David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.
Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.
They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?
When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.
When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.
Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.
It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
If at first, you don’t succeed, try a few threats, or leverage.
Or just get rid of the problem
Back in my cell, delivered more forcibly than when they escorted me to the interrogation room, I had time to consider his words.
A tactic, I told myself. Classic divide and conquer.
It was obvious that he wanted me to corroborate his suspicion that Breeman had sent the helicopter out to find his operation. Did it sound like something she would do or any other commanding officer whose jurisdiction this operation fell under?
Why hadn’t they told her? If t was military and being run by our side, why would they keep it secret from their own people, especially when something like what just happened, could happen?
It didn’t make sense.
Unless, of course, it was the CIA. They seemed to be a law unto themselves, except in this case they needed something to incriminate her with in order to have her removed, and replaced with a more sympathetic commanding officer.
It was all too much for a gunnery sergeant like me to understand.
At least I didn’t know anything so I couldn’t tell them anything. A little solace perhaps, but the trouble was, they’d never believe me.
I sighed. Perhaps some sleep before they returned for the next round.
They came in the middle of the night. Or day, I had no idea what it was outside because there were no windows in my cave cell.
They had no intention of being polite, I was dragged up by the scruff of the next and tossed in the direction of the door. When I stumbled, still half asleep and unable to see properly, one of the guards kicked me and said he would do it again if I didn’t get up.
He did anyway because I took too long.
My ribs were hurting when I breathed, as I staggered in front of them, one behind me giving me a shove every two or three steps, perhaps hoping I’d stumble again so he could kick me.
At the interrogation room, a different one this time, he shoved me in and shut the door. I didn’t hear a key in the lock, so perhaps they were hoping I’d try to escape.
There was only one chair in the room, and I sat in it. I couldn’t sit up straight because it hurt, so I had to slump over.
A half hour later a man and a woman, both with white coats like a doctor would wear, came in. Nothing was said. The man took up a position behind me, then held me so I couldn’t move.
The woman then joined him, produced as a syringe, and jabbed it in my neck.
The man let me go, and a few seconds later I fell off the chair onto the floor hitting my head in the process, and a few more after that, it was lights out.
Yes, I see the lighthouse, what’s it doing all the way out there? The thing is, these places are sometimes so remote, I start thinking I should rent one for 6 months and then, without any distractions, I’ll get the blasted book finished.
Until there’s a shipwreck, of course!
Light is of course light, duh. Turn on the switch and let there be light.
Hang on, didn’t someone else say that, millennia ago? Someone famous? It’s on the tip of my tongue.
No! It’s not cyanide…
So, whilst we need it to see everything, it has another meaning…
My, that’s a light load your carrying today, which means not very heavy.
Or, that’s a light-coloured jumper, which means pale.
Oh, and did you light the fire?
And, after you light the fire, do you light out to a safe haven in light traffic because really it was arson, and you got a light sentence the last time enabling you to do it again.
If you are trying to rob someone, then it was a kilo light.
And after a long hard struggle, did you light upon the correct answer?
This is not to be confused with another similar word, lite.
It seems this is only used for describing low-calorie drinks and food, such as lite beer, which seems to me to be a lazy way of not using light
Still, there’s not much other use of the word except as a suffix -lite, but then you’d have to mention -lyte as well.
The message here – just use the damn word light and be done with it.
Whilst it is always an idea to sit down and write and keep going, not worrying too much about the narrative, there’s always the problem of ideas about characters, and relationships that come back and need to be addressed.
I have issues with Jennifer in that we will need to know something about her, and need a little backstory.
Jennifer is the second most important character in this novel and one that has more talents than what my main character, or anyone else for that matter, thinks she has. Of course, that is deliberate on her part for a number of reasons that will be introduced at the appropriate time.
But, at the start, all we will have to work with, is the introduction provided by the narrator.
It may go something like this:
Jennifer Pennington Smythe was, as you might expect, very English, very reserved, and very private. She was the definitive ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, and I was guilty, at first, of suspecting she had once been a schoolmistress due to the severity of dress, demeanor, and expression.
HR had sent her to me when I’d requested an IT Specialist, though of what particular discipline it was never divulged, neither by HR nor by her. She arrived one morning, told me she was to ‘help resolve our technical difficulties’, moved into an office that had been used as a storeroom, and worked hard to prove her worthiness in the role.
My first attempt at conversation was rebuffed, the second met with a very cold stare. Everyone, including me, learned very quickly that any other topic of conversation than work would be ignored. At the time it suited me, there was trouble in paradise and I didn’t want anything more on my plate to deal with.
