, I would do something to him far worse, but that would sound brutal.  I thought I might tell her that I found the son and told him that if Elise said she had been assaulted, I would come find him and cut his manhood off with a blunt knife, but that might offend her.

I went with a simpler explanation.  “We had a friendly chat over a bottle of beer.  I paid.  I explained my circumstances, that the good Lord uplifted those who helped the helpers, and he understood.  All men can be reasonable when they see the light.”

“How do you explain his visit to the hospital emergency department with a mangled shoulder?”

I forgot she worked in the hospital, and her reach might be in places like the Emergency room. I shrugged.  “A man like that, I’m sure, has managed to upset people less understanding than we are.”

The crossed arms and the frown told me I was skating on very thin ice.

“Your dad said you did training for the National Guard.”

“That or juvenile detention.  Might as well be the same thing.  The instructor was bullying.  Learned to defend myself against IEDs, though.”

She shook her head.  “Thanks.  I’ll leave it to the Good lord to decide whether you deserve to go to heaven or hell.  Elise and I have Italian food on Thursdays once a month.  You’re welcome to join us.”

“That would be greatly appreciated.”

…

Several months later, I dreamed of my mother.  I was not sure how old I had been when she left, but it must have been before cognitive memories kicked in.

But even so, there were memories, like her perfume, her laugh, her smile, and the look in her eyes when she held me in her arms.

I wanted to think it had been very difficult for her to leave me behind, but I guess the horror of living with a liar and cheat like my father was far worse.  But I never quite understood why she had kept me behind.

When I woke, there was an image of her, clear as day, in my mind, and the ache of missing her was very painful.  It was like she was there, almost within reach.

Something had prompted these memories.

Elise had come home after the graveyard shift and made toast and coffee.  She was humming to herself, a sign she was happy.  I wondered if she had struck up a friendship with a nice boy; she had mentioned a few in the past, but we both knew our prospects were low.

Still, as Elsie would say, hope springs eternal.

And the frost and snow would soon abate into spring, and everything would come back to life.  I was looking forward to the warmth.

My shift was going to start in the cancer ward, where I had spent the last week cleaning the floors until they gleamed.  Of course, the tiles were tired and scuffed, but I did my best.

The head nurse in Ward A was a dragon, and she was always complaining that the cleaning should be at night.  I actually agreed with her, given the daytime foot traffic.  Patients, nurses, doctors, auxiliary staff, visitors. It was like rush hour on the subway.

But I had my instructions.

Nurse Bleeth, perpetually angry, came out of the elevator and sighed.  She was not the dragon; she was an hour away from ending her early morning shift.

“Your boss is trying to irritate us; isn’t he?”

He had complained to the Superintendent that his workers were being impeded, and that it was not his fault that the management had decided to implement twice-daily cleaning.

His attitude was to make it fast; I maintained we had to do it properly.  No one was going to win this battle.

Did I simply do the job, work around the obstacles, and couldn’t wait for breaks? Yes.

“I don’t make the rules.”

“No, but the people that do often forget it’s the small things that make this all work, and at the moment it’s not working.  But it’s not my problem, I’m told.  That’s a matter for Nurse Andrews.”

She was the dragon. It was amazing how little things suddenly turned into big problems.

“Make it quick as you can.”  She smiled and carried on that harried sort of way, like she was expecting the sky would fall in.

If it had been the dragon, it probably would.

I’d just about finished the passageway and was about to go around the corner when a woman’s voice yelled out, “Don’t you dare speak to your father like that,” followed by a retort, “He’s not my father,” in that stricken tone that people used when the truth landed on them like a brick.

A youngish boy came bemusing out of the room not ten feet from me, and in such a blind hurry to escape, crashed into me, sending us both sprawling.

Two things I noticed in that split second before the crash: he had the look of a spoiled rich brat, and the second was that he looked exactly like me.

Only healthier and stronger.

While we tried to get off the floor, a woman came out of the room, saw the two of us and went over to him.

The other boy was on his feet. I used the rail to pull myself up.  My arm hurt where I landed on it, totally unprepared. I turned to look at the woman, to admonish her over her child.

One look and I nearly fell down again.  The nurse who had come from the station came over to see if we needed help.  A doctor passing had stopped, seeing me almost faint.

It was not from the crash.

The perfume, the expression, the eyes.

And the boy.  He was looking at me, then her, then back at me.  “David?”

David?  Was that my name from a very distant past?  My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, what I was feeling, like there was a connection between us, which was impossible.

Then I passed out.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

More about my second novel

…

But, here’s the thing.

John and Zoe are nowhere near Vienna, Zoe having gone to Bucharest and then Zurich on her way back to see John, who was going to pick her up from the airport, and then both of them were going to Lucerne for a few days.

A reminiscing cruise on Lake Geneva had been on the cards, but there might not be time.

First, they had to do some work on charting who was trying to kill her, because she had finally come to the realisation that there is more than one.  Her visit to Bucharest yielded another name, quite possibly the person who was masquerading as Komarov.

Second, John was intending to introduce her to the new members of their team, the team he hadn’t quite got around to telling her about, who will be dedicated to research, investigation, and, via Isobel and the dark web, organising the hits.

John had decided that she should not out there be distracted by finding work, just doing the work.  He was going to take care of the rest.

Perhaps a good time would be over dinner?

Meanwhile, Sebastian and Rupert are on surveillance duties while Isobel is tracking down which hotel the lovebirds are staying in. As soon as she has the information, Rupert is on the job.

She then moved to track John, knowing Zoe would be with him because she had seen the passenger lists for flights from Bucharest to anywhere.

Both are thankful that neither John nor Zoe was in Vienna, which then makes it a priority that neither Worthington nor Arabella should leave, except to go back home.  Although they hadn’t established it was the reason Worthington was in Vienna, it was too close to the bungled attempt on their lives for them not to draw the appropriate conclusion.

Sebastian has a plan B that no one was going to like, not even himself.

Plan A was yet to be formulated.

More about my second novel

…

But, here’s the thing.

John and Zoe are nowhere near Vienna, Zoe having gone to Bucharest and then Zurich on her way back to see John, who was going to pick her up from the airport, and then both of them were going to Lucerne for a few days.

A reminiscing cruise on Lake Geneva had been on the cards, but there might not be time.

First, they had to do some work on charting who was trying to kill her, because she had finally come to the realisation that there is more than one.  Her visit to Bucharest yielded another name, quite possibly the person who was masquerading as Komarov.

Second, John was intending to introduce her to the new members of their team, the team he hadn’t quite got around to telling her about, who will be dedicated to research, investigation, and, via Isobel and the dark web, organising the hits.

John had decided that she should not out there be distracted by finding work, just doing the work.  He was going to take care of the rest.

Perhaps a good time would be over dinner?

Meanwhile, Sebastian and Rupert are on surveillance duties while Isobel is tracking down which hotel the lovebirds are staying in. As soon as she has the information, Rupert is on the job.

She then moved to track John, knowing Zoe would be with him because she had seen the passenger lists for flights from Bucharest to anywhere.

Both are thankful that neither John nor Zoe was in Vienna, which then makes it a priority that neither Worthington nor Arabella should leave, except to go back home.  Although they hadn’t established it was the reason Worthington was in Vienna, it was too close to the bungled attempt on their lives for them not to draw the appropriate conclusion.

Sebastian has a plan B that no one was going to like, not even himself.

Plan A was yet to be formulated.