Posted in Authors, Books, Crime, Crime fiction, Debut novel, Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Noir, Novels, Pat Black, Writing
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Crime, Debut novel, fiction, Novels, Pat Black, PR Black, The Family, Thriller, writing
My debut novel, The Family, is available now for Kindle, Kobo, Google Play Books, Apple Books and NOOK.
Becky Morgan is a survivor.
Her family were wiped out by a serial killer in France 20 years ago.
She was the girl who got away.
Now, she’s looking for the killer – but he has his own unfinished business to take care of…
Who will win this deadly game of cat and mouse?
25 Thursday Apr 2019
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It’s all about you – what’s your and what’s your story?
I’m Lisa Hobman and I grew up in West Yorkshire. In 2012 my family and I relocated to Scotland after falling in love with place during holidays. It was after this that I began my writing career and have since published 14 books.
Tell us a bit about your latest book.
A Summer of New Beginnings is set along the stunning north coast 500 route in the Scottish Highlands. It tells the story of broken hearted, luxury travel writer, Zara, who is suddenly catapulted front her comfort zone and asked to cover the route by bicycle! She expects to hate every second but along the way learns lots of new things about herself and human nature in general. It’s a romantic story with a few giggles and a wee bit of a The Proclaimers along the way.
What do you love about your chosen genre?
I’m a total romantic at heart, so I love to be the weaver of spells that sprinkle a little love into my characters’ lives.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’m reading the Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series and absolutely loving it. I like to read outside of the genre I write to expand my horizons. I’ve just finished binge reading all of Lisa Jewell’s suspense novels too.
Movie magic: what actors would you cast in the big-screen version of your book?
Ooooh now then… I think Richard Madden would have to play Lachy, dark and brooding but with a sense of humour. And I think Charlotte Ritchie would play a great Zara! Quite demure and very pretty but with an inner strength and great comedy timing!
What writing projects are next for you?
I’m currently working on the first of what I hope will be a series set on the Isle of Skye. Having visited a few times it feels like the perfect setting for a story. The scenery is breathtaking and I’m excited about bringing it the attention of my readers.
Many thanks to Lisa for dropping by The Ox. You can connect with her right here:
Twitter: @LisaJHobmanAuth
Facebook: facebook.com/LisaJHobmanAuthor
Instagram: @Lisahobmanauthor
17 Wednesday Apr 2019
Another interview with a team-mate from Aria fiction – psychological thriller author Karen Osman!
It’s all about you – what’s your name and what’s your story?
My name is Karen Osman and I’m an author, writing psychological thriller books. I have always written in some form or another from a very young age. I loved it and it was, and continues to be, a daily part of my life – even on holidays! I started writing novels in 2016, when I won the Montegrappa Writing Prize for The Good Mother, which then led to a three-book deal. Prior to that, I set up my own business, Travel Ink, offering content writing services to the travel and tourism industry which still runs today.
Tell us more about your latest book, The Home.
My second novel, The Home, is a psychological thriller, set between the 1970s and 1980s, about successful career woman Angela whose memories of an abusive children’s home affect her adult life. The book delves into the darkness of living in a children’s home, casting a shadow over family ties and what it means to belong. Abandoned as a baby, Angela is desperate to escape her supposed refuge, yet despite being adopted and taken into the hearts of a wealthy couple, the scars of her childhood remain. When Angela discovers the identity of her birth mother Evelyn, their reunion is no fairy tale and as sinister events start to unfold, Evelyn fears she may not survive her daughter’s return.
It was motherhood that inspired the plot; As a mother of two young sons (aged 2 and 4) myself, I still remember that double-edged maelstrom of emotion of those new-born days – a mix of joy and worry – and it’s been a powerful influence in my writing for my new book, The Home. At the same time, I was researching about the horrors of children’s homes in the ‘60s and ‘70s, much of which only came to light many years later.
It’s incredibly disturbing that such events could have happened in places which are supposed to protect children. From here, I started to develop the outline of a plot and the character of Angela was born.
What do you love about your chosen genre?
I love everything about psychological thrillers including the pace, the plot, and the whole premise that even the best of people can be driven to carry out chilling deeds. I also like the fact that this genre makes the reader think and try and work out the twists.
What are you reading at the moment?
Cecilia Ahern’s Roar – a fabulous book. I run an online show called Karen’s Bookshelf and it’s actually the book of the month for that.
Movie Magic – what actors would you cast in the big-screen version of your book?
Angela, one of the main protagonists, is 27 years old, ambitious and career driven and the 1980s, when the book was set, was an interesting time for women. On the one hand, Margaret Thatcher was a powerful example of what could be achieved by women, but on the other hand, sexism was very much present. I could imagine someone like Margot Robbie playing the role. The hardworking personality of Angela is the polar opposite of her birth mother Evelyn, the other main character, who is content to rely on government support and often plays the role of the victim, abstaining from as much responsibility as she can get away with. Maybe Jessica Lange?
What are you working on next?
My third novel, The Perfect Lie, is about a lawyer who is representing a young woman who has been raped. As the case develops, the lawyer is reminded of a past she would rather forget and her perfect life starts to unravel. It’s out in September 2019.
For more info, visit www.karenosman.com
27 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted in Authors, Books, Crime, Crime fiction, Fiction, Interview, Literature, Mystery, Writing
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Here’s an interview with my Aria fiction team-mate Anita Davison – author of the Flora Maguire mystery series!
It’s all about you – what’s your name and what’s your story?
Anita Davison and I’m long enough in the tooth for my story to take up far too much of this blog so I’ll just go with frustrated historian who took to writing when the kids left home. Not because I suffered from empty nest syndrome but, with them out the way I finally had some time to write.
Tell us a bit about your latest book.
My most recently published novel is The Bloomsbury Affair from Aria Fiction which is the fifth book in the Flora Maguire Mysteries, a series of Edwardian cosy mysteries set in London and Cheltenham.
What do you love about your chosen genre?
Historical fiction has always been my preferred genre to read, but when I began to write, I was conscious of the fact that authors writing stories about real historical characters did a far better job than I could. I love murder mysteries so decided to use the historical aspect to create atmosphere, interest and flavour with an additional problem for the heroine to solve. My amateur sleuth has to wheedle out culprits without most of the modern methods of crime detection and forensic science, so the research aspect was great fun not to mention fascinating.
What are you reading at the moment?
A much-anticipated murder mysteries series written by an author friend of mine, Alison Stuart, the first of which is called Singapore Sapphire due for release this year.
