Tag: suspense

Writing about writing a book – Day 28

So after that rather undramatic ‘off with the fairies’ moment, it’s time to come back to earth.  Holiday or not, there’s always something that can go wrong.

Even when you’ve been told to take some vacation days, and reluctantly stayed home.  The notion that vacation meant going away somewhere doesn’t enter Bill’s mind.

Perhaps he’s like a lot of workaholics, using their job as an excuse to forget about life outside work.

Maybe he was hoping something would go wrong.  Maybe he had considered manufacturing a problem so that he would have to go back.

Maybe not, but that was the sort of employee he was, not one that could willingly take a day away, just in case.

Like now.

 

I’d almost managed to doze off again when the phone rang.

I jumped to its equally shrill sound cutting through the silence.  It had to be a wrong number because no one at work would call me, and I didn’t have many friends, so I let it ring out.  As far as I could remember, it was only the third time it had rung since I’d moved in, four years ago.

Blissful silence.  I looked at the bedside clock.  7 am.  Who called anyone at that hour?

It rang again.

Ignore it, I thought.  If it was anyone, it would be someone from the office.  I’d told them all not to call me, not unless the building was burning down and they were all trapped in it.

And even then, I’d have to think about it.

Burying my head under the pillow didn’t shut out the insistent ringing, compelling me to answer.  Almost reluctantly I rolled back, pulled the telephone out from under the bed, and lifted the receiver to my ear.

“Bill?”

It was Carl Benton, my immediate superior; an insipid, loathsome, irritating little man, the last person I would want to speak to.  He’d insisted I take this leave, that the office could survive without me, adding in his most condescending manner that I needed the break.

I slammed the receiver down in anger.  It was a forlorn gesture.  Seconds later, it rang again.

“I seem to remember you were the one to tell me to go on holiday, that I needed a holiday.  I’m off the roster.  It can’t be that important.  Call someone else.”  I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to speak.  Not this morning.  I was not in the mood to listen to that squeaky, falsetto voice of his, one that always turned into a whine when he didn’t get his way.

And hung up again.

Not that it would do any good.  I knew that even if I was in Tibet, he would still call.  Then I realized it was too early for him to be in the office, and if he was, he would have been dragged out of bed and put in a position where if he didn’t produce results, they might realize just how incompetent he was.

At last, my holiday had some meaning and smiled to myself.  I’d make the bastard sweat.

He left it a few minutes before he rang again.  And I let it ring out.  I could see the expression on his face, bewilderment, changing slowly into suffused anger.  How dare I ignore him!

Another five minutes, then the phone began its shrill insistence again.  Before it rang again, I’d moved it from the floor to the bed.  I counted the rings, to ten, and then picked up the receiver.

“Bill?  Don’t hang up.”  Almost pleading.

“Why?  You said I should go, away from work, away from the phones, away to recharge my batteries, I believe you said.”

“That was Friday.  This is Monday. You’re needed.  Richardson has been found shot dead by his desk.  All hell has broken loose!”  Benton rarely used adjectives, so I assumed when he said all hell had broken loose, it meant something had happened he couldn’t fix.  His flowery language and telegram style had momentarily distracted my attention from Richardson’s fate.

Harold Richardson was an accountant, rather stuffy, but good at his job.  I’d spoken to him probably twice in as many years, and he didn’t strike me as the sort who would kill himself.  So why did I think that?  Benton had only said he was shot.

Benton’s voice went up an octave, a sure sign he was going into meltdown.  “It’s a circus down here.  Jennifer is missing, Giles is not in yet, the network is down, and that bunch of nincompoops you call support staff are running around the office like headless chooks.”

It all came out in a nonstop sentence, followed by a gasp for air.  It gave me time to sift the facts.  Jennifer, my sometime assistant, and responsible for data entry and accounts maintenance, was not there, which in itself was unusual, because she kept longer hours than me, Peter Giles, my youthful assistant, just out of university and still being beaten into shape was not in, and that was usual, so it could only mean one thing.

The network was down.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

 

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 46

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on the back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Chasing leads, maybe

It was all over in the blink of an eye.  The swat team had secured the scene, zip ties, and shoved me into a corner with two burly men standing over me, guns ready in case I tried to escape.

