'A Hornets' Nest'

Making steps towards publishing the novel. Had a good talk with a self-publishing company in the UK to discuss my options. And I've got a title, 'A Hornets' Nest'. Thinking about that apostrophe there ...

Audio / Video - The Neanderthal in me

Busy weekend! Here is an audio recording of a short story I wrote about one of my interests, Neanderthals. The photo, by the way, is actually me, with my features morphed into those of a Neanderthal. This is something you can get done at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Very good fun!

Video - "How companies really work"

On my Facebook page you can see a short film (4 mins 30) that I made explaining - not too seriously - my view on how companies work. I hope you enjoy it!

Work, work, work...

Well, little by little I inch closer to my goal. I've been doing a lot of work over the holidays tightening up the text and ironing out inconsistencies. To my horror I discovered that I'd got my time-line wrong and Celia was taking Jeremy to the Oktoberfest when it would be closed.

I've also being researching e-publishing and other such topics which I will have to get my head around soon. But the most alarming part of my research was when I realised that I'm about 20,000 words outside the standard length for this kind of novel which is ca 80,000 words!

Agh!

I need to think hard about this. Do I add in more content, or do I just decide it should be a short novel?

Some thinking necessary. Any thoughts from you welcome.

Chapter 37 - The Hunt

Beer wagon, Oktoberfest

As promised, here is Chapter 37. Only one more chapter after this one, stay with me!

The story so far ... Jeremy Fisk has proved to be the keystone to the UN embargo breaking carried out by British companies during the war in Croatia. He has stolen all the evidence collected by Celia and Franz and left Celia to be killed by his accomplice, Morpheus Herman, who will make it look like a suicide.

Celia manages to take advantage of a distraction to escape from the store room at the Oktoberfest where she is being kept, but in her semi-drugged condition, will she be able to flee from Morpheus?

Chapter 37 – The hunt

“Nothing!” said Max to his father when they met at the agreed time in front of  one of the fairground rides. They’d split up when they arrived at the Oktoberfest and searched the main tents separately, looking for Celia.

“And she hasn’t gone back home either. I just phoned Tante Ilse and Arnold,” said Franz.  “Let’s try the Oide Wiesn section next. Where is it exactly?”

“Under the Big Wheel. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be a bad place to meet somebody, it’s quieter than the main area.”

“Come on then!”

**************************************************

The cool air outside the store room was almost like a slap in the face for Celia and increased the dizziness that the drug in her beer had caused, making it hard to move in a straight line. Once she fell, only the adrenaline got her up again.

She realized that the storeroom she’d been in was somewhat away from the central area of the Wiesn and there was a stretch of ground she had to cover before she could merge with the crowds. Even then, she didn’t dare stop and ask just anybody for help. Morpheus would not necessarily hold back from completing his task, just because there were people around him. She needed the police, but they were mostly by the exits and entrances.  

**************************************************

Morpheus was angry. Fooled into talking about himself and then being caught off-guard in that way! By a woman! It was another example of how he was falling to pieces. The drugs he took to dull the constant pain from the cancerous clusters nesting in his chest were slowing him down mentally and physically. Ah well, not much longer, but before he went he was going to get this job done. He always did his job. He set off after Celia as she ran towards the crowds.

****************************************************

Franz swore. The path towards the Big Wheel was blocked by people waiting to see the different brewery wagons pulled by enormous cart horses go down the main thoroughfare.

“’schuldigen … ‘schuldigen … muss durch … muss durch!”

Max pushed his way through, pulling his father after him to the front of the crowd where their path was blocked by barriers.

“Please, let us across,” begged Max to a nearby policeman walking down the line. “We’re looking for my mother!”

“You’ll have to wait, sonny. Won’t be long.”

**************************************************

The crowds were much denser now and Celia had to push and barge her way forwards. People swore at her and pushed back, but she was beyond caring.  Looking over her shoulder from time to time she could see Morpheus’s pale face bobbing along behind her, gradually gaining ground.