Movie magic: what actors would you cast in the big-screen version of your book?
All the romantic looking ones who look good in period costume – Rupert Friend, Matthew McFadden, Aiden Turner, Tom Burke, Dan Stevens, Kit Harington, Daniel Day Lewis – Ooh sorry did you want some girls too? OK then here’s a few-
Saoirse Ronan, Jenna Coleman, Eleanor Tomlinson, and I would love Kelly Riley to play Flora’s mother. [She’ll need ageing a little though – sorry Kelly]
What writing projects are next for you?
I’m toying with a possible sixth book in the Flora Maguire Series but need to have a serious discussion with my publisher about that. Another project I have in mind is a murder mystery in London set in 1915. While my heroine’s husband is fighting on the Western Front, she discovers her best friend murdered and is determined to find out who killed her with the help of her suffragette aunt who persuades her to volunteer at the Women’s Military Hospital on Endell Street, staffed entirely by women to treat war wounded. Similar to the Flora Maguire stories but with more drama.
Many thanks for inviting me onto the blog!
No, thank you!
Connect with Anita right here:
Website: www.anitadavison.co.uk
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/anita.davison
GOODREADS: http://www.goodreads.com/AnitaDavison
TWITTER: @AnitaSDavison
22 Wednesday Jun 2016
Posted in Authors, Books, Drama, Fiction, Literature, Pat Black, Short Stories, Short Story, This Thing You Humans Call Love, Writing
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Amazon Kindle, Bargain books, Book launch, Celtic FC, Glasgow, Kindle, Loch Lomond, New authors, New books, Road to Loch Lomond, Scotland, Seville, Short stories, Visit Scotland
These days, days, days, run away like horses over the hill
My brand new short story collection, This Thing You Humans Call Love, is now available for you to order.
Don’t be misled, there are no space aliens in this book, though there are a lot of odd creatures and strange new worlds.
Short stories are my favourite things to write. You don’t take an eternity to plan and draft one, you can get right down to business, and if you get it wrong, it’s no big deal to redraft, or simply move on to the next one. If there is such a thing as a professional short story writer, then that’s what I’d like to do when I grow up.
With one glaring exception (which you can read here), these stories are all set in and around Glasgow, or have a very strong connection to the place.
I’ve chosen July 3rd 2016 as my launch date quite deliberately. It marks 30 years since I first started writing a big project, when I was just a kid. It’s the equivalent of Hal 9000 coming online, or Roy Batty being born… hang on, it’s nothing like any of these things.
It’s also the 30th anniversary of the day I found 50p in the street and bought a comic with it. I was delighted with that result.
Anyway, I like the symmetry of it. Hey, I bullshit for a living.
I hope anyone out there crazy enough to buy this book enjoys the tales. I put a lot of me into them. Comparatively speaking, it won’t cost you very much at all.
02 Thursday Jun 2016
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Boats, Book, Fragment, Fragments, Ionian, Lost at sea, Novel, Novels, Ocean, Peril, Rescue, Sea, Shark, Tiger shark, writing
My fingers wanted to type “Motley Crue” there, even after I’d told them not to.
Adrift was my attempt to write about modern-day peril on the high seas. The idea was that a small tourist boat would get lost in the Ionian, or maybe the Med, following a huge storm.
The passengers, a crude cross-section of British society, have to take command of the vessel without any navigation or seamanship skills after the captain – a chancer who cuts corners and maintains his boat on the cheap – suffers a fatal heart attack.
Things get a bit Lord of the Flies as cliques develop, alphas and betas emerge, blood gets spilled, wives are coveted, and food and water runs out. A huge tiger shark begins to stalk the boat, too. Maybe a giant squid, or a fucking sea serpent. Why not?
Sea monsters are about as plausible as a boat remaining lost in the Ionian Sea for any length of time, with rescue planes, GPS navigation, satellite distress signals and god knows what else on hand to help effect a rescue.
The scenario still intrigues me: the notion that our ideas of home, safety and civilisation are as thin as a pane of glass in your patio door. It only takes a moment of crisis to completely change the game, and nudge us towards a more primal state. Hey, for some, the difference is only a pint of lager or two.
I was inspired by my first two “big” foreign holidays which didn’t involve being a drunken dickhead with like-minded dickheads, taken when I was in my mid-20s.
I met some strange people. Probably I seemed like a strange person, to them.
I remember one girl on an overnight cruise ship to Egypt at our dinner table who made a face like a cat’s arsehole just about every time I opened my mouth. It turned out that the three couples assigned to our dinner table were Scottish, English and Irish. My opening line: “Hey, sounds like the start of a joke!”
Everyone laughed politely, except this girl, who made a face which stuck for the rest of the trip. It became horribly obvious that I’d done something to piss her off.
Being a sort-of good, nominally catholic boy at the time, I blamed myself. I thought: it’s my accent. It’s too rough. They don’t understand when I’m being ironic, or simply cracking a joke. My facial default mode isn’t “smile”. They call it “resting bitch face” these days. All of these factors can add up to an unfriendly picture.
The girl came over at the end of the trip and said: “I just want to say sorry to you. I spoke to my husband; I didn’t understand you were joking with the Scots-English-Irish thing.”
So, it wasn’t my fault, after all… she was a moron.
They’re out there, alright.
Separately, we had dinner with two other couples we met, one of whom were extremely well-to-do property developers, while the others were ordinary working folk from Inverness. It was like the Frost Report sketch with the Two Ronnies and John Cleese. I think we were in the middle. Well, possibly. I know my place, anyway. The upper class couple (they passed out business cards at the end of the night) were jaw-droppingly, casually rude about the Inverness woman’s appearance.
I wondered how the clear social stratification on show at the Thai restaurant could be altered by a simple piece of bad luck, or a moment of crisis. Other writers might imagine a wife-swapping party. It goes back to that primal thing again.
I sucked my teeth when I re-read the opening paragraphs, after a gap of more than 10 years. It’s something I was guilty of quite a lot at the time. In describing a woman, I’d start by outlining her body; and by “outlining her body”, I mean things I like about women’s bodies. Their breasts, their legs, their buttocks… possibly their eyes, if I was feeling magnanimous.
I’d probably read too many horror novels by sweaty, bulging-eyed British men in my youth and imbibed some of their prose style. I can’t even put this on the blog, I thought.
But when I read on, I realised my 27-year-old self knew what he was doing. I follow this blunt appraisal by describing the meathead who’s making the original description – a no-necked boor who quickly asserts himself, for all the wrong reasons, when crisis strikes. The type of man who has women categorised, ticked off and possibly even verbally abused without ever taking a look in the mirror himself. Note also his second name: Tamworth.
