Author: elegsabiff

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Introducing Five Six, with puppy eyes for feedback –

Five Six Pick Up Sticks, which has dominated my life for longer than I care to remember, goes live soon, and I’m chewing my nails. I would dearly love feedback on this excerpt from the first chapter? Be mean, if you have to. I’m thick-skinned, I can take it.  First chapters have to set the scene and tone of the book, and it may not appeal to you as a book, but if you might have liked the look of it, except for – well, it’s the ‘except for’ that I would love to know.

It officially launches just before Halloween and has 13 chapters and a retired witch living in #13, but no exciting Halloween stuff. And just to warn you – no gore, no zombies, no vampires, no wild sex – I think I had better shut up now. I’m talking you out of even reading further.  There IS a life-and-death car chase on the Forth Road Bridge, and where earlier books had a couple of murders to solve, this one had over twenty, if that helps. But no gore. Please comment …. on Twitter or Facebook if not here.

five six final

Detective Inspector Iain McLuskie locked his car in front of the main house at Grasshopper Lawns and struck off across the large garden with the confident familiarity of a man who knew the place well. With several murders there in fairly quick succession over the winter he’d spent a fair bit of time at the retirement village, but things had been restfully quiet lately. It was a pleasant novelty to be visiting socially, and he looked around appreciatively at the changes the season was bringing to the Lawns.

Spring had been late arriving in Scotland this year, but was making up for lost time; an army of tulips, flaunting vivid scarlet petals, marched through the borders past exhausted daffodils and crocuses, and the giant bank of rhododendrons was bulging with fat buds. Privet hedges crossed each other to make X-shaped mini private gardens at regular intervals around the perimeter of the lawn; he could see a few gardening enthusiasts already hard at work in the lovely spring weather. The sky arched blue overhead, the sun was warm on his face and the lightest of zephyrs pushed a few puffs of cloud overhead, and stirred the blossom on the fruit trees.

An indifferent gardener himself, and father to young football hopefuls, his own small garden was stripped to basics. One day, he promised himself, when he had the time, he would pop back here for gardening ideas. In the meantime, he was making his way to number twelve of the apartments that encircled the lawns, to run a proposition past Edge, Sergeant Kirsty Cameron’s slightly eccentric aunt.

The aunt in question was found busily weeding her triangle of hedge garden, which contained an elegant old bench and some ancient flagstones nostalgically imported from her previous home. She was wearing faded jeans, an overlarge plaid shirt and a completely disreputable gardening hat, and was clearing weeds between the flagstones with vigour and a running muttered commentary.

“I hope there aren’t any swearies in that lot, Miz Cameron?”  He hailed her cheerfully and she twisted round.

“Detective Inspector McLuskie! What a surprise. And of course there were swearies. Along with a magic spell that apparently banishes creeping buttercup. If it works I shall rent myself out for gardening services and be rich for life.” She used the bench’s sturdy support to scramble to her feet and looked past him, surprised. “Where’s Kirsty?”

“Helping out in Grangemouth for the next few days.” He pointed at his cheek. “You’ve – er – got a bit of mud…”

“Oh, I must look like hell. Gardening doesn’t suit me.” She pushed her battered gardening hat up her forehead – adding two more smears of mud, to offset the rakish dab on her cheek – and shot him a sharp look. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you, but what brings you here? Come on over to my verandah, do. I’ve some lemonade there in the shade.”

Two Havana chairs flanked a tiny table which held a jug of iced lemonade and a glass, and she waved him to one of the chairs.

“Help yourself, I’ll get another glass. I’ll only be a moment.”

He started a polite demurral but she fixed him with another sharp glance, said “Nonsense!” and vanished inside.

Smiling, he helped himself. Kirsty Cameron was in her twenties, a pleasant and competent police officer who was a pleasure to work with, but she was the image of her aunt. He had a sudden impression of what she would be like in thirty years’ time. Still slender, still attractive, redoubtable…

Edge reappeared without her hat and gardening gauntlets, her face free of smudges, and a fresh glass in her hand. She sank down into the other chair with a sigh of relief and he held the jug up invitingly, and filled her glass at her nod.

“I hope I’m not interrupting?” He drank gratefully – the lemonade was icy, clean and sharp, delicious – and she grinned at him.

“Not at all, I was clearing my decks for Kirsty’s visit this afternoon. What can I do for you?”

“I ken Kirsty visits Tuesdays so I wanted to speak to you first. I was going to ask how you were but I can see you’re back to your old self, right enough.”

“Just a small operation.” She was dismissive. “Part of growing older, such a bore, but I hope you got my thank you note for the flowers; it was very kind of you. And being called JB Fletcher did wonders for my ward cred!”

“Ah, now, you know we value your detective skills. In fact, I’m hoping you might be interested in – well, if you’re not too tied up with anything at the moment – you’ve jokingly said a couple of times in the past that you wanted to join the Force?”

“You’re offering to sign me up as a hobby bobby?” She leaned forward, eyes bright with interest and he waved his free hand vaguely.

“Not sign up, not as such. More if you’d put in an occasional… let’s call it appearance, on our behalf? I don’t know if Kirsty has said anything at all about some deaths we’ve recently picked up on which have aroused our suspicions? I’ll let her fill you in, but long story short, there’s a potential link to the dating agencies that cater to singles over fifty.”

