Tag: Reference

Searching for locations: From the Presidential Suite to almost walking the plank, Auckland, New Zealand

This is something you don’t see every day of the week, or once in a lifetime, perhaps.

We arrived at the Hilton Auckland hotel somewhere between one and two in the morning after arriving from Australia by plane around midnight.

Sometimes there is a benefit in arriving late, and, of course, being a very high tier HHonors guest, where the room you book is upgraded.

This stay we got one hell of a surprise.

We got to spend the night in the Presidential Suite.

The lounge and extra bathroom.

Looking towards the private bathroom.

A bathroom fit for a King and a Queen

And the royal bed

There was a note to say that we should keep the blinds closed for privacy and that a ship would be arriving in the port, but I did not expect it to be literally fifty feet from our balcony.

aucklandhotelandship

The fourth attempt, other factors, and people

There are two other characters that will be used in this rewrite, the second an addition to give the main character a means of letting the reader get to know a bit about him.

His name is Milt, an African American that’s always been on the fringe.  Another who is a victim of his circumstances but not letting it get the better of him, the sort of man who makes the best of a bad situation.

He’s seen active service in the army, honourably discharged, but still affected though not as bad as some of those he served with.  He is in fact the ideal man for the job, with combat experience, so he’s not likely to get flustered in a shit storm.

And probably not the man you want on this site.  Being in desperate circumstances doesn’t mean you do desperate things.

He is one of a team of four and our main character drew the straw to partner him.  There are two others, based on the other side of the park, neither of whom are trustworthy, Smithy, the overall leader, to whom they all report at shift start and end, and Carruthers, an Englishman reputed to be ex SAS, but no one is inclined to believe him. 

The scars on his neck tell a story, but it was left to the other’s imagination, as he doesn’t talk about it.  Milt was of the opinion he was captured in Afghanistan and tortured, but that could be just be canteen scuttlebutt.

Whatever the circumstances, Graham kept away from him as much as possible, and was glad when he didn’t have to partner him for the shift.

The other character. Penelope has featured in the earlier versions of the story.  Over the changes her background has changed, but I’ve settled on a medical surgeon career, renown for doing tricky procedures with a high success rate, and in doing so gained a reputation, some not always good.

Wealth and ego don’t always make a good pair, and marrying wealth brings its own rewards and pitfalls, particularly when you discover the man you married isn’t exactly whom you thought he was.

It is of course a typical scenario, but I’m going to try and weave it differently.  There will be no more teasers until the story starts.

But she will be introduced earlier than in the previous iterations because she needs some backstory too, otherwise just arriving at Graham’s work and getting shot, while provoking a volatile situation that drags the reader in, out of left field is not exactly the best start.

So, let’s begin.

© Charles Heath 2020

The fourth attempt, let’s look at the main character

So there’s words on paper, and three times I’ve tried to fix it, or, perhaps just make it sound better, because reading it in my head, there’s too little background, and too many questions.

The flow of the story isn’t working for me, so I guess it’s time to sit down and work out what it is I’m trying to say.

The notion that our main character, Graham, is a loser seems to shine through, and that’s not what I’m trying to portray him as.  No, far from it, it’s been a lifetime of bad choices that have put him where he is, and he knows it.

So, in part, this is about owning your mistakes, and it’s my job to make him come across as a hero in waiting.  There’s good in him, perhaps too much, but there is also that attitude that led to all those bad choices, the one that can get him into trouble, and a sort of intransience inherited from his father, that has more or less got him ostracised from the family. 

I want this character to be a chop off the old block, both of whom are the type not to back down, not to say sorry, and, to quote a rather apt allegory, would cut their nose off to spite their face.

Graham’s intransience led to his refusal to follow his father into business, refusal to go to University despite having the necessary qualifications, and just to round out the defiance, his choice of women whom he knew would meet with family disapproval.

And these factors, over a period of time, saw him bounce from a low paying job to jobs with no prospects, and a string of failed relationships, until this moment in time, where he was basically on his own, working the graveyard shift as a security guard.  The sort of job where qualifications weren’t looked for and workmates looked like and probably were ex-cons.