The description of human bodies as something you might see on a hook in a butcher’s is a very deliberate nod towards what is going to happen later, when matters of the flesh don’t relate so much to idle fancies in the Mediterranean sunshine as something you might actually eat, if you were more than a little peckish.
So, a tip of the hat to my younger self, there. Although for some, head-hopping is a writing no-no.
I received one of my rudest ever pieces of criticism from an agent when I sent the first three chapters off: “This dialogue is not believable at all. If you want to be published, you have to get that right. Can you imagine people saying this stuff in real life?”
Well, obviously, mate. That’s why I wrote it down.
But the final analysis must lie with the reader.
Perhaps I could re-set Adrift in the Tropics, somewhere remote in the Pacific – or any place on this planet where people could plausibly get lost at sea…
Out of all the Undead Books, Adrift is the only one with a premise that I could see making print. Whenever I lose heart, I always tell myself: worse books than this have been published. Much, much worse.
Anyway, here it is: chapter one. Anchors away! (Aweigh? Ole!)
Chas Tamworth could tell that she was British before he even heard her voice. That two-tone sunburn across her shoulders was a dead giveaway, something that marked out the UK holidaymaker from other white sun-seekers, almost an actual anthropological trope. Her exposed skin from the neck down was lobster red as she climbed on board, but the parts of her that peeked out from beneath the bikini top were fishbelly white.
She would’ve been a nice girl if it weren’t for the sunburn, Chas thought. Generously built. Plump. Big up top. Dimples in her cheeks and her stomach as she stepped onto the gangplank towards the boat. Unabashed about her squashy belly, which Chas liked a lot, without knowing why.
Chas turned to his wife Denise and whispered, without taking his eyes off the girl: “She’s well done, eh?”
Denise peered over the rim of her sunglasses. “To a crisp,” she said, without moving her lips.
Denise was draped over the best deckchair, her wire-frame body and tinted hair fully exposed to the early morning sun, a G n’ T in her hands and a novel face down on her lap. She watched the sunburned girl and another man clamber on board the boat, noting the folds in the girl’s exposed stomach as she bent over slightly to drop onto the deck. She seemed ill-at-ease with the gentle swaying of the boat. The man had a cute face but he was a bit stocky. He had on an eyesore of a T-shirt, a psychedelic jumble of horizontal stripes of varying breadth and shade. Denise grimaced. “His T-shirt doesn’t look well,” she said to Chas.
“It’s like a broken TV set,” Chas muttered. Chas – shaven-headed, brawny and hairy-chested – was sat on the second best deckchair, clad only in his bathing shorts and expensive little sandals. He was putting on his sun cream, forcing the last of the Factor Five out of a tube. The tube gasped as he released it. He smeared the cream over himself, squinting as he slipped off his Elvis sunglasses to rub around his eyes.
To the couple stepping onto the boat, Chas’ eyes were surprisingly small once the glasses were off. Sam Bannen, the man with the sunburned woman, thought the big fellow looked a bit piggish as he squinted into the morning sunlight and wrinkled his bulbous nose. Like a football hooligan. Definitely English. He must have a Union Jack beach towel lying around somewhere, Sam thought.
Sam’s wife Lia, the sunburned girl, took his hand as they moved uncertainly onto the deck off the gangplank. The boat was moored at the little harbour and the water was calm, but Lia didn’t quite like the way the world suddenly became unsteady both under her feet and in her line of vision. She had a horror of seasickness, drowning and fish. But she had not considered any of these things as being a possibility when Sam had urged her to go on the one-day cruise around the islands.
She glanced over the side into the sapphire waters, noting the barnacles and other creatures dotted down the length of the pier’s legs and the side of the hull. A tiny school of orange fish huddled around the structure, seemingly taking shelter in the shadow. Even by the side of the docks, it looked deep enough to drown in.
“There’s no chance of a storm or anything, is there?” she asked her husband.
“Actually, there is,” Sam grinned. “But it’s forecast for tomorrow.”
“Bloody hell. I thought there wasn’t going to be any rain at this resort?” Lia tugged her sarong, lifting it a little higher on her midriff. The material chafed her reddened skin and she suppressed an urge to scratch it. There were two other people on the deck already, and they were both looking at her. There was one bald guy with a bull neck; he looked like a rugby player or something, a big lump of a bloke. She had to squint to look at him; the sun glared off his smooth, sweat-beaded head, his scalp seemingly aflame. Beside him there was a skinny girl in a red one-piece bikini sipping a G n’ T.
Lia fancied a G n’ T. “Look, you must be able to get drinks,” she said to Sam. “Already.” She nodded at the couple on the deckchairs. They both nodded back. “I fancy one of those.”
“Looks like a G n’ T,” Sam said. “Bit early for a G n’ T, isn’t it? Even for you.”
They stopped the conversation as they approached the other couple, sitting down on two of the less privileged deckchairs set in the shade. “Morning,” Sam said. “Looks lovely out, eh?”
Chas had put his Elvis sunglasses back on. He smiled at Lia and Sam. “Blooming,” he said. “Another scorcher. By the way, I’m Chas. Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands.
Denise smiled, taking Sam’s proffered hand. She had a firm, dry grip, but she only took hold of his index and middle fingers, a child’s handshake.
“And I’m Denise,” Denise said, after a pause.
**********
“The Firebird,” Amy Smart said, pulling her long blonde hair back into a ponytail. “Stupid name for a ship, don’t you think?”
Struan McPherson put his glasses on and squinted into the sunlight at the boat. There, on the side, was the black lettering etched out against the brilliant white hull. Beside the name was an abstract figure of a fiery phoenix, a sort of red arrow with a beak and orange flames undulating out from the back. From a certain angle it might have been a jellyfish.
“Not appropriate, you’re right. I suppose it’s got some kind of special meaning to the captain. Maybe he doesn’t realise that he’s mixing his metaphors slightly by applying an aeronautical name to a nautical vessel.” Struan’s Highland Scots accent ruffled the vowels, shuddered the consonants; these sounds continued to delight Amy, even after so many years.
“Do you think we should tell the skipper?” she grinned. “Ask him to change it? How about The Fiery Fish?” They were walking along the jetty, bypassing the other yachts and speedboats tied up in the little island harbour. It was still early but there was a lot of activity on board the vessels, ropes and lines rattling, sails sighing on the yacht, chatter as supplies were loaded aboard for that day’s tourist intake. Buoys dipped in and out of the water as the boats rocked gently. The dark-haired, tawny-skinned men untethering lines or loading boxes openly glared at Amy as she walked past them. A few smiled.