*****************************************************

There she was again! He thought he’d lost her but then Morpheus caught sight of her pink dirndl again, slightly to his right. He followed doggedly after, ignoring the pain which had changed to sharp stabs in his lungs, making each breath feel as if he were breathing in glass needles.

*****************************************************

The crowds clapped and cheered as the first wagon trundled by, the huge horses tossing their heads and snorting so that their decorations clinked and their ribbons shook. In the crowds on the other side, Franz gradually became aware of some sort of commotion, with people shouting at somebody as if a fight was taking place. And then he saw Celia ploughing forward, red in the face, hair disheveled and eyes desperate. He clambered over his barrier, ran to her side, grabbed her arms and started pulling her over towards him.

“Hey, was macht ihr da?” a policeman further up the line shouted.

“Morfeus is behind me, he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!” Celia gabbled. She toppled over the barrier on top of Franz and they fell to the ground. He jumped up pulling her with him, but she could only cling to his neck as her legs gave way beneath her. He wrapped his arm around her waist and started dragging her towards the other side, aware of police moving towards them but also of another wagon approaching.

******************************************************

Morpheus made it over the barrier with nearly his last strength. There they were, the two people who’d managed to destroy his friendship with Ivan Kaiec, the only thing he had left in his life. He felt a rush of hate so powerful it drove everything else aside. He raised his gun with a wavering hand and squeezed the trigger at the exact moment they tripped over each other’s feet and collapsed to the ground again. He thought for a moment he must have hit one of them because there was a terrible scream of pain, then realized it must have been something else, it was too loud. He moved forward to finish the job, just as Celia and Franz started rolling towards the side. His focus was so complete he never registered the panicked horses bolting towards him, blood from his bullet streaming down one animal’s flank. He was knocked over and his chest and skull crushed by iron hooves as the frantic coachman tried helplessly to get them under control again.

******************************************************

The police, almost as terrified as the horses, dragged Celia and Franz to their feet and started shouting. Both of them were incoherent with shock, the wagon wheels had so nearly crushed them too.  It was only Max who was able to explain to the police what had been happening.

“The airport, Max!” said Celia eventually. “Fisk has got all the material, they mustn’t let him get away!” Then she felt dizzy again and collapsed for the last time that day.

Chapter 36 - Finding Celia

Oide Wies'n

 How disgraceful, April 19 was when I posted my last chapter! And I left poor Celia all that time locked up with the bad guys ... I can't imagine she'll ever forgive me. I hope to post again before 10 November.

The story so far ... Celia meets up with Jeremy Fisk at the Oktoberfest and shows him the material she and Franz have collected concerning Ned's investigations into the British government's involvement in arms smuggling to Croatia during the independence war in '94-95. Jeremy tells her he has somebody who will publish her claims and they arrange to go to meet him. As Celia stands up she feels very dizzy and confused and Jeremy is able to take her with no resistance to a small storeroom where they are joined by Morpheus Herman. But what is Jeremy's connection with Morpheus?

Chapter 36 – Finding Celia

It was Max who guessed that Celia had gone to the Oktoberfest.

‘I saw her from the window heading towards the underground,’ he said. ‘She had a dirndl on. Where else would she be going?’

‘It seems an odd place for a meeting,’ said Franz. ‘So many people and so noisy.’

‘Yes, and that makes it difficult for anyone to find her. Phone her immediately! Maybe they haven’t met up yet and we’ve got time to warn her,’ said Tante Ilse.

Franz rang, but Celia ignored his call and by the time Max tried with his phone she’d turned hers off completely.

‘Call the police,’ said Timothy. ‘It’s our only chance.’

They weren’t particularly helpful. With the Oktoberfest on and a football match scheduled for that evening their resources were overstretched and Franz was hampered by not being to explain properly why Celia should not be meeting Jeremy.

‘They just think I’m a jealous husband whose wife’s having an affair. I’m going down there to look for her myself. You lot wait here and warn her if she calls back.’

Max insisted on going too, so they left Timothy in one flat and Tante Ilse went back to hers.

