Self-editing webinar – members only
Hello folks
We’ve got another self-editing webinar coming up on 6 July at 19:00 (UK time.)
If you want to submit some work for me to RIP APART WITHOUT MERCY then:
a) Mwah-hah-hah. I look forward to feasting on your bones
b) Please give me a chunk – maximum 300 words – in the comments below. Please include your name (or I’ll just use your Townhouse handle.) Also the title of the piece, and just one short sentence telling us what kind of book it is. (Plus something about the set up of the snippet, if we need to know.)
I won’t be able to use everything. In the past, I’ve been able to get through 3-4 pieces in the hour.
Please don’t submit your work below if you’re not a JW member: we won’t be able to use it.
Please also don’t submit your work unless you are comfortable having it discussed publicly, cos public discussion is exactly what’s gonna happen.
All clear? Yes? No?
Yes! Tremendous. Look forward to seeing you there.
I’m Kevin Catterall, with the opening of the second chapter of my psychological thriller:
The Game Changer.
Unaware, Charles Baron, the BBC Middle-East Correspondent, is about to be released from Abu Ghraib Gaol Iraqi following three years of illegal imprisonment.
******
The inky blackness lightened. The greyness started to show. Razor sharp slivers of bright light penetrated the monochrome hellhole. It betrayed the blood-stained tiled walls and concrete floor of the four-metre square dungeon, and his manacled state. Charles Baron peered through swollen eyes at a constant reminder of pain and torment.
Suddenly he became fully awake. For his protection Charles wrapped his arms around himself, and quietly lay in the foetal position. He desperately tried to ignore the whisperings in his ear:
You will never win. The words bounced off the tiled walls rather like a redundant echo, and disintegrated in a blaze of light
Speak…speak with my pain, he thought…
Make pain my friend, in a place in which friends do not exist…
Remember who you are, whatever you do, you will resist…
Charles closed his eyes, tightly-shut.
My body aches and feels slippery, he thought. It has leaked its energy. He felt the pressure from his right thumb, and forefinger, jammed around his mouth, as he rocked back and forth.
Your fortunes have reached their nadir, but survival is key…
The quiet of the previous hours was instantly shattered. His torso, bathed in sweat, was in anticipation of further pain and degradation.
He leaned back.
His now thin body was rebelling from continual whipping, just enough to withstand unconsciousness.
How can I withstand unconsciousness, and not maintain consciousness, he thought, there is a difference?
Every moment was painful.
Tied down on a bench, he remembered the previous day’s struggle for air. The rough linen hood applied over his head masked the torrents of ice-cold water cascading around him.
I will forever experience the effect of drowning.
Struggling to remain conscious, the torture always stopped before the blackness.
I wish I were dead.
I still remember too, how and why I came to be here…doing the job I loved.
Working title: The Chip. Near future science fiction.
“I got something to show you,” Jamie says.
He is closer to me than I’d like, but my back is already up against the shelves in the small, piss-scented cleaning closet.
Jamie tugs his scrubs off over his head, displaying a greyed undershirt and heavily muscled arms covered in home-inked tattoos of snarling dogs, one of them rendered to look like it was chewing its way out of the skin of his bicep. I keep my face still, which is the only thing to do when in a closet after hours with someone who’s probably an ex-con and that ex-con is doing a strip-tease. My finger twitches over the panic button on my watch. I’m trying to be subtle, but Jamie sees the motion and barks out a laugh.
He doesn’t continue stripping, which is a relief, and bends over to move some barrels from the bottom shelf. “No room in this motherfuckin’ closet,” Jamie says by way of apology as his hip knocks into me.
Some more rooting around, some more swearing, and he comes up from the bottom shelf with his treasure. Two robotic arms soldered to a curved metal cage with thick canvass straps and buckles, each part a different colour and thickness, looking like the pieces were scavenged from a junkyard to create a ribcage for Frankenstein’s monster. He grabs a metal headband and places it on his head, then buckles the contraption on his chest. Two taps on the headband and an indicator light blinks from red to green. He raises his tattooed arms and his robot arms at the same time, at least four arms short of being a warrior goddess. One robotic arm swings in my direction, and I bang my head against the shelf to avoid getting my skull crushed.
