Tag: Serial

Past conversations with my cat – 83

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This is Chester.  He has reminded me that it’s Groundhog Day.

So I had to ask, where on earth did you get that from?

Everybody knows it’s Groundhog Day.  He sits there with this knowing look in his face, and it dawns on me, he’s been looking up stuff on the computer again.

I am going to have to remember to turn it off.

In Canada and America maybe, but we don’t have it here because we don’t have the cold and snow like they do.

We have cold because you light the fire.  I’m sure there’s been snow.

Now I know he’s finally losing it.

It’s 35 degrees Celcius outside, and even when it is cold it’s still 16 degrees Celcius, not Fahrenheit.

Look, get with the program here.  We need something to celebrate.

Why?  And a second later realizing I should not ask.

It’s been a bit dull, no mice, no treats, all bad news on the internet.  Oh and by the way, since cats only get cat flu, you want to be careful not to get that new coronavirus going around.

I shake my head.

Now I’m definitely turning off the computer at night.

Cat flu indeed!

 

 

 

Writing about writing a book – Day 11

Once again, instead of writing, I have been obsessing over the planning and creation of a website for the book.

And, that being the case, now I have to give the book a name so I can name the site/blog after it.

The word Starburst has featured in the story so tentatively I’m going to name it “The Starburst Conspiracy”

The site will be on WordPress.  There will be progress blog posts, there will draft writing and possible chapters for beta reading and comment.  There will be separate pages for each of the characters.

I’m not sure how I’m going to build an email list so perhaps I’ll build a following first.

So, having mapped out a plan for the site, I’ve made the first post and written the ‘About’ page which basically gives a bit of history about the book.

Bear in mind the original book of about 400 pages scribbled over a long period of time, and not really a book in the sense of the word (more a collection of ideas set in some form of chronology) and set in the early eighties and will probably stay there but will be the basis for the new novel.

Another interesting aspect of this exercise is to see how far I have come writing-wise in the last 30 years and how easy it is to spot the issues with the original manuscript.

I’ve also created a master page for the cast of characters and only a page for the main character so far.  Others will follow.

There will be another page with an ongoing, updated synopsis.

Shortcuts to these pages, as the information flows will be in subsequent posts.

 

For now, it’s back to writing, after a long gap, and the ideas have been churning in my head.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

Writing about writing a book – Day 10

I’m back to writing, sitting at the desk, pad in front of me, pen in hand.
The only thing lacking, an idea

It’s 9:03 am, too early to start on a six-pack.

I need to try and concentrate on the job at hand, but it isn’t working.

Blogging, websites, Twitter and Facebook, all of these social media problems are swirling around in my mind.

The more I read the more it bothers me that if I don’t have the right social media presence if I do not start to build an email list, all of my efforts in writing a book will come to naught.  And especially so, if I don’t hire a professional to do my cover.  Another problem to add to the ever-growing list.

Then I start trawling the internet for information on marketing and found a plethora of people offering any amount of advice for anything between a ‘small amount’ to a rather large amount that gives comprehensive coverage of most social media platforms for periods of a day, a week or a month.  I don’t have a book so it’s a bit early to be worrying about that.

I move onto the people who offer advice for a cost on how to build a following, how to build a web presence, how to get a thousand Twitter followers, how to get thousands of email followers before the launch.

The trouble is I’m writing a novel, not a nonfiction book, or have some marvelous 30-page ebook on how to do something, for free just to drive people to my site.  I’m a novelist, not a handyman so those ideas while good is not going to help me.  And there are enough people out there telling the rest of us how to be a writer, how to be a marketer and then some.  The problem is, most of them are one long advertisement, offering the ‘real’ answers’ for money.

I’m not sure how many people have my email address, but I’m getting over a hundred emails a day, all asking me to buy some sort of guaranteed service.

Yet another problem to wrestle with along with actually creating a product to sell in the first place.

Except I’m supposed to be writing for the love of it without the premeditated idea of writing for gain or getting rich quick.

What am I missing here?

So should l be writing short stories and offering them for free to drive people to my site?  These would have to be genre-specific so it needs time and effort and fit into a convenient size story that will highlight or showcase my talent.