So, what is this trouble?
There are three distinct stages of this relationship between the two most important characters, and it is the actions of one of the protagonists that brings them together. This particular protagonist, of course, is the main character’s wife, a woman that is on the periphery for the period the novel covers, but a little background will be needed at some point before we reach this part of the narrative.
This now means that I will have to put together a back story for Bill and his ex-wife Ellen, not too much yet but enough to explain the next part of the evolving relationship between Bill and Jennifer.
I’m sure this topic is going to raise it’s head again and again…
It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
If at first, you don’t succeed, try a few threats, or leverage
He took a deep breath, gave me a look a parent would give a miscreant child, and started again.
“What’s the deal with you and Commander Breeman?”
Yes, he does know about her proclivities, but he was hardly in a position to condemn her. He, too, had a ‘thing’ for the female trainees under his command, and one in particular.
“She has to eat, I have to eat, in the same mess as it happens.”
He gave me another of his penetrating glares.
“Nothing else?”
“That would be against regulations, as I think you are fully aware.” I returned his glare but with more intensity.
“What did you discuss over the dinner table?”
Odd question. Not operational matters, if that was what he wanted to hear. But what we spoke about had little relevance to work.
“Cars.”
It was true. She liked restoring old cars from the mid-war period, some of which had been used as props in period movies. I had an old Cadillac, the sort that would fail any fuel economy test.
I could see it was not the answer he was looking for. He would have to ask a specific question in order to get a specific answer one way or the other.
“Did she mention the no-fly zone?”
I thought about it for a moment, and then said, “No, there are no cars out there to speak of.”
“Flippancy doesn’t become you, Alan.”
Perhaps not, but it was all he was going to get.
And for added emphasis, I said, “Like I said to your predecessor, I don’t know how or why you would have to ask the pilot.”
He stood abruptly, nearly knocking the chair over. Angry.
“You know something, Alan, otherwise you would not have been on that helo. She threw you under the bus, and the quicker you realize that the better.”
Instead of making a grand entrance, arriving in style and being greeted by important dignitaries, we are slinking in via an airplane, late at night. It’s hardly the entrance I’d envisaged. At 9:56 the plane touches down on the runway. Outside the plane, it is dark and gloomy and from what I could see, it had been raining. That could, of course, simply be condensation.
Once on the ground, everyone was frantically gathering together everything from seat pockets and sending pillows and blankets to the floor. A few were turning their mobile phones back on, and checking for a signal, and, perhaps, looking for messages sent to them during the last 12 hours. Or perhaps they were just suffering from mobile phone deprivation.
It took 10 minutes for the plane to arrive at the gate. That’s when everyone moves into overdrive, unbuckling belts, some before the seatbelt sign goes off, and are first out of their seats and into the overhead lockers. Most are not taking care that their luggage may have moved, but fortunately, no bags fall out onto someone’s head. The flight had been relatively turbulent free.
When as many people and bags have squeezed into that impossibly small aisle space, we wait for the door to open, and then the privileged few business and first-class passengers to depart before we can begin to leave. As we are somewhere near the middle of the plane, our wait will not be as long as it usually is. This time we avoided being at the back of the plane. Perhaps that privilege awaits us on the return trip.
Once off the plane, it is a matter of following the signs, some of which are not as clear as they could be. It’s why it took another 30 odd minutes to get through immigration, but that was not necessarily without a few hiccups along the way. We got sidetracked at the fingerprint machines, which seemed to have a problem if your fingers were not straight, not in the center of the glass, and then if it was generally cranky, which ours were, continue to tell you to try again, and again, and again, and again…That took 10 to 15 minutes before we joined an incredibly long queue of other arrivals,
A glance at the time, and suddenly it’s nearly an hour from the moment we left the plane.
And…
That’s when we got to the immigration officer, and it became apparent we were going to have to do the fingerprints yet again. Fortunately this time, it didn’t take as long. Once that done, we collected our bags, cleared customs by putting our bags through a huge x-ray machine, and it was off to find our tour guide.
We found several tour guides with their trip-a-deal flags waiting for us to come out of the arrivals hall. It wasn’t a difficult process in the end. We were in the blue group. Other people we had met on the plane were in the red group or the yellow group. The tour guide found, or as it turned out she found us, it was simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the group, of which there were eventually 28.Gathered together we were told we would be taking the bags to one place and then ourselves to the bus in another. A glance in the direction of the bus park, there were a lot of busses.
Here’s a thought, imagine being told your bus is the white one with blue writing on the side.
