Tag: Thrillers

Searching for Locations: Venice, Italy

Venice is definitely a city to explore.  It has an incredible number of canals and walkways, and each time we would start our exploration at St Marks square when it’s not underwater

Everyone I have spoken to about exploring Venice has told me how easy it is to get lost.  It has not happened to me, but with the infinite number of ways you can go, I guess it is possible.

We started our exploration of Venice in St Marks square, where, on one side there was the Museo di Palazzo Ducale and, next door, the Basilica di San Marco.  Early morning and/or at high tide, water can be seen bubbling up from under the square, partially flooding it.  I have seen this happen several times.  Each morning as we walked from the hotel (the time we stayed in the Savoia and Jolanda) we passed the Bridge of Sighs.

Around the other three sides of the square are archways and shops.  We have bought both confectionary and souvenirs from some of these stores, albeit relatively expensive.  Prices are cheaper in stores that are away from the square and we found some of these when we walked from St Marks square to the Railway station, through many walkways, and crossing many bridges, and passing through a number of small piazzas.

That day, after the trek, we caught the waterbus back to San Marco, and then went on the tour of the Museo di Palazzo Du which included the dungeons and the Bridge of Sighs from the inside.  It took a few hours, longer than I’d anticipated because there was so much to see.

The next day, we caught the waterbus from San Marco to the Ponte di Rialto bridge.  Just upstream from the wharf there was a very large passenger ship, and I noticed there were a number of passengers from the ship on the waterbus, one of whom spoke to us about visiting Venice.  I didn’t realize we looked like professional tourists who knew where we were going.

After a pleasant conversation, and taking in the views up and down the Grand Canal, we disembarked and headed for the bridge, looking at the shops, mostly selling upmarket and expensive gifts, and eventually crossing to the other side where there was a lot of small market type stalls selling souvenirs as well as clothes, and most importantly, it being a hot day, cold Limonata.  This was my first taste of Limonata and I was hooked.

Continuing on from there was a wide street at the end and a number of restaurants where we had lunch.  We had a map of Venice and I was going to plot a course back to the hotel, taking what would be a large circular route that would come out at the Accademia Bridge, and further on to the Terminal Fusina Venezia where there was another church to explore, the Santa Maria del Rosario.

This is a photo of the Hilton Hotel from the other side of the canal.

It was useful knowledge for the second time we visited Venice because the waterbus from the Hilton hotel made its first stop, before San Marco, there.  We also discovered on that second visit a number of restaurants on the way from the terminal and church to the Accademia Bridge.

This is looking back towards San Marco from the Accademia Bridge:

And this, looking towards the docks:

Items to note:

Restaurants off the beaten track were much cheaper and the food a lot different to that in the middle of the tourist areas.

There are a lot of churches, big and small, tucked away in interesting spots where there are small piazza’s.  You can look in all of them, though some asked for a small fee.

Souvenirs, coffee, and confectionary are very expensive in St Marks square.

Writing about writing a book – Day 21

I’m back to writing Bill’s backstory, and how he got mixed up in the war, and a few other details which will play out later on.

This will be some of it, in his own words:

…

I think I volunteered for active duty in Vietnam.

It was either that, or I had been volunteered by my prospective father-in-law.  I was serving under his command in an Army Camp for some time, and unbeknownst to me for a time, I had been dating his daughter.

The daughter of a General.  It was like that adage, ‘marrying the boss’s daughter’.  Only this boss was the bastard of all bastards.  When he found out, my life became hell.  As a Corporal, he told me I was far beneath his expectations of the right man for his daughter.  He thought she would be better off with a Colonel.

Then I got my orders.  I was to join the latest batch of nashos on their way to the latest theatre of war.  But before that, Ellen, a woman with a mind of her own, and sometimes daring enough to defy her father, said we should get married, and I being the young fool I did, in a registry office, the day before I left for the war.

I promised to be faithful, as all newly married men did, and that I would come back to her.  We had all heard the stories coming out of Southeast Asia, where the war was not going so well, for us, or the Americans, and that this was a final effort.

When we landed, we were greeted by the men leaving.  They were glad to be going home.  And I chose not to believe some of the stories.  Nothing could be as bad as they painted it.

Could it?

 

I’d been trained for war.  I could handle a weapon, several actually, and I could if I had to kill the enemy.  After all, it was my job.  I was defending Queen and country.

I was a regular soldier, not a nasho.  Not one of the mostly terrified boys who’d hardly reached anything approaching manhood, some all gung-ho, others frightened out of their minds.  As a regular soldier, this was where I was supposed to be.

But being sent to a war to fight, and having to fight, I soon discovered were two very different things.  On the training ground, even training with live ammunition, being shot at, mortared, and chased through the jungles of North Queensland, it was not the same, on the ground in Saigon.

It was relentlessly hot, steamy, raining, and fine.  Or dry and dusty.  But in any of the conditions, it was uncomfortable being hot all the time.  During the day, and during the night.

Then we were sent out to join various units.  Mine was north, where, I wasn’t quite sure, where the motley remains of the group were bolstered by us, new people.  Morale was not good, as we arrived in the torrential rain in an air transport that had seen better days, and notable for two events, the fact we were shot at several times and taking out the first casualty before we arrived, and the near-crash landing when we did.

I soon learned the value of the statement, ‘any landing you walk away from is a good one’.

 …

Yes, seems like a good start to a bad end.  More on this tomorrow while I’m in the mood.