‘Bring Celia back safely,’ she said to Franz, gripping his arm as he bent to kiss her goodbye. ‘I love her so much!’

Franz nodded, his eyes suddenly stinging, and left.

*****************************************************

‘If you could see the look on your face!’ said Jeremy. ‘Priceless!’ He drew up a chair the other side of the desk from Celia while Morpheus remained standing behind him.

‘What’s … what’s going on? Why is he here?’ asked Celia. The smelling salts Jeremy had given her had helped to clear her head, partially at least.

‘Ah, Morpheus is a good friend of mine. We’ve been working together on and off for many years. First of all with the Colonel and then - when he started getting all idealistic about how he wanted to fund his adventures in politics - without him!’

‘But Ned …’

‘Ah, dear old Ned. He was much too interested in the arms deals that I was organizing for the Colonel during the war.”
“That was you?” asked Celia. “Not … not Timothy Arnold?”

Jeremy laughed. “What? That fussy old woman? No, no, it was me. And your brother was starting to be a real nuisance with his questions. Very unpatriotic of him. I had the unofficial blessing of the British government itself! Or at least the Department for British Export Development.’

‘Did you kill Ned?’

‘No, but we might have had to if it hadn’t been for that Croatian tank shell landing in the right place at the right time. Just extremely good luck – for me at any rate!’

‘But …but why did you believe me when I said I’d seen him?’

Jeremy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Best way to know what you were up to. And there was always the remote possibility that you were right. There were just bits and pieces of body in the building after the shell hit it. I could see you weren’t going to give up looking for him and if we kept an eye on you then maybe you’d lead us to Ned. But that’s not going to happen now.’

‘What do you want though? What are you trying to achieve? I don’t understand.’

Jeremy waved the bundle of material Celia had brought with her.

‘Well, first of all this stuff. I have no intention of being prosecuted for helping the British government break UN embargoes. And then secondly, Morpheus here is very unhappy at the damage you and your husband have caused to his business operations.’

‘The prostitution rings?’

‘Exactly. Though you don’t need to sound so judgemental. Very bourgeois of you.  By destroying his relationship with the Colonel you’ve lost him his friend and protector, the only one he had left after his family was wiped out. And as perhaps you’ve heard, Morpheus believes in revenge.’

‘Have you poisoned me, is that why I feel so ill?’ said Celia, her voice shaking.

‘No poison, just a little drug in your beer to make you cooperative. A pity, if you’d only just given everything to that sleazy boyfriend of yours, Tomislav Lederer, none of this would have been necessary.’

Celia felt dizzy again, and again Jeremy put the small bottle under her nose.

‘You know about Tomi?’ she asked finally.

‘Of course! Tomi approached Morpheus a short time ago, wanting to sell him Ivana’s information which he believed he could get from you, thanks to those most artistic photographs that he took of you two. Morpheus told me and we hatched this little blackmail plan for Tomi to try to get hold of everything without anybody getting hurt. But then you spoilt it by being all noble and refusing to hand it over. Very foolish of you! It’s going to lead to two deaths.’

‘Deaths?’

‘Morpheus will explain. It was his idea.’

‘One is already happen,’ said Morpheus. ‘Sometime soon police find Lederer’s body near Ostbahnhof . With nice photos. Two will be you, also with nice photos. Look like you murder him, then suicide with same gun.”

“The shame you see, Celia. You couldn’t live with yourself,” added Jeremy.

“But … but the police will know you’re involved. I told Franz I was meeting you!”
“And I shall tell them all about it! You rang and said you had a story from my good old friend Ned about UN embargo busting. Because I’m so good-hearted, I agreed to try and help Ned’s poor little sister.  I came to see you, found you had nothing and left again, very annoyed at how you had wasted my time.”

He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, Morpheus, I need to leave now if I’m going to get my plane. Give me about an hour’s start before you kill her, there’s a good chap,” he turned back to Celia. “Perhaps I’ll hear about this on the news tomorrow night back in London, eh?”