There are a few more details like the older brother, Jackson, politician and schemer, the same as his father before him (the seat was passed down through the family), like the younger sister who is a highly successful surgeon, married into immense wealth.  His brother had been less successful in the marital stakes but what he lacked in a wife was more than made up with a string of highly eligible and beautiful women.

And, no, he doesn’t resent the fact they’re rich, or that his parents were, too, just that they treated him with contempt.

It was almost five years since the last time he had seen any of them, that last time he attended the family Christmas in Martha’s Vineyard, the ‘Stockdale Residence’ an ostentatious sprawling fifty room mansion that, in a drunken rage, he’s tried to burn down.

Once again, he had not received an invitation to the next, due in a few days, and it was not entirely unexpected.

Graham has his faults, but that even, five years ago, had pulled him off the road to self-destruction, helped along by a year stint in jail where he learned a great many lessons about life itself, and survival.

The four years since?

A lot of regret, and a lot of repentance.  Life after jail was a lot worse than life trying to defy the family and the system.  There were two roads he could have gone down, and thankfully for him, it was not the wrong one.

So, he’s back on the path, a whole lot wiser, a whole lot tougher.

That might not have been exactly what I was thinking for him over the first three attempts.  I don’t think any character really begins to shine until halfway through, as you find him meeting various challenges in ways even you, as the writer, find quite unexpected.

Is that the end result of being a pantser over being a planner?

I don’t think, even as a planner, you can create a character that’s not going to change, or ever surprise you, as the story evolves.

And somehow I don’t think I’m about to change from one to the other.

Well, not completely.

But there’s more, and no, it’s not steak knives!

© Charles Heath 2020

The fourth attempt, let’s look at the location

Equally important is the location.  Dark and brooding characters need dark and brooding locations.  It’s undeniable that there’s evil everywhere, we just have to look for it.

Of course, that’s not what I do, but …

I have been in a few tight corners, with some possibly dark and brooding characters where my heart rate has increased exponentially, and was saved by quick thinking, and a desire not to hang around and see what happens (for the purposes of a writable experience – no,, I’m not that stupid).

As the story stands, we move form a small staff room, or rest room, and then we move out to the car park of … what?  It’s not exactly clear where it is, only that Graham is leaving work to go home.

Whether it’s clear or not, Graham is a security guard, part of a team that work on an industrial estate where there’s a number of factories and office blocks. 

Some of those buildings are empty, for a variety of reasons, so a back story for this might be created so that I can convey a clearer picture of not only the bricks and mortar, but what it’s like there.

Ergo the first descriptive line, steeping outside into the epicentre of the south pole.  There is snow everywhere, which meant it was falling while he was inside at work, but now, the moment he leaves, it’s stopped.  Cold, then, and clear.

So it begins…

Now, as a secondary theme, it might not be obvious the owners are lax in the hiring of security staff to watch over their assets, staff that are relatively dubious in character, which might, in turn, mean that the notion of using cut-price security might mean something else is going on.

Are the empty factories empty?  Or have they been repurposed, and the guards are not sure what their guarding?  Do they want to know?  A job is a job, and in this situation, either from a hint from the employer, or the words of an old hand, and it doesn’t pay to poke a nose in where it’s not wanted.

So, as you can see, when starting the story I didn’t give proper thought to the background story, the fact that I could weave another or several storylines intertwined with what will be the master plotline.

What is the master plotline?

I have an idea or two, but let’s not get to ahead of ourselves.

Let’s stitch together a scenario or two for the back story and see where it takes us.  Remember that this was more or less part of the storyline originally in my mind but may not have been articulated in what I wrote at the time.

Basically, then, we’re dealing with a large industrial site on the outskirts of a city in decline.  Everyone can relate to the problematic times we’re in now, but this was written at the height of the last global financial meltdown about fifteen year ago, which caused a deep recession.

Within that framework a lot of businesses and people went to the wall.  Graham, and others, lost a decent paying job, as well as his house, having finally got on the property ladder, only to find he couldn’t pay for it.

At the time he was not alone in that respect.  And lenders were not immune either, so there’s the possibility of one or two industrial park owners not exactly being legit in some of their business dealings, not after taking heavy hits financially.