Opening of Dimensions, a contemporary mystery-thriller. The story explores the struggles of a married man at the height of a mid-life crisis, the seemingly impossible relationship he develops with a woman half his age, and the discovery by his family that he’s not the man they thought him to be.
———
He’s never cheated on his wife. Oh, he’s had numerous occasions, she too, truth be known, but he’s never wavered. That’s, of course, until he meets her.
It happens out of the blue on Fortnum and Mason’s hectic ground floor. He’s heading down the wide, central circular staircase to the wine and food hall to pick up a few bottles of F&M’s claret. She’s trotting up the stairs with a magnum of champagne in each hand despite the remonstrances of the nervous wine manager trailing behind her. For no apparent reason, she stumbles into his path. He manages to save one of the bottles as it slips from her small, graceful hand before he collapses, landing on his back. She falls, her body across his, as he frantically waves the bottle he’s caught as if it’s some championship trophy. A well-meaning clutch of noisy fellow shoppers, led by the wine manager, attempts to assist them out of their unseemly maul. She’s helped to her feet, slightly breathless, and blurts out a string of foreign words. He replies in the same strange tongue, surprising both of them. She looks down at the bottle still in her hand when he thrusts his trophy at her. The small crowd disperses. They gawk at each other and then break out into raucous laughter—hers honking, unselfconscious, his full of unbridled abandon.
Hi,
This is a chunk from a short story. It’s the end of the war in 70’s Nigeria and Ama is writing to her pen pal in Bristol.
————————————————————————————————-
I’m home by four in the afternoon. Getting to our apartment is a drag, there are eighty eight steps. Imagine doing that with bags of shopping or buckets of water as we often have to do. Once I’m in, the world stays outside. I can sit on the balcony for hours watching fights start and end, boys chat up girls and pickpockets earn their living. There’s a cool unpolluted breeze, uninterrupted by the constant din of car horns beeping to show displeasure with people’s inability to obey the rules. Up here you’re sheltered from the maddening crowd below. Everyone has a slow purposeful walk, it’s too hot to hurry. I can tell people from their gait. You’ll see kids running errands, people with carefully balanced trays selling whatever they can to bring in a little extra money. The evening ladies from the aptly named Freedom hotel strut their stuff bagging customers and sometimes giving them more than bargained for. Young people with nothing better to do but look hip with their Afros and obligatory black power combs outdo each other with the width of their bell bottoms and flared trousers. Women with blowout afros, mini-skirts and platform shoes so high, you’d think they would topple over jump on and off of buses balancing bags and babies on their backs.
It’s been three months since the end of the war, the fighting never got to Lagos, but we watched censored bits on the TV. On the evenings without power, we sat on the balcony listening to a different view of the mayhem on the BBC world service. We gathered round my father’s 1950s radio with the volume cranked up to show solidarity and surreptitiously lowered when the opposing side came on to air their views.
Everyone is free to live where they want. You will hear people shout ‘One Nigeria’ more times than I care to count. Is that true? we’re a melting pot of tribes, cultures, complexions, religions and languages. People fled towns they’d known all their life not because of the colour of their skin but because they came from the different part of our one Nigeria.
Hello, Steve Johnson here,
TITLE. Greenwicker Cricket Club, season 2017.
Social commentary. Opening chapter.
OPENING FIXTURE
GREENWICKER V THE KINGS HEAD
SATURDAY 13TH MAY 2017
DUNCAN NOTTINGHAM
CAPTAIN
‘Duncan, Duncan, Duncan,’ pleaded Duncan Nottingham. ‘Tails you stay, heads you emigrate.’ Duncan counted like NASA from five, and tossed a pound coin. His coin clipped the living room mirror and landed in a three-quarter-full coin jar. He knelt. In the jar laid two pound coins, one on tails, the other heads.