He half-filled his glass again and sat back. “You ken the whole Scottish police force has been reorganized, aye? There’s no denying that doing away with all the little divisions has improved our overall picture, and now we’ve picked up some odd similarities in a few geographically-scattered deaths. I’ll have to ask you not to talk about it the noo, we dinna want to start any kind of panic in case it’s pure coincidence. We’ve been lucky; there was already a fraud investigation starting in the senior singles scene, with a top undercover poliswoman assigned to it. She’s just the person to take it up a level. Problem is, all this extra information got dumped on her, and all urgent, and she says there’s a limit to what she can do without ever meeting the marks. It would really help her if there was someone doing the social, appearing as her, but only in low risk situations. And it would be good to have someone – er –”

“Old?” Edge offered helpfully and he laughed awkwardly.

“No, no! I was trying to think how to say someone who could genuinely be interested in meeting senior singles. Old wasn’t the word I wanted!”

“I know what you mean. Someone older, who really could be expected to want to pick up sticks and sympathize about gout. I joined one of those senior dating websites myself, once. You wouldn’t believe some of the responses I got – from all ages, too. Still, it was cheap; you get what you pay for. I did think of going for one of the more expensive select introduction ones – mainly because my accountant Patrick looked on the verge of being snapped up by one of his widows, and that would have left me without my standby escort. Then he managed to escape, and I also made friends with Donald and William, so I never bothered.”

Iain grinned involuntarily. “Life must have been very quiet before yon Laurel and Hardy! There’s nothing for them in this set up, though. What I thought was, mebbe you’d like to pop round, have a talk with Susan, weigh each other up and see if it would be something that would interest you? She’s working from her home, it’s just over the way, in Onderness. She’ll talk you through what she’s doing, the possibles she’s already identified, how she’s monitoring things. She’s very good, and a nice person, you’ll like her. And you’ll ken why I’m asking, when you see her. You look very like the profile picture of herself that she’s posting on the websites.”

Edge poured the last of the lemonade into her glass and gazed thoughtfully into space after Iain’s departure. Murder. Back in December, when Betsy Campbell’s death had started a whole train of events, proximity to murder had been quite exciting, but there had been rather too much of it since then. Still, this wasn’t on the spot, and her involvement would be very limited. It wasn’t even confirmed that murder was involved at all –

Her train of thought was abruptly interrupted by the sight of a sizeable rump reversing slowly into view on hands and knees from the miniature garden next to her own and a breathless voice calling her name.

Stifling a laugh, she hurried over to help Miss Pinkerton up. The older woman, her neighbour in number thirteen and known to all as Miss P, gasped out grateful thanks as Edge helped her to her feet.

“Ay do it every time!” Miss P puffed ruefully. “Ay think Ay can manage on my weeding stool, and then Ay reach too far for a pesky herb and the next thing Ay know Ay’m on all fours again. Ay don’t know how you manage to get up and down so easily.”

“I don’t at all,” Edge assured her. “If it wasn’t for my bench I couldn’t get up either. You should get a bench in your bit, they’re very useful.”

Miss P was at least seventy, with a fresh complexion, fluffy white hair and the wide candid eyes of a young girl. Writing an endless stream of wistfully romantic novels kept her in comfortable circumstances, and Edge considered her an ideal neighbour – quiet, gentle and unsociable. Over the three years they had been neighbours, Miss P’s extreme shyness had only slowly thawed to the point where conversation occasionally slid past the briefest of friendly greetings, towards the first glimmerings of friendship.

“Ay really should be doing this at midnight anyway,” she said diffidently and unexpectedly. “Dark moon, you know. Most efficacious. But at my age, midday will have to do, Ay can’t be crawling on all fours to my apartment at midnight. What would my neighbours think?”

“Well, this neighbour would be quite startled, certainly. I was going to ask if you’re a good witch, but even in my head it sounded exactly like a line from the Wizard of Oz!”

“Oh, not a witch at all, not really. Not any more. Ay was quite the Wiccan in my younger years, even now Ay observe the more practical rituals, like cutting herbs according to the moon phases, but Ay don’t like to talk about it – or be talked about, if you’d be so kind.”

“Of course not, although I think it’s fascinating. Did you at least get all your herbs?” Edge fought to rid her mind of an image of her portly neighbour dancing round a midnight bonfire, and succeeded.

Miss P beamed at her and held up a slightly crumpled woven bag. “Oh yes, once Ay was down there Ay got the lot before Ay called for you. Ay had a feeling you’d understand when Ay heard what you said to that nice-looking policeman. Before you moved away, of course. Not that Ay would have listened if Ay…” She gave up on her jumble of sentences and settled instead for, “Will you join me for a quick cup of tea?”

“I’d have loved to.” Edge had to shake her head. “My niece will be here in less than an hour and I’ve still to make myself and the apartment presentable. Are you coming up to watch the boules later this afternoon?”

“Ay hadn’t planned – well, maybe. Ay don’t really go out in public alone but Ay suppose it isn’t really public. That’s at the top bit, where the new allotments are?”

“No need to go alone, we’ll knock on your door on the way past.” Edge was firm. “You’ll like Kirsty, she’s lovely. And boules is such fun.”