He got up from the chair and patted Morpheus on the back. “I’ll be in touch again soon. I think we can use this material against our good friend the Colonel in due course.”  He opened the door and looked at Celia again. “Sorry about this Celia. It’s nothing personal with me, just business. Morpheus on the other hand … I think it’s very personal!” Then he left.

Morpheus pulled out a gun from his pocket and sat down in Jeremy’s chair. His Grand Inquisitor’s face had developed dark rings under the eyes since the last time she’d seen him and they made him look pitiless. Celia shrank back in the chair behind the desk, her heart beating faster than she’d have thought possible, tears starting to trickle down her face.

“Maybe you pray. We have time. Nobody come here until much later. Pray!”

Celia fell to her knees and put her elbows on the desk and started to pray like never before. At first just random words, but then she began to whisper all the prayers she could remember one after another, over and over again, like a chant. The repetition gradually calmed her down and she started to think. She had to try to make a connection to her captor.

“I know what happened in the war to your parents and your wife,” she said eventually, her hands still clasped in front of her and her elbows on the edge of the desk. “It was very terrible!”

Morpheus said nothing. He kept his eyes down and the gun steadily pointing at her. After a moment, Celia carried on.

“What kept you going? How did you manage to survive that?” At first she didn’t think he’d respond, but then he spoke.

“Anger. Hate. Revenge. Very powerful emotions. Makes many things possible,” he said.

Celia was silent, thinking what to say next.

“But … but those emotions eat you up inside if you can never let go of them,” she said. “They can make you ill, give … give you cancer …

As she spoke she saw his eyes flicker up to her face with a look of surprise in them. Then she realized.

“Oh …it’s happened to you, hasn’t it? You have a cancer, don’t you?”  she asked. Again there was a moment’s silence.

“That’s what doctor say.”

“So it’s serious then?”

Morpheus nodded. “Nothing can be done anymore, but …” he shrugged his shoulders. “… we all die some time.”

“How much time do the doctors say you have?”

“Longer than you. I think you should …”

Celia never heard what he thought because at that moment something crashed against the wall of the store room and she heard the sound of German voices arguing outside.

“Ich hab’ doch gesagt, wir müssen die …”

Surprised, Morpheus half-turned in his chair to see what was happening behind him. Celia seized the chance and with all her strength tipped the desk up and over so it toppled onto Morpheus and knocked the gun out of his hand. She leapt for the door, wrenched it open and was outside and running before he could stop her.

Chapter 35 - "Meeting at the Oktoberfest" audio file now available!

You can listen to what happens when Celia goes to the Oktoberfest if you click here!

Chapter 35 – Meeting at the Oktoberfest

 I've always had mixed feelings about the Oktoberfest. Travelling around Munich during the season can be horrible, with too many drunks, too much noise and the constant necessity to step around piles of vomit.
Yet when you're actually there it's very hard to resist the atmosphere. There are so many people having fun and this is infectious. 
In these last chapters I want to try to convey these mixed feelings I have and I also think the Oktoberfest can provide an exciting setting for the finale. I hope you agree!

The story so far ... Franz had an unexpected visit from Timothy Arnold, looking for Celia. He's heard that she plans to give the information she's collected about the arms smuggling tolerated by the British government into Croatia during the civil war in the 90's. He warns Franz that under no circumstances should she give this material to Jeremy Fisk, the very person she has just gone to meet.

Chapter 35 – Meeting at the Oktoberfest

The late September sun was shining out of a blue sky as Celia hurried through the crowds towards the entrance of the Oktoberfest and her meeting with Jeremy. Although it was only midday it was already busy and she couldn’t go as quickly as she wanted.

‘Don’t stand out,’ Jeremy had warned her. ‘Make sure you’re not followed. Dress and move inconspicuously.’

Celia forced herself to slow down and by the time she reached their agreed meeting point outside the Löwenbrau tent she was calm again.

‘You can’t miss it,’ she’d explained to him. ‘There’s an enormous model of a lion above the entrance, holding a mug of beer which moves up and down. And the lion roars from time to time.’

