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.
Clare George, What Remains. Family saga. Opening of the first chapter, in London in 2017.
The man in the lift was so close she could smell his body odour. Nic huddled in the corner, odd strands of her pale, off-ginger hair still wet against her face, and tried to wrap the tie of her umbrella around the mangled spokes. Everyone else had snapped theirs shut on entering the tube station, but hers had been turned inside out by a gust of wind just as she’d walked in. She pressed herself against the lift’s sides, trying to make space to squeeze the umbrella open and assess the damage, but the man shifted sideways to face her more directly, so that if she did she’d extend it right into his crotch.
‘Cheer up, darling,’ he said. ‘It might never happen.’
Christ. What did they mean, when they said that? It was so little worthy of her attention. And yet it felt like a sign of leakage, a skirt tucked into her knickers, the exposure of a vulnerability she didn’t want to know she had. It was a passport into her brain.
He persisted. ‘What’s up, sweetheart? Cat got your tongue?’
She mustn’t speak. Speaking would only admit him further. But not speaking, she knew, was submission, the silent acknowledgement of his power. Ahead of her were the bodies of two dozen commuters, all facing the same way, all obeying the rules of isolation for situations too crowded for comfort. He was the only one violating those rules. But behind their backs, he could.
The doors closed. The floor lurched downwards. It would only be seconds before she’d be released.
He opened his mouth again. ‘You’d be pretty if – ’ and in a blaze of anger, she thrust the broken umbrella upwards, holding it beneath his chin like a knife. ‘This is for you,’ she hissed. ‘You have it.’
I love this!
Agree, I think this is great as well!
Yeh…three thumbs up if I could…
Staying Alive, a satirical dystopian novel in which a mixed group flees from a government that terminates the over 70s. In this winter scene their journey is obstructed by a wide river but they have spied a boat on the other side.
Andrew is suddenly awake. The night is eerily still. There is no moon but shapes are visible by starlight; he has never seen the sky so thickly studded. He can feel the sharp air in his nostrils and the cold lies on his skin.
He knows now what he is going to do. He can feel the adrenalin. His mind is buzzing. Swiftly and quietly he packs up his things and stows them in the rucksack. He does not pull on boots, but stuffs his socks into them and carries them in one hand as he walks silently down to the edge of the river. It lies like a turgid black slug on the landscape. Solid, immovable. It is hard to believe that only a short while ago the rivers were rushing torrents.
A dark shape looms out of the wood behind him.
‘Take my waterproof bag,’ whispers Ginger. ‘You’ll need clothes. And a torch.’
‘I don’t know,’ Andrew replies, ‘I’ll swim faster and easier without. The stars are bright enough.’
‘Right,’ says Ginger. ‘I’ll wait here then. You’ll need a light to aim for.’
They stare across the dark river. The boat is just visible against the white-painted stanchions of the landing stage on the far side. Andrew takes off his tracksuit and passes it to his friend. After a moment’s hesitation he takes off his underpants too.
‘Won’t need these,’ he says with a laugh and walks ankle-deep into the icy water. Feeling ahead with his feet he takes three slow steps and is up to his knees, then his thighs. He bends and cups water in his hands, wetting his face and head with a gasp. Then, several times, he splashes water up his arms and over his chest. He ducks and takes a final step forward.
This is the opening chapter to an urban fantasy, Shadow and Flame
Names hold power, so I won’t tell you mine. What I will tell you is that it was June first, the sun was going down, and I was sitting on the Priory’s roof, hating my life more than usual.
And I needed a drink.
Don’t get it twisted, I wasn’t suicidal or anything, and I’m not an alcoholic either. What I was, was destined to die at the end of the month. Me and every other halfling that’d hit twenty this year. See, you’d want a drink too. If I’d had one, I’d pour some out for the fallen.
Hah. No I wouldn’t. I’d down that shit. I probably was an alcoholic, but whatever. I wouldn’t be around long enough for cirrhosis to set in.
Closing my eyes, I tried to enjoy last few rays of sun. I’d spent the past hour lamenting my fate and the way my nail polish clashed with my bikini. You know, multitasking. And in weighing my options, such as they were, I kept coming up snake eyes.
It was bullshit.
I pulled my knees in and sighed, looking out past the crew installing razor wire on top of the compound’s tall adobe walls. The desert stretched out towards Vel in the distance. There weren’t any better answers there, but I did have a couple friends, and one of them owed me a beer. My eyes flicked to the highway running past the Priory, a straight shot in to the city. I could use one of those, too.
The sun dipped behind the mountains and I shivered, shrugging into the scratchy novice robes I’d been sitting on. I padded across the roof and swung onto the ladder. Half way down I could pick out Sister Reticence waiting for me in the shadows.
I really like this! I’d definitely want to read on!