“It was very popular in France, when Ay lived there, but of course it was only older people who played it in those days.” Miss P seemed completely unaware of possible irony. “Ay do remember Godfrey saying the first tournament was very successful. Did you play?”

“No, I couldn’t at the time, I’d just had my op. Pity, because I love it, I’ve played it a bit in the past. I think the competition will be fierce today, but every time I thought I’d pop up and get in a little practice there’ve been people working on their game. Sylvia and Matilda are there half the day, every day. I imagine they’ll be the winners today.”

“Oh, Sylvia!” Miss P permitted herself a tiny unladylike snort. They agreed she’d be ready for three thirty and she headed back to number thirteen, while Edge hurried into her own apartment to shower off the morning’s exertions. She shook her head as she went. The most unlikely witch in the world, living right next door; bet that wasn’t on her application form! On the other hand, the Trust only selected residents with interesting pasts, so anything was possible…

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How to give a book away – harder than you’d think

I know I’ve been quiet lately; I’ve been totally engrossed in a crash course of learning how to give books away. You’d think everyone likes a freebie, but there are OH SO MANY free books out there, you can’t just put an apologetic tweet on Twitter saying er, hello, would you like my book? Free?

Most writers have the subconscious but unshakeable belief their books are jewels of the highest quality, which need only to be brought to the attention of an anxiously-waiting world. Most of the experts trying to shift them for you cynically consider them the equivalent of an old sofa on the pavement. The reality, one has to hope, falls somewhere between the two.old sofa

Once I started delving into the subject of free books I was genuinely gobsmacked at (a) how many options there are (b) how many writers are giving their books away (c) how often (d) how far off trend my books are and (e) how difficult it is. The best free book websites won’t even look at your book if it doesn’t already have multiple reviews and a top rating, which seems completely puzzling to someone who was only thinking of doing it to get reviews and an improved rating in the first place.

I’ve done a giveaway once before, on one of my short stories, with I think 4 tweets on the subject, and shifted around 100 copies, so obviously the research needed to be done. I’ve now registered with any number of websites so that I can send them One Two when the promotion starts. I’ve joined about twenty Facebook promo pages so I can post the details, ditto.

This is like preparing for the A-Z blog challenge in April all over again, as I prepare lots of utterly spontaneous-sounding little tweets, posts, blurbs and mini-synopses to paste into place – I’m guessing the end of October will be an absolute blur of activity.

And yet – now I am coming across sensible, intelligent articles which agree, along with some of the websites I investigated, that I should be paying to give my book away. I’m having a little trouble getting my head around that, to be honest. It took me a while just to accept giving books away was good for sales, and I’ve attached a click-on link for a good article by Martin Crosbie on the subject of free promotions

Here’s another good article, by Rex Jameson, on How to give books away. Both articles were found on my new favourite website: Favourite, because the administrator emailed me back to tell me my blurb on One Two was crappy, and how to re-write it. That’s gold. So if you want a fab website for Freebie Fridays, pick up your free books via Indies Unlimited

I pay for my Grasshopper Lawn covers, and love the results. I pay for editing, after the many blushes of releasing One Two in January without professional editing; then picking up error after error after error and a review pointing out how desperately it needed it. At least with eBooks you can change the book as often as necessary – printing an unedited book must be heart-breaking, although at least the minimum-thousand-copy print runs of the past no longer apply. But paying to give the book away? Really? There’s a relevant up-to-the-minute article on the same website Is Free Over?

More research is necessary. Well, and more money. Writing is my passionate hobby, and no totally engrossing, thoroughly enjoyable, hobby comes without a price tag. Few hobbies actually pay back a few pennies here and there, or can be shared with people you have never met, so those are definite perks. But right now I’m deflated. I’ll give the promo a fair go, because it’s interesting and useful experience. I’ll put out the third book, because it’s the best so far, but if it doesn’t ‘take’, writing will go back to being a private hobby.  typist

As for Five Six Pick Up Sticks, it’s back from being edited, and bleeding red ink on nearly every page, but the death of one thousand cuts is mainly superficial; no huge rewrites needed, and it will be published at end October as planned. As all of the above pain is to launch it into a world not completely indifferent to the series, fingers crossed…

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First impression of diverse books

I accidentally learned something really pivotal in the last couple of days. On a reviewing site on Facebook I said I download free books that catch my fancy, and always post a fair review if I do;  anyone wanting me to look specifically at one could send me a private message.

(To digress very briefly, when you send a private message on FB to someone you’re not following, it goes to their ‘other’ mailbox and FB doesn’t tell you about it.  You need to check regularly, as shown below.  Inbox (12), Other (2))

Facebook other

Back to what I was saying.  I got a LOT of private messages, most of which had completely ignored what I had gone on to say about my tastes.  It was an interesting crash course in instant reactions. If the cover had entwined bodies or gushing blood, I knew immediately not for me. So cover really is that important at identifying your book to your target readers.  Two seconds yes/no.

If the cover looked okay, I clicked on the link to read the blurb, i.e. what the author thought summed up their book.  One sentence led, or didn’t, to me reading another.  Ten seconds yes/no.