 Jeremy wasn’t there yet, so Celia stood slightly to one side and waited for him, sniffing the Oktoberfest scents in the air. The smell of sugared almonds being roasted dominated, with the occasional whiff of charcoaled fish providing a contrast. From time to time she caught a touch of cinnamon from the large spicy biscuits, decorated with kitsch sentiments written in faux Bavarian that hung around many people’s necks, while underlying everything was the stale, sour reek of beer, spilt over the previous days. There were groups of middle-aged, camera-clicking Japanese and American tourists being led around while the atmosphere was still relatively sober and their anxious guides had a reasonable chance of getting them something to eat and drink and out again before losing somebody. That was nearly impossible to do in the evening when the atmosphere became rowdier.

Somebody tapped her on the shoulder making her jump. It was Jeremy.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ve got us a table inside the tent. We might as well make ourselves comfortable and have something to eat and drink, don’t you think?’

He was much more relaxed than he’d been on the phone the previous evening and insisted that Celia drink with him although she didn’t much feel like anything.

‘We need to look very ordinary,’ he said after he’d also ordered food for them. ‘My contact has agreed to meet us here if I say it’s worth his while. Now, have some of this delicious beer … that’s it … cheers! And tell me again about everything you’ve found.’

Celia went over it once more, adding the information about Tomi’s visit, but leaving out his blackmail attempt and her subsequent row with Franz.

‘So, you just told him that you hadn’t received anything from Ivana, is that right?’

‘Yes. He was suspicious, but there was nothing he could do to prove we had got something.’

‘Very good. Now, Celia, my contact will ensure worldwide publicity for this story, but in return he wants exclusivity. Where is all the material? In your bag there?’

‘Yes,’ said Celia. ‘Everything’s here, including our print outs, Ivana’s memory disk and Bernard’s CD.’

She showed him a couple of the photos including the incriminating address and the fake inventory lists for school equipment signed by the Colonel.

She’d just finished putting everything back when her mobile phone rang. She looked at the display, it was Franz. Well, he could wait. She turned it off completely. That would teach him.

‘I see. Did you make any copies to your computers?’ asked Jeremy. ‘I’m sorry to be a bore about this but my contact is insisting on absolute exclusivity for this story. He told me that if I had even the slightest concerns that you’d kept some of the material, then he wasn’t interested. I have to protect my reputation, you see.’

‘This is really everything. We decided not to risk making copies. The CD and the disk were easy to hide but the computer wasn’t. I told you our flat was already broken into once.’

‘Smart thinking. I can see you’ve got a talent for this kind of thing. Now, I’m just going outside the tent for moment to make a phone call. I think we should go ahead, but let’s see if my contact agrees. Excuse me a moment…’

He got up, leaving Celia alone at the table. The tent’s brass band began playing the first set of the day and as she listened to the sentimental trashy music she felt the Oktoberfest charm start its work. The place was noisy, vulgar, over priced and full of drunks but somehow she nearly always enjoyed going there. She began to relax and drank some more.

Jeremy reappeared, carrying a giant pretzel for them both.

‘It’s on!’ he yelled at her above the brass band. ‘He said he needs about an hour to get here, which gives us time to enjoy ourselves a bit. I think we should drink a toast. To Ned and his sister: the two best journalists I’ve ever worked with!’

Their food arrived shortly afterwards. Jeremy asked if Celia would fetch him some mustard and then attacked his pork knuckle while keeping up a flow of conversation and joining in enthusiastically with the frequent toasting required by the brass band. Celia felt relaxed for the first time in a long while. It was good to be freed from the burden of knowing what to do about Ned and Ivana’s material. Somebody else’s problem. She had enough other ones still to deal with, it would be nice to be able to go to sleep and wake up with them all solved.

‘Are you alright, Celia?’ Jeremy’s voice penetrated her thoughts. ‘You look very sleepy suddenly.’

Celia shook herself.

‘Sorry, I don’t think I’d better drink any more beer. It makes me tired. Where will we meet this person? We can’t talk here!’

Jeremy looked at his phone.

‘He’s just sent me a message. He’s arranged somewhere quiet for us nearby. Come on!’