In that scenario, there’s always the possibility of insurance fraud as a means of cutting losses, hence the need for security that might be asked to look the other way.

Another possibility could be that empty buildings and enterprising men, or women, fit the category of ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’. 

Or someone who recognises an opportunity to make some money.  That particular scenario opens the door to a plethora of ideas.

© Charles Heath 2020

In a word: Happy

“I’m happy to be being here.”

Yes, I actually heard that answer given in a television interview, and thought, at the time, it was a quaint expression.

But in reality, this was a person for whom English was a second language, and that was, quite literally, their translation from their language to English.

Suffice to say, that person was not happy when lost the event she was participating in.

But that particular memory was triggered by another event.

Someone asked me how happy I was.

Happy is another of those words like good, thrown around like a rag doll, used without consequence, or regard for its true meaning.

“After everything that’s happened, you should be the happiest man alive!”

I’m happy.

I should be, to them.

A real friend might also say, “Are you sure, you don’t look happy.”

I hesitate but say, “Sure.  I woke up with a headache,” or some other lame reason.

But, in reality, I’m not ‘happy’.  Convention says that we should be happy if everything is going well.  In my case, it is, to a certain extent, but it is what’s happening within that’s the problem.  We say it because people expect it.

I find there is no use complaining because no one will listen, and definitely, no one likes serial complainers.

True.

But somewhere in all those complaints will be the truth, the one item that is bugging us.

It is a case of whether we are prepared to listen.  Really listen.

And not necessarily take people at their word.

 

In a word: Blue

Of course we all know this word is a colour, or color depending on where you live.

You know, blue sky, deep blue sea, blonde hair blue eyes.  Very descriptive.

But it can also mean you are down in the dumps, a rather strange, for some, expression that means you are sad or unhappy.

For others to have a blue means to have a fight with someone

And oddly, and I know this from first hand experience, that a red haired person will be called bluey, or less pleasing either carrot top or blood nut.  I used to ignore those people who used those expressions, except for my father in law.

You can do something until you are blue in the face, which means do it without result until exhaustion, another way of saying your wasting your time.

And if something comes out of the blue, it usually means its entirely unexpected.  For me, that’s always a bill I wasn’t expecting, for someone else an inheritance.

And in some parts of the world, blue is used as a synonym for conservative political party, for insistence, the Liberal party in Australia, and the Democrats in the United States

Blue should not be confused with the word blew, which is the past tense of blow, which is wind causing an air current, or blowing air through pursed lips.

That doesn’t mean that if something blew up it was just a giant air mass exploding because it can’t.  If a bomb blew up it means it detonated.

And if that sounds complicated:

What if something blew my mind?  Does that mean my head exploded?  No, it just means its incomprehensible, whether good or bad.

Or

What if I blew a fortune on a three legged horse?  We all throw good money after bad, but you can easily lose a fortune, or blew it.

Its the same thing with opportunities, for instance, he had a chance and he blew it.  Yes, obviously something better came along, not, or he just ignored a sterling opportunity.

An excerpt from “Betrayal” – a work in progress

It could have been anywhere in the world, she thought, but it wasn’t.  It was in a city where if anything were to go wrong…

She sighed and came away from the window and looked around the room.  It was quite large and expensively furnished.  It was one of several she had been visiting in the last three months.

Quite elegant too, as the hotel had its origins dating back to before the revolution in 1917.  At least, currently, there would not be a team of KGB agents somewhere in the basement monitoring everything that happened in the room.

There was no such thing as the KGB anymore, though there was an FSB, but such organisations were of no interest to her.

She was here to meet with Vladimir.

She smiled to herself when she thought of him, such an interesting man whose command of English was as good as her command of Russian, though she had not told him of that ability.

All her knew of her was that she was American, worked in the Embassy as a clerk, nothing important, who life both at work and at home was boring.  Not that she had blurted that out the first tie she met, or even the second.

That first time, at a function in the Embassy, was a chance meeting, a catching of his eye as he looked around the room, looking, as he had told her later, for someone who might not be as boring as the function itself.