Struan didn’t mind this, or didn’t notice. “Perhaps we should wait until we get back to port. It could be a long swim home if he takes offence and decides to make us walk the plank.”
“Doesn’t look like there’s many on board,” Amy said. She could see a few heads bobbing about on the deck just past the gangplank. “I thought we were late. Do you think it’s normal to have just the six passengers?”
“Six is just fine,” Struan said. “It’s not that big a boat. I’m happy enough with the extra space, anyway. You remember all those French people we were squeezed up against the last time we took a boat trip? That was tres mauvais.”
“Get away!” Amy said. “They were fun. It would’ve been a boring trip without them. At least they were having a laugh.”
“Fun? They were rude. They only seemed fun to you because you couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
“They started singing Frere Jacques. That was fun. And I know what that meant. Well… I know how the tune goes, anyway.”
“Bof!”
“Bof yourself.” They linked hands. He gave her a kiss as they went up to the gangplank.
“Ladies first,” she smiled, and motioned Struan to go forward.
****
“That’s the most ginger man I’ve ever seen,” Chas said. He hadn’t meant to say it so loud; Sam barked a short laugh, while Lia’s eyes bulged in astonishment. “Sorry, no offence if any of you are secretly ginger, but…”
“Hey, some of my best friends are ginger,” Sam tittered.
Struan was ginger. His hair was of a darker tint, more like stained wood or ancient terracotta pots unearthed after being buried for centuries. His goatee beard, though, was a few shades brighter, as carrot-red as his hair had been when he was a youngster. He was tall and rangy, and had the look and the three-quarter length shorts of a surfer or an animal rights protester. Then Chas saw who was following up the gangplank and his laughter died away. Tall and blonde, with tiny little shorts and a –
She looked right at him. “Hello!” she called out. “Top of the morning! Whew!” Amy strode past Struan and sat down in the empty deckchair in between Chas and Sam. “What a day!”
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Lia said, from the shade. She twirled her black hair girlishly around her fingers. “Couldn’t have picked a nicer day for a cruise.”
“Whereabouts is our captain?” Struan said, his Scots burr causing everyone’s head to snap up. “Is there anyone else on board?”
Sweaty sock off the starboard bow, Chas thought. He’s got a real live ‘See You Jimmy’ hat on, too. God almighty.
“Don’t know where he’s gone,” Sam said, standing up to shake hands with the newcomers. “He said he had to go pick up some supplies, or somesuch.
****
One hand settled on his paunch, Captain Jack Mills leaned back in his chair and drained off the last of the coffee. He sighed and placed the little cup back in its saucer on the table. From this moment forth, each and every single morning, things begin to get better. He smacked his lips.
Looking up from the cup, he could see the sombre eyes of Gregoris peering down at him from behind the café bar.
“Why do you always look so upset, Gregoris?” Captain Mills said. “You should be pleased to see me.”
“You are a regular source of business,” Gregoris said, in a gritty smoker’s voice, “every morning and every night too, Jack.”
“That I am,” Jack said. “I’m in this fine establishment just about every day, isn’t that true?”
“That’s true, Jack.”
“I’m the first face you see in the morning, and the last arse you kick out at night, wouldn’t you say that was so? I’m almost part of the furniture.”
“Yes, that is so.” Gregoris scratched his white beard. The hairs on his chin, like those on his head, were stiff and spiky like a cat’s whiskers. “What do you want, Jack?”
The Captain cleared his throat and leaned forward. You couldn’t tell how heavy he was when he was standing; six feet three in his socks and almost as broad again, he carried it well. But when the Englishman sat down, it was then you noticed the belly, stoked with liquor and rich food for all the years he’d been on the island. “I’ve got a proposal for you. It just so happens, there’s a vacancy on board my ship.”
Gregoris laughed. “You have many vacancies on your ship Jack. This much, we all know.” He picked up a broom and started sweeping the stone floor. He half-turned his back on the Captain while he worked on a corner.
It wasn’t that Gregoris didn’t like Jack. They had always been civil to one another each morning Jack came in, even after those nights when Jack had stayed till long after the English women had left and the music was switched off, and Gregoris and his brothers had to lift the seafarer’s head off the table and propel him out of the door and into a taxi. Their conversations had become part of the ritual of opening the café for the owner. And yet it was more than just familiarity borne out of habit. Gregoris couldn’t deny that he had a certain fondness for the man; he could burst with the most irrational optimism, that special quality common to all truly hopeless men. But Gregoris would make any excuse to make himself busy if the mornings with Jack dragged on a little and the other customers, regulars or otherwise, took too long to arrive. There was just something tragic about the man, Gregoris decided, something desperate.
“Well, business is picking up,” Jack said. “It so happens I’ve got a charter party today. A tour of the islands. Six good English people, Gregoris. Appearing at the dock, at nine o’clock. And I’m short of a mate.”
Gregoris stopped sweeping. “I see. I thought you had taken on some help?”
Jack made an impatient gesture. “That fool? He jumped ship to work for somebody else. He wasn’t quality, Gregoris. Quality’s hard to find. And you need quality out on the sea. I need a quality man. To do an easy job.”
Gregoris thrust his porcupine chin out, a gesture which always tickled Jack. He looked like an exasperated tortoise. “I told you after the last time, I’m not happy about Yannis going to sea with you. Not the way you carry on at nights. I’m sorry.”
“Ah, Gregoris,” Jack said, leaning back in the chair. “You think I drink on the job? Come on, what do you take me for?”
Gregoris said nothing.
“Look. I just need someone to pour the drinks and untie a few lines for me. It’s nothing difficult. And it’s not like we’re going to get rough seas.”
“This is not what the weather reports tell us.”
“Not till tomorrow, Gregoris. Plus it won’t be as severe as people are saying. I bet it won’t even blow the fluff off your prick.” Gregoris winced at this expression. “Besides. We’ll be back here by ten o’clock. With British airs and graces and the girls slapping our faces.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll pay him double whatever he’s getting in here.”
“Double!” Gregoris spluttered. “Who is your charter, Mr Prime Minister and The Queen?”
“Well, I did say it was good English people,” Captain Jack said, rubbing his thumb and fingers together and leering. “Ones who don’t argue. Ones who always think it’s a fair price. Yes? Come on. Yannis is a big boy now. And it’s cash in his pocket towards his trip to America. Let’s see if he fancies another trip on the ocean waves with his Uncle Jack. See if we can’t toughen him up a bit out there! What do you say?”
