This year is the first time I’ve attempted NaNo, and while it’s really for those who haven’t yet written a novel, I felt I needed to boost my raw-draft output having concentrated on editing for much of the last twelve months. There isn’t much of this year left to go, you see, and because I have written, without fail, one full novel every year since 2002, I was getting a little nervous about 2007’s effort.

Anyway, Great Aunt Ida’s Revenge (a weird mainstream story, sorry horror folk) was drafted in a little over six weeks last year, so I’ve decided to step away from Llanvale, my fictional horror setting, and draft a quick and dirty sequel before the year’s end. Enter Stanley, my hapless teen, as he contemplates life without some much-needed nooky.

Excerpt
Great Aunt Ida’s Impossible Return

I own a condom called Tim. He’s been in my wallet now for one year, five months, fourteen days and around about ten or eleven hours. Not too sure about the minutes though (I’m not that anal). He’s nothing special really, neither ribbed nor bumpy with no tiny packets of tingly goo to make the experience extra special, nor does he taste or smell of aniseed or strawberry (as far as I know). He’s just a normal straight up and down kind of guy with no frills. Come to think about it, Tim’s probably the most boring prophylactic in the entire universe. But I love him. I bloody must do because I just can’t give him up. He sits in my wallet, day after day in the dark, living in hope of being allowed his leave, of discharging his god-given destiny, while I live in terror of exactly the same.

Gawd, Natalie.

While I checked out the kitchen cupboards for food, I decided I’d call around her house later on that day. I’d come clean and just admit to being a little nervous about the whole thing. She’d take pity on me, surely, then leave me alone for a bit in the nooky department. Perhaps I could appease her by asking her to help redecorate mum and Uncle Mick’s bedroom in the house. She could choose the colours. Yeah, she’d like that. Women did.

Breakfast turned out to be a cup of tea, a dubious looking banana from the fridge, and was disturbed by a couple of Uncle Mick’s ex-colleagues who looked more shifty that any pair of criminals I’d ever seen as they stood on the doorstep. They wanted to know if I knew anything about the grave robbery. I said no, I’d been away. They asked if I knew anyone who’d want to upset our family. I said yes. Two pairs of eyebrows shot up and two pairs of eyes beneath gleamed with a blood-lust I’d only ever seen in the eyes of Mick when he was after me with Doris, his peacekeeper truncheon type-thing.

“Who?” the stouter of the two wanted to know.

“Oh, just about any criminal put away by my uncle over the last twenty years,” I told him.

The eyebrows dropped down to sit back at-ready and the pair tried hard to hide their disappointment. “Ah well…yes. If you hear of anything?”

I nodded. “Yup.”

“Thanks, son.”

I sighed. “No problem.”

I shut the door and went to check my email. There was one from Pete, nothing from Nat. I sighed again and opened Pete’s message.

“DUDE!” God, he even wrote that way too. “I’m BACK in HELL (ThisTown) for a couple of weeks before going off to WAIT FOR IT………. CARNEGIE HALL in MANHATTAN at a teaching event thing in the recital hall. Shit, Stan-me-man, my balls are busting for this. I’m on my waaaaaaaaaaaaay……..!”

Scientists have ‘discovered’ that neatness stymies creativity.

Blinks.

Scientists have ‘discovered’ the right side of the brain, it seems.

Crikey, I could have told these highly-paid people that messy is good when it comes to creativity, that one should allow the muse its way with the person doing the creating. And it’s a ‘place’ we all strive to be, isn’t it, inside that creative trance? A place that has in many cases been ‘educated’ out of us.

Sigh.

I could have told them all this and more.