Yes, yours is, and 25 others because all of the tourist coaches are the same. An early reminder, so that you do not get lost, or, God forbid, get on the wrong bus, for the three days in Beijing, is to get the last five numbers of the bus registration plate and commit them to memory. It’s important. Failing that, the guide’s name is in the front passenger window.
Also, don’t be alarmed if your baggage goes in one direction, and you go in another. In a rather peculiar set up the bags are taken to the hotel by what the guide called the baggage porter. It is an opportunity to see how baggage handlers treat your luggage; much better than the airlines it appears.
That said, if you’re staying at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, be prepared for a long drive from the airport. It took us nearly an hour, and bear in mind that it was very late on a Sunday night.
Climbing out of the bus after what seemed a convoluted drive through a park with buildings, we arrive at the building that will be our hotel for the next three days. From the outside, it looks quite good, and once inside the foyer, that first impression is good. Lots of space, marble, and glass. If you are not already exhausted by the time you arrive, the next task is to get your room key, find your bags, get to your room, and try to get to be ready the next morning at a reasonable hour.
Sorry, that boat has sailed.
We were lucky, we were told, that our plane arrived on time, and we still arrived at the hotel at 12:52. Imagine if the incoming plane is late.
This was taken the following morning. It didn’t look half as bland late at night.
This is the back entrance to Building No 4 but is quite representative of the whole foyer, made completely of marble and glass. It all looked very impressive under the artificial lights, but not so much in the cold hard light of early morning.
This the foyer of the floor our room was on. Marble with interesting carpet designs. Those first impressions of it being a plush hotel were slowly dissipating as we got nearer and nearer to the room. From the elevator, it was a long, long walk.
So…Did I tell you about the bathroom in our room?
The shower and the toilet both share the same space with no divide and the shower curtain doesn’t reach to the floor. Water pressure is phenomenal. Having a shower floods the whole shower plus toilet area so when you go to the toilet you’re basically underwater.
Don’t leave your book or magazine on the floor or it will end up a watery mess.
And the water pressure is so hard that it could cut you in half. Only a small turn of the tap is required to get that tingling sensation going.
It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Old friends, new tricks.
Genial tone, trying to win my confidence. I wasn’t going to ask, but wait for an explanation. Asking would be like leaving the door ajar.
He sat after pulling the chair closer to the table and put his clasped hands on the table.
“This is a secret military operation known only to very few, apart from the team that is in situ. Commander Breeman has been, against very specific direct orders, trying to find out what we are doing here.” He stopped.
I think this was the moment I was supposed to ask, what was going on here.
If it was secret, then I didn’t want to know, and he was not going to tell me anyway.
I just looked attentive.
“You have been caught up in a jurisdictional issue. It’s not hard to assume that you were sent here, with the pilot of that helicopter, to do an off the book search for this camp. That, in itself, would be impossible, but the flyover coincided with a provedore run. Just plain bad luck.”
For Joe, the pilot, it was. Or not, if he had been given specific verbal orders, making it out to be a training run. And the odds of me being on board at the same time, given my association with Breeman?
One coincidence too many.
And if it was as the man before had said, they knew everything, then Bamfield would know of my connection to her.
“You said you had no idea where you were when you were shot down?”
Time, I guess, to speak. “No, I didn’t. The desert looks all the same to me.”
“You will forgive me if I say I find that hard to believe. I know you are better than that, Alan. Who sent you out here?”
“I was along for the ride. Standard operating procedure. A helo goes up, someone like me has to be on board in case of trouble. More conventional trouble than rockets.”
“But you specifically?”
“I don’t make the rosters, I just go where they tell me.”
Bamfield frowned. I think he’d finally noticed I was not addressing him as ‘sir’. Until I knew what side he was on, I considered myself a prisoner of war.
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.
…
Now we have the where and the who. What’s the story going to be about?
I find inspiration in the most unlikely places.
Shopping malls are great, there is so many things going on, so many different types of people, there’s often enough to fill a journal.
Driving on the roads, you get to see some of the most amazing stunt driving, and it’s not even being filmed, it’s just playing out before your very eyes.
Waiting in hospitals, waiting for doctors, accountants, dentists, friends, hanging around coffee shops, cafes, bistros, restaurants, hotels, the list is endless.
But often a reliable source, the media and newspapers in particular, and a frequent go to, and the more obscure the headline the better. Then it’s simply a matter of letting your imagination run free, like:
Four deaths, four mysteries, all homeless.
This poses a few interesting scenarios, such as, were they homeless or were they made to look like they are homeless. If they are genuinely homeless how did they die? Are they connected in any way?