In one case, although the cover looked right, and the blurb seemed to cover my interests, it didn’t really grab me. Purely because I was slightly disappointed, I went on to look at the reviews, and they were very upbeat. Hmm. Then, and only then, did I start reading the sample, and it was great, and I downloaded the book, enjoyed it very much, and will be giving a good review.  I’ve also fed back to the author that her blurb isn’t working for her, because that’s the sort of thing I’d want to know.

But what a learning curve – faced with twenty seven messages about twenty seven books, I rejected fourteen immediately on their covers, and five on their blurb which made it clear that we weren’t, you should pardon the weak pun, going to be on the same page.  That’s a maximum of fifteen seconds of attention.

Eight of the submissions got me as far as reading the sample. I gave up at the second editing glitch on three of them, got bored on two, got puzzled on one, took the one I mentioned above, and took another which started really well but I’m halfway through and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.  It’s fun, it’s easy to read, but every other page is a new character and no central plot. Many of the characters have similar names and I’m getting confused. I’ll probably give up soon, it seems to be the book equivalent of Love Actually and you either like that sort of thing or you don’t.  The blurb suggested a tight dynastic theme and named two characters who have so far (halfway through, remember) appeared fleetingly twice, a paragraph each time. Eh?

I wish I’d known all of the above before I wasted my own promotional window, because my blurb is (rightly or wrongly) a snatch of conversation between characters and I WASTED the window by repeating it there.  The window should have been much tighter and brighter, that few seconds of attention that the cover won for me. Damn.  I love my books, but I’m not helping them.  Wearily pushing them into the light and effectively saying ‘there you go, darling, off and sell yourself’ is not productive.

I’m toying with the idea of starting a Facebook page just for those first impressions, for writers to try out different options on each other before taking them into the big wide world. If there’s a page for that already, please let me know, otherwise keep an eye out for the next blog.

As for those wondering how the promotion learning curve is going, here’s the latest learning. If you sign up on a promotion option, especially one which requires participants to share and retweet and that sort of stuff, first check what time they’ll be doing their thing. I’m annoyed with myself for not checking – Kboards do their promotion at 4pm Pacific time. That’s midnight here in the UK,  I did one weary share and retweet and crawled off to bed!  Their FB page has nearly 60K followers and the post got 88 likes (8 books were being pushed at the same time).  They’re quite small on Twitter, 1600 followers, and it looks like the tweet only got retweeted once (by me).  (and I’m even smaller). No way at this point of judging if I got a personal benefit.  Both of the Kboard links direct viewers to their blogspot.  http://kboards.blogspot.co.uk/

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Hitting the ebook promotion trail

For those of you avidly following this post to see if I’ve found any good promotion stuff, I’ll start with the nuggets gleaned so far and suggest you skip the rest.

Why give away a book?  It is probably only really worth it if you are writing a series.  If you can give away a thousand books, (and the well-known writers give away twenty five thousand or more), that’s potentially up to a thousand people who will read it, finish it, think ‘that wasn’t bad’ and maybe, let’s not get too carried away here,  post a review and / or buy another in the series.

All the activity – and the more you can give away, the more activity there is – gets your sluggish book moving from the murky depths, to the heights where readers looking in your category will see your book in that ‘people who bought this book also bought’ strip.  Your cover, bobbing around jauntily, demanding their attention. The rest, of course, is up to your blurb and sample but the more books you shifted, the longer it will take to fall back to the depths, and the more chance it has of actually selling (and therefore continuing to bob, and sell, and bob, etc)

Even giving books away takes work. You have to push push push on Twitter and Facebook and list it on lots of different websites (telling them in advance when your book is free) and Facebook pages (post it on the day) and hope like hell it’ll take.

Getting onto some of the websites almost guarantees attention, because they’re fussy about the books they take, but they’ll only accept books with an overall rating of 4.5 stars and at least ten proper (not puff) reviews.  Ah, reviews.  The chicken and the egg. No-one will look at the book if it doesn’t have reviews, and if no-one reads the book how will it ever get them?  One in perhaps a hundred readers bothers to post one at all. So how to get onto respected sites like Pixel of Ink?

Frankly, the book may have few or no reviews because it stinks. At best, because most of your readers are also writers and Amazon is very beady-eyed about writers reviewing writers.  (Personally I think Amazon should authorize those writers who do real reviews, because at least half the readers out there are writers themselves, but that’s an argument for another post and not why you’re patiently reading this and wondering when I’ll get to solving the problem.)

Three-four-final

I have no idea whether I’ve solved it, but I have signed up to Kboard, who will promote the book for a day along with fifteen others, on their own page and their Twitter and Facebook links. All sixteen writers commit to retweeting and promoting the listing like crazy all day.  Kboard themselves have sixty thousand followers, plus whatever the writers can collectively drum up, so the potential of being spotted is there.  They feature new or overlooked books, so Three Four is being thrust forward to fly the flag.  One Two may have its first murder in the first chapter, but Three Four is a more cheerful starter (and needs reviews, especially Amazon.com ones). (Fingers crossed)

So there we are, I’ll post in a few days to let you know whether Kboard is something to pencil into your own plans.  You can move on now because the rest is quite gloomy.