Or should I create a website for the novel and set up pages for the characters and get some interaction going that way?  It will be difficult without giving the whole plot away so if I do it will have to be carefully managed.  And, in doing so, it will be taking me away from what I’m supposed to be doing, writing.

Of course, I could get someone else to set all this up for me, but I haven’t got fifty dollars, let along the $5,000 they are asking.   Yes, I can create a free site, yes, I can find a cheaper option if I looked hard enough, but, again, it takes me away from my primary objective.

I don’t think I will have a good night’s sleep again with all of these social media problems I’m going to have.

Oh well, back to the book.  It’s time to have a nightmare of a different sort!

 

When I opened my eyes I was in a room, not immediately recognizable, because it looked like my room, in my parent’s house where I grew up, when I was a young boy.

The curtains fluttered on the other side of the room, around the edges a muted light that could have been the moon or street lighting.

It was warm, the breeze pushing pas the curtain material and washing over me in gentle waves.  I was hot and could feel the sweat on my brow.

It reminded me of the long summer days, the warmth stretching into the night, and the cool breezes that made the endless heat bearable, where the only covering you needed was a sheet, and then sometimes not.

There was movement, also, on the other side of the room, a figure curled up in a chair, the form of which was framed as a silhouette against the indistinct light, now a little brighter.  My eyes were rapidly adjusting, and shapes were becoming clearer.

I turned my head slightly and saw a door with a window in it, slightly ajar.  My bedroom door had never had a window,

I tried to speak but couldn’t, my throat dry, and made swallowing difficult.  It felt like something was stuck in my throat.

I tried to think, but it made my head hurt, and, then, a thousand images flashed before my eyes, or what seemed like a thousand, of a time I’d never known about.

Not until now.

Of a past that I’d known was lurking somewhere in my mind.  Of a missing period of my life that had been, up till now, locked away, and beyond my grasp.

And for a good reason.

It was awful.

No.  It was horrendous.

No.  It was worse than that.  Words could not describe the images, the feelings, the despair, the hopelessness.

And then I screamed.  Bound, in pain, feeling a charge of electric current run through me, trying to beg them to stop, only to find my mouth stuffed with a filthy, horrible tasting rag, making me gag.

Then it stopped, and I slumped back, easing the muscles that had tensed in pain, opening my eyes to see a man, Chinese, holding a knife over me, saying, “You will tell me what I want to know” over and over, then slowly pushing the knife near my shoulder, the pain unbearable as I screamed and begged for him to stop.

And as suddenly it started, it stopped.

It had to be a dream.  It had to be.

Then nothing.

 

I’m not sure about the knife wound, what impact or damage it may have or cause so some investigation is needed.

And that’s not where it ends.  More of the nightmare tomorrow!

 

© Charles Heath 2018-2020

A private detective story lends itself to be written in episodes

The 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 was finally completed as Walthenson’s first case, ‘A Case of Working with the Jones Brothers’.

He has now embarked on his second adventure, as yet untitled, but can be found here:

https://www.walthensonpi.com/

 

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 breath life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

 

Searching for locations: Florence, Italy

Apologies now if I have misspelled any street, piazza or any other names.

The first time we arrived in Florence was by train, from Innsbruck in Austria.  We had been booked into the Hotel Brunelleschi, based on the fact it was built over part of a 12th-century monastery, it was conveniently located, and was a luxury hotel.

We took a taxi, not knowing how far it was, and found it tucked away in a street, via Sant’elisabetta, not far from Florence’s cathedral, the Duomo.  The taxi barely fitted through the streets.  First impressions, it was old, second impression, the room we were given was amazing, with a view over the main street, and wafting up from a food shop below, the aroma of newly baked waffles.  We had to have one.

Words cannot describe how amazing it was to wake up that first morning and look out at the bright sunshine and blue sky.  We were in for a hot day, but that wasn’t going to deter the tourist in us.  Of course, after we had a great breakfast.  I particularly liked the crispy bacon.

The first place on the list to visit was the Piazza del Duomo, where the cathedral is located, and the Porta del Paradiso.  We went into the church, and also did a side trip down into the crypt.  We did not climb to the top of Brunelleschi’s cupola.  We tried the pizza, and hearing that the gelato was very expensive in the main part of the city, ventured further afield and found a gelato vendor that was inexpensive.  As the day was very hot it was a welcome relief.

The Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that crosses the Arno.  We walked to the bridge, taking in the views up and down the river before crossing to the other side, then back towards the Piazza Santa Croce.  On our most recent visit there was a football competition, Calcio Fiorentino, in progress that had taken over the whole Piazza, and during the day there was a parade where all the teams and others dressed in the historic clothing dating back to the 15th century.

The Galleria dell’Accademia was also high on the list of places to visit, and we left the hotel early as we had heard the queues are long to get in.  They were right.  We were at the end of a very, very long queue stretching back to Via delgi Alfani.  We were in the queue for about an hour and a half and it didn’t seem to move very quickly.

Then some people passing by said that we could go to the Museo Di San Marco, and purchase tickets to enter the gallery at a particular time.  We had also read or heard something similar, and, taking a risk we left the queue and went in search.  We found it at the Piazza San Marco, purchased tickets for 13:30 and had time to have lunch before turning up at the entrance for our timeslot, and sure enough, with others who had also purchased tickets, we went in.

Just out of curiosity I went back to the queue to see when the people in front of us were, and they still had an hour before gaining admission.

We saw everything that was recommended, including the famous statue of David, though I had a lot of trouble taking a photo when people kept walking in front.

The Piazza Della Signoria has a large number of statues, including another of David, the Marzocco, the symbol of Florence, Il Perseo, the fountain of Neptune, Poseidon, Perseus with the head of Medusa, and a hall of statues adjacent to the Palazzo Vecchio.

Florence is old, the roads are cobbled and narrow, and there are many trails one can follow and discover something new at the end of every twist and turn.

I have to go back, other than the fact I need a new wallet and belt made from Italian leather.  My wife loves the purses and handbags, also leather, though the scarves have only recently been added to her list of most wanted items.

But, in reality, I want to simply soak up the atmosphere, relax, eat the pasta and drink the endless supply of Moretti’s.

Writing about writing a book – Day 9

Blogging, Social  Media, and other stuff.

 

Aren’t there more important things to do like writing?

I think reading the 101 things to do to establish your author brand is finally getting to me.  I leave this to read the last thing before I go to bed and it’s beginning to give me nightmares.

So, for starters, I’ve created a twitter page but I’m not sure what to do with it.  Yet.

Then I created a Facebook page but there is one for authors and I think l have created the wrong one.  It’s very confusing.

And reading 10 things an author shouldn’t do, one of them was not to use Facebook.  Who to believe?

Now I’m lingering at WordPress after googling writer blogs and got a choice of so many, some free, others quite expensive, and I’m not sure what half the stuff is they’re offering.

There’s also Site blog, and there’s collaborative blogging.  Perhaps it’s time to get back to the easy stuff like plotting and writing my book!

That might have been easy if a little voice in my head wasn’t screaming ‘you need a website’.

Once again I’m googling my fingers to the bone trying to decide if I want a free one or pay.  At least if I pay there might not be ghastly ads for porn sites.  That’s one criticism I read that can be a problem.

I decided to pay a nominal amount but now I strike a new problem, I need to get a domain name such as ‘authorname.com’.

I put in my name and it is taken already so in order not to pay the person who snapped it up in the hope of making a million dollars, or perhaps because he has the same name as me and thought of it first, I have to accept one of the variations.

It then gives me the opportunity to buy right now that particular name because it is free, and I found myself working with a hyphen.  It could be worse, I suppose.

It also offers a few extra web domains with different endings such as .com,.info, etc.

What the hell it’s only a few extra dollars and I’ll worry about what to do with them in two years’ time except for the .com which I’ll use now.

The website started and a month paid for, got a .com to link it to, and now all I have to do something with it.  No, I’m not a web designer even after I picked a template that looked author like.

It can wait.

Social media investigated but looks like its going to suck up a lot of my time.

Better get back to the book and write my page, or 1000 words, or 2000 words for the day.

 

I look over at the rubbish bin and it is overflowing.  It looks like a scene out of a bad movie, where the writer pretends he’s a pro basketball player who can’t shoot.