And then what happened?
This is the opening of “A Fig in Winter” – a psychological thriller
Karen Pearson takes a gulp of sherry from the tumbler trembling between her hands. Her eyes flit from the tumbler to the door, to the sink, to the body on the floor, then back to the tumbler. She grimaces, runs her fingers over her ear, over the millimetre long hairs of her buttercream-blonde pixie cut. She’s tall, slim, has deep brown eyes and a lightly tanned complexion, a head-turning combination if it wasn’t for the angry red welt on her check and the split in her lower lip. She takes another gulp of sherry, runs her fingers over her ear again and says: ‘We should call an ambulance.’
‘I think it’s a bit late for that.’ I take a sip from my own tumbler. The sherry is rank. It comes from a plastic bottle my wife Rachel bought to make a trifle for a dinner party.
‘The police then.’
‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea either.’
‘But.’ Karen’s eyes flick down to the body again, to the blood seeping along the grouting channels between the tiles, the petrified eyes staring at the ceiling, the jagged blood-caked neck of the shattered whiskey bottle pointing accusingly at her. She looks away and runs her fingers over her ears several times in quick succession. ‘We can’t just sit here.’
‘We need to work out what to do.’ I need to think. I need a decent drink but all the alcohol that isn’t splattered over the kitchen floor is in a cabinet in the lounge and I’m not trailing blood and DNA and whatever else forensic scientists love through the house.
‘What’s there to work out? Robert? We have to tell someone.’
‘Do we?’ My brains ticking its way through scenario after scenario. We don’t come out well in any of them.
For the self editing workshop. This is the opening chapter.
Title: The Iced Heart Mystery
About this novel: The title says it all…readers are offered a double dollop of mystery and romance.
She strode through the heavy drizzle as if the sun was out shining, instead of the sky being low, grey and dripping rain. On her feet were black pumps that missed every puddle. Many eyes followed her. Curious. Intrigued by her oblivion to the rain. With her head held high, she moved as if there was a song in heart. Her eyes neither checked her feet nor the puddles on the asphalt, but rested on the horizon.
One man whistled softly, a smile on his lips. His dark eyes were still enthralled by her long after she had skipped up the stairs, yanked on the heavy, wooden door and entered the red-bricked, four-storied apartment building. His head sank back on the soft, leather upholstery, closing his eyes as if to replay the vision that had just crossed his path. Tall and slender. Graceful and sure. Her neat carpet of black hair had rain droplets caught in the micro fine curls. Her cinnamon skin was moist and her lips moved as if she was singing. Then, with an affirmative nod and his smile lingering, himself satisfied, he started the grey Mercedes and slowly merged into the traffic.
Had he stayed longer, he would have noticed a pink Fiat easing out from seemingly nowhere, hurrying down the street only to return moments later and disappear through the hidden entrance, reappearing in five minutes. The sun blazed out from behind the slate clouds, just as it drove out of sight.
*
Inside, Bridget had grabbed her rolled mat from the deep, wicker basket where she kept all her yoga paraphernalia. She glanced around, her eyes searching quickly before landing on what she was looking for.
‘And there you are!’ Perched on top of the fridge, was a pink leather wallet. Tucking it under …
This is a story about night climbers at Oxford University -set in the early 1970s. Jamie Underhill has been persuaded by the haughty and condescending climber Stephen Farrimond to accompany him on a climb of Keble College chapel. Having struggled to reach the roof, Jamie has joined Stephen at the west end of the chapel roof. They are resting and chatting when he hears a sound.
*******
Jamie felt a soft chill on his cheek. The weak breeze carried a musty smell, a mix of herb and burnt rope. Another cough and a stifled hiccup.
He wanted to laugh out loud. “Smell that?”
“Wood smoke!” Stephen scrambled to his knees “Where’s the fire?”
“No,” Jamie laughed “only weed. An unusual venue, very enterprising!”
“Right. Let’s move.” Stephen grabbed Jamie’s arm, fingers dug into his bicep.
“Easy” Jamie shrugged him off. “I don’t want to startle them.” He began to crawl toward the sounds and the smell.
“Don’t be a fool Underhill! Come here!” Stephen barked. Jamie ignored him.
If we’ve heard them, they can hear us. They’re probably more frightened than we are.
The crawl was slow and hard on his knees. He forced himself to stand, one hand on the parapet at waist height. Not enough to stop a fall, but a useful anchor point. He commanded his breathing, waited for it to steady. Risking a look at the view, he saw he was well above streetlamp level. A weak glow underlit the Van der Graaf generator building, its stylised winged roof just visible against a gloomy cloud backdrop.
The stiffness eased from his legs but his head felt light. He leaned inwards away from the parapet, propped himself up on the slope of the roof. It felt cold, but thankfully dry and solid against his palm. He continued edging along the channel.