Before the next wave, I had time to consider what just happened.  Obviously, Dobbin or Jan had set the scene.  She lied about being able to track Maury, they found him, brought him back to the room, tortured him, and then killed him.  The few seconds I had to look at the body showed signs of intense interrogation.

A side benefit was to stitch me up for the crime.  The fact the police were at the door a minute after I’d arrived meant they had been waiting for me to come back.  That pointed to Jan as the informant.

But to what end.  If they considered I was the only one who could find the USB, why let me get caught by the police.

Jennifer would be safe.  She had been in the foyer a full ten minutes before I arrived, and was sitting in a corner when I passed her.  If they knew she was involved, she would have been missing.  Hopefully, she would have seen the swat team arrive, and leave.

A few minutes after the swat leader spoke into his two-way radio, a middle-aged woman and a young man in his late 20’s arrived, the woman first, the young man behind her.  A Detective Chief Inspect, or Superintendent, and Detect Sergeant.  He was too well dressed to be a constable,.  One old, one new.

The young man spoke to the swat leader, the woman surveyed the scene, looked at the body, then at me, shaking her head slightly.

I tried to look anonymous if not invisible.  The fact they had found no ID on me would not count well for my situation, or so I had been told.  Nor was the fact I preferred not to speak.

Never volunteer information.

A nod from her and the two swat guards took several steps back.  She pulled a chair over from the side of the bed, and once three feet away, sat down.

“I’m told you are refusing to answer any questions.”

“Refusing to answer and simply not talking is not the same thing.”

“You do speak.”

“When appropriate.”

“What are you doing here?”

“This is my room, along with a young lady, who as you can see, is not here.  That much you should have gleaned from the front desk.”

She pulled a card out of her pocket.  “Alan, and Alice Jones.  Not your real names I suspect., nor very original.  Do you know who the man on the bed is?”

“He told me his name is Maury, not sure of his first name, but that wasn’t his real name.  His other name was Bernie Salvin, but that might also be a fake.  He was one of two men who were in charge of my training.”

“For what?”

“I suspect it might be above your pay grade.”

If she was shocked at that statement she didn’t show it.  In fact, I would not be surprised if she had suspected it was likely it had to do with the clandestine security services.  Torture victims were not an everyday occurrence, or at least I hoped for her sake they weren’t.

She gave a slight sigh.  “And who do you work for?”

“There’s the rub.  I have no idea.  I’ve just been caught in the middle of a bloody awful mess.”

The second rule is always to tell the truth, or as close to it as possible so you don’t have to try and remember a web of lies, and trip yourself up at later interviews.  And keep it simple.

“So, no one I should be calling to verify who you are?”

“No.  Not unless you can revive the man on the bed.  I’m only new, been on the job after training for about a week.  I was part of a team running a surveillance exercise when a shop exploded and the target disappeared.  I’ve been trying to find out what happened.”

Her expression whanged, telling me she was familiar with the event.

“Do you find out anything?”

“Only that the would be a body in the shop, a journalist, that was trying to hand over some sensitive information.   I have no idea what it was, or who he was.  The target, whom I suspected was there for the handover, is now also dead. So, quite literally, two dead ends.  Do I look like someone who could do that to a man?”  I nodded in the direction of the body.

“You’d be surprised who was capable of what.  Do you have a real name?”

“I do, but I won’t be telling you.  You have my work name, that’s as much as I can volunteer.”

“A few days in a dank hole might change that.”

“A few days in a dank hole would be like a holiday compared to the week I’m currently having.”

She smiled, or I thought it was a smile.  “I daresay you might.”

There was a loud noise and some yelling coming from outside the door.  A man burst into the room, two constables in his wake.

A man I didn’t recognize.

She stood.  “Who are you?”

“Richards, MI5.”  He showed her a card, which she glanced at.  She’d no doubt seen them before.

“We’ll be taking over from here.”

“This person?”  She nodded her head in my direction.

“Leave him.  We’ll take care of him.”