Gregoris sighed. “I might be able to spare him. But it all depends on him. I’ll call him and find out.”
“That’s more like it! For that, I’ll have another coffee. I’ll drink to our health.”
“To your health,” Gregoris said, feeling underneath the bar for his mobile phone.
******
Yannis killed the engine on his moped and put it on the kickstand. He could see Jack through the window of his father’s café, leaning back on his chair, his open mouth booming silent laughter. He wondered if Jack had been drinking already; wondered if the big man would be sneaking sips from the bottles he kept in the wheelhouse beside the First Aid kit during the voyage. Yannis had done the sums and he would be mad not to take the trip out on the boat with the old man. Today was his day off and he would have been happier in bed, but the offer was too good to miss. One thing he could say for Captain Jack; the old man was quick enough with his money. Too quick for his own good, maybe, but it was cash towards next year. This was all-important.
He took off his helmet and ran a hand through his thick, curly black hair. Hateful hair; every night he would try his best to flatten and straighten, to tickle and tease it into submission with gel, mousse, even his sister’s spray which made him smell like a pansy. But by midnight, like in the fairytale, it would have unravelled back to its wild, untamed foliage. Some women loved to run their hands through the hair as he served them at the taverna; some were even sober enough to look disgusted when their hands came away covered in the translucent soup he had covered his head with.
Chantelle-Grace had not looked disgusted, though. And she had run her hands through his hair a lot. Chantelle-Grace, who he would be meeting outside the Metro Bar tonight. Alone, she had said; meaning without the squawking friends who had got in Yannis’ way the past couple of nights they had gone out together. There would be plenty of time for him to go home again after the voyage was over for the night, to get cleaned up and put on his good clothes. Chantelle. He mouthed the word to himself without realising it, this tall, handsome young man of nineteen, as he went across the square to the café to meet Captain Jack.
“Thank Christ for that, there he is,” said Chas. The others on the boat looked to the gangplank. There was a tall, heavily-built man lumbering towards them, dressed in khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with buttons missing. He wore a battered-looking cap, with strands of greying hair sticking out from beneath. There was something of an old military colonel in him, Chas thought, or maybe an ex-copper. Something in the posture, his movements precise for such a big man. Definitely a uniform guy; he decided he would chin the skipper about it later on when things got quiet.
The captain had huge hands, and the boat swayed noticeably as he pulled himself aboard. He looks like he could’ve been a bit of a boy in his youth, Sam thought to himself. Looks handy. He noticed Lia grimacing as the vessel swayed a little; her hands strayed to the seat of her deckchair and she gripped it, hard. Perhaps reading his thoughts, Lia smiled at him. “I know. If we sink, that won’t help.”
“It’s the same on a crashing plane, too. Not very effective. Unless there’s a lifeboat under there.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Gritting your teeth can work wonders though.”
“Good morning shipmates!” Captain Jack boomed, presenting himself on deck with a quick salute. “Sorry to have to abandon ship briefly, I was forced into press-ganging this young fellow on board for today’s trip.” He indicated Yannis, who nodded and smiled with his eyes downcast as he followed the captain along the gangplank. Denise looked up, her eyes peering over the rim of her sunglasses. Tasty, she thought. And only a little fellow.
“Now I’ve already met some of you,” – here the Captain nodded to Chas and Denise – “but presently I hope to make everyone’s acquaintance before we set sail for the islands. As you can see, it’s a lovely morning, and conditions are perfect for our voyage today.
“I’m Captain Jack, and I’m in charge of the good ship Firebird. My first mate Lieutenant Yannis is here to assist me, and he’ll be happy to serve you all refreshments at the bar just inside the main cabin. Please feel free to call us ‘sir’ and salute, but this is not an essential on board for today.
“Now before we prepare to cast off, a few safety notices. If, at any point during the trip you should feel seasick, no problem – give me a holler and I’ll be happy to stop the boat, and you can get out for a little walk until you feel better.
“In the event of the boat sinking, you will find lifejackets in the marked cabinets fore and aft. Unfortunately, the emergency helicopter is in for repairs, so lifejackets will need to do if you should go into the briny.
“We set sail at…” he peered at his watch, “ooooh, whenever I feel like it, so in the meantime sit back, make yourselves comfortable, and prepare for a trip into the deep.” There was a smattering of embarrassed applause, started by Sam and Lia. The Captain doffed his cap smartly, then unlocked the wheelhouse at the bow before disappearing inside.
Struan’s gaze followed the captain as he passed through the door, then arched an eyebrow as he spotted a loudhailer system bolted to the wall. “I bet you this guy’s a frustrated comedian,” he said, indicating the speaker. “He’ll be talking to us on that thing all day.”
“What thing?” Denise said. Suddenly, there was a sharp whine as the loudspeaker shrieked into life.
“Apologies ladies and gentlemen, just checking to see if you’re all awake!” Jack’s voice boomed forth. The group burst out laughing.
Yannis began untying the boat from the jetty, fumbling some of the ropes, worrying that he hadn’t got them all. He could see the whole dock collapse in the wake of the Firebird, trailing along behind the boat out to sea. Another part of him was rejoicing at the vision that was the tall English girl with the ponytail, forgetting for the moment all about his Chantelle. It would be a pleasure to serve, he thought.
The holidaymakers chattered away among themselves, pitching in the odd comment to each other about the weather, the apartments they were staying at, all the restaurants and bars they hadn’t enjoyed. The final checks were completed, and then the engines roared into life. Foam surged up from the propellers at the stern; soon the boat began to pilot away from the jetty. At first the motion was so slow, Lia began to wonder if they were moving at all; then she realised that the dock was angling away from the boat. She had a slight moment of disorientation, then a sense of the universe being out of sync, the horizon pulling away from the foreground; then the engines roared again and the boat leapt through the dock and out to sea. Even Denise cheered as the wind caressed their heads and tossed their hair.
Lia stared at the water hissing against the side of the boat, white foam creeping over the deep blue in stark, probing fingers. “This isn’t bad, this!” she cried.
28 Saturday May 2016
Tags
Books, Chapters, Charlie Dimmock, Chick-Lit, Fragment, Home renovation, Minty McGee, Novels, Opening chapters, Phil and Kirstie, Property, Salutary lessons, Sarah Beeny
In those desperate early noughties, I had a crack at chick-lit.
