I don’t know about other writers but I try to write something every day. Sometimes it’s only a few lines and at others it just seems to come gushing out. This weekend has been like the second of those states and I am pleased to say I have passed two milestones with the first draft of “Innocent?”

The first of these milestones was the 50,000 word one. That target was not only met but surpassed this morning and I’ve managed nearly another thousand words since then. Those words may seem like arrant nonsense when I come to read over them for the second draft but at least the ideas will be there.

I have my own system for the first drafts of any new writing. On day one I just get it down on paper…or rather into the laptop. Then, the next day or when I come to start writing again, I start by reading from the beginning of the last session, correcting and editing as I go.  Sometimes this means I get very little new stuff written on day two but at least I know that what I wrote on day one now makes some sort of sense and most of the typos have already been fixed. It’s a system that seems to work for me so I’m not planning to make any changes to it, but others of course are free to choose their own methods.

I said earlier I’d achieved two milestones with this new novel. The second of these is that I now know who did it. You’ll have to wait for the book to be finished before you find out exactly what it was that was done and who did it to who but I’m happy that I now know the perpetrator.

You may be surprised that it’s taken me 50,000 words to decide who the crook is but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’ve had an idea all along of course. When I started writing I knew how the novel would end and I had several contenders for the title of the bad guy but, as usual, the characters have taken on a life of their own as the book has progressed. Those who started out being the good guys have developed some bad traits while some of the nasties have shown they do have good sides to their characters. Now however, one stands out as being much more evil than the rest and I can see that he, or she, is the guilty party.

It’s strange how people who are nothing but figments of my imagination can seemingly come alive and go their own way but they always do and this phenomenon is not just true for my novels, other writers have told me it happens to them too. We try to create a world and populate it with characters we conjure from the depths of our sub consciousness I think it’s a signal of our success when these characters come alive on the page, start to create their own roads and to go off in unfathomed of directions.

On the odd occasion when a character is dull and lifeless and has no depth or personality I know it’s time to either ditch the character or to start again with another storyline. So far occurrences like this are very rare, let’s hope they remain so. Happy reading.

Like most writers I am also an avid reader. The latest offerings by my favorite authors were always top of my Christmas wants list and over the years I accumulated a vast number of books. Then my wife gave me my first electronic reader and I was in paradise. So many books available at such reasonable prices, I was spoiled for choice. I couldn’t possibly read them all so how to decide which ones to download?

Naturally I went for those in my favorite genres first but that did not help much so it was a matter of looking at titles and then at the reviews each had gotten and choosing the most popular.

That was a huge help. I bought a lot of ebooks, read them all and enjoyed most of them long before I put any of my own work out there. That was a while ago now and it taught me a lesson. I was trying to sell my books and was desperate for reviews because feedback from the reading public is not only the best way an author has of seeing what he is doing right…or wrong, good reviews are also a way of attracting the browsing reader.

The thing is reviews were slow in coming. Books were being sold but few readers left feedback and this made me realize how selfish I’d been. I’d downloaded all these books and enjoyed reading them but I was very negligent when it came to leaving reviews. I’ve changed that now. I figure if an author can spend months working on a book that gives me pleasure then the least I can do is spend five minutes leaving a review of his or her work. It helps the writer and may encourage them to persevere and write more.

I’m sure you can all see where this is leading now. It’s an unabashed request that those of you who have been driven by curiosity to download and read one of my books leave me a short review; By doing so you will earn my gratitude and will encourage me to get on with “Innocent?” and the other projects that are buzzing around in my head.

Thank you and, just to whet your appetite here is a little more fiction:

The Jade Princess

 My Granddad told me his father was a simple man. Not stupid by any means but sometimes he just did not think ahead. He was also acquisitive. No, not inquisitive - acquisitive. In other words he took things. Nothing big, nothing very valuable you understand, just bits of cash or something that would fetch a few bob in the pawn shop. Usually it was barely enough to buy him a pie and a jug of ale. Except once that is. Just once he hit the big time, in fact he hit it so big it was massive and it left us with our one and only family heirloom.