“Johnson, Jacobs, let’s leave the room to them.  We’re done here.  Places to be, gentlemen.”  She nodded in my direction.  “Good luck, you’re going to need it.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

Short Story Writing – Don’t try this at home! – Part 6

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, there’s this thing called continuity, but it covers a whole range of writing sins, most of which I eventually get caught out.  Films sometimes miss a few items, like back in the roman days, there are plane trails in the sky, in a 1920’s period piece, there’s a mobile phone sitting on a desk.

Like one minute the hero has a gun, and the next he’s fighting for his life with a knife, and, hey presto, there’s that gun again.  The error might not be that big but you can’t pull out a weapon you don’t have or wasn’t there in the first place.

Similarly, the hero pulls out a mobile phone, but there’s only one problem, it’s 1980, and there are no mobile phones.  Our problem might be that we are so used to doing and using certain things that we might forget, for a minute or two, that were not available in the past.

Then there’s places like hotels and restaurants, both of which change hands and close and reopen with a different owner like someone changes their socks.  There’s no substitute for checking, on the internet of course, whether a Hilton Hotel was in 6th Avenue, New York, in 1920.

The answer is no.  The first Hilton Hotel was in Waco in 1927.  The New York Hilton opened in 1963.

The same goes for the fashion of the day.

I’m no fashion guru, but I have to rely on Google once again to fill in the gaps.

And my all-time favourite, getting the right make and model of car.

Oh, and just for good measure, back in the old days they used acoustic couplers to attach to phones via a serial port to dial-up not a server, but a BBS, Bulletin Board Service, at a rate of 300 baud, or a little while later, 1,200 baud.

There was no internet in general use.  If you wanted to call the office when out, use a telephone box.  Or carrier pigeon.

And the use of language, there’s a lot of stuff relevant today that was not used back then, and there was a lot of stuff back then that isn’t tolerated now.  Some of it might be hard to get your head around. 

It isn’t for me, because I can remember the 1970s and 1980s, but I’m not too sure about allowing some of what happened then to creep into my work.

So, you get the picture.  Try to use the past as the past, or leave it in the past.

Unless it’s a book about time travel, then all bets are off.

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 45

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on the back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Chasing leads, maybe

“Silly question, what were you doing in the hotel with this ‘operative’?”

Yes, it sounded odd the moment I said it, and, if it was the other way around, I’d be thinking the same.

“We joined forces, thinking we were in danger, at the time, not knowing that she was working with Dobbin.  I discovered that later, by chance.  She doesn’t know I know.”

“And she’ll be waiting at the hotel?”

“Dobbin wants the USB.  She believes we’re collaborating, after telling me she works for MI5, on a different mission involving O’Connell.  She had apparently been undercover as a fellow resident at the block where O’Connell had a flat, and a cat.  The cat, of course, had no idea his owner was a secret agent.  The flat was sparsely furnished and didn’t look lived in, so it may have been a safe house.”

“Wheels within wheels.”

“That’s the nature of the job.  Lies, lies, and more lies, nothing is as it seems, and trust no one.”

“Including you?”

“Including me, but keep an open mind, and try not to shoot me.  I’m as all at sea as you are.  And, just to be clear, I’m not sure I believe Quigley that the information is lost.  People like him, and especially his contact, if he was a journalist, tend to have two copies, just in case.  And the explosion might have killed the messenger, but not the information.  Lesson number one, anything is possible, nothing is impossible, and the truth, it really is stranger than fiction.”

“Great.”

A half-hour later I’d parked the car in a parking lot near Charing Cross station.  The plan, if it could be called that, was for me to go back to the room, and for Jennifer to remain in the foyer, and wait.  If anything went wrong she was to leave and wait for a call.  For all intents and purposes, no one knew of her, except perhaps for Severin and Maury, but I wasn’t expecting them to be lurking in the hotel foyer, waiting for me.

As for Dobbin, that was a different story.  It would depend on how impatient he was in getting information on the whereabouts of the USB, and whether he trusted Jan to find out.

I’d soon find out.

The elevator had three others in it, all of who had disembarked floors below mine.   As the last stepped out and the doors closed, it allayed fears of being attacked before I reached the room.