I noticed that even people who weren’t normally into reading bought and read these books – and lots of them. They all seemed to have the same covers and the same plot.
I’ve never looked down my nose at the genre – I read novels about prehistoric sharks eating people – but I supposed that these stories were all written to a strict formula, and if I followed it, I couldn’t miss.
As you’ll see… not the case.
I didn’t have a title but I had the name of my main character: Minty McGee, a red-headed TV property show presenter. She meets someone she doesn’t get on with at first, but eventually sparks fly, etc etc.
More interestingly, I didn’t tell the story from her perspective, but from that of a runner/gopher called Jess – Sancho Panza to Minty’s Don Quixote.
For obvious reasons, I didn’t send my sample chapters to anyone. So this post is an act of literary masochism; but even so, I cannot bear to include the subsequent chapter where we meet Minty’s gay best friend. That would be an act of literary sadism.
I guess you can write novels to formula, and people have made plenty of money doing so for their entire careers. But you can’t reduce them to that. They’re horribly complex things to put together, regardless of whether they’re about giant prehistoric sharks or kooky interior designers. Luckily I didn’t persevere with Minty for too long before taking this on board.
Do play along at home with your “a man wrote this” bingo cards. I’ve got my head in my hands at the part where I say Minty has “a long skirt”, and leave it at that.
I’m not sure what was going on in my mind with Minty McGee. Could she have been a fantasy figure – like Red Sonja, or Sarah Beeny as drawn by Frank Frazetta? There’s definitely an element of that in there. I was careful not to describe her body in any great detail: I thought the hair was enough for the imagination to work with.
In 2004, as now, I thought property renovation shows were the very devil. So many nights I sat at the other end of the sofa, grinding my teeth, as people on television became anxious that their £400,000 budget for a bit of painting and decorating might not be enough.
This was when people talked about a “property market bubble, heading for trouble,” but not too seriously.
I guess it’s all to do with building a secure and comfortable dwelling place, one of the most basic human impulses. But there are other impulses, and as my time as a property TV show widower went on, I began to pay attention to these. I found it difficult to get Sarah Beeny off my mind, or that lass with the red shoes. Kirstie?
I didn’t really fancy her, but I used to fantasise about a night out with Kirstie. She’d start off by telling you about her ex-boyfriend and how badly she missed him. Then she’d get horribly pissed, far too soon. Some bloke called Phil would send her dozens of texts, their tone becoming increasingly desperate, but after a while she’d ignore these. She’d launch herself at you in the taxi queue. You’d participate out of a sense of fascination rather than lust. Disgusted onlookers would tell you to get a room. I think they call this cognitive dissonance. And maybe I had a night out like this, once or twice.
My Sarah Beeny fantasies were more focused on a night in, rather than a night out. How big a house, and how much work would it need? We could convert the loft. I’d spend a lot of time re-plastering the twin room. We could investigate the basement. And so on and so forth.
The garden is strictly Charlie Dimmock’s domain, though. I’d meet her there at dusk. You wouldn’t need a drop of drink. The plants would sigh with the dying light. The air rich with scents and buzzing with invisible activity. You remember Charlie? She had red hair. There’s a lot of Charlie in Minty’s DNA. I have no aptitude for gardening whatsoever.
If there’s any lesson to be learned here, it’s: don’t write something if your heart isn’t in it. Perhaps even more pertinent: don’t try to write positively and without irony about something you hate.
Had I continued with this folly I might have called it The Ballad of Minty McGee. It’s a better title than it deserves…
“Minty, don’t you think this is a bit-”
The car lurched over a speed bump. Jess’ chin touched her chest.
“-Fast?”
Minty slid her sunglasses down her nose and winked at Jess. Her red hair burst out behind her in the wind, streaks of flame flickering against the sunburnt paint of her convertible.
“We’re going to be late,” Minty said.
“We’re not going to be late. Minty, I think I saw sparks there.”
Minty smirked. “Well. You’ve got your seatbelt on, haven’t you?”
“That’s hardly the point,” Jess said. “If we crash and explode, they’ll hardly say: ‘Well, at least they died with their seatbelts on’.”
Minty barrelled through amber lights. Behind other windshields, Jess could see open mouths, bared teeth, bulging eyeballs. “Don’t you like this car?” Jess said. “In one piece?”
“We’re going to be late,” Minty said again.
“We are not going to be late,” Jess said, exasperated. “We meet Jim-Bob and the crew outside the house at one o’clock. It’s ten past twelve. It takes ten minutes to get there. How can we be late?”
“We’re taking a detour,” Minty grinned, her hair caught in the slipstream like a fighter pilot’s scarf.
Jess glanced at the organiser in her lap. “A detour to where? Minty, you know you have to film today, then later on you’re meeting Peter. What detour is this? When did we organise this? Jesus, what was that?” The car lurched again, stuttering over some small obstacle on the road. But Jess hadn’t seen any speed bumps. “A dog? Or a child?”
Minty looked unsure for a moment, biting her lip. “A hole in the road? I dunno.” She glanced at the mirror and wrinkled her nose. “Poor design, that’s probably all it was.”
Jess shook her head. “Okay, so where are we going on this detour?”
“We’re taking a drive. Up the Boulevard.”
Jess snapped shut her organiser. “The Boulevard. Why?”
Minty turned off onto the main road. Trees appeared by the side of the road, brilliant green in the afternoon sun. “This is why. Look at all this,” she said, smiling. “Greenery. Now this is good planning.” The trees lined up on either side of the road, planted in perfect symmetry, all roughly the same height. The road tapered off towards the horizon, white lines shooting forwards. “This is design Jess, my love.”
“Now I know you’re mad,” Jess said.
“Just look at it,” the girl driving the red convertible said as they hurtled down the neat, ordered rows. “It’s all so simple.”
*************
“We’re late,” Minty said, sliding out of the car. She took her time about it too, smoothing down the long skirt, tousling that hair. She slid her sunglasses back on top of her head and clicked a button on her key ring to activate the alarm. Jess always expected this car’s alarm signal to purr, the contented sound of a lean cat curling up on itself. But it simply gave out a cheerful boop and the hood stretched itself out, wrinkles straightening, the soft top resolving itself into hard angles and leather sheen before clicking into place.
Minty watched all this coolly. Then she looked around the street she was parked in. Terraced houses, dirty red brick, sparse patches of grass with concrete bald spots. “Does it say which number we’re supposed to be going to?”
“Well it’s not exactly a number,” Jess said, turning pages back and forth in her organiser. “It’s a house name, but I can’t make out…I can’t even read my own writing… here, what does this say?”