It was a celebration, honouring one of the Embassy officials on his service in Moscow, and the fact he was returning home after 10 years.  She had been there one, and still hadn’t met all the staff.

They had talked, Vladimir knew a great deal about England, having been stationed there for a year or two, and had politely asked questions about where she lived, her family, and of course what her role was, all questions she fended off with an air of disinterested interest.

It fascinated him, as she knew it would, a sort of mental sparring as one would do with swords, if this was a fencing match.

They had said they might or might not meet again when the party was over, but she suspected there would be another opportunity.  She knew the signs of a man who was interested in her, and Vladimir was interested.

The second time came in the form of an invitation to an art gallery, and a viewing of the works of a prominent Russian artist, an invitation she politely declined.  After all, invitations issued to Embassy staff held all sorts of connotations, or so she was told by the Security officer when she told him.

Then, it went quiet for a month.  There was a party at the American embassy and along with several other staff members, she was invited.  She had not expected to meet Vladimir, but it was a pleasant surprise when she saw him, on the other side of the room, talking to several military men.

A pleasant afternoon ensued.

And it was no surprise that they kept running into each other at the various events on the diplomatic schedule.

By the fifth meeting, they were like old friends.  She had broached the subject of being involved in a plutonic relationship with him with the head of security at the embassy.  Normally for a member of her rank it would not be allowed, but in this instance it was.

She did not work in any sensitive areas, and, as the security officer had said, she might just happen upon something that might be useful.  In that regard, she was to keep her eyes and ears open, and file a report each time she met him.

After that discussion she got the impression her superiors considered Vladimir more than just a casual visitor on the diplomatic circuit.  She also formed the impression the he might consider her an ‘asset’, a word that had been used at the meeting with security and the ambassador.

It was where the word ‘spy’ popped into her head and sent a tingle down her spine.  She was not a spy, but the thought of it, well, it would be fascinating to see what happened.

A Russian friend.  That’s what she would call him.

And over time, that relationship blossomed, until, after a visit to the ballet, late and snowing, he invited her to his apartment not far from the ballet venue.  It was like treading on thin ice, but after champagne and an introduction to caviar, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl.

Even so, she had made him promise that he remain on his best behaviour.  It could have been very easy to fall under the spell of a perfect evening, but he promised, showed her to a separate bedroom, and after a brief kiss, their first, she did not see him until the next morning.

So, it began.

It was an interesting report she filed after that encounter, one where she had expected to be reprimanded.

She wasn’t.

It wasn’t until six weeks had passed when he asked her if she would like to take a trip to the country.  It would involve staying in a hotel, that they would have separate rooms.  When she reported the invitation, no objection was raised, only a caution; keep her wits about her.

Perhaps, she had thought, they were looking forward to a more extensive report.  After all, her reports on the places, and the people, and the conversations she overheard, were no doubt entertaining reading for some.

But this visit was where the nature of the relationship changed, and it was one that she did not immediately report.  She had realised at some point before the weekend away, that she had feelings for him, and it was not that he was pushing her in that direction or manipulating her in any way.

It was just one of those moments where, after a grand dinner, a lot of champagne, and delightful company, things happen.  Standing at the door to her room, a lingering kiss, not intentional on her part, and it just happened.

And for not one moment did she believe she had been compromised, but for some reason she had not reported that subtle change in the relationship to the powers that be, and so far, no one had any inkling.

She took off her coat and placed it carefully of the back of one of the ornate chairs in the room.  She stopped for a moment to look at a framed photograph on the wall, one representing Red Square.

Then, after a minute or two, she went to the mini bar and took out the bottle of champagne that had been left there for them, a treat arranged by Vladimir for each encounter.

There were two champagne flutes set aside on the bar, next to a bowl of fruit.  She picked up the apple and thought how Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden, and the temptation.

Later perhaps, after…

She smiled at the thought and put the apple back.

A glance at her watch told her it was time for his arrival.  It was if anything, the one trait she didn’t like, and that was his punctuality.  A glance at the clock on the room wall was a minute slow.

The doorbell to the room rang, right on the appointed time.

She put the bottle down and walked over to the door.

A smile on her face, she opened the door.

