Tag: Serial

The story behind the story: A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers

To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.

But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.

That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.

It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years.  Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?

My private detective, Harry Walthenson

I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.

But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it.  Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.

Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life.  I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

Then there’s the title, like

The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello

The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister.  And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.

But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.

Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.

Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.

I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021.  It even has a cover.

PIWalthJones1

Well, that was my August

I have been busy, busy, busy writing this month, but as much as I have done, it still feels like I’m not getting anywhere.

For instance, both ‘The Things we do for Love’ and ‘Strangers We’ve Become’ are still with the editor for the final checking, where I’d expected to be in a position to publish them this month.

It may have something to do with the sending of two new novels, ‘If Only’ and ‘Betrayed’ for first perusal after I completed the third edit, and felt both were ready for someone else to look at.

They will be joined by ‘First Dig Two Graves’, the second Zoe thriller later this month.

Then there’s the episodic stories I’ve been writing, each of which will become a novella eventually. But to begin with, they are episodes as and when I can find the time, and published in their raw form on my writing blog as the ideas come.

They are:

What happens after an action-packed start – now finished with the publication of episode 47.

You can find the end here: https://bit.ly/2Yxnh1k

It’s a story inspired by the Castello di Briolio – I have yet to write more episodes

The latest episode, 36, is here: https://bit.ly/3h1DCCC

So you want to go on a treasure hunt – this has been written up to episode 54, and episodes 55 – 60 have been outlined.

Find the latest episode, 47, here: https://bit.ly/31EHunK

Was it just another surveillance job – has been written up to episode 45

Find the latest episode, 36, here: https://bit.ly/3aeMvX5

I’ve started on the replacement episodic story for ‘Action-Packed’ called ‘Motive, Means and Opportunity’ and have several episodes written. Publishing that story will begin some time in September.

Alas, the ideas never stop, and the notebooks are filling up.

And with the pandemic and having to stay in, this had greatly increased the amount of time I have to write. But it is exhausting, and when the travel restrictions are lifted, I will be going away to some quiet place where I can unwind for a week or two.

Some time, we’re told, around mid 2021.

Past conversations with my cat – 95

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This is Chester.

He realizes we are now part of a different world driven by the events surrounding the COVID 19 virus.

The grandchildren are here while their parents are working, and they are going to school remotely, that is one is in the kitchen and one is in the dining room, remotely linked to their school, teachers, and classmates.

Chester finds this interesting because they are not trying to find him, so, he’s come out to see what they’re doing.

First, he jumps up on the dining table and sits next to the 13-year-old. She is hard at work. I hear him ask if there is anything he can help with given his vast knowledge of everything.

There’s a universal greeting from 30 others, and he tries to find where all the other people are. No, it’s not hide and seek, they’re all online she tries to tell him.

No, doesn’t get it. They must be in the room somewhere. And he’s suddenly miffed that he can’t find them, and then that his assistance is not required.

All too much to cope with, he comes out to join the 10-year-old sitting at the kitchen table. She had headphones on and doesn’t hear him.

This time he sits on the floor and looks up thinking, if they can’t see him, he’s not there. She ignores him. I don’t think mathematics is his strong point.

So, he wanders into the office, planning to annoy me.

I find some headphones and put them on. He gets the message, no interruptions today, everyone is hard at work.

A sigh, then he goes to his corner and lies down on his bed, yawns and closes his eyes.

I know he’s not asleep. He’s waiting for something to happen, ready to spring into action.

Unless, of course, it’s a mouse.

In a word: Flower

It’s what we expect to see when we walk past the front of some houses but instead sometimes see lawn, rocks, or a disaster.

They are what makes the difference between a delightful street and an ugly one, and by that I mean flowers.

By definition though, it means the state or period in which the plant’s flowers have developed and opened/

Just beware the man who turns up with a bunch of flowers that look vaguely familiar to those that grow in your neighbour’s gardens.

They are also in abundance in horticultural gardens, and in florist shops.

My favourites are roses.

And just a word of warning, look out for triffids.  If you read John Wyndham science fiction you’ll know what I mean.