As the doors closed behind me, the silence of the hallway was working on my nerves, until a few steps towards my room I could hear the hissing of an air conditioning intake, and suddenly the starting up of a vacuum cleaner back in the direction I’d just come.

 A cleaner or….

Remember the training for going into confined spaces…

The room was at the end of the passage, a corner room, with two exits after exiting the front door.  I thought about knocking, but, it was my room too, so I used the key and went in.

Lying tied up on the bed was a very dead Maury, three shots to the heart.

And, over the sound of my heart beating very loudly, I could hear the sound of people out in the corridor, followed by pounding on the door.

Then, “Police.”

A second or two after that the door crashed open and six men came into the room, brandishing weapons and shouting for me to get on the floor and show my hands or I would be shot,”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

Short Story Writing – Don’t try this at home! – Part 5

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.

Maybe there’ll be less confusion tomorrow.

“Trouble in Store” – Short stories my way: Point of view

If this story was being written the first person the only perspective or point of view would be that of the narrator.

Since we need to have a number of perspectives it is better done in the third person so we can change between characters and try to understand their motivation.

We might look at the first-person perspective for each of the characters later.

The second of the protagonists is the girl with the gun.  How did she get it?  How did the situation deteriorate so quickly?   What is she going to do?

This is a short story and we need to know something about her, so we have to get to the heat of the matter quickly, so let’s start with:

Her mother said she would never amount to anything, and here she was, with a broken drug addict coming apart because she had been cut off from her money, dragged into coming to this shop to leverage drugs from his dealer at the end of a gun.  It was her fault, Jerry said and made her feel responsible, much the same as her parents and everyone else in her life.

One of life’s losers or just a victim?  This theme can go in any direction.

Then a moment to reflect on why she was here:

Why had she agreed to go with Jerry?  At that moment when she picked up the gun off the floor, she realized it was not out of responsibility or fault, it was out of fear.

That gives us the why; he had obviously tried to make her feel responsible and when that failed, he threatened her.  But now there’s a bigger issue, the gun and a situation spiraling out of control.  The thing is, she has the gun and the power to walk away or make matters worse.

The problem was, she has outed the shopkeeper as a dealer in front of someone who had not known.  That now made him a victim as much as she was.

She looked at the two men facing her, a shopkeeper who was a dealer and a customer scared shitless.  As much as she was.  Her gun hand was shaking.

The scene is set, something has to give.

Time for the shopkeeper to weigh in.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.  Please, put the gun down before someone gets hurt.”

It’s a typical response from a man who realizes he’s in trouble and is trying to make time while he thinks of how to rescue himself from a potentially dangerous situation.

Time to change the perspective again and explore the shopkeeper.

If only Jack hadn’t come in when he did.  He would have the gun, called the police, and brazened his way out of trouble.  Who would the police believe a pair of addicts or a respectable shopkeeper?

Now he had to deal with the fallout, especially if the girl started talking.

 

Next, actions have consequences, building the tension.

 

This section rewritten, moving from Jack as the narrator to the girl, and then to the shopkeeper:

 

Annalisa looked at the two men facing her, a shopkeeper who, despite his protestations, was a dealer and a customer scared shitless.

The poor bastard was not the only one.  This was meant to be simple, arrive at the shop just before closing, force the shopkeeper to hand over the shit, and leave.  Simple.

Except …

The shopkeeper told them to get out.  Simmo started ranting waving the gun around, then collapsed.  A race for the gun which spilled out of his hand, she won.

He was getting the stuff when the customer burst into the shop.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, she thought.

Why had she agreed to go with Jerry?  It was her fault, Jerry had said, and he made her feel responsible for his problems, much the same as her parents and everyone else in her life.

Her mother said she would never amount to anything, and here she was, with a drug addict coming apart because she had been cut off from her money, dragged into coming to this shop to pick up his score from his dealer at the end of a gun.

She heard a strange sound come from beside her and looked down.  Simmo was getting worse, like he had a fever, and was moaning.

The shopkeeper saw an opportunity.  “Listen to me, young lady, I have no idea what you are talking about.  Please, put the gun down before someone gets hurt.  Your friend needs medical help and I can call an ambulance.”

