skiffcat

Hope you don’t mind me using this post for a plug. Check out ‘The Jokers of Sarzuz’, my horror short on www.twbpress.com at $1.99, downloadable for a kindle or as a pdf file. I would be interested to hear what you have to say about it. In addition, read the reviews at Amazon, where the book is available in the kindle store. A lot of my stories start their lives on write for ten. Some lay in an embryonic state on wft until I think of something else to do with them. Like this one, which wwas actually inspired by the beginning of a John Le Carre book, ‘Our Game’. I learnt a lot about writing from that chapter. Two cops call on the main character to enquire about one of his buddies, who has gone missing. The characterisation and suspense in that opening sequence was so well written, I found it quite inspiring. I am also reading ‘Last Night in Twisted River’ by another John, John Irving. I am a great Irving fan, but I think it is true to say that although I enjoy him, I don’t learn as much about writing from him as I do from John Le Carre. I would describe Irving, certainly the later work, as discursive, expansive and panoramic. He breaks all the rules we learn as emerging writers, but then he can do that can’t he? He is established. Maybe I am being a little unfair. Of course you can learn a lot from Irving as a writer; it’s just that picking up ‘Our Game’ after getting half way through ‘Last Night in Twisted River’ I found the opening of the Le Carre so gripping a piece of writing, everything I had ever read or been taught about characterisation and descriptive writing was there. It was very much a reinforcement of all I had learnt from Terry Wright during the editing process of my first e-book ‘The Jokers of Sarzuz’ – write active sentences not passive, give characters motivation for everything they do and say, show don’t tell and all those other invaluable nuggets. Please read ‘The Jokers of Sarzuz’ and tell me what you think.

My mobile phone, once my true friend, my forever companion, my means of staying within the world and communicating outside myself is now my bitter enemy.
I am afraid to turn it on. I can no longer sleep with it by my bed.
I hate the very sight of it. It feels slimy in my hands and it seems to have developed a smell – like, kind of…rank earth. It’s as if I had left it in a flower pot full of bedding compost overnight.
My friends and family don’t ring me on it anymore. I just get…those calls. And each time, a call comes through, one of the contacts in my address book disappears to be replaced by a new contact. So my contact list is filling up with those callers now.
At first it was just messages. In fact I remember the first one. It was a Tuesday. I know it was a Tuesday because I remember hearing the dustbin men clattering around outside. And the garbage truck always leaves a smell in its wake. We used to joke and say it was the spirits of the dead swirling around behind the truck, foraging for detritus, but that doesn’t sound like such a funny joke any more.
My phone beeped to tell me I had a text message. On the way out of the door, in a rush to get to work as usual, I paused to read the message.
‘Caroline’ it read, ‘Greetings from your dead friend, Luke’
Of course, I thought it was a joke, albeit in pretty bad taste. Luke had been a good friend. But he died in a skiing accident a year ago. I didn’t recognise the number of the sender, so I dialled it, to give the sick joker a piece of my mind. Of course, the number was unobtainable.
As I was scrolling through my list of friends that evening, I noticed that Paula’s number was gone. Had I accidentally deleted it? The new number was there though – the one purporting to be from ‘Luke’. Do you know, however hard I tried I could not delete that number.
A couple of days later, another message. ‘Hope you’re doing alright in your new job dear. Gran. xxx’

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This is a protected post.

Ferguson was told he was to play the role of a ‘soul policeman’. He had no idea what the job entailed but he knew he was to find out this very night. He was used to walking the city at dusk, but this evening was different somehow. Maybe it was anticipation on his part, for it is not every night you meet Professor Dubus. The streets of the city was as oppressive…where did that deep humming vibration come from?…it was dark for July but as oppressive as he had never known any Summer to be. Buildings soared skyward above him but he never looked up. Rubbish littered the city and people scurried back and forth, intent on getting home before it really got dark. The streets were no place to be after dark. Not if you feared for your life. Not if you feared for your very soul.
Ferguson’s thoughts turned to Dubus. What little he had read about the man aroused his curiosity more and more…an academic, a recluse, a bizarre figure who was said to despise sunlight. The advert in the newspaper had said Dubus needed a person to work for him…a personal assistant…somebody trustworthy, somebody brave, somebody not afraid of those things that were best kept to the night…