The point is, far from the original story that simply covers four seemingly random deaths, a writer can spin this into a thriller very easily.
It could follow a similar headline in another country where three headlines could be found, say, in London, where a man is found dead in an abandoned building, a week after he died, with no obvious signs of how he died.
A woman is killed in what seems, from the outset, an accident involving two cars, but the kicker is after three days, the driver of the second vehicle just simply disappears.
A man is reported missing after not reporting for work when he was supposed to return from a vacation in Germany.
And the third death, where an obscure piece says a man was found at the bottom of a mountain, presumed to have fallen in a climbing accident.
It’s all in the joining of the imaginary, yet possibly quite real, dots.
You could be on a train, and two people are acting oddly, note I didn’t say suspiciously, when going to or from work.
When on a holiday, you notice that a fellow hotel guest is in the same place at the same time every day but acting like he or she is waiting for someone or something. Then suddenly they’re not there.
But I’m not suggesting for a minute you should start investigating.
Just let the imagination work it’s tricks.
And, before you know it, you’re on that rollercoaster ride.
Time to read 101 things you need to be a writer, and 101 items to consider when writing a book.
You need:
Pen, check. Paper, check. Enthusiasm, not the greatest at this hour, but check. Writing software, I’ve got Scrivener, what have you got? Word? So have I, so I see you, and raise it with Y-Writer. Not sure how to use either yet, but some proficiency with Word. Still using pen, paper, and typewriter. Till I run out of ribbons … do they actually make ribbons anymore?
Writing the book:
The plot, well that will evolve as I’m writing, like the reader I don’t want to know the end yet. Well, I have an idea how it will end, but that could change.
Characters, yes, they are works in progress.
Oh, while I remember, Bill has a past which he doesn’t remember, the events so traumatic, he knows something happened, spent time in the hospital, but was not sure what it was. It will come back, triggered by another traumatic event. It will also fuel dreams or nightmares.
And we need a master criminal, and he is going to be a character called Colonel Davenport. A career soldier turned disillusioned and finds a way to make a living out of the war. A very good living. Led a group, some of whom still exist as his henchmen, the sort who kill without conscience.
Outline, isn’t that written after the book is complete? No? Ok, then the story so far:
1 – Bill is on holidays
2 – Benton calls, emergency, the network is down – Company name Transworld (PK, boring)
3 – Other problems – a dead body for one (Richardson, the Accountant), departmental members unavailable
4 – Police – introduce a new character, Chief Inspector Gator
5 – Arrival at work, meeting with Managers, discuss the situation – new character Aitchison – he is involved somehow ?? The first suggestion is, there is a network within a network
6 – Locating the problem – Introduce Giles the IT officer, Bill meets with Gator, speak about files on servers gone missing (ok, a bit of geek speak here)
7 – Introduce Jennifer, explore their relationship – more geek speak with added humor
8 – Lunch – then Aitchison calls, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
So far so good.
8:00 am, coffee in hand, to the writing room (well, desk anyway!)
A little more profiling on Bill, now with the last name Chandler. Still not sure if I want to keep up the first person narrative, but I’ll worry about that later …
Looking at the mess constituting my room and my life, slob may have been an appropriate description. I considered myself old, overweight though not necessarily fat, hair greying at the edges, and few wrinkles around the eyes, there were no real plusses in my description.
Some said I had a kindly face, but perhaps I had the look of a paternalistic grandfather. There were several men in the office who were the same age and had grandchildren. And some who had children at a time when they should be planning for retirement, not parenthood.
World-weary and perpetually tired, I’d passed mid-life crisis, wondering what it was that affected other men my age. I’d never had the desire for fast cars and even faster women. I had trouble keeping up with Ellen.
I used to think I’d missed a lot in half a lifetime.
Now, I didn’t know what to think.
Did I deserve pity? No.
Did I deserve sympathy? No!
The only person who could get me out of the rut was myself. For years I’d traded on Ellen’s good nature. She deserved better, left me, and was now happier in the arms of a man who I wanted to believe treated her far better than I. She had told me so herself, and judging by her manner, it had to be true. Only recently had she got her smile back, the one that lit her face up, one that infectiously spread happiness to anyone near her.
There were reasons why I became the person I was now. Some might say they were valid. In the cold, hard light of dawn, I could see it was time I stopped using my past as a crutch and got on with the business of living.
Perhaps today would be the first day of the rest of my life.
OK, Jennifer is there, and things are about to change.