The girl switched her attention back to him.  “Shut up, let me think.  Shit.”

The storekeeper glanced over at the customer.  He’s been in once or twice, probably lived in the neighborhood, but looked the sort who’d prefer to be anywhere but in his shop.  More so now.  If only he hadn’t burst in when he did.  He would have the gun, called the police, and brazened his way out of trouble.  Who would the police believe a pair of addicts or a respectable shopkeeper?

Now he had to deal with the fallout, especially if the girl started talking.

 

© Charles Heath 2016 – 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.

“Trouble in Store” – Short stories my way: Setting the scene

I used to like writing short stories, somewhere between two and five thousand words, but, in the end, it was too much hard work.

No chance of getting into stride with a location description, no real chance of giving a background to a character, it was simply a case of diving straight in.

But …

I’ve been thinking about writing a short story, starting it with a short succinct sentence that will set the tone.

Something like:  “Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun”

What then?

Should he start analyzing what sort of gun it was, did it have a light trigger, was the person holding it shaking, a man or a woman, or a child?

Location, in a house, a disused factory, a shop, a petrol station, the side of the road.

So, where was Jack?

Something like:  “He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.”

For himself or someone else?  Is it day, is it night, or somewhere in between?

Something like:  “He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp, and came through the door, the sound of the bell ringing loudly and the door bashed into it.”

So, Jack’s state of mind, he is in a hurry, careless coming through the door, not expecting anything out of the ordinary.

How would you react when you saw a gun, pointed at Alphonse until the sound of the door warning bell attracted the gunman’s attention?

Is it a gunman?

Something like:  “It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation.  Young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, Alphonse, and then Jack.  A Luger, German, a relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, now pointing at him.”

The punch line:  Cigarettes can kill in more ways than one.

The revelation:  The corner store also supplied the local drug addicts.

The revised start is now:

Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.

He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.

He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp.  His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.

It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation. 

Young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack.  He recognized the gun, a Luger, German, relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.

Jack to another second or two to consider if he could disarm her.  No, the distance was too great.  He put his hands out where she could see them.  No sudden movements, try to remain calm, his heart rate up to the point of cardiac arrest.

Pointing with the gun, she said, “Come in, close the door, and move towards the counter.”

Everything but her hand steady as a rock.  The only telltale sign of stress, the bead of perspiration on her brow.  It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.

Jack shivered and then did as he was told.  She was in an unpredictable category.

“What’s wrong with your friend?”  Jack tried the friendly approach, as he took several slow steps sideways towards the counter.

The shopkeeper, Alphonse, seemed calmer than usual, or the exact opposite spoke instead, “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score.  At the end of his tether, my guess, and came to the wrong place.” 

Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation.  She didn’t look like a user.  The boy on the ground, he did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.

 “Simmo said you sell shit.  You wanna live, ante up.”  She was glaring at Alphonse. 

The language was not her own, she had been to a better class of school, a good girl going through a bad boy phase.

Nest time, point of view.

…

© Charles Heath 2016-2021

Sayings: Irons in the fire

There is an expression you hear a lot, here, there, and everywhere when referring to someone who is very busy, ‘oh, he has a lot of irons in the fire’.

These days we use it as an analogy not to have too many things on the go at the same time, and, in the end, none of them will be finished properly, or finished at all.

There are two old-time literal meanings that can apply to this analogy, the first being that in laundries, they used to have their irons in the fire, warming so that clothes could be ironed. Having too many meant sometimes one would be left too long, and end up scorching the clothes being ironed.

Hopefully, that didn’t happen to a very expensive dress!

The second meaning came from a blacksmith’s foundry where he had iron bars in the fire, heating up so that they could be worked on. Having too many in the fire at once sometimes meant that one became overheated, and ruined.

Conversely, having too many pieces of iron in the fire might cause the fire to be too cool to heat any of the metal bars.

These days, a lot of people need to have a lot of projects on the go at once, in the hope that one or more might suddenly become a winner.

Sadly, that doesn’t happen very often.

And, no, buying a lot of lottery tickets hoping one will win, that is not very likely either.

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 2022