I wonder how much their grant was?

~~~~

I found it difficult to decide where to put this post as reading is both work and a pleasure to me — both taken at a natural working trot, not a great, gullumping gallop. I don’t know. I’m sceptical here — how can speed reading possibly be enjoyable? Isn’t idling through a novel just that: abandoning the Rat Race for a while?

And while listening is not really reading, (yet can be in some ways better) I do also have a novel near-finished that I started about a week ago. Sounds like I’m a slow reader, eh? Well no. I’m quite fast actually, I just don’t have much time in which to do it. I read in five or ten, sometimes only one or two, minute sections, grabbing a few words in between other Real Life goings on. Having food in the vicinity, such as dinner or lunch, is always a boon though. It means I might actually squeeze a whole quarter of an hour extra out of the day for this little pleasure if no one talks to me.

Evenings, of course, are dedicated to writing fiction, blogging and catching up with whatever editing jobs need doing. I also read and critique for a few fellow writers and, whilst this could be construed as reading for pleasure, there’s always an element of nit-picking and opinion needed from me. As of course is the case when the writerly tables are turned and the critiquer’s hat is on the other foot.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: what I’m reading. Though my small digression was warranted here, as you will see. The novel is by a British author who shall remain nameless because I once loved what he did. The last time I read anything by him was in the eighties/early to mid nineties when horror was the buzzword all around the Western world and everyone was writing it. Indeed everyone wanted to be Stephen King**. In a word or three: I was young.

I read this book initially when I was 21 and thought it okay, but you know I really do think it might have been the very last thing I read by this particular author. And the reason why became agonisingly clear at around twenty pages in this past week — the writing annoys me.

There are adverbs tripping over themselves to slow the prose down — too many. There is head-hopping galore without a sniff of a transition — two, sometimes three characters in a scene. And the women are blatantly dainty and meek — all the better to strengthen the wimpy male lead, methinks. Erg. All in all, I’ve struggled against my youthful self loving this author, and am using experience and age to ask WTF?

Mostly, I am gutted.

Now, I do not hold with the majority of writers on the Internet who say that all ‘ly’ adverbs should be banished from one’s prose, because one which is well-placed has as much right to be there as any other well-chosen word.

And I’m not opposing a well-placed and suitably transitioned POV swap once, perhaps twice, in a novel should the plot warrant it.

But the thing is this, the reason I am gutted, is that my youth deceived me: I seriously thought that because this guy was a best-selling author (like SK) that he was good. Ah well.

What of the weak female character, I hear you cry? Well, weak female characters will always annoy me, no matter who writes them, male or female.

Anyway, that’s my week’s reading for pleasure — more listening that aught, but hey.

Next week, I’m reading something that has won prizes, just to be on the safe side — Chocolat, by Joanne Harris. Can’t go wrong there. Surely?

And I promise to make this section more reading than writing too, next week. I’ve a fellow writer’s book to review as well as reading Chocolat – a pleasure long ago promised, but yet to emerge from these busy fingers, so this category should be busy.

~Womblin~

*A bit of Wales that sticks out into the Irish Sea. Lovely.

**Everyone still does, I hear you cry? Well, not this writer, though I can appreciate what and how he writes.

****

Up ahead, no more than four hundred metres away, someone stepped out into the road and turned to face him. David’s foot flew from the accelerator and stamped the brake. “Shit!”

ABS off for sports mode, the Beema fishtailed to a stop ten feet in front of the man — the hitch-hiker David knew he’d already passed — and he sat breathless over his steering wheel, staring wide-eyed at this maniac who’d brought his thrill to a grinding halt.

…Or life to a start.

The odd thought made David blink. He could not fathom why, given the day’s events, he would think such a thing. It was as though someone else had spoken inside his mind. Frowning, he scanned the stranger who should not have been where he was.

The man’s short blonde hair lifted a little in the breeze as he stood equal on his feet, tall and imposing yet easy with it. His hands pocketed, he stood as though waiting for a bus — a ride. Bright eyes held David’s. The man smiled. His ride, it seemed, had come.

Despite the distance, David looked into his rear-view mirror for the hitcher he’d already passed. But the road was clear; the garage was too distant to see, therefore the hitcher would be too. His frown deepened. The first man had been unusual for these parts, what were the chances of another? “Twins, maybe,” he muttered as he glanced through the windscreen again. He hissed in a breath. The man was gone.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers.” David shook his head, moved foot from brake to accelerator once again. “Fucking weirdo, fucking with m–” A rap on the passenger window and he jumped. When he turned, the smiling man was looking in at him.

Not knowing what else to do, caught within the sticky surreality of indecision, David pressed the button and the passenger window whirred down.

The man poked his head in a little and looked around. “Nice car,” he said, his low, slightly accented voice appreciative. “It’s German.” His paper-cut eyes examined the leather upholstery, the dials, switches and lights of the dash, then came to rest at last on David. “I need a ride.” He raised an angled brow. “Have you got one?”

David opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what might come out, not knowing what to do. For the second time that day he felt entirely out of control. “I…um…where are you heading?” he asked, his mother’s voice echoing in his mind from years gone by, warning of hitch-hikers, mutilation — death.

The stranger already had his hand on the door handle, but not at the front. He opened the rear door and swung himself in. “Wherever you’re going,” he said.

David frowned and looked back over his shoulder. “Front’s free, you know.” He reached for the solicitor’s papers to clear them, casting an eye between the front seats to check his baseball bat still lay there. It did.

“That’s quite all right,” the stranger said. “I like to stretch out, if you know what I mean. This is after all going to be a very long journey. Isn’t it… David?”

David looked at the man as he shut the car door. Did I give my name? Straightening slowly, he stared past his own puzzled reflection in the rear-view mirror and to his new passenger behind. The word ’smooth’ didn’t quite cut it. David got the impression as he watched the man settling back against the passenger door, his long legs stretched over the seat, that nothing could faze the guy, nothing would disturb. He blinked as bright eyes turned his way, staring back at him through the mirror’s reflection.

The stranger faded from focus as David looked at his own eyes, comparing them. He’d always thought them bright, but they were dull and grey measured against this man’s piercing orbs. His hair, also, he’d thought a light blonde, but the man’s fair head made David’s look dirty, unkempt. And as he gazed at the curve of his own quizzical eyebrows, David realised that the whole of the stranger’s demeanour seemed sharper, more defined than anything around him. As though the world were only a backdrop and the man was the reality — the keystone and the focus.

David wondered at this strange clarity. Does this mean I’m not real? He rubbed his eyes.

Now the man looked around and pursed full lips. “Are we ready to go, David?” he asked. “Time ticks. Oh, you might want to pull over, out of the way of the lorry. Quickly.” He lifted a finger to point at the road running around the left-hand bend David had been about to take before the stranger stopped him.

The skin on David’s back prickled. With a bizarre panic urging him, he dumped the clutch and selected first. Pulling away, he chanced another glance back at the man, a small part of him expecting he’d be gone.

He wasn’t.

And as David accelerated, steering left and away from the log wagon that hurtled around the corner at that very moment, its wheels astride the centre lines, the man leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “You are ‘South’, David,” he said. “…Listen.”