I was going to use the above as the cover for a book I published on Wattpad, but I didn’t in the end. I mean, it wasn’t a porno so what was I thinking?
I used a picture of a woman with a roly-poly tummy instead. Let me see if I can find the picture…
Nope, I can’t. Okay, let me see if I can find a link to the book…
Inelegant, but see if that works.
I just published Chapter Four – Squash for Dinner, which is the fourth part of my new novel Embodying.
I just published Chapter Three – Head Full of Furniture, which is the third part of my new novel Embodying.
I just published Chapter Two – Killer Killer, which is the second part of my new novel Embodying.
I just published Chapter One – A Bit of a Pickle, which is the first part of my new novel Embodying.
I see the signs from this bench: the house behind me was recently sold by Ashtons; there are road works 300 yards away on the main road; the speed limit is 40mph on that same main road; and Alwyne Drive leads to Alwyne Grove. Anyone here know what an alwyne is?
I do. Apparently it’s an elf. Or perhaps a magical friend. It’s also a girl’s name. So maybe we’re talking about girl elves being just up the drive from here?
Thing is, though, I know that there’s not much of a grove up that drive. If there is it’s in someone’s front garden. Yeah, that’s right, there’s nothing but houses up there.
Across the road, though, is a whole other kettle of starlings. You see those trees? Well behind there are fields and fields and more fields that stretch right down to the river Ouse. There are also trees there, most of them politely standing at the edges of the fields, but I imagine that a few of them have conspired to form the odd grove or two.
I’ve got a phone call appointment with an NHS professional on the 24th September. Hopefully they’ll be able to tell over the phone whether the irregular brown patch on the side of my head is skin cancer or not. Do you think I should buzz-cut my hair to make it easier for them to do their diagnosis over the phone?
I haven’t seen any squirrels near this bench but that doesn’t mean they’re not …
Run!!!
Just had an idea for a novel. Here’s how I developed that idea (think of it as a case-study):
When you flip a coin it can either be heads or tails. In any argument, there are two sides: yours and theirs. When something bad happens then there are at least five ways you can react: denial, anger, bargaining, grief or acceptance. What if all of these sides were not just aspects of the self, but real people (or characters in a novel)?
The characters are different aspects of me. My denial will be called Eddie (Sheeran), anger will be Kurt (Cobain), bargaining will be Simbiatu (Little Simz), depression will be Dylan (Thomas – Under Milk Wood) and acceptance will be Jane ((Emma) Austen).
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Characters:
Brief Synopsis:
A serial killer is loose in the (city, countryside, hamlet, isolated mansion, fortified supermarket) – a cancer in the heart of the (city, community). One by one, Eddie, Kurt, Simbiatu and Dylan are murdered until only Emma remains alive. Is she the killer or is there someone else? Yeah, we’re going to have to go for the fortified supermarket. But fortified against what? Well, duh, Zombies; obviously! But don’t worry, they’re just a backdrop. Just a reason why the situation is inescapable. The inevitability of what happens next is important.
To be honest, that’s all the planning I need. The novel just about builds itself from here on out.
Chapter Outlines:
The End.
Ha, now all I have to do is write it up.
Further Research:
The serial killer has to have a name. It has to be so unpronounceable in English that they call him ‘C’ or ‘Big C’. I’ve been having a conversation with a language expert (hi, Melissa): at https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/129050235/posts/248
Me: “Hey, Melissa, I have a really random sounding question. I need a first name for a new novel that begins with C and is largely unpronounceable to English speakers. Your surname made me think you light know of one. Perhaps it could have plenty of zeds or exes in it.
I’m Robert. Sorry if I weirded you out with that question. :)”
Melissa: “Hello Robert! Well i don’t know if this will work for you, but what came to my mind is “Chizvinzwira” which translates to “now hear for yourself ” in my language (Shona). I’m honored you asked by the way, i guess i like random questions.”
Me: “Wow, thank’s Melissa – that’s ideal. I have no idea where to begin in pronouncing that correctly. Perfect.
Now I need to ask permission to use the name I guess. I’ve just planned out a novel (you can see the plan here if you like: https://robertcday.wordpress.com/2021/09/14/embodying/) and I needed a name for my serial killer. He’s not going to be called Chizvinzwira in the book because he’s in England and, because no-one in the situation he finds himself in (trapped in a Supermarket with Zombie Hordes surrounding it) has the mental bandwidth to pronounce his name (or they’re all racist idiots – I haven’t decided yet (probably a combination of the two)) then they call him C. Actually, they call him Big C. I’ve not decided whether that’s because he’s big and muscular or big and fat – which do you think would be most likely? I think the former (muscular) because he’s got to have some strength in order to be able to kill all those people. Unless he’s cunning, I suppose. Probably cunning and fat would be most likely due to his motivation for killing them (food is running out in the supermarket). I don’t really know what people who speak Shona are like (which dialect, by the way?) but there are always going to be outliers.
Anyway, like I say – I need to ask your permission to use this name because it’s not for good purposes. C will be fat and cunning, will kill four people out of greed for food and life, and will not be redeemed at the end of the book (he will die in a napalm attack along with the zombies in the closing scene). What do you think?
Kindness – Robert.”
I didn’t realise that I was doing it, but I’ve just found out that I’ve been tracking cars.
It’s probably because I read books whilst I walk. I even read them as I cross the road. I was doing it just now.
Without knowing it I tracked a car that had just passed me. I didn’t do it with my eyes, because they were firmly fixed on my book as I crossed the road. No, I was actually doing it with my ears.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but cars make swooshing noises as they move along. Most of the sound you hear, as a car goes by, is not actually from its engine, but from the sound its tyres make as they displace air from the surface of the road. Try it now and you’ll see (hear) what I mean. Stand by the road and pay attention to what you hear as a car passes by.
This particular car; the one I was tracking with my ears, had just passed me before I stepped into the road. Unconsciously, I tracked it as it drove away from me. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, the car vanished from my radar. It stopped