So, after yesterday, how do I go sorting out the words, and get the story underway.
As the heading suggests, I wrote the story around watching the Viennese Waltz in real-time, and if you play it starting at the exact right time, everything matches, the steps the movements, and their conversation.
Actually, I had to watch that Waltz about twenty times to get it right.
It kind of made me wish that I could have found the woman of my dreams and danced with her. The fact is, the woman of my dreams, now my wife of 50 years, was an excellent ballroom dancer, and me, well, I’m the definitive two left feet, which I think may have been ne of her disappointments.
We could have made such a statement on the dancefloor if only I knew how!
As they say, it’s never too late.
But, the dancefloor is where our two main characters come together, and by the end of it, everyone knows what they themselves haven’t.
Every story starts somewhere, and there is a catalyst.
This story was going to be a short story, which is why the first chapter is so long. In rough form, it is nearly 5,000 words. Today I write it, tomorrow I’ll edit it.
But…
How did we get here in the first place?
Firstly: I heard a Viennese waltz way back when I used to watch Walt Disney on a Sunday night, and one of his shows over two weeks was about Johann Strauss. It stuck with me all these years, until…
Secondly: I heard it again on the radio when I was looking for the classic music station. All at once I was back in that brief period of my childhood.
That’s another story, moving on.
Thirdly: When my wife and I started out nearly 50 years ago, we hated each other at the start. I mean seriously. Then, over time, when you see who the person is rather than what you think they are, things change.
It’s a common story, this love-hate relationship.
Just what happens to kick this off … you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
How many times have you been sitting somewhere, and in the background there’s a song playing?
The interesting thing about music is the memories and the feelings that can be invoked.
And, if you’re a writer, it can tug at the inspirational strings.
I had one such experience not so long ago in a shopping mall of all places while having some ghastly junk food. The chef must have been having a bad day.
I digress.
It was a Viennese waltz, and you know, if you’ve heard one, how it can stick on the mind, that ebb and flow effect. I saw an episode of Disneyland many, many years ago that had Strauss composing the waltz in time to the clip-clop of the horses drawing his carriage. I don’t think it was as simple as that.
But however it came into being, it stuck in my mind.
So much so, that I went to YouTube and pulled up people performing the Waltz, and in watching it I because almost mesmerised.
Where’s this going, you ask?
Well, it gave me an idea. That first idea was to write a story of two people out on the ballroom floor, having a conversation, with the dance moves thrown in a appropriate times, in essence guiding the conversation.
Boring you say?
O light be, but then make the two people a girl and a boy who have niggled and hated each other all their lives, only to discover shortly before the ball, that the opposite was true, that they loved each other.
Hate is easy when you’re a pre-teen and teenager, but once middle school turns into college, and people change, though some not necessarily for the better, odd things happen.
Now, again, if it was an ordinary girl and an ordinary boy that would almost be boring, so to spice it up the girl is from the wealthy part of town, and the boy from the less wealthy side, those that the wealthy tend to look down on.
But he’s not too down and out, just from an old well-known family that has fallen on hard times.
Oh, and like all the romance films I’ve been looking at as research, this will follow one of the tried and tested premises, that she was always in love with him, and he was always from the moment he saw her in elementary school, just never thought he had a chance.
516 pages in total, in the rawest of forms, a story from start to finish.
Now the hard part begins; the first edit. I’m sure there are a few continuity issues, and at least one name changes for one of the characters.
There are other issues that will need addressing, like Inspector Banner who seems to turn up out of thin air and needs a little more introduction.
Likewise, Henry’s brother Harry needs to have his timeline and actions given his disabilities looked at in terms of whether it’s possible he could do what he did. I know it’s fiction, but characters lose credibility when they seem to have powers they simply could not possess.
Above all, Michelle needs to be more thoroughly introduced, though my intention originally was to have her this girl who is too good to be true, all of a sudden have this bad streak, whether by design or by accident.
I also think her relationship with the Turk needs more explanation because it seems in places quite wishy washy for want of a better description.
There may yet get to be a prologue that gives each a chance to see who they are before they get to the hotel by the sea.
Perhaps I’m, simply miffed that Diana aka Millie did not get a chance to shine before she appears much later in the book.
But, it is what it is for now, and the next edit, in a few weeks might or might not address all of these issues.
516 pages in total, in the rawest of forms, a story from start to finish.
Now the hard part begins; the first edit. I’m sure there are a few continuity issues, and at least one name changes for one of the characters.
There are other issues that will need addressing, like Inspector Banner who seems to turn up out of thin air and needs a little more introduction.
Likewise, Henry’s brother Harry needs to have his timeline and actions given his disabilities looked at in terms of whether it’s possible he could do what he did. I know it’s fiction, but characters lose credibility when they seem to have powers they simply could not possess.
Above all, Michelle needs to be more thoroughly introduced, though my intention originally was to have her this girl who is too good to be true, all of a sudden have this bad streak, whether by design or by accident.
I also think her relationship with the Turk needs more explanation because it seems in places quite wishy washy for want of a better description.
There may yet get to be a prologue that gives each a chance to see who they are before they get to the hotel by the sea.
Perhaps I’m, simply miffed that Diana aka Millie did not get a chance to shine before she appears much later in the book.