It’s just not flowing.  I’m beginning to hate Bill as a name.  Perhaps I’ll change it to Tarquin.  No, that’s not quite a name that suits the character.  It leads to a mental debate about what is an appropriate name for a character and sends me off into Google land again to see what various names mean.

The name is Bill until I find something better.

I guess that leads to some introspection on how I see, or what I want, the character to be.  So far he’s been married, and divorced, not been much of a husband to his wife, or children, maybe because of what happened to him when he was in the army, something he knows about in a peripheral sense but is about to learn a whole lot more.

Being shot, ending up in a hospital, sparks a memory, in a dream, brought on by a particular type of painkiller, and he is about to remember who and what he was, stuff that he has previously not realized, or knew about.  Those last traumatic events in the war zone caused his memory to be wiped.

It’s not the sort of memories certain people want to be brought into the open.

OK, finally something to work with.

I need to work on the dream or nightmare sequence.

Pen in hand, I start writing…

 

© Charles Heath 2018-2020

In a word: Straight

Yes, that man is straight as an arrow.

Well, in my experience based on the fact many years ago I used to play Cowboys and Indians, and I was always an Indian, I used to make a bow, and arrows, from the limbs of a tree in our back yard, those arrows were never straight.

How they got them so back in the middle ages without a lathe is anybody’s guess.

We all know what straight means, level, even, true, not deviating.  It could be a board, a road, the edge of a piece of paper.

But, of course, there are other meanings like,

He was straight, meaning heterosexual, a question not 50 odd years ago anyone would ask you, and 100 years ago, you wouldn’t dare admit anything but.

In poker, a card game, it is a sequence of five cards, and the sort of straight I’d like to get is ace high.  Chances of that happening, zero per cent.

It can mean being honest, that is, you should be straight with her, though I’m not sure telling your wide you’re having an affair would be conducive to continuing good health.

It could mean immediately, as in, I’ve got a headache and going straight to bed, probably after hearing news of that affair that was best left unspoken.

Perhaps that would be the time to have a whiskey straight, that is without mixers or ice.  I’ve tried, but still, at the very least I need ice.

This is not to be confused with the word strait, which is a narrow waterway between to areas of land.

But, here’s where it gets murky because a company can be in dire straits after being in desperate straits, and a person can be strait-laced, and just to be certain, most lunatics finish up in a straitjacket.

 

Past conversations with my cat – 82

This is Chester.

It’s been a long summer, and it’s not only the heat that’s been bothering him.

It’s been school holidays, and along with many households where it’s not possible for parents to go on holidays, it falls to the grand parents to mind children. It’s a job I take seriously, and also a time to be spent with them before they grow up and disappear into the adult world.

Chester, however, only sees it from a cat’s point of view. To him, they’re trouble, but perhaps not without reason. They did torment him something terrible when they were young.

Of course, what he fails to realise is that children when young don’t quite understand animal etiquette, that is they should be treated with care.

But, I said in their defence, when you were a kitten you were an absolute monster, sinking your claws into everything, ruined lounge chairs and curtains, unravelled balls of wool, and, this was the cruncher, refused to chase mice.

Of course, as usual, when the arguement goes against him, those eyes close, and he pretends he’s asleep. It doesn’t fool me. But once that happens, no one scores any points.

And something else I’ve noticed, his memory is fading.

Of course, I didn’t tell him that they don’t officially go back till Wednesday, so he’s in for a surprise tomorrow morning.

Writing about writing a book – Day 8

I am painfully reminded that I need to have Social Media presence.

Marilyn told me that if I was on ‘Facebook’ I would have been able to follow her ‘adventures’.  If I was on Twitter I could acquire reading followers, and Instagram, to share photos of book covers and my travels.

I drag out the dusty laptop computer, the one that had an email account that goes back to the early days of the internet, and used a VT52 mainframe interface, or at least that was what I think it was called, and fire it up.  The operating system is out of date, error messages on top of error messages.  Thankfully the desktop works, but it too, is out of date, running Windows 97.

Even my mobile phone is more powerful and sophisticated than both my boat anchors.

Time to get into the ‘real’ world!

My writing is now on hold.  Shopping for a new computer, and updating operating system software, is a priority.