Another mean for the word is to reach the optimum stage of development, though the word bloom could also be used to describe the same thing.

There is another similar-sounding word, flour, but this is the stuff used to make bread, scones, and puddings.

By definition, it is the result of grinding wheat or other grains to a powder.

If something is said to be floury, then it means it is bland.

 

In a word: Freeze

Yes, if the temperature was 20 degrees below zero and the forecast for the net week was the same, then that would be the big freeze.

In a more understandable way of putting it, to freeze something is to preserve it at a temperature below zero.

Some things don’t freeze, like petrol.

And you want to hope that you put antifreeze in your radiator otherwise you are going to have big problems with your car in winter.

It also means to stand still.

You can also isolate someone by freezing them out.

And freeze in fear, unable to move, like a deer in headlights.

But the worst example of a freeze is when your computer stops, and you forgot to save that 200-page novel, thereby being lost forever.

No.  That would never happen, you had autosave on, didn’t you?

Didn’t you??????????

Freeze is not to be confused with a frieze which is a broad horizontal band of sculpted or painted decoration, especially on a wall near the ceiling.

Or frees, which in some countries type of football described multiple free kicks, in one sense, and, in another, what you do when you let them go, e.g. he frees the dog.

In a word: Flight

There is a saying, if God wanted us to fly then he would have given us wings.

Unfortunately, he didn’t, so we do not get to know what it’s like to be in flight,

Unless…

We take an aeroplane, which usually has a flight number such as QF607, or in conversation, ‘I’ll be taking the 6 o’clock flight’.

If someone runs away, then we say they have taken flight.

If we roll back a few years, say about 80, to World War 2, flight tales on a whole new meaning.

It refers to a group of planes, in one case a number of spitfires, or,

The man in charge, a flight lieutenant, also colloquially known as ‘flight’.

This is not be confused with the word flite which has several very obscure meanings,

First, it means to quarrel or argue, or engage in a debate, and

Second, to make a complaint.

But one that sticks in my my mind is Flyte, from Brideshead Revisited.  they were a very interesting family.

I’ve always wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt – Part 47

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

“A hundred square miles, that must have run up the coast close to Patterson’s Reach?” I asked.

Patterson’s reach was about five miles to the north, a small town, where there was little fishing done and allegedly a lot of ferrying drugs being dropped off by large ships coming along the offshore shipping lanes.  No one could prove it, and every trap set by the coast guard had failed to find any evidence.  That meant that someone was tipping them off.

It was also the domain of the Cossatino’s who discouraged anyone else from living there.  It was said that Cossatino owned all of the lands the town sat on and the people who lived there worked for him.

“Only as far as Patterson’s reach and then inland for about 20 miles, about as far as the Faultline and perhaps the closest point between the foothills and the sea.  Ormiston had bought all the land thinking that the treasure was buried on it.  You see, he had a map too, long before Boggs senior had started forging them for the Cossatino’s.”

And in hearing that it begged the question, who had first found the original map?  If Cossatino found it, then getting Boggs senior to forge a lot of useless maps would hide where it really was.

What if Boggs ‘original’ map was yet another elaborate forgery, given to him by Cossatino to create others?  I put that thought to one side.

I wondered if Boggs had been to see her, to get some background.  If there was going to be an expert on the treasure, if it existed or not, she would know.  In fact, she probably knew old man Ormiston.

“Does that map still exist?”

“Perhaps.  It was not found in his effects after he died.  Spent his last years in an asylum.  It wasn’t not finding the treasure, or losing his fortune that sent him mad, it was Alzheimer’s, poor old man.  Whatever documents that were found when his relatives cleaned the place out were brought to the library to be stored, cataloged at some point, and one day when someone decides to write a history of the area, no doubt they want to see the collection.”

“I couldn’t look at the papers?”

“Are you interested in writing a local history.  I’m sure your hunt for the treasure and the many fruitless other expeditions looking for it would make a very entertaining chapter.”

“Maybe I will.”

If that was what it took to look at the documents.  There might be something interesting to be found.  Especially if he kept a diary.  I thought it best not to ask, and fuel suspicions.