I’m frankly a bit subdued on this promotion trail. I spent two days researching Facebook groups (there are lots) (LOTS and lots) for authors, promotions, reviewers, groups for everything you can imagine, and in all fairness all but two of the ones I thought looked the best have accepted my request to join. The other two haven’t said no, they’ve just not responded, but in theory I’ve now got an audience of over 100 000. However, I’ve come to realize two things.

Firstly, the readers have pretty much fled. The bulk of the posts are shouts of ‘read mine!’ ‘No, read mine!’  We’re all yelling at once and nobody is actually reading any of the posts – at most, a quick scan to see what the competition is up to, a sneer, and move on.

That’s not to say nothing posted is read. I put a post on a FB group which included reviews, saying I’d review any free books that I liked the look of enough to download, but that I did most of my reading on the train so nothing to make me blush, cry or puke in public.  Gold stars, I said, to anything that made me smile and cheered me up.

I’m guessing I’m the first reviewer to put my head above that parapet for a while. My post had two comments within minutes, and the group administrator said sternly that all further comments had to be private. It had about twenty comments on it within half an hour.  My Facebook ping has gone hoarse announcing more incoming private messages. Body parts, buckets of blood, entangled heaving bodies and dead babies for the most part – obviously my sensibilities are out of step, because if the authors don’t expect their readers to blush / cry / puke at that lot you have to wonder who they are writing for. Not one – not ONE – has so far met the general guidelines.

The second thing I realized is that I’m WAY off trend. My corpses should be hopping to their feet, elbowing aside the boring living people, ripping apart their killers and running amok.  My living characters will have to wear black and grow fangs if they want a look-in. The way they’re written now, William’s the only one who would even know what to do at an orgy. (William would love me to write in an orgy.)

I’d say (primly) that I don’t know enough about orgies to write about them, but knowing little or nothing about a subject, including sex, hasn’t held back some of the authors who have pressed books on me.  As a reviewer, I’m embarrassingly popular. As a writer, I’m one step off jumping into the fray and shouting READMINEREADMINEREADMINE ITS (sic) THE BEST.

I take that step next week since I’m signed up to that Kboard promotion and can’t cancel at this stage. And I’m still going to have a free book giveaway in late October, to welcome Five Six to the family, just because I’m now gripped by an unhealthy fascination to see if I can at least manage to give books away. But I’m not hopeful.

five six final

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Puzzling through how to promote a book (an ongoing learning curve).

I genuinely don’t remember learning to read, although I do remember the first word I couldn’t read – I was showing off at school because it was all sooooooooo easy and the teacher said in that case I should read out the story of Jack Sprat.

I was 4, and pretty full of myself, and whipped through it until I got to ‘between them both they licked the plate clean’.

“No”, said the teacher, “it doesn’t say plate. It says platter.”  Whatnow?’  There were words I didn’t know?

And now a few years (okay, decades) have slipped by and there are still, nearly every day, words I don’t know.  They still set off my inner four year old.  What does it do? What does it mean? Is it a better word than the one I knew? Is it a word I want to be friends with?

Reading was (and is) my passion, although I couldn’t quite understand why a book could say anything, and nobody minded (fairies at the bottom of the garden? Good story) but you couldn’t tell people there were fairies at the bottom of your own garden because they said you were telling stories. Duh, YAH. But they didn’t seem to think me telling stories was a good thing.

I puzzled it out eventually. Once you write it down, then it becomes a Story and people nod and smile and tell you what a funny little imagination you have.  The first Stories were in crayon. Then pencil. Then pen. Then typed.  I thank the powers that dictate our lives that I was born in an age that would eventually include the word processor and even, in fullness of time, the electronic book, although we had to wait a while for that.

Turns out there are quite a few of us looking to be patted on the head and praised for our funny little imaginations. In truth, I sometimes wonder if there are more writers than readers. It was obviously time to sit down and puzzle out how to get a few more pats.

I’ve put out two books without any proper promotion at all but the third is coming out end October so anyone with promotion tips, or who can point me in promotional directions, please let me know. In the meantime I’ll pass on the ones I come across as I work through my pages of notes, and try things out.

Here are a few goodies found so far. There is a great site for selling short stories, Alfiedog.com  (click here to link) (take your imagination for  walk)

I’ve been accepted but damn and blast hadn’t known to switch off my ‘Kindle Select auto-renew’ option so it will be November before The Passing of Mrs Parker Woodburn is available there. But hey, I’ve tried a few of the stories already and they’re ideal train-commute reading, highly recommended.  I’ll be keeping very good company.

Another lovely site is First Chapters,( click here to link) where you can post your first few chapters, cover, author bio, etc.  It’s a co-op site,  you promote the site as well your chapters and so does every other writer who has had chapters accepted. Together, at least in theory, we reach millions – in reality, a couple more pats on the head, eh?

 

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Painting my brother’s girlfriend green – another from the archives

 

Long ago, best beloved, I had the world’s most fun job, organizing top-end catering events. A random tweet on Twitter brought back one of the FUN ones and I’m capturing it before my erratic memory loses it for another fifteen or so years. To be honest, I don’t remember what the event was for (picture me blushing) but I do vividly remember our side of it.