Now the smell was strong. Skunky and sickly sweet. A hunched figure sat at the corner of the roof, with its back to him. He heard another hiccup.
“Hello.” He called softly.
A young man twisted sharply to stare at him. Long hair, straggly beard and mouth stretched with terror. He struggled upright, turned and tripped, sprawled against the angled lead roof.
Opening of a historical fiction / ‘faction’ short story – ‘The day the Suez Canal was nationalised’
Dusk brings a welcome freshness to the sultry heat of the day. At the harbour entrance, the bronze verdigris statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps stands thirty-three-feet tall on its plinth, right hand outstretched in welcome to incoming vessels, the left hand clutching a plan of the Canal, a wreath of laurels inscribed with a motto at his feet – Aperire terram gentibus. To open the land to all nations. De Lesseps was fifty-five, a former diplomat with a chequered history when he stood not very far from this very spot one day at dawn in April 1859 to strike the coup de pioche, the symbolic first strike of the pickaxe that marked the fulfilment of his life’s ambition : the start of the works of the extraordinary enterprise that was the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez to marry the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
Now it is July, 26 1956. Night falls in Port Said. A cool breeze from the sea blows over the statue and along the jetty, funnelling down through the Canal, the energy of the air making the waters swell and surge into tall waves that slap the hulls of the ships lined in procession along the quayside.
A convoy of ocean liners and tankers is waiting in procession for clearance to start its night transit down the Canal, towards the Red Sea. The pilots are on board to help the captains steer their vessels through treacherous waters alive with currents and waves.
A fat moon rises in the black velvet sky. It casts a silvery sheen over the palazzo-like domes of De Lesseps’s company awarded a concession to build the Canal and run it up to November 1969.
Jo Waldron, with an extract from my Commercial Fiction novel, Second Chance. My MC, Beth, has been engaged three times but each fiancé died before the wedding day. When she dies and goes to heaven so is tasked with choosing which one to marry in the afterlife. In this scene, she has just arrived in heaven and realised she could see them all at any moment.
I try to catch my breath as she makes her way off, but the same thought plays over and over: George, Anthony, Jack. All dead – and so am I.
Mrs Macey was wrong when she said I was too young to know many people who had crossed over. These three I know very well. The memories I’ve tried so hard to suppress force themselves into my mind, a kaleidoscope of love, broken laughter and the endless darkness of grief. I feel the way I always do when I remember; like I’m trapped on a helter-skelter, picking up speed, constantly turning faster and faster on a ride that never ends.
It takes all my strength to force the memories away and focus. I need time. Time to think. To come up with a plan. I need to be alone. Everything out here is too bright and loud and I can’t concentrate. The dim, dark quiet of the unknown room feels enticing now. I turn and push against the door, gently this time.
Nothing.
I push harder.
Still nothing.
I throw myself against the door, push with all my strength.
Still nothing.
I can’t breathe. I pummel furiously at the unrelenting wood with my fists.
Out of nowhere, a hand appears on my shoulder. I feel a scream rising from the pit of my stomach as I spin round, expecting to see them all before me: George, Anthony, Jack.
I don’t take in the unfamiliar cactus green eyes, messy blond curls, in time to stop the scream escaping. The man in front of me takes a hasty step back at the force of my reaction.
This is the opening of my Sci Fi Horror novel; ‘Reign Dance.’
Dublin.
Old Michael Feeney’s dying body convulsed instinctively, feet kicking, as he hung from the Great Beast’s maw, the jaws closing ever tighter around his throat.
All futile.
He stared into the pus-yellow eyes of the Great Beast, and in the final seconds of his life, memories washed through his dying mind.
…seconds and memories…
He thought of the first time he had seen a Follen, how unlike anything else in nature it looked. A body the size of a horse, held low to the ground on spidrous legs; its damp skin mottled pink and grey in colour, turning yellower towards the head, where sensory fronds grew from its brow, and pedipalps surrounded its gaping, wet mouth. And to the rear, its muscular tail, equipped with two spear-like stingers, glistening with poison.
Yet for all its animalistic appearance, he felt the jagged, ruthless extent of its intelligence, too. And its powers, for it reached into his mind, even as he reached into its.
They came in many other forms, of course, but this was an Follen Elder.
He had known then how the rabbit feels when it sees the fox.
…seconds and memories…
He recalled the visions he had taken from the Follen’s mind, from its ancestral memoires, for Feeney was a thief of thoughts, as well as other things
They fell.
The Follen.
Through the endless black void of space.
Like seeds.
Like spores.
Like pollen.
Until some found fresh Earth in which to grow.
To develop.
To evolve.
And ultimately to dominate.
The Great Beast meant to oppose them, and that is what had brought it to him…which in turn led him to a final recollection…