            From what I can gather Great-Granddad did not rely on his light fingers to earn his living, he actually owned a horse and cart that he used to deliver and transport things. He drove it himself and made enough out of it to keep a roof over the heads of Great Grandma and six kids. Anyway, early in the last century by some mischance he got a job transporting large items from various railway stations to one of the big hotels in the west end. Now you can see the situation, a petty thief with access to the service elevator and all the floors in a very posh hotel? Great-Granddad just had to try his luck and open a few doors occasionally.

            I don’t know whether he managed to steal anything on his previous visits to the place. Perhaps his big hit was a one off but from what I have been told on that particular day he was delivering luggage and helping to carry it up to what we would now call the penthouse suite. Anyway, somehow he was left alone for a while and as was his wont he tried a few door handles. One opened and he found himself in the most luxurious room he had ever seen. Not being one to hang about Great-Granddad naturally looked around for anything that looked as if it might bring a few quid and which was small enough to hide under in his jacket.

            He did not have to look far, in a glass cabinet against the wall was a single item, a small green statuette. He grabbed it and realised immediately that it was the delicately carved figure of a girl. Even he was impressed by its intricacy and not wishing to break it he grabbed a small carved box, emptied the cigarettes it contained into his pocket and then put the figure inside before hiding the box under his coat. Within five minutes he was out of the hotel, sitting on his cart and going home.

            At that time Great-Granddad had seen the inside of more than one London police station and he had learned from his mistakes. Instead of heading for the nearest pawnshop he stopped off on the way home and hid the box and its contents somewhere. He knew that the police would trace him and that they would check his known fences and he was right. What he did not anticipate was the furore his little escapade created.

            Usually if he was suspected of something the local copper would call and take him down to the station. This time they sent a covered police van with an inspector, a sergeant and six burly policemen. Great-Granddad was bodily thrown into the back of the van where a couple of coppers tried to persuade him to talk whilst the rest tore his little terraced house apart. They emptied every drawer and cupboard, ripped up floorboards, dug up the garden and even looked down the privy. Great-Granddad was beaten until he looked like he had been trampled by his horse and he could not think straight but he did not confess. One look at what was happening had persuaded him that if they once pinned this on him he would go away for a very long time indeed and, whilst he had already done various short stints behind bars, the thought of years at hard labour terrified him more than the beating did.

            They kept him for a week. During that time they beat him, cajoled him, promised him they would not prosecute and in the end tried to bribe him. He was a stubborn old cuss though, and he would not give them the satisfaction of admitting what he had done so eventually they had to let him go. During his interrogations he had picked up a little of what it was that he had started but it was not until he got home that he realised the full extent of his crime.

            It turned out that the green figure was a thirteenth century Japanese carving known as the Jade Princess. It belonged to the Emperor of Japan, was apparently priceless and had been brought to England by a Japanese Prince for exhibition in the British Museum. It’s loss had caused a major diplomatic incident and had made headlines in every newspaper across Europe. The figure was unique though and was instantly recognisable so  the police were promising that the moment the thief tried to dispose of it they would have him.

            Now, as I said at the start of this, Great-Granddad was a simple soul but he was not stupid. Whether he retrieved the cigarette box and its precious contents and then hid them again I don’t know but from that day on he denied all knowledge of the theft no matter who asked him. He realised that he could not sell the figure, his usual sources would not touch it and he had no way of contacting those who might have been tempted to buy it so he hung on to it.

Some time before he passed on he must have fetched the box from its hiding place because as he lay breathing his last he told his eldest son, my Granddad, the story and showed him the figure. That is how it has been ever since. The old carved box and the Jade Princess have been passed on from father to eldest son. It is never put on show but we know where it is and we can look at it whenever we want. I was given it by my Dad on the day that the doctor told him that the thirty a day he had smoked since he was twelve years old were finally going to kill him.