 

I am pleasantly surprised at just how inexpensive reasonable good laptop computers cost.  I looked at tablets from Apple, Samsung, and the Surface.  All very nice, but a computer, as big and cumbersome as it is, is still the cheapest option.

My afternoon is taken up with installing windows 10, setting up a Gmail email account, investigating, and signing up for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  I also take out a cheap subscription to Microsoft Office.  I need Word for manuscripts, and Excel to budget, Powerpoint to dazzle.

I take to reading the information about ‘creating an author presence on the internet’ and see that perhaps I need to have a ‘blog’, whatever that is, and a website.

There’s free and there’s not so free.

Damn.  A day wasted in computer and social media land.  They even had something called the ‘cloud’.  I think I have been out of the computer world too long, having transferred into middle management just as the next phase of the computer technology started making an impact.

Tomorrow I tackle blogging.

 

I can’t sleep, not without writing something for the day.  My thoughts have been swirling around Bill and Jennifer, and it’s time to bring them together, and by, guess what, a calamity!

 

I start scribbling:

 

Hospitals were places I rarely visited.  Like others who shared my fear, it would take a rather compelling reason to get me there.  On this occasion, it had been a compelling reason.  If I hadn’t got to the hospital when I did, I would now be dead.

When I woke, it was to disorientation and confusion.  I didn’t remember much of anything that had happened after having lunch with Jennifer, and running into Aitchison.

When I finally came from the depths of unconsciousness and returned to whatever version of reality that was running at the time, I found myself in a position where any movement, including breathing, was painful.

It was dark, the shapes were blurry, and some moved.  As objects slowly came into focus, activity increased, and more people arrived.  My major concern at that time was the sensation of immobility, and of how difficult it was to breathe, or, more to the point, how painful.  Muffled voices spoke in a strange language.  After a short time, consciousness slipped away, as, mercifully, did the pain.

It was another week, though it seemed like a month before I realized where I was.  It had taken a while, but it was definitely a hospital.  One of the shadowy figures also became recognizable.

Jennifer.

She, too, had a number of bandages, and the black and blue look of a person who’d just survived a hit and run.

Then I remembered.

Aitchison.

Outside the restaurant.

When my eyes finally came into focus I looked at her and saw her smile.  Another realization, though it became clearer sometime later, was that my hand was in hers, and as she squeezed it gently, I felt it give me strength.

“Welcome back.”  She was quite close, close enough for her perfume to overpower the clinical disinfectant.

“Where did I go?”  My voice was barely above a whisper, my throat dry.

“We’re not sure.  You died once.  Now you only have eight lives left.”

It was odd that I’d heard it before, somewhere in the distant past, so I believed I had fewer lives to spare.  I looked at her.  “Aitchison?”

“He didn’t make it.”

“You?”

“I got caught in the crossfire.  So did you.  The police said Aitchison was the target.  We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I’d heard that before, too.  I think that was Richardson’s problem, and he’d suffered the same fate, but his end result was terminal.

The conversation had exhausted me, and the pain returned.  It was still difficult to breathe, and I dared not look where most of the tubes were going.  Tears ran down my cheeks as the pain became unbearable.  I heard her call a nurse, and not long after the pain receded.  So did my consciousness.

 

Enough, it’s time for sleep.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

In a word: Dry

We all know what this means, without moisture, in other words not wet.

It could also mean dull factually, as in reading some non-fiction books, and quite often those prescribed as mandatory reading at school.

You could also have a dry sense of humour, where you have to be on your game to understand, or get, the humour.

It could also describe boredom by saying that it’s like watching paint dry.

For those who like a bit of a tipple, the last place you want to go is a dry bar, where no alcohol is served.

Perhaps this should be mandatory for weddings and funerals, places where feelings often run very high and do not need the stimulus of half a dozen double Scotches.

And speaking of alcohol and cider in particular, you can have it sweet, dry, or draft. Many people prefer dry, sometimes the drier the better, especially wine, and oddly martinis.

Aside from whether they are shaken or stirred.

But the most fascinating version of dry is dry cleaning. Just how can you ‘dry’ clean clothes?

Would that be what they call an oxymoron?