Having a Break

We’re heading to UK on Friday, so will not be spending much time on the PC or my blog, if any. I certainly won’t be writing, and sometimes I wonder how I’ll manage to get back into it when we return. Whenever I’ve been asked advice about writing, I’ve always recalled that Churchillian statement: ’Never Give Up’. And that old, J.B.Priestley nutmeg about applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair. It will be time to follow my own advice. We can talk all we like about writers’ block and plot building, research etc., but in the end it comes down to prevarication, or dithering perhaps is a better choice of word. One sound of piece of advice I’ve come cross is to simply write and not worry about the final result until you start editing and getting the second draft prepared. I can’t use my struggle with chemo as an excuse because it’s now eight weeks since my final dose. I’ve had two subsequent medication sessions since then, but these are meant to improve my system. I must say I have felt a marked improvement, and other people see it in me too, but I also have to guard against complacency because I know I am now 100% yet.

Me and Pat are looking at our trip to UK as a welcome break after the last, traumatic six months. We’ll be seeing our eldest son’s new home for the first time. My elder brother is now living at a different address, and two friends of ours, Brian & Pauline are living in UK after about 17 years in Spain. We will also be travelling down to East Sussex to spend a couple of days looking around, figuring out if we can afford to buy a park home there. We’ll be in UK for ten days all told, and we are really looking forward to it.

Getting back to the struggle to write; I thought it might be interesting at this stage to put feelers out to my numerous readers about the direction in which I should go with my novel. Bear in mind though that I have completed a great deal of research and piled in about 40,000 words, but I decided to let you all have a taste of the opening prologue; just to get your thoughts on it. Here goes:

Charlie Picket woke but did not open his eyes. He felt the dubious comfort of the hard mattress in the motel room pressing into him, but preferred it to the squalor of the Mexican prison he had just left. He hadn’t planned to stop on his way to the American border, but the long drive had proved wearying, and he had finally succumbed and pulled over for the night. He was in a small town called Los Montesinos, somewhere between the desert jail that had held him and the border crossing at El Paso. The motel looked like a dump, and there was nothing he found in there to change that impression. The room was squalid, barely furnished and prompted thoughts of a quick, morning departure barely minutes after he had stretched his weary body out on the iron bed. But he needed something to eat before giving in to sleep.

There was a taverna opposite the motel, its flickering, neon sign struggling to light up the parched ground as darkness fell. Only the sound of music, faint but clear, gave it life. Picket hadn’t eaten for several hours as he pulled into the motel, and the thought of a meal and a drink to chase it down seemed to make up for the paucity of life around the small town. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t eaten for so long or had a beer for several weeks that he stayed too long in the bar. The music was good, the guitarist accomplished and the señoritas happy to flirt. Picket was an attraction some of them found hard to ignore, and he would have been pleased to accommodate them, but he didn’t want to end up in some dried up river bed with his throat cut. So he kept them at arm’s length and took comfort in the ambience and the drink; so much so that when he stepped out of the bar, the night air seemed to floor him. He staggered back to the motel room and after clumsily undressing he collapsed on to the bed with the thin sheet pulled over him.

He opened his eyes and could feel the throb of pain beneath his skull. His bladder was full and he had an erection that a cat would have found hard to scratch. He lifted his head from the pillow and stared up at the sunlight filtering through the yellowing curtain hanging loosely over the window. He groaned and laid his head back down again, wanting the pain to go away and more sleep to come. But the nagging pressure in his bladder forced him to push himself up on to one elbow and take stock. He remembered where he was and groaned as the thudding inside his head increased and the nagging discomfort in his bladder urged him to get out of bed before he pissed himself. He pushed himself up on one arm and sat like that for a while, his head drooping from his shoulders and his arm trembling slightly as it supported him. The bed sheet slipped down to his waist. He grabbed at the thin edge and was about to pull it off when he saw her.

‘What the f….!’

The expletive died in his throat as his eyes fell on the young girl. She was sitting on an upright chair in the corner of the room, barely three feet from the end of his bed. She could only have been about twelve or thirteen; no more. She was wearing what looked like pyjamas and was barefoot. Her hair was dishevelled and her pyjama top was torn and stained with mud. But it was her small feet that drew Picket’s attention: they were covered in blood. And she was sitting there as though she belonged, holding a gun and pointing it straight at him.