            He lasted just six months after that but it is a pity he did not hang on for a little while longer. Just two weeks after he died one of the Sunday magazines contained a story about the Jade Princess showing up in Japan nearly a hundred years after it was supposedly stolen in London. There were pictures with the article and the figure they showed was an exact replica of the one Great-Granddad had taken. Or rather it was the other way round. I had ours valued at Sotheby’s and they assured me that it was a late nineteenth century copy worth around a thousand pounds.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Great-Granddad, his son and grandson kept the secret for nothing. The Japanese Prince must have had the replica made and then conveniently left a door unlocked. He had proved to be a bigger thief than Great-Granddad was. I was tempted to sell the thing but I did not. I still have the Jade Princess, like I said it is the only heirloom our family has ever had and besides, I don’t need the money, not after selling the fifteenth century Imperial trinket box that Great-Granddad had used to hide his false Princess.

New to this

Okay, I'm new to this blogging business so forgive me if this has hiccups at the beginning. I chose this forum in order to give people who are interested an opportunity to sample my writing so what better way to start than by posting a short story: This is called "Hope" and I hope you like it.



 HOPE

Rain was falling. Not heavy rain but that cold, steady, persistent drizzle that soaks everything and seems to go on for hours. That Sunday in March of nineteen twenty-seven was no day to be out and thirteen year-old Barry's patched hand-me-downs were thin and worn. He did have his dad's overcoat on though. It was an old coat, it was not fancy and it was several sizes too large but it was a good, thick, workman's coat that kept out much of the rain and the biting wind.
   There had been an added bonus with the over-large coat, a pack with two cigarettes and a book of matches in the pocket. Barry was smoking one of them now, enjoying the unexpected treasure as he crouched in the lee of the hut on the side of the railroad, waiting for a train to come by.
   His father would not miss the cigarette; he had probably forgotten them already. He had other things to worry about and besides, he should not smoke in his condition. Last night he had kept the whole house awake for the third night running with his incessant coughing and that was the reason why Barry was here. His mother had sent him out to scrounge around for enough coal to make a fire because she had sent word for the doctor.
   Barry had done this often enough before. It had become a kind of game. The coal hunt they called it but usually when he did it he was with a bunch of other kids. Today the weather was too bad for anyone else to be out and he was alone. He did not mind, there would be fewer to share in the spoils and, more importantly, there would be no-one to demand a share of his precious cigarette.
   He crouched in the wet, his hair plastered darkly to his head, rain dripping from his ears and nose and his right hand cupped around the cigarette to shield it from the rain. His left hand was tucked deep inside the coat as he hugged it to himself in an effort to retain some warmth in his chilled bones. Being sent out in all weathers on an errand like this was nothing new for him. He was an experienced scrounger. He knew where to go to get whatever he needed and he was sure that this would be the best place for coal. There was a long curve in the tracks as the trains came out of the station and occasionally those with full tenders lost some of the precious black gold as the engines canted a little on the bend.
   Barry already had three small pieces of decent fuel in the battered bucket he had brought with him but to start a fire and keep it going would take a lot more and it seemed that other scavengers had beaten him to it today.
   He looked up at the sky, the rain driving into his face and making him squint. It was hard to guess the time on a day like this, the clouds had been uniformly grey since he woke up in his tiny attic room. His growling stomach told him that it was time to eat but then, it did that most of the time. His breakfast had been a stale biscuit and a spoonful of gravy with a sprinkling of salt. It was not a substantial meal but it was a darn sight better than some people managed to get in those days of the depression. It was still not enough for a growing boy though, and what little there was he had had to share with his four younger brothers and sisters whilst his mother dozed, exhausted, at his father's bedside.
   He grimaced and looked at the three forlorn lumps of shiny, black, steam coal lying in the bottom of the bucket. A fire made from them was not going to be enough to keep a dog warm. He could hunt about and find enough scrap wood to fill the rest of the bucket but wood burned too quickly, if he could get rain-soaked wood to burn at all. To get it going his mother would need scraps of newspaper and some dry kindling and then, even if they could light it, it would be gone in minutes whereas a good coal fire would last for hours.