Minty peered at the slanted lettering. “Hmm. ‘Pick up two pints milk, cotton buds, baby wipes’,” she said.
“Funny girl.”
“That’s why I’m the one on TV, honey.”
“Look at the other part of the note,” Jess said. “At the bottom.”
“Ah. The house is called ‘Rhiannon.’ That’s nice.” She looked around the street. “Celtic. Earthy.” Here she bunched her shoulders – “I like it.” She spotted the Orions and the Fiestas, the Puntos and Saxos and Cinquecentos and Bravas. “Not sure if it fits into this neighbourhood, but I like it. Rhiannon. Yes.”
“‘Yes’? Wasn’t it Fleetwood Mac?” Jess said.
Minty took a few seconds, then pretended she got it. “You’re the one who should be on the TV,” she sighed. “Okay. Suppose we’d better get looking. And you should take your time, love,” she added, as Jess began to root around in her bag, trying to find a slot for the organiser among the threaded hairbrush, the torn envelopes, the fingers of lipstick. “We’re late already. That means we have to take it slowly. We don’t rush.”
18 Wednesday May 2016
Posted in Authors, Books, Fiction, Pat Black, Short Stories, Short Story, Writing
Tags
Amazon, Anthology, Cheap books, Collection, Ereader, fiction, Kindle, Short stories, short story, You Be A Pirate Ill Be A Cowboy
You must admit, it’s a decent title.
I’ve changed the cover, as the last one was too busy. I’m not sure about that shade of blue on the banner at the bottom, mind, but that’s easily changed.
This is a full collection of original short stories, and it’ll tide you over until the next one (due out in the summer).
Help push me into the Amazon top one million!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Be-Pirate-Ill-Cowboy-ebook/dp/B01DGOM31A/
15 Sunday May 2016
Tags
Appearance, Books, Cover girl, Disguise, Face, Furry face, Handsome, Hidden, literature, Mask, Mystery, Pat Black, Pig, The Man in the Mask, Ugly, writing
Always on my mind, baby
I’m a writer. But I don’t use my own name. I don’t show my true face. I wear a mask.
My wife isn’t quite sure about this. “Psychologists would have a field day with you,” she says, during playful moods.
At other times, she is outright suspicious. I wonder if she thinks I’m like Kevin Bacon in that dirty invisible man film. Creeping around the internet with my mask on, cackling like a Victorian villain, tying decency to the tracks.
I have my reasons for this disguise. (None of these involve being a dirty invisible Kevin Bacon.)
First, I’ve always thought that, until it starts bringing in money, I’d be embarrassed if my workmates knew about my typing habit.
My job has a little bit to do with this – I’d feel demeaned if colleagues knew I wrote. Most folk would be supportive, I suppose, but it isn’t “most folk” that make the biggest impression in life – it’s the bastards.
It would certainly give some people ammunition to take a pop at me. I have a thick skin, but I know the laws of the jungle. You present a possible weakness, it gets exploited.
This also has a fair bit to do with my childhood, where my activities as a seven-year-old writer and comic book artist were laughed at by some family members.
“Why do you bother with that stupid stuff? Does that girl you drew have boobs?”
An older brother used to find it hilarious to steal the stories and comic strips I wrote and show them to his girlfriends and mates, then delight in telling me how much they laughed about it. When I was nine I wrote an entire illustrated Choose Your Own Adventure-style book about – what else, in 1986? – a Ninja. He was probably a crap Ninja, as I recall, because you could see him on every page. Having conversations with people, etc. He had a cool ninja mask, though.
It took me months. My brother stole it and I never saw it again. I saw him do it. When I asked him what happened, he swore he didn’t know a thing about it.
Where I come from, creativity is a bit effete. It was something I loved, but it became something furtive, something hidden, of necessity. In the closet, you might say.
Secondly, in a world where image is very important, my face isn’t an advantage.
It used to be that writers with actual writing careers could be faceless, an almost perfect scenario where you have a chance of success and even a level of fame while still being able to walk down the street, unrecognised. Nowadays, that’s becoming less likely for authors. You need an online profile to sell yourself, a face to go with the name.
I am increasingly horrified by what I see of my true face in photographs, the changes that time has wrought. Of course, you don’t have to be a writer to realise that you could be this month’s cover star for Faces of Fuck Magazine.
This feeling certainly involves some ego. To paraphrase a chilling statement uttered by a female relative a few years ago: “When you were a wee boy, I used to think you would grow up to be the most handsome man. What happened?”
A while ago I was compared to former Doctor Who actor David Tennant by a drunken woman in a pub, which, while hilarious, I must admit I found flattering. To be clear, I don’t resemble him in the slightest, and I think the woman was off her head. I’ve got dark hair and eyes and a Scottish accent, but that’s it.
Well… I say it was flattering. That was only for a moment, until a friend I was with at the time made a more truthful comparison: “Yes, he’s like David Tennant… in a hall of mirrors.”
To counter this very favourable review, and to give you a more complete picture of what I look like, another drunken woman in a pub a couple of years prior to this compared me to portly breakfast TV host Eamonn Holmes. I should hope there’s no resemblance at all there, either… but she must have said it for a reason.
If someone had handed me a literal mask that day, I should probably have worn it. Certainly I stepped it up in the gym from that day forth.
The truth of my appearance, regrettably, lies in the centre of these two extremes.
So, a mask preserves some dignity.
But on top of that, I enjoy the mystique of the false identity; the hidden face, even though it is mostly in my head. Obviously, a stuffed Highland cow avatar isn’t quite as thrilling and mysterious as being Batman. And I’m not looking to solve crimes or bring justice to people, or indeed do anything remotely important.
But there is the thrill of being part of a conspiracy, no matter how small. And like the masked heroes and supermen, there are some people who do know my real name, the supporters and confidants. They help me get through, and give me a push to carry on.
The thing which some people find hard to grasp is that being Pat Black isn’t about putting a mask on. I feel as if I’ve taken a mask off.
I’ve written about topics and scenarios that I wouldn’t have dreamed of addressing had I written under my own name, out in the open. My writing feels more honest, more real, as a result – and in some cases much more personal, too.
Masks aren’t always a good thing, of course. We all know that internet anonymity can be corrosive, a cover for sadism, spite and jealousy. But rather than indulging my dark side, being Pat Black has set me free. There’s no pressure to be anyone or anything, and that’s liberating.
Pat Black feels like the real me.
