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If that's not the goofiest smile in the world...
I don't know what is.
I'm really not at all photogenic.
I blame it on my parents.
If only they'd had a normal child...
One, in other words, that didn't spend every waking hour reading books and trying to write them...
Then things might have been different.
Of course, writing short stories is one thing, writing complete books is something totally different...
The sheer investment in time required...
The vision of something that's going to be 30 times bigger than the normal 3,000 words that a short story might need.
Against that, you have more time and space to develop your charcters and the storyline.
And, possibly, a greater sense of satisfaction when all is done.
I like writing short stories but the books are fun as well.
The Mapmakers Tale
I am putting the finishing touches to a novel about a biker who moves to France and, by riding down the slower, smaller roads that he has never ridden before, he discovers a different world; one obscured to all of those who race around locked in their steel boxes - who don't bother or care, to see.
I'll be publishing this novel as soon as it's finished or is to my liking or, preferably, both.
The Mapmakers Tale
I am the second son and the third oldest of us siblings.
Like a good Germanic family my parents decided to have four children; boy, girl, boy, girl and in that order. I often wonder how they arranged that.
Not that we were Krauts; we were fourth generation Cornish country bumpkins with more Polish heritage than anything else. And a taste for academia; there were plenty of surgeons and doctors in our family tree.
I suppose that I was always slightly jealous of Mike, my older brother and first born. Not that I noticed at the time; it just seemed normal that Mike should get more attention and that I should receive his cast off’s. In a way it helped me to work harder in order to make my own way in life. I got a good degree and have ended up as a respected and rather well paid IT consultant; for a long time my BMW sat next to my Audi convertible in the driveway of my five bedroomed mock Georgian detached house.
My sisters worked hard as well. Marie, the second born, has gone on to become a hot shot solicitor and her Mercedes convertible sits next to her Land Rover and her horsebox in the drive of her farmhouse in the Yorkshire dales. Yes, Marie has horses and showjumps to a pretty high standard.
And Jane, the youngest of the four of us, the only one of us to have children, had those children quite young and then went on to become a mature student and end up with a PhD in statistical sociology or some such thing. She has, in a way, become the most successful of all of us; often appearing on TV talk shows and with an occasional article in the Sunday Times.
And that was the thing, you see; Mike never really worked at anything. Or, at least, he never seemed to. Yes, he took his motorbikes very seriously; they were always perfectly maintained and spotlessly clean. Fishing as well; he always caught more fish than any of his mates, purely because he put more effort in – often walking the beach at low tide so that he would know what it would look like when the tide came in, bringing the bass and the flounder in its wake.
So it was really no surprise when, halfway through his second year, Mike flunked out of university; Cambridge, no less.
The Sunday Club
This is a sort of extract from a novel in progress; The Sunday Club.
The Sunday Club is based upon some of my memories of the two years when I worked as a barman in a bikers’ pub on the south coast of England in the early to mid eighties.
When it is finished, The Sunday Club won’t be just a collection of memories or short stories. It will, I hope, be a cohesive novel, detailing the experiences of a young barman working in a bikers pub on the south coast in the glory days of the miners strike and Thatcher and unemployment. In the glory days before mobile phones and the internet.
Those glory days when water or oil cooled bike engines were still new and still cool. And upside down forks were still to be born.
It's taking some time to write because it's a very personal book. I don't just want it to be a diary; that would be boring. I want it to be a story of its own - just based on my experiences as a naive young lad working in a bikers pub.
Once again, this is a sort of extract; a few small chapters of the novel. Plucked out and rearranged as one.
Criminal Justice and Public Order – 1 – The Old Man
"There are three types of shit in this world.” The old man said.
It was a different time and a different place but I can still remember it as though it were yesterday. Sometimes when the wind blows in from the sea and the building creaks and groans as it settles in place, old memories come flooding back. Some good and some bad.
I don’t know if it is a sign of old age but, often, these days, I find myself thinking of things that happened years ago; rather that what happened today or yesterday.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, or bad.
It was a Sunday night.
It was a Sunday night three days after dole day and the easy money had run out.
The youngsters had blown their dole checks in the first few days and we wouldn’t see much of them until Thursday week. A few might sneak in, hoping to scrounge a drink but most of our punters would be the older ones; the ones who’d learned how to eke out a pint and, somehow, make their money last from one dole day to the next.
Once again, it was a quiet night; Sundays always were. Part of me enjoyed this as it gave me a chance to catch up on little jobs, polishing glasses and so forth. Part of me hated it as the time really dragged. But, Sunday nights my boss and wife wife took the evening off so I was nominally in charge. I like that, nothing bad ever happened on a Sunday night.
And bad things sometimes happened here, it was just a matter of degree.
The old man was a regular. Normally he was quiet enough and never ever caused any trouble. Occasionally, though, he felt the need to hold court and give us all the benefit of his wisdom. And wise he certainly was. A Yorkshire cobbler’s son from Ilkley, he’d spent his youth not playing cricket or robbing cars but bettering himself. He now worked as a self employer printer and, judging from what he spent at the bar, must have been doing OK for himself.
“There are three types of shit in this world.” He said.
“The first is dog shit. You can find this on every street in every town or city in the world.” He was looking at Ian as he said this. It was obvious that he had a message to pass on.
Different Roads
I write a lot, really a lot...
Now, some of it is rubbish and gets discarded and some is just not good enough and gets put to one side to be looked at again, later on.
But gradually I am building up a stockpile of short stories that I intend to publish in one volume.
Some of these will be multi-chapter short stories that would be too long to be published elsewhere.
Once I have enough short stories to justify a book I'll let you know.
It will be called Different Roads.
All the best