It was not Vladimir.  It was her worst nightmare.

…

© Charles Heath 2020

Searching for locations: Oreti Village – No two sunrises are the same – 2

Oreti Village, Pukawa Bay, North Island, New Zeland

On the southern tip of Lake Taupo

Our first morning there, a Saturday.  Winter.  Cold.  And a beautiful sunrise.

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This was taken from the balcony, overlooking the lake.

The sun is just creeping up over the horizon

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It gradually gets lighter, and then the sun breaks free of the low cloud

It lights up the balcony

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And the trees just beyond, a cascade of colorful ferns.

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It looks like it’s going to be a fine day, our first for this trip, and we will be heading to the mountains to see snow, for the first time for two of our granddaughters.

Short Story Writing – Don’t try this at home! – Part 4

This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories.   Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine.  It works for me – it might not work for you.

…

You’ve got the place, now you want the who.

My main characters are quite often me.

Not the real me, because I’m boring.  No, those characters are what I would like to be, that imaginary superhuman that can do everything.

Until, of course, reality sets in, and the bullets start flying.  When that happens, we should be looking to run or at the very least get under cover, not walk into a hail of bullets, with a huge grin, staring down the enemy.

Hang on, that never happens except in superman comics.

What’s really needed here is a little vulnerability, a little humility and a lot of understanding, qualities at times I don’t have.

So, in order to create a more believable character, I start dragging traits from others I’ve met, or know, or really don’t want to know.  

In a writer’s environment, there are a plethora of people out there that you can draw on for inspiration.  I once spent and afternoon at a railway station just observing people.  Even now, I make observations, some of which are true, and others, wildly off course. 

I once tried to convince my other half that I could pick people’s traits, and we sat at a café outside a church in Venice.  I was lucky, I got more than 75% correct.

Other characters in my stories I have met along the way.

Like a piano player in a restaurant.  It was not so much the playing was bad, it was the way he managed to draw people into his orbit and keep them there.  The man has charisma, but sadly no talent for the instrument.

Like an aunt I met only twice in a lifetime, and who left a lasting impression.  Severe, angry looking, speaking a language I didn’t understand, even though it was English.  It was where I learned we came from England, and she was the closest thing I came to as an example of nineteenth-century prim and proper.  And, no, she didn’t have a sense of humour or time for silly little boys.

Like one of my bosses, a man of indeterminate age, but it had to be over 100, or so it seemed to my sixteen-year-old brain, who spoke and dressed impeccably, and yes, he did once say that I would be the death of him.

I can only hope I wasn’t.

Like a Captain of a ship I once met, a man who didn’t seem to have time for the minions, and a man who reeked authority and respect.  I’ve always wanted to be like him, but unfortunately, it was not in the genes.

Those are only a few, there are thousands of others over the years, a built-in library, if you will, of characters waiting to be taken off the shelf and used where necessary or appropriate.  We all have one of these banks.

You just have to know when to use them.

In a word: Under

Under by itself is a rather boring word, you know, under the moon, under the sea, under the influence, which is not hard to be if you’ve been hypnotised or after a few drinks.

Under is anything beneath something else.

But lts add it to some other words like,

Under rated, which means it is better that what others give it credit.

Under wear, what you would wear underneath your clothes.

Under study, the person who takes over a lead role when the lead is incapacitated. And how many understudys are guilty of harming the lead, in order to get a big break?

And not get away with it?

Under stood, an agreement that might or might not be in writing that something will happen, that is, it is understood that I will be the next president.

Or not. Who on earth would really want to be president of anything.

So in the spirit of trying to cionfuse everyone all of the time, I have a conundrum in thr form of a question, whar is the difference between under and underneath.

To me there is none, you can be under the sea or underneath the sea, or under the table or underneath the table, but then there’s another, you can be under the influence but not underneath the influence, though technically you could, if you wanted to used confusing English.

And, just to add to the confusion further, I can say that the submarine sailed under the sea, underneath the sea, but, in actual fact, it doesnt.

What is under the sea is the sand, or sea bed, and a submarine does not plow its way through the sand, does it.

What we really should be saying is that a submarine moves through water.

Just saying…