To Duncan, the one-one result, meant fate was as indecisive as him, and he wouldn’t let fate duck its responsibly. Without looking down, he nudged the jar with his knee, and kept nudging and not looking, until clinking convinced him of a shift. He peered. Still one tails, one heads. On a patient breath, Duncan shuffled to the sunflower on the coffee table. He held the stem and plucked a petal, ‘I’m staying,’ he picked another, ‘I’m emigrating.’ He sneezed. Hay fever.
Duncan collapsed onto his back and examined the ceiling where the bath-shaped water stain lived. He imagined a giant pound coin split the ceiling, then a huge hand, his wife’s, catch the coin. She tossed the coin, with him on it, and he spun out of the house. He flew above the lush Greenwicker cricket ground, crossed the Channel, and landed in a muddy football pitch in Poland.
Duncan shuffled back to the jar and shook out the change. In the pile, stood a lone fifty pence. He put the coin on his thumb. ‘Five, four, three, three and a half…’
At that moment, his wife Serafina, speedway skidded onto their drive. She looked back at the wide furrow of displaced gravel and whistled. She sucked in her face-cheeks and removed her helmet.
Title: MARKED WITH THE CROSS OF LORRAINE by Laura Fuster
The first book in my two-book FIGHTING FATE series, it’s a YA historical action/adventure set in 1940 London and war-torn occupied France.
Chapter 1: Losses
Enrique’s eyes flew open, dissolving the blaring siren. He bolted upright, his heart thumping, and listened; but the only sounds were the slow, rhythmic breaths of the four still asleep. He sighed. Just another dream.
He threw his blanket off and climbed out of bed; it would be a long time before he’d be able to go back to sleep. He snatched the windup travel clock from the sill of the blacked-out window and tiptoed over to the tiny nightlight—one thirty, maybe tonight, they’d be lucky and the planes wouldn’t come.
He looked down into the crib where his infant sister lay sound asleep, the sock puppet he had made for her during the voyage clutched in her arms. As he watched, a little smile creased her lips and her eyelids began to flutter as she enjoyed some pleasant dream. He bent over and kissed her forehead, careful not to wake her.
He turned to walk back to his bed when the sudden screech of the siren jerked his head towards the window and sent his heart rate skyrocketing. Seconds later, Elena was climbing up the bars of the crib, screaming bloody murder.
‘Está bien, Elena’, he shouted as he ran to the clothes he had staged at his footboard. Jumping into an old pair of baggy woollen trousers, he nearly fell over as his foot caught in the gas mask flopping at the belt loop. Without removing his pyjama top, he threw his secondhand jumper over his head and pushed up the dangling sleeves as he stuffed his sockless feet into the tattered leather shoes lying under his bed. Then he hurried back for his little sister.
Her flushed cheeks glistened in the weak glow of the nightlight as he scooped her into his arms. Bundled in a thick yellow sleeper in anticipation of this now all too frequent emergency, she should be warm enough in the crisp, late September air; but just in case, he grabbed her blanket, along with her red and blue Mickey Mouse gas mask.
The opening of a short story, in which things do not turn out to be quite what they appear. It is (perhaps) in the speculative fiction genre and is set in the present day.
Joe Cortanna
Just one hour ago, I had been warm and calm and comfortable, swaddled like a baby, high in the skies in my aluminum cradle. From LA to JFK, I had boozed and snoozed across the continental divide until the thump of the wheels on the runway cleared my gin fogged head. Now, driving north on Broadway, the billboards whispered to me in the darkness of the night. No PowerPoint needed, they pitched their deal in compelling fonts of pink and neon, their unique selling point a fragile, desperate promise of intimacy amongst the city millions. As I left the rental in a parking lot, the pavement released its heat into the late evening, filling my nostrils with the acrid taste of cement dust. I set off towards the brightness of the lights, ready to settle amongst the other moths, thirsty to drink the nectar of companionship.