   Shivering, he and looked up and down the line. To his left the rails, shiny and rain sleeked, bent round the curve towards the unseen station and the town whilst to his right they went arrow straight until they vanished into a distant tunnel. They were empty and with a sinking feeling of disappointment he realised he was wasting his time. There was no more coal to be found along the edge of the track, he had already searched. He was frozen, the rain was running down under his collar and soaking his shirt and there were no trains running because it was Sunday.
   He sighed, grimaced again and, with slumped shoulders, turned to walk slowly down the steep embankment. He knew his mother would get mad at him for not finding what she wanted. It was not his fault there was no coal to be found but she would get mad just the same. She was always getting mad. It came from the worry of having five kids and a husband who could not manage more than the occasional day or two's work at best, spending the rest of his time in a damp bedroom coughing his lungs up. Money was always scarce and now she had to spend a precious dollar getting the doctor in to tell her what she already knew, that her husband was dying of TB.
Reaching the path at the bottom of the bank he turned towards the hole in the fence. Pulling the loose plank aside he was halfway through when he heard the distant whistle.
   It was a train. Not a big one, the note of the steam whistle was too shrill for that but it didn’t matter, the little ones sometimes came round the curve faster and canted over further. When they did, some of those whose tenders were newly loaded down with coal occasionally lost some of it in a glittering black avalanche that would cascade over the side of the bunker to bounce and roll along the edge of the track.
   Hopefully, he turned and began to scramble back up the steep slope. He could hear the wheels now, the wheels and the busy, self-important puffing of the pistons. It was a little engine, one of the ones that they used for shunting wagons about and he could tell from the sound of it that it was not moving fast. Barry reached the top and stood panting knee deep in last year’s soaking, dead grass and weeds as he watched the grimy, black engine come slowly round the curve.
   It was one of those that had a fixed tender and even from a distance he could tell that this was not full. Disappointment welled up in him again and the strangely heavy weight of the almost empty bucket pulled at his arm. The rain increased but he was oblivious to it as the engine reached, and passed, the apex of the curve with nothing falling from it.
   His shoulders sagged, the dirty little engine was puffing past him now. He could see the figures of the driver and stoker standing on the footplate, their features lit by the glow from the open firedoor. They were passing close and going slow. Sometimes train crews jumped down and chased kids but Barry wasn’t afraid. He was not very tall but he was strong and he had no doubt that he could outrun either of the men who were staring down at him as they chugged past.
   He shivered involuntarily as water dripped from his nose and he saw the driver say something to his companion and then laugh before he turned away to check his dials and levers. The stoker did not laugh though, his face was grim and his eyes held Barry's as he was slowly carried past. Barry could not tell what went through the man's mind. He could not imagine what the man saw; could not conceive the image of the thin-faced, ragged boy with the huge eyes who stood in a ridiculously over-large coat at the side of the track, holding an empty bucket.
   He could not feel the tightening of the man’s stomach muscles nor know of the lump in his throat as he looked down on the boy. He had no idea of the memories that his forlorn, rain soaked appearance recalled or how his eyes, desperate and despairing yet defiant and hopeful at the same time, tore at the man’s very soul.
   Barry just stood there and hoped. The boy and the man continued to hold each other's stare for a long moment as the distance between them began to increase again. Barry longed to call to the man. Longed to ask for help but he was proud, too proud to beg. So he stood and watched the little engine move away from him and he did not utter a sound even when the man twisted abruptly, slashed his shovel deep into the glittering black, rain slicked coal and, lifting it full to overflowing with the dark treasure, turned back.
   Their eyes met again and for a moment understanding passed between them, the man recognized the boy's need and his pride and Barry felt the man's understanding and his sympathy. Then the big stoker’s shovel twisted abruptly and the lumps of black gold fell to bound along beside the engine for a second before coming to rest on the edge of the long grass. Barry did not speak but his expression must have betrayed his gratitude, the fireman nodded gravely once and then turned back to stoke the boiler of his engine, his heart lighter having given a shovel full of hope.