 

The organizers wanted an additional five waitresses to work the  inner VIP tent in special makeup, pretty girls please, excellent figures, prepared to wear body makeup. As persuasive as I was, the event crept ever closer and I had only found four regulars who qualified and were willing to give up their Saturday plans, even for double rates. Pretty girls with excellent figures just don’t sign up as event waitresses as often as you’d think. Three days to go, and I was having a therapeutic rant to my brother.

 

Actually, he said, it sounds fun. Do you want us to help out?  Did I! His girlfriend of the time was something of a pocket-sized miniature, but no denying she was pretty, in a Billie Piper sort of way, so of course I jumped at the chance.

 

top star treesThe organizers had rented the Top Star drive in, which is built on top of one of Johannesburg’s older mine dumps and is therefore part of the city, and features – of course – a giant film screen, an area large enough for around a thousand cars, and an amazing view of Johannesburg at night. The theme was UFOs, and episodes from the X Files played on a permanent loop over our heads. Gigantic Scully and Mulder kept poking around eerily lit places. No sound track survived the party music, although they kept hearing things and exchanging meaningful startled glances.  Meanwhile we scurried below like ants. There were four giant marquees for guests, and a kitchen tent tucked away behind the screen for us. We also had twenty lambs turning lazily on twenty spits, and the flickering glow made our quadrant look more like an inner circle of hell than an alien spaceport; five serving points; and twenty aliens as waiters. (No real change there, then.)  The waiters were in silver waistcoats and fright wigs, and hard at work serving canapés and cocktails to around a thousand guests as the event warmed up.

 

The organizers were thrilled, luckily, with their five ‘specials’, who were painted green, put into silver sarongs and silver wigs which brushed to the ground (in the girlfriend’s case, trailed on the ground behind her) , driven down to a waiting helicopter decked out to look remarkably like a UFO, and flown in. Flashing lights, deafening musical cues, all very Close Encounters, it was an absolute riot.

 

Now I edit manuscripts some of the time, and work for a bank trying to help people disentangle their disastrous finances some of the time, and try to write best-selling books in between.   I want to be abducted by aliens.

 

 

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Nose to nose with the SA police – another from the archives

I had been lucky with the South African police, it must be said – my first encounter was at 3 one morning, I had just ordered a whisky at Bara G when I realised how late it was, downed it, said my goodbyes and hurried out for the 20 km drive home. Of course I had the motorway to myself and amused myself seeing how long I could take a straight line across the curving lanes of the M1, crossing and recrossing lanes until – whoops – blue light. Knowing full well I reeked of whisky I cranked the window open a bare centimetre; the policeman asked if I was aware one of my front lights wasn’t working properly. He made me do alternate indicators, and then step on my brakes. Ah, he said, one of my brake lights wasn’t working. I was astonished. I was indignant. I sprang from the car and, keeping my shoulder against the car so I wouldn’t stagger and betray myself, I joined him at the back. Ooh, I said owlishly, neither of them is working! Very nicely he told me to drive home carefully and sleep it off. (How did he KNOW?) (Yes, that was a very long time ago. Can you imagine, nowadays?)

The second time I was driving through De Deur with a long-awaited letter from my London cousin open against the steering wheel, trying to decipher her scrawl in quick glances from road to letter to road. Oops. Man in blue stepped out rather suddenly (luckily during a road, rather than letter, stage) and stopped me. I dropped the letter hastily and looked innocent. As he walked round the car he reached through the open window and patted my unbelted shoulder. ‘Ek se niks, hoer?’’ (I’m saying nothing) Sheepishly I buckled up and was waved on my way.

Despite the above I really am a careful driver so there was a long period of no encounters at all. Old South Africa – where all cops were white, and spoke Afrikaans – was in the fullness of time replaced by the New South Africa, where cops were recruited from both sexes and all races and English was the general language, although senior officers were still predominantly male and Afrikaans in the early days. Made no difference to law-abiding me, although when my daughter was accused of stealing things in grade school, and simply couldn’t understand why it was okay that people stole her stuff, but not okay when she took something, I did take her to the local police station where a rather embarrassed, very kind black policeman explained the law pertaining to personal property – in English. I was dead impressed.

Then one morning I was on my way to work when the M1 came to a grinding halt. There had obviously been an accident, damn damn, but the 11th Avenue turnoff was oh so slowly approaching and I could cut through the back roads to Sandton – a taxi pulled into the yellow lane and I followed it instantly, two or three other cars following as quickly (1). Damn! Police car parked just before the off-ramp! We all edged our way back into the crawl but I could see a large policeman walking between the lanes. He slapped the taxi’s windscreen, and strode on towards me, slapped my screen, and went on past. What was that about? The traffic crawled past the police car and there was the off-ramp – to get back in the yellow lane and whip up the off ramp was the work of a moment and I started up 11th Avenue, one eye on the time (2). A glance in the rear view mirror, though, showed flashing blue lights. For me? Crap. Just to be sure, I turned onto a side road. The lights followed. Crap, CRAP. I pulled to the side of the road and opened my window, smiling ingratiatingly. The same large policeman marched to my car, leaned in, turned off my ignition and took my keys as he strode back to his car. Say what? Hey! I jumped out and followed as, still completely ignoring me, he started talking on his radio. “What the hell?” I tried to interrupt him, and wagged my finger under his nose for emphasis (3) “you don’t just bloody take someone’s bloody keys, okay?” (4) He turned his back on me and carried on talking and short of pulling him round (which would obviously have been stupid even if he hadn’t been very large, and like all SA police armed) there was nothing I could do but stalk crossly back to lean against my car, have a cigarette, and sulk. Another police car pulled up in minutes and the driver marched up to me, toe to toe, nose to nose (I’m tall, he was quite short) and shouted “we’re sick and fuckin’ tired of you pipple and your racist attitudes, you unnerstand me?”I should say the first one was black and this one was white. Give the first guy his due, he did say hastily, ”she hasn’t been racist.“ The new guy didn’t miss a beat. “We’ve got new powers” he bellowed, “so there’ll be no more taking crep from you pipple who think you can do what you want. You’re unner arrest.”