As Celia stood up she felt the ground beneath her feet tilt and would have fallen if Jeremy hadn’t caught her elbow. He grinned.

‘Powerful stuff that beer, eh? Never mind, let me help…’ and he steered her out of the tent into the crowds.

‘Don’t understand … didn’t drink much,’ she mumbled, swaying from side-to-side. She saw people looking at her and a group of teenage girls began giggling.

‘Come along my dear. This way …’ Jeremy put his arm around her waist and half carried her along with him. Celia tried to work out what was happening but it was as if her brain had filled with treacle and she couldn’t string two thoughts together, while around her the world span out of control.

A door appeared in front of them. Jeremy opened it and pulled her inside, then sat her on a chair in front of a desk. Celia looked blearily round the tiny room, lined with files. She knew she was still at the Oktoberfest because outside she could hear the noise of the funfair and screams from people on the different rides. This must be some sort of office belonging to one of the tents. The desk suddenly rose up and hit her in the face.

‘Here, sniff this!’ ordered Jeremy, thrusting a small bottle under her nose. The liquid inside had a sharp, smell that stung her nose but cleared her head and allowed her to sit up again and stay upright if she held onto the arms of the chair.

‘What … what’s happening? I think I’m ill. You’ve got to take me to the doctor,’ she said, trying to stand up. Jeremy pushed her back into her seat.

‘You don’t want to go anywhere, Celia. And anyway, you’re supposed to be meeting my contact aren’t you?’ There was a knock at the door.

‘Ah, that must be him now. Please don’t feel you have to get up!’

He opened the door and Morfeus Herman walked into the room.

Audio file Chapter 34 - False friends

... is now available here. I hope you like it!

Chapter 34 - False friends

False friends

After all the excitement of 'Chapter 33 - Blackmail' and Tomi Lederer turning out to be such a villain I got a bit stuck with this chapter. 
One problem was I found it very difficult to know how much to include of the inevitable argument that ensued after Franz told Celia he wants a divorce because of her fling with Tomi. A row in these circumstances is inevitable but just not very interesting to write about, so I tinkered around for ages trying to imagine how both parties would react and behave. 
I think Celia is essentially a very pragmatic person. For her, sleeping with Tomi was just something she wanted to do at the time because she liked him, they had the opportunity and she was fed up with being ignored by Franz. It had a physical, but no emotional significance.
Franz is however tortured by the thought of the physical side, in particular because he knows that he bears some of the responsibility for it due to his treatment of Celia, prior to the trip to Venice (Chapter 21 - Death on the Rialto). 
My theory is that the physical side is a much bigger deal for men than women. Men aren't so bothered with the idea of their partner  loving somebody else, as long as the other person doesn't sleep with their partner. Women don't like their partner sleeping with somebody else either, but as long as they feel they are the only one that is truly loved they are able to deal with it better.
Not that I have the courage to test this idea any time soon.
The story so far: Tomi Lederer has attempted to blackmail Celia into giving him the information sent to her by Ivana Kaiec concerning arms smuggling into Croatia during the Yugoslavian civil war. Celia refuses and in revenge Tomi tells Franz of the night they spent together in a hotel. Franz throws Tomi out of their flat and at Celia's request doesn't look at a blackmail photo that Tomi dropped. However, he then tells her he wants a divorce ... 
Chapter 34 – False friends can be found on the right under 'Good Stuff'.

'Speak Up!' - short story

Nothing to add to Celia's adventures this weekend, I'm afraid. But if you click here, you can read and listen to another short story I wrote recently. I hope you enjoy it!

Audio recording of Chapter 33 - Blackmail

Tom Hanks

I decided I had to change the name of Chapter 33 from 'Love Rat' to 'Blackmail'. It seems more appropriate. You can download the audio file here.

It's a strange experience doing these recordings. I really like producing them and oddly enough it's the villains, such as Tomi, that are the most fun. I think that if I was an actor I'd probably enjoy doing bad guy parts most, unlike Tom Hanks who has never played a villain. It's a shame, he'd do it so well. 
Funnily enough, when I spoke Tomi's lines, I had Hanks's voice in my head. I wonder why? Perhaps when this project is made into a film I can persuade him to play the part of Tomi. Does anybody out there have his agent's number?