But, it is what it is for now, and the next edit, in a few weeks might or might not address all of these issues.
It’s just all the trials and tribulations in between that make it seem like it’s all too much effort with nothing but pain and misery punctuated by a few moments of utter delight.
I’m sure a story where everything works like clockwork might have been easier, but the thought of having some meaty characters standing between them and ultimate happiness was more interesting.
The idea of Emile, or the Turk, being an affable person, was modelled on Sidney Greenstreet, a rather interesting actor in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, and I’d just seen his performance in The Maltese Falcon.
When I first started the story, I wanted Michelle to have a secret, but at the time, it wasn’t for her to be a prostitute, simply a fashion model who fell in with the wrong crowd and got into trouble with drugs and the high life.
But that wasn’t interesting enough. By that time, I was dabbling in the thriller genre, and realised I couldn’t write a Mills and Boon-type book, so it veered into thriller territory.
Who doesn’t like a guy who wants to rescue a fallen angel?
Why not make the fallen angel an avenging angel? Her friends help her escape, and then she decided to help her friends escape to the freedom she fleetingly had, and now, determined, would have again.
But, the idea of freedom and the actual getting of it are two entirely different concepts. 400 pages worth of angst, setbacks, love found, and love lost, the love found again. Henry might be a little too naïve, but he had to be to provide the extreme contrast in backgrounds and notions of what life is like.
It’s just all the trials and tribulations in between that make it seem like it’s all too much effort with nothing but pain and misery punctuated by a few moments of utter delight.
I’m sure a story where everything works like clockwork might have been easier, but the thought of having some meaty characters standing between them and ultimate happiness was more interesting.
The idea of Emile, or the Turk, being an affable person, was modelled on Sidney Greenstreet, a rather interesting actor in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, and I’d just seen his performance in The Maltese Falcon.
When I first started the story, I wanted Michelle to have a secret, but at the time, it wasn’t for her to be a prostitute, simply a fashion model who fell in with the wrong crowd and got into trouble with drugs and the high life.
But that wasn’t interesting enough. By that time, I was dabbling in the thriller genre, and realised I couldn’t write a Mills and Boon-type book, so it veered into thriller territory.
Who doesn’t like a guy who wants to rescue a fallen angel?
Why not make the fallen angel an avenging angel? Her friends help her escape, and then she decided to help her friends escape to the freedom she fleetingly had, and now, determined, would have again.
But, the idea of freedom and the actual getting of it are two entirely different concepts. 400 pages worth of angst, setbacks, love found, and love lost, the love found again. Henry might be a little too naïve, but he had to be to provide the extreme contrast in backgrounds and notions of what life is like.
Henry wakes to the realization that, one, he is in hospital with no memory of how he got there two, his brother Harry is nearby, three that he had no idea if his rescue mission succeeded or failed. And lastly, what happened to Radly.
The reality, he had been used as a human punching back, Michelle had disappeared, along with the Turk, and Harry made the conscious decision not to tell his little brother what had transpired while he was in the hospital. Good news though, Diana and Radly were in the same hospital, and were alive.
Harry has pieced together the night’s events, and ever relating it, he wonders how any of them are still alive.
His father comes to visit, and it’s apparent he doesn’t know the real reason Henry is there.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Henry has bought a house in his now favourite village by the sea, easily accessible by train, for now, and plants to go there when discharged.
Michelle has not returned, and he has told himself that she might never. It’s that old saying, better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Henry wakes to the realization that, one, he is in hospital with no memory of how he got there two, his brother Harry is nearby, three that he had no idea if his rescue mission succeeded or failed. And lastly, what happened to Radly.
The reality, he had been used as a human punching back, Michelle had disappeared, along with the Turk, and Harry made the conscious decision not to tell his little brother what had transpired while he was in the hospital. Good news though, Diana and Radly were in the same hospital, and were alive.
Harry has pieced together the night’s events, and ever relating it, he wonders how any of them are still alive.
His father comes to visit, and it’s apparent he doesn’t know the real reason Henry is there.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Henry has bought a house in his now favourite village by the sea, easily accessible by train, for now, and plants to go there when discharged.
Michelle has not returned, and he has told himself that she might never. It’s that old saying, better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Henry and Diana are sent to a hospital where Henry’s father was on call, both appalled when he discovers the identity of one of the victims, and ready to operate on his son.
Banner curses his late arrival as the Turk got away, and so, apparently, did Michelle.
She returns briefly to see Henry and talk to Harry. She asks if he is willing to help make those who caused Henry pain, and he readily agrees.
Henry survives but will be in an induced coma for a while.
Harry gets the call, and with some of his friends, they are off to capture those who caused Henry’s injuries, principally Felix and the Turk. The mission is run by Michelle, whose slowly evolving plan has reached maturity.
First Felix, at one of the parlours. He has one weakness, and it is his downfall.
Then the Turk, who thinks he is invisible, but there was one person who knows all of his secrets, his one weakness.
Both end up in a room, securely bound, awaiting their fate.
It’s going to be a long slow death.
Banner runs into one of his old felons, who just happens to be the Turk’s neighbour, and who is able to fill Banner in on some details, like who may have perpetrated the kidnapping.
He headed to Harry’s place and all but accuses him, but with no tangible evidence, all Banner has is suspicions. He leaves empty-handed.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 