“Elmer said there might be relations of Ormiston still around here?”

“Yes, I did say that which I now regret.  There are, but I don’t know who they are.  I knew his wife’s family name was Maunchen, and that the Maunchens came from California originally, and there’s nothing to say they didn’t go back.  Certainly, the wife would be deceased by now, and they had three daughters, all of whom would have married, and changed names.  You’d have to go digging through wedding records in at least a dozen parishes.  If you were thinking of investigating.”

“Sound like too much hard work.  Besides, the treasure doesn’t; exist.  I’m only helping Boggs to keep him from doing something stupid.”

“Like father, like son, unfortunately.  You do realize the father made some outlandish claim in the hotel one night that he had found the clue to where the treasure was buried.   Trouble was, he was prone to making outlandish claims, and by that time, a drunkard.  He went missing the next day, and has never been seen since.”

“You think he found it?”

“No.  But I’m guessing someone thought he had and killed him trying to find out.  We’ll never know.”

“A lesson to be learned then.  I’ll keep an eye on Boggs junior just in case he’s thinking of making an equally outlandish claim.”

“You do that.”

She opened a drawer and pulled out a form and handed it to me.

“What’s this for?”

“A request to look at the archives.  You have to register, and I have to give you a special card, the key to the history of Arkwon County.”

Where it said signature, I signed it.

“You fill out the rest.  When do you want me to pick up the card?”

“Monday next week.  In the meantime, be careful.”

She said it like she knew I would be walking into trouble.

…

© Charles Heath 2020

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.

Short story writing – don’t try this at home! – Part 3

Where is this story going to start?

Let’s forget about the what and the who and the when for the moment, and figure out the location.

After all, we couldn’t make a movie unless we have somewhere to shoot it.  Those places are called locations, and before a film begins someone has to go out and find locations.

Sometimes it’s easy, because you know where the story is based.

New York, London, Singapore, Moscow.

It’s more likely it will be somewhere you’ve been, or where you live.

I live in Brisbane, in Australia.  Not a lot of people overseas know of it.  Oddly enough before I moved here over 30 years ago, it was just a name on a map.

But the point is, now that I’m here I could write a story based in Brisbane.  Or as easily, in Melbourne, where I also used to live.

Or I could select a place I’ve travelled to, perhaps not once, but a few times, and each time taking photographs and notes about that place, thinking one day I could used it as a location.

I have, and I do.  It’s one of the reasons why I like to travel.  I’m always on the lookout for someplace new.

Several of my books are based in New York, several in London, and various parts of the story find the characters in places like Paris, Rome, Florence, Tuscany, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Moscow.

Then, sometimes when my knowledge is lacking in some of the finer points of the city, Google maps, and Google itself are there to fill in the gaps.  I have virtually driven down streets in London, especially near Kew Gardens and in Knightsbridge, checking locations.

Suffice to say, I know some parts of London like the back of my hand, and recently, before COVID, visited and did a spot check just to be sure.

With COVID 19 causing havoc with travel plans, virtual travel is all I can do at present.

Then there’s building, like houses, apartments, any sort of building which may require some knowledge.

I guess what I’m saying is that there’s more to locations than just saying something is there, it had to fit the area.  Yes, the story is a work of fiction, but sometimes it’s better to have an idea of what’s there, or readers will be disappointed.

Especially if they live in that city, town, village, house or tent.

I actually use the real estate advertisements in a city of town where I want to have a house, because it gives you a map, exterior views, how to get there, and best of all what it looks like inside.

Still can’t afford that $12,000,000 apartment in New York, but the views, there were to die for.

But I, as always, digress…

Now it’s starting to sound like a lot of hard work.

It is.

Even if you go down the ‘pantser’ road, there’s still lot of research to be done.

More confusion tomorrow.

The story behind the story: A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers

To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.

But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.

That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.

It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years.  Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?

My private detective, Harry Walthenson

I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.

But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it.  Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.

Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life.  I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

Then there’s the title, like

The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello

The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister.  And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.

But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.

Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.

Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.

I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021.  It even has a cover.

PIWalthJones1