I wiped spittle from my face with a pained look. “Okay, can I at least have my keys back to lock my car? Or are you just going to drag me off?”(5) The two cops went into a huddle, there was more radio talking, and another wait. A third police car arrived, with two cops, one of them female. She drove my car up to Norwood police station with me in the passenger seat, escorted by a police car in front and one close behind. The cavalcade drew some very startled looks but I was starting to feel uneasy. This was a lot of trouble they were going to, for what? Maybe being cheeky had been a really bad move –

At the station I was allowed one call, so phoned work to say I was at Norwood police station and would be late. Then I was charged:(1) reckless and dangerous driving (2) leaving the scene of an accident (3) assault on a police officer (4) crimen injuria and (5) resisting arrest. I didn’t even know what crimen injuria was (swearing) and very indignant about the assault charge. Turns out, did you know, that threatening someone is assault? Actually touching them is GBH. Or so those berks assured me. By now I was finally really scared, was I really going to be thrown into a cell just for trying to get to work on time? In fact they left me alone in the detectives sitting room and I was standing in the doorway, glumly having another cigarette, when I saw our (Afrikaans, very pregnant) sales director hurrying up the stairs with her (Afrikaans, very pretty) secretary. The company had phoned the police station back to check I was okay (having assumed I was reporting a burglary, or similar) and been told I’d been locked up as a public danger, so Pregnant and Pretty had been sent to the rescue to talk me out on bail. (R500! The Cape Town Strangler was released on R1000 bail!)

My court appearance booked for the next day, and if you think I slept well that night, your nerves are stronger than mine. My mother went with me for moral support and we waited, and waited, and waited, and finally went to the court official to find out when my hearing was to be. “Ag,” she said “we threw thet out. Bluddy rubbish.”

There was a post on Facebook today about the UK police getting new powers, which really opened the floodgates on this twenty five year old memory. Ah, nostalgia….

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Querulous today

I read this somewhere, a while back, don’t know who wrote it –

From birth to 18, to live life to the fullest, a girl needs good parents.

From 18 to 30 she needs good looks

From 30 to 50 she needs good luck

After 50, she needs good cash.

And STILL my Premium Bonds aren’t spitting out that increasingly essential million pound payout.  In the not too distant past, one planned to fund life up to 70. Now life expectancy is over 80 and rising, and that’s downright scary. A couple of blogs ago I mooted a tontine but no-one seems yet to have forwarded it to the Chancellor. Tchah. I really don’t want to live to a great age if it involves being infirm, reliant on others, and / or poor. In fact between thee and me I don’t want to live to a great age at all. 10 or 20 extra years between 30 and 40, absolutely, but tacking them on at the end, eek, no. When vigour and agility and joy in living starts to diminish, who wants to still have a 20 year sentence to complete?

My daughter gets married next March and may produce a grandchild or two – she’s not promising anything. Maybe then I’d feel differently and want to stick around for as long as possible. Right now if the great cosmic bell rang in my ear and a voice intoned ‘we’ll get you to the wedding, but after that you’d better tidy the house every night before you go to bed because time’s nearly up’ I’d be pretty shaken but not devastated. In fact, sneakingly relieved. The definition of middle-aged keeps stretching, and I do both admire and wonder at people of 70-plus who call themselves middle aged. I’ve heard it said that middle age starts with the first mortgage. Does it end when that’s paid off? There’s another old saw – forties are the old age of youth. The fifties are the youth of old age.

Am I old? I worry about my finances, socialising gives me a headache, and I can’t run up a flight of stairs any more. I’ve never been great with names, but now I’m having occasional problems with faces, too. Sprinting for the train leaves dancing spots in front of my eyes. I’ve started getting ailments I never heard of, that I have to look up on the internet. Well, okay, just one, but it’s the thin end of the wedge. There are increasing streaks of silver in my hair – pretty soon I must choose between streaking or dyeing it, or just letting it pick its own colour. I’m seriously considering writing post-it notes to myself, to carry them from room to room, because it is so bloody irritating to forget what I was going for.  Any day now someone will offer me their seat on the train and I won’t know whether to simper gratefully or be resentful. (Who am I kidding? Both.) It doesn’t help that as a weathered South African living amid the superb Scottish skins I already look ten years older than my contemporaries.

Bette Davis is quoted saying, at 70 plus, ‘old age isn’t for sissies’. At 10, I’d have dared anything rather than be called a sissy. Now, I’m wondering whether I’m up for the challenge. You’re as old as you feel. Today that makes me about 97. Tomorrow – who knows. How’s your day going?