Chapter 33 - Blackmail

Chapter 33 - Blackmail can be found on the right under 'Good stuff'. ... 

Tarot is back! 'Chapter 32 - The Fool' audio file...

... is now available on line. Just click here!

And here you can see a picture of me recording it for your listening pleasure.

Chapter 32 - The Fool

The Fool - Rider Waite Tarot

I've drawn up my plan, I've written my chapter summaries and I've even cleaned my desk, there's no excuse not to produce the next chapter. So here, a week after I promised, it is:

The story so far ... Celia Thomas, a Munich based art restorer is working on a project to rescue some 16^th century paintings in Croatia. While in Zagreb she glimpses somebody she believes to be her journalist brother Ned, who was apparently killed in Bosnia in 1995. As she starts to investigate his disappearance she stirs up a lot of trouble for herself and those around her.

The paintings are packed up and on their way to Munich for restoration. When Celia gets back home she finds some bad news waiting for her... 

Chapter 32 – The Fool can be found on the right under 'Good stuff'.

The Final Phase

Outlines for the seven remaining chapters

 Happy New Year to everybody for 2015. I hope you had or are having enjoyable holidays and are able to deal with the continuing adventures of Celia Thomas.

Because although I have not posted anything for a while I’ve been busy over the last ten days working out how to end this story. It has not been easy.

The difficulty was that I had too many strands that needed to be resolved. Nine in fact, so one of them had to go and I decided to ditch the idea which I introduced in the last chapter that Celia and the Colonel were about to find treasure in the secret cabinet in the wall behind the paintings. It’s kind of a shame as I liked the whole Famous Five adventure element that having buried treasure introduced and I had gone to a lot of trouble quite early in the book (Chapter 11 – Marcus mentions that the X-ray photographs reveal a hollow space in the wall behind the panels) to introduce the idea of there being something in the wall. Now I shall either have to rewrite various chapters to eliminate it, or else just leave it as a red-herring for readers to get excited about. I haven’t decided yet.

This still leaves eight themes that need to be dealt with:

1 What happens to the pictures in the chapel?

2 Does Tomi reappear?

3 What about Timothy Arnold and the Department of British Export Development?

4 How will the theme of human trafficking and Morfeus Herman be resolved?

5 Is the Colonel a good guy or a bad guy? Does he win his election or end up in jail/dead?

6 Are the tensions between Celia and Franz really all resolved? Should she tell him about her fling with Tomi?

7 What can Tante Ilse and Max contribute to the final stages of the story?

8 Is Ned still alive or not?

I’ve now managed to sketch out an outline for how to bring all these elements together which – according to my calculations – means that there are now only seven chapters to go. How long these seven chapters will take, I don’t know exactly, but let’s be optimistic and say that with luck I should be finished by June 2015. This is something like two years after I had originally planned, but – hey – what’s that between friends?

So, dear readers, stay with me as we approach the final phase. I hope to be able to post chapter 32 by the 11 January. Keep your fingers crossed!

The power of language - ethnic cleansing

I had an interesting comment the other day. I'll re-post it here so you don't have to hunt it out:

A special language challenge for you, if I may: Your plot summary refers to "ethnic cleansing". There is nothing clean about "ethnic cleansing". How about an alternative, more appropriate term instead? Not easy, perhaps, but worth the effort surely. 

I had a long think about this. If I haven't misunderstood the post, the proposal is that we should not use the word "cleansing" in the context of an activity that involves the persecution of one group of people by another, because the word "cleansing" is intrinsically positive. If we use "cleansing" then perhaps to some people the persecution may sound reasonable, acceptable.

There is something to be said for this point of view. I'm a believer in the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf theory (language influences thought and also some aspects of non-linguistic behaviour) so I can see how this might work. We can see positive examples of this in the changes in attitude during my lifetime towards various groups thanks to the banning of abusive / patronising language about those groups in the public sphere.