…

© Charles Heath 2016-2024

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

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

This is not meant to be a treatise on short story writing.  Far be it for me to advise anyone on the subject.  I prefer to say how it is that I do it so you can learn all of the pitfalls in one go.

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, the list is endless.

But the best source, newspapers, and the more obscure the headline the better, and then just let 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’re homeless.  Are they connected in any way?

The point is, far from the original story that simply covers four seemingly random murders, a writer can turn 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, where, 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.

Where an obscure piece says that 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 dots.

 

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 58

What story does it inspire?

…

…

As we all know from folklore, there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But…

Here’s the thing – you cannot get to the end of the rainbow.

I know, I’ve tried. A few years back in New Zealand, we were coming down the mountain road and at the turn, that’s where the rainbow ended. It was quite clear, there, before us, but by the time we reached it, a few seconds later, it was gone.

So, what do rainbows represent?

The technical reality is that it is just light refracting on raindrops. Boring, huh?

How about something more positive, that it is a symbol of hope.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Iris the goddess of the rainbow was one of the messengers of the gods.

In other mythology, a leprechaun buries a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

However…

If we are going to consider the possibilities of using a rainbow in a story, whether it is the catalyst for an event, either good or bad, since I prefer the glass-half-full version, let’s just say our protagonist, at a very low point after some devastating news, just happens t look out and see a rainbow.

What happens after that is up to your imagination…

“The Enemy Within” – the editor’s third draft – Day 29

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.

And so it begins…

…

What’s a spy story without an insidious plot?

…

So, the world of the spy is usually in the most expensive clothes, the most expensive cars, staying in six-star hotels, high rolling in the best casinos, in the company of very beautiful women. Also let’s not forget they can shoot with almost any weapon from a Luger to a sniper rifle, to a portable land-to-air missile launcher, they can fly any sort of plane or helicopter, and to finance all this, a briefcase full of money, six different passports, and whatever documents might be needed in a crunch situation.

Let’s not forget that he or she is an expert in martial arts and self-defence, and the notion of taking on six assailants at once does not faze them one bit.

Yes, larger than life.

But do they have to be? I mean, at some point our agent has to be a newbie in the field, after months and months of training in all the essential things they need to know.

That first job in the field.

Will they succeed, or will they be found out and killed before they draw their second breath?

This story starts out as a first mission of a newbie, and the fact that from the moment he is on the ground in the target zone, everything goes wrong. He is still working on the premise that those who sent him had researched the mission and planned for a basic safe working space. After all, it was a matter of going in, getting the target, and getting out. Since no one else was supposed to know they were coming, it should have been simple.

Shouldn’t it?

“The Enemy Within” – the editor’s third draft – Day 29

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.

And so it begins…

…

What’s a spy story without an insidious plot?

…

So, the world of the spy is usually in the most expensive clothes, the most expensive cars, staying in six-star hotels, high rolling in the best casinos, in the company of very beautiful women. Also let’s not forget they can shoot with almost any weapon from a Luger to a sniper rifle, to a portable land-to-air missile launcher, they can fly any sort of plane or helicopter, and to finance all this, a briefcase full of money, six different passports, and whatever documents might be needed in a crunch situation.

Let’s not forget that he or she is an expert in martial arts and self-defence, and the notion of taking on six assailants at once does not faze them one bit.

Yes, larger than life.

But do they have to be? I mean, at some point our agent has to be a newbie in the field, after months and months of training in all the essential things they need to know.

That first job in the field.

Will they succeed, or will they be found out and killed before they draw their second breath?

This story starts out as a first mission of a newbie, and the fact that from the moment he is on the ground in the target zone, everything goes wrong. He is still working on the premise that those who sent him had researched the mission and planned for a basic safe working space. After all, it was a matter of going in, getting the target, and getting out. Since no one else was supposed to know they were coming, it should have been simple.

Shouldn’t it?

“The Enemy Within” – the editor’s third draft – Day 24

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.

And so it begins…

…

Are we no better than them?

…

At what point do you tell yourself that

  • You are doing this for King and country
  • The end justifies the means
  • You are on the right side of justice
  • Bad people get what they deserve

Can you truly tell yourself that doing to them what they did to you is morally justified?

I’m not sure Jack is fully across what it is he has to do in order to find out what he wants to know.

It’s fine to tell yourself it’s what they do to you when the roles are reversed, but the question had to be, is there another way?

Well, the first interview went as expected. No information told that they know nothing, they are just foot soldiers told to act on orders, not question them, and no they don’t know who the person is that sent on your mission other than the operations officer.

The fix-it men, those who are little more than thugs in cheap suits are a case in point. They dish out the violence to achieve an end or carry out an assassination when asked.

He tried to do it the easy way. He soon learns there is no easy way.

“The Enemy Within” – the editor’s third draft – Day 24

This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.

And so it begins…

…

Are we no better than them?

…

At what point do you tell yourself that

  • You are doing this for King and country
  • The end justifies the means
  • You are on the right side of justice
  • Bad people get what they deserve

Can you truly tell yourself that doing to them what they did to you is morally justified?

I’m not sure Jack is fully across what it is he has to do in order to find out what he wants to know.

It’s fine to tell yourself it’s what they do to you when the roles are reversed, but the question had to be, is there another way?

Well, the first interview went as expected. No information told that they know nothing, they are just foot soldiers told to act on orders, not question them, and no they don’t know who the person is that sent on your mission other than the operations officer.

The fix-it men, those who are little more than thugs in cheap suits are a case in point. They dish out the violence to achieve an end or carry out an assassination when asked.

He tried to do it the easy way. He soon learns there is no easy way.