Instead of making a grand entrance, arriving in style and being greeted by important dignitaries, we are slinking in via an airplane, late at night. It’s hardly the entrance I’d envisaged. At 9:56 the plane touches down on the runway. Outside the plane, it is dark and gloomy and from what I could see, it had been raining. That could, of course, simply be condensation.
Once on the ground, everyone was frantically gathering together everything from seat pockets and sending pillows and blankets to the floor. A few were turning their mobile phones back on, and checking for a signal, and, perhaps, looking for messages sent to them during the last 12 hours. Or perhaps they were just suffering from mobile phone deprivation.
It took 10 minutes for the plane to arrive at the gate. That’s when everyone moves into overdrive, unbuckling belts, some before the seatbelt sign goes off, and are first out of their seats and into the overhead lockers. Most are not taking care that their luggage may have moved, but fortunately, no bags fall out onto someone’s head. The flight had been relatively turbulent free.
When as many people and bags have squeezed into that impossibly small aisle space, we wait for the door to open, and then the privileged few business and first-class passengers to depart before we can begin to leave. As we are somewhere near the middle of the plane, our wait will not be as long as it usually is. This time we avoided being at the back of the plane. Perhaps that privilege awaits us on the return trip.
Once off the plane, it is a matter of following the signs, some of which are not as clear as they could be. It’s why it took another 30 odd minutes to get through immigration, but that was not necessarily without a few hiccups along the way. We got sidetracked at the fingerprint machines, which seemed to have a problem if your fingers were not straight, not in the center of the glass, and then if it was generally cranky, which ours were, continue to tell you to try again, and again, and again, and again…That took 10 to 15 minutes before we joined an incredibly long queue of other arrivals,
A glance at the time, and suddenly it’s nearly an hour from the moment we left the plane.
And…
That’s when we got to the immigration officer, and it became apparent we were going to have to do the fingerprints yet again. Fortunately this time, it didn’t take as long. Once that done, we collected our bags, cleared customs by putting our bags through a huge x-ray machine, and it was off to find our tour guide.
We found several tour guides with their trip-a-deal flags waiting for us to come out of the arrivals hall. It wasn’t a difficult process in the end. We were in the blue group. Other people we had met on the plane were in the red group or the yellow group. The tour guide found, or as it turned out she found us, it was simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the group, of which there were eventually 28.Gathered together we were told we would be taking the bags to one place and then ourselves to the bus in another. A glance in the direction of the bus park, there were a lot of busses.
Here’s a thought, imagine being told your bus is the white one with blue writing on the side.
Yes, yours is, and 25 others because all of the tourist coaches are the same. An early reminder, so that you do not get lost, or, God forbid, get on the wrong bus, for the three days in Beijing, is to get the last five numbers of the bus registration plate and commit them to memory. It’s important. Failing that, the guide’s name is in the front passenger window.
Also, don’t be alarmed if your baggage goes in one direction, and you go in another. In a rather peculiar set up the bags are taken to the hotel by what the guide called the baggage porter. It is an opportunity to see how baggage handlers treat your luggage; much better than the airlines it appears.
That said, if you’re staying at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, be prepared for a long drive from the airport. It took us nearly an hour, and bear in mind that it was very late on a Sunday night.
Climbing out of the bus after what seemed a convoluted drive through a park with buildings, we arrive at the building that will be our hotel for the next three days. From the outside, it looks quite good, and once inside the foyer, that first impression is good. Lots of space, marble, and glass. If you are not already exhausted by the time you arrive, the next task is to get your room key, find your bags, get to your room, and try to get to be ready the next morning at a reasonable hour.
Sorry, that boat has sailed.
We were lucky, we were told, that our plane arrived on time, and we still arrived at the hotel at 12:52. Imagine if the incoming plane is late.
This was taken the following morning. It didn’t look half as bland late at night.
This is the back entrance to Building No 4 but is quite representative of the whole foyer, made completely of marble and glass. It all looked very impressive under the artificial lights, but not so much in the cold hard light of early morning.
This the foyer of the floor our room was on. Marble with interesting carpet designs. Those first impressions of it being a plush hotel were slowly dissipating as we got nearer and nearer to the room. From the elevator, it was a long, long walk.
So…Did I tell you about the bathroom in our room?
The shower and the toilet both share the same space with no divide and the shower curtain doesn’t reach to the floor. Water pressure is phenomenal. Having a shower floods the whole shower plus toilet area so when you go to the toilet you’re basically underwater.
Don’t leave your book or magazine on the floor or it will end up a watery mess.
And the water pressure is so hard that it could cut you in half. Only a small turn of the tap is required to get that tingling sensation going.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 