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And now for something completely different

Here’s a question – I’m writing a series of detective stories which are breezy and wouldn’t bring a blush to your maiden aunt’s cheeks. You could recommend them to her without a qualm. (Do feel free to do so, by the way.  The more the merrier when it comes to readers. Details under About tab. Thanks) (smiley face)

But back to the question.  I’ve also written a sci-fi story which is about to go off for editing. I doubt your blushing aunt would like it, unless she likes sci-fi, plus it contains a lot of what in Scotland are called swearies.  That isn’t gratuitous, it establishes the characters firmly by type, and the story is funny and lively, not even completely free of raunchy, BUT as far from the Grasshopper Lawns stories as they could be, considering they’re written by the same person.  Obviously I’m going to put it out under a different name but the question, you knew I’d get there eventually, is do I keep them completely separate?  For instance I could put into my author profile on Amazon that I also write under the other name. Or refer each to the other in a note at the end.

There won’t be many of this type (certainly no series) and as a stand-alone it will struggle.  So there is a temptation to link them and be offering a bigger general range in a very crowded market. However they are so different that one of my beta readers gave up after 10 pages, whereas a new beta reader enjoyed it but is completely uninterested in the Grasshopper lot. There’s not going to be much overlap.

So I’d really appreciate some advice here, especially from someone who has had the same genre-jumping issues, or from anyone who likes both types. It can’t only be me, can it?

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Time for the tontine

Some people are gifted wordsmiths and could sell ice cubes at the North Pole. I’m anti-gifted, I couldn’t give away water in the desert. That’s why I’m putting this forward to writers, because there’ll be some convincing and hard-talking needed.  Just sift through my ramblings and see if you also think tontines are the best hope for our financial futures, eh?

Author Thomas Costain wrote a book in 1956 called The Tontine, which as its central thread tracked four characters in their late teens and early twenties. Their parents invested the – at that time enormous – figure of one hundred guineas each in a tontine set up after the battle of Waterloo, with the capital finally to go to war veterans.  The venture caught public interest and millions of pounds were invested. Three of the characters were to be the final three survivors, and in their eighties were receiving annual interest cheques worth, in modern terms, hundreds of thousands of pounds.   The book covers sixty years of dramatic change in England and abroad, through the Industrial Revolution and the emancipation of women, and is fascinating, you should read it, but the point of this blog is, isn’t it time to bring back a tontine system for old age?

The tontine took its name from Italian banker Lorenzo de Tonti, and at its simplest, one buys in to one’s age group, the funds are invested for a tontine period which usually equates to pensionable age (so those investing at age twenty would be in for a forty year investment period) during which all interest would be reinvested. When the tontine matures, the annual interest is instead divided every year between the survivors.  Wikipedia describes it as a combination of a group annuity and a lottery. The older you live, the better off you will be – a dramatic alternative to the future facing most of us now.   You are gambling on living longer – and it is the word ‘gamble’ that ended the tontines originally. Gambling on the outcome became so heated that the last few survivors had to be guarded 24/7 so that bookies couldn’t nobble the favourites!

The first tontine was in the Netherlands in 1670, and over the next century there were state tontines in England, France, and some German states. They were optional, not obligatory, and therefore not fully subscribed, which was eventually their downfall – to be truly appealing, the capital has to be huge.  I believe the answer is for a government itself to pay in for every registered citizen (maybe, if the ID system is really to go ahead in the UK, as a carrot dangled in front of a reluctant population?) and for people to have the option to increase their stake.

Personally I’m at the age where I couldn’t hope for a tontine period of longer than 10 years (unless I bought into a group with a longer period to run) but I really wish there was one. In my direct line, only one ancestor has failed to make it to eighty. My maternal great-grandmother cleared a century with ease. These bones are built to last, but oi, my finances.  Will they stretch another twenty, thirty years? Offer me anything where my investments would improve by the year, and I’m in.  A thousand pounds, absolutely. Five thousand? Er – gulp – okay.  If I was really, really sure I’d make it through to the final stages I’d beg, borrow or steal to invest every penny I could, to get a bigger percentage of those huge final payments.

If I got knocked over by a car two days after committing the funds, too bad.  Them’s the breaks.  If I died one day before an annual payment, I lost out for that year and so did my heirs, but then of course I wouldn’t care because my financial worries would be over for good.  It is the most personal investment you could ever make.

The Waterloo Tontine of the book was privately run and turned out to be a fraud, but was intercepted and run properly. (Really. Read the book. It’s huge, but fascinating.)  Governments, however, really should be looking at bringing back the state tontine.   With increasing longevity the tontine for twenty-somethings would potentially only run out of survivors in eighty years, but in the meantime there’s a huge cash injection from the twenty somethings, thirty somethings, forty somethings, etcetera – all the different groups.  Those already over pension age would probably start receiving interest payments immediately on their group’s capital, but even for them living the longest would pay off the best.

Anyone with me on this? Who wants a tontine system for themselves, and their kids?  If this has caught the eye of just one person who can talk well, and spread the word, that’s a step towards assuring a future for old me.  She’ll be ever so grateful.