So, should a writer avoid using a language chunk like "ethnic cleansing" and look for  / create something else? "Ethnic displacement / expulsion / forced relocation" perhaps?

At the moment  I'm not sure. To be honest "ethnic cleansing" is excellent shorthand and I know my audience will understand exactly what is meant. Nor will they think it is something positive because it has only ever been reported as something bad. If I use another expression the audience will have to pause to try to work out what I mean and I don't necessarily want that.

Nevertheless, I think it's an interesting point and I shall continue to ponder the issue. Any thoughts welcome.

Lisbon and the relics of the Saints

Relics and busts of saints in St Roque, Lisbon

November has been a very busy month in my bread and butter job, which hasn't left time for continuing the novel. 
However on a trip to Lisbon at the end of October I visited a great church - the Church of St Roque.
Like all towns which were centres of trade in the past, everybody lived in fear of the plague. St Roque was a plague survivor and became the person you prayed to when you were feeling poorly.
In a chapel of this church I found this amazing collection of saintly bones. What made this collection unusual was that there was also an artist's impression of what the saint looked like in bust form, sitting on top of the glass casket with the bones, something I've never seen before. For some reason they all seemed to be female saints in this chapel (and fairly hot saints according to the artist).
Now I'll give you three guesses what Celia and the Colonel are going to find in the hidden chamber in the chapel as described in Chapter 31...

Chapter 30 – Discoveries and Chapter 31 – Evidence

Recently I went to a packed workshop held at ‘The Munich Readery’ run by Rita Banerjee who teaches at the Ludwig Maximilian University.

The title of the workshop was Character Development and playing with persona and we looked at the different types of characters you have in a novel, specifically ‘flat’ characters who don’t develop (e.g. Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice) and ‘dynamic’ characters (e.g. Elizabeth Bennet or Mr Darcy in the same novel) who do.

Rita then introduced us to a simple but powerful character development tool. By answering a set of very wide-ranging questions about the character (e.g. attitude to authority, dream life, fridge contents etc) you develop a clear mental picture of him or her before you even start writing.

I found the tool very helpful and applied it to the new character, Morpheus Herman, that I introduced in Chapter 29 – The Inquisitor. Morpheus is a ‘bad’ character, but I was dissatisfied with my first version. He was just a cardboard cut out baddie and I didn’t find him very convincing. By answering all these questions about Morpheus for myself, I was able to establish a back story for him that partially explains the way he is now and makes his actions more plausible. You can see the result in Chapter 31- Hidden Treasures below.

For the first time in this blog, I’m putting up two chapters at the same time. I hope you enjoy them.

The story so far ... Celia Thomas, a Munich based art restorer is working on a project to rescue some 16^th century paintings in Croatia. While in Zagreb she glimpses somebody she believes to be her journalist brother Ned, who was apparently killed in Bosnia in 1995. As she starts to investigate his disappearance she stirs up a lot of trouble for herself and those around her.

Celia is back in Croatia to supervise the removal of the paintings to Munich for restoration. Meanwhile her husband Franz is examining two sources of information that might reveal something about what happened to Ned.

Chapter 30 – Discoveries and Chapter 31 - Evidence can be found on the right under 'Good Stuff'

Chapter 29 - The Inquisitor

Portrait of the Cardinal Inquisitor
Don Fernando Nino de Guevara
El Greco

It's difficult for a contemporary westerner to imagine the terror a character like Don Fernando on the left here wielded in the 16th century. For us, figures in the church (well, the Church of England at any rate) are seen as mostly benign and slightly ridiculous.
 Don Fernando was not that sort of churchman at all as you can read here if you are interested.
This portrait was the inspiration for the new character that makes his appearance in Chapter 29.

The story so far...
Celia is  preparing for the paintings to be moved from Istria to her studio at the Department for Conservation in Munich. Franz meanwhile has far bigger problems to deal with. Could he be going to jail?

Chapter 29 – The Inquisitor can be found on the right under 'Good stuff'.