I was on my third Manhattan when the blonde breezed by – her sky-high heels heartache red to match her lips, hair tumbling onto her shoulders in a way that made Niagara look like a shy rain shower. She paused and then poured herself onto the bar stool next to me.
‘Hello, stranger.’
I was not surprised. My Alan David suit, Gucci diamond cuff links and old school Paul Molé razor cut all signalled – ‘I have it all — come flutter with me’.
‘What will it be?’ I said.
She let me take in the full view before replying.
I added up the numbers. She was just under six feet in her four-inch Jimmy Choo stilettos. Waves of blonde hair lapped gently on her shoulders. Her Pearl Rose cut-out tulle gown did not so much clothe as embrace and caress her perfect hourglass figure.
‘Vodka, straight, one ice cube.’
For the full story, see here.
Just joined JW, so this would be an ordeal of fire if it got selected for discussion!
This is the prologue for a thriller, The Thirteenth Voice: After nuclear catastrophe, twelve strangers survive in a secret bunker. But as they struggle to adapt, a master manipulator emerges and no one is safe.
NOW
She looks at the live feed. Thankfully, all the dead in the lobby are hidden in bundles of clothes, and it looks more like the aftermath of a wild party than the apocalypse.
Outside, the end of Broad Street holds its abandoned vehicles, litter blowing in the breeze. In the corner of the wall of the Sheldonian, under the stern stone faces carved on the columns, some rubbish is stirring. She watches it for a moment, a GAP bag catching a gust and circling up before dropping back to the pavement and starting again. It’s mesmerising. It seems almost alive, dancing in the breeze. She watches as it pulses, enjoying the unpredictability of it. Her mind begins to wander, thinking of the days when plastic bags were in the hands of the shoppers, the days when she wasn’t the only living person in Oxford. She may doze. She has nothing else to worry about right now. The plastic swirls. It’s the only movement on the screen, and something about it stirs a memory, long buried. She frowns, the fuzziness of sleep evaporating. What does this remind her of? It’s giving her the feeling of a strong emotion, as a song might remind you of an old boyfriend or a sad film.
Why?
She sits forwards, examining the movement. What is it that this bag reminds her of? She stretches out her mind, digging into the past, and nearly hooks something, but it’s a slippery thing. She closes her eyes, seeing the image now only in her memory. It lifts and dives, and she is hurting. Aching with loss and the ultimate betrayal. She can feel the pain in her chest.
Her eyes fly open just as the bag catches a bigger gust and sails off down the street, gone forever.
She remembers.
Hi Harry, I’m Jason.
Here’s a submission for the editing webinar!
Title: The Broken Ballad of Mr Tallywhacker
A dark comedy adventure set in a fairytale land
300 words of story beginning:
Percy’s mood was one of disquieting melancholy, as though he was emotionally prepared for the impending tragedy. All that morning the gloom had filled him, and his mind was awry with unwelcome insights; the most poignant of which seemed to be centred on his specific reason for living. At first he attributed these thoughts to a fourteen hour sleep, that, even by his lethargic standards was unusually long. He paced around the wooden floor of his bedroom, pondering the purpose of his existence, which was a deeply troubling notion to consider. After much deliberation he could find no definitive reasoning for his being, and so, dissatisfied, he huffed and lay fully dressed on his bed, crossing his booted feet. Here, he dreamt up various scenarios that would cause his life to expand with meaning and adventure. The permutations of his own mind took him by surprise, and he found himself drifting away in a seamless transition of unrelated hypothesised events, all of which culminated in the conclusion of adventure being a dangerous proposition.
What is adventure, anyway, but a troublesome disturbance, he thought. It was a disturbance that he was often disturbed by; the thoughts often creeping up on him like a shadow at dusk, and something deep inside of him knew life held more possibilities than the lonely existence he had lived. He was eighteen years old, and yet the bountiful lust of youth seemed to have passed him by without a care. Lifting himself from the mattress he moved to the window, where his thoughts drifted to the previous summer.