This is a smudged picture of the man behind the mask. His identity is safe… for now.
Perhaps one day I’ll be able to take the mask off, and it won’t matter if friends, family or former colleagues know what I get up to in here and elsewhere, under cover of the night.
But for now… you’re stuck with the furry face.
12 Thursday May 2016
Posted in Authors, Books, Crime fiction, Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Novels, Pat Black, Writing
Tags
Book, Books, Fragment, Mortis Lock, Novel, Unfinished novel, writing
And last…
The package contains the Subbuteo Brazilian World Cup squad. The real Subbuteo, not this cardboard shit you get nowadays. Little plastic men, black, bright yellow shirts, the pale blue shorts, the tiny little flicker of the badge on the jersey. Brilliant. How could you not love Brazil? How could you not want to be Brazil?
It might seem like the kind of thing that would make you cry, if you lived in a daytime TV movie. Scott Breely sending me his treasured Brazil squad. Part of his suicide note, I was told. Deep stuff. Days of innocence. Is that… is that a tear in your eye? Compose yourself, come on.
I looked at the little plastic men, resolute little creatures with their hands at their sides in their plastic holders. One of them had survived serious injury; yellowed glue joining his little shins back together after coming to some grief, not a bad job. But he wouldn’t be featuring in any first eleven of mine, I had to be honest.
No-one knew that these plastic men had a secret. In particular, that the box they came in had a secret compartment.
Scott and I would use our Subbuteo sets to take drugs paraphernalia to each other’s houses. Kids’ stuff. Scott’s World Cup edition – with the floodlights and everything, he even had a fucking stadium with fake fans in it, the spoilt bastard – was used to hold bongs, pipes, a rolling machine, the merchandise itself. There was probably no need for all this secrecy, but you know how it is when you’re a kid, especially if you live in a white bread middle class area; the fear of getting caught, the paranoia. The disgrace. We never were nabbed, of course. The plan was foolproof. Even if our mothers ever spotted the bongs and the rollers, they’d never find the drugs; Brazil held the drugs. The aristocrats of world football were also the viceroys of illicit substances and moonlight transactions in our town. There was a little secret compartment in the bottom of the box, quite carefully constructed by Scotty, I must say; just enough to conceal a little deal of hashish we’d get from the stoner guy who worked at the petrol station off the main road.
One last toke, I thought. He wanted me to have one last toke. I unfolded the box parts – carefully, just the way we used to; that compartment would have to get used again, after all – and there wasn’t a deal there. There was a shiny silver key. And a note.
“No-one but you.” It said. And beneath that: “ROSS STREET. BOX 211.”
*****
Ross Street has a storage depot. The depot is synonymous with the street; if you want to take something to storage, you would say you were taking it to Ross Street. It’s a big old warehouse, once used by a tea merchant back in the day, I think. There had been plans to buy it over and turn it into a concert venue, or a car park. But it turned out there was more money in storage. People have a lot of shit out there they want to store, it turns out.
I take my own car in, ignoring my dad’s pleas to stay for some breakfast. It’s easy to get parked in Ross Street; it’s not the busiest part of the town.
As a relic of the city’s mercantile past it’s not the best one there ever was. It’s in a part of town that gradually became run-down; there’s a lot of boarded up shops there now, To Let signs. The lovely sandstone facades are intact on all of the buildings; some of them have just the facades, and nothing else. The stonework is listed, so it can’t be demolished, but everything behind the front has had the wrecking ball put on it. I think of Buster Keaton, the front of the house falling on him, but he goes through the open window and doesn’t get squashed.
Ross Street depot was a handsome building at some point, I suppose. It looked like it had come through a major air bombardment, but escaped with fleshwounds while the neighbours got pummelled. The sandstone is more black than red, and there are little cracks in the windows here and there. The gargoyles have been scared away. Once inside the front door, I’m taken through to the warehouse area by an old guy with a massive gut and a jangling set of keys on his belt. “Right at the back,” he grunts. “Follow the numbers on the signs.”
I walk past row after row of containment units. You wonder what’s in them. Antiques. Missing masterpieces. Munch’s the Scream, boxed up there, shrieking away in the dark. Dead bodies. Shergar. Some of the containers are monolithic, towering over you. Listening to my echoey footsteps in the gloom, I just know there are rats in here somewhere. There’s something about the smell. It’s Ratropolis in here, I think.
You make jokes sometimes because you’re scared.
When I reach section 211 in a series of wooden racks there’s just a trunk in there. When I say trunk, it’s more like a box file of some kind. It’s new and shiny and it has wheels on it, a long handle. Interesting. So I lug it back down the way I came. There’s a little skittering sound to my left and I look just in time to see a pink tail flicking past one of the containment units. “Fuck me,” I say aloud. “Fuckin’ knew it.” I don’t like rats.
Then there’s the sound of a much larger animal behind that containment unit. The stamp of a foot. The rats sprints back the way it came, crosses my path, and disappears behind some of the other units.
I’m aware of the buzzing of the lights. The blood fizzing in my ears.
“Is there… is there someone there?” Even now, I feel it’s best to be polite.
Silence from behind the container. I’m going to have to walk right past it, lugging the container with me. I heard it alright. There is someone behind that container. I don’t move.
“Hey!” A square of light opens in the distance. I hear a set of keys jangle as the outline of the old doorman appears in the portal. “You need a hand up there or what?”
Heading towards that light, I hurry past the container. There’s nobody there of course.
*******
I’ve traded a cupboard in Melbourne for one in the city. I’m on the top floor of some swish new-build flats and taking that container all the way up the stairs is an effort for a little fella like me. I think of old ladies lugging their trolleys full of messages up old tenement steps. Those bitches could probably turn me over no problem at arm wrestling.
I’m not sure what I expect to fly out at me as I open it up. One of those octopus things in Alien maybe, that suck your face off. A giant Looney Tunes boxing glove, an Acme anvil. The world’s most elaborate parting shot. “That’s for Summer ya bass,” a note taped to the glove might say.
I peer inside.
Liked this? Start from the beginning.
…And that’s pretty much all he wrote. There is one other chapter about Jason meeting up with his friend, a lesbian policewoman (“I deserved as much… it’s like every stupid, smutty joke I ever cracked on stage got me in a headlock and snapped on the cuffs, and not in the sexy way, either”). Spot the expository role…
Despite some banter, I haven’t included it here because I wrote it out of sync, and it wouldn’t make much sense.
I have a few of these fragments – I may ping them out here. Next up: terror on the high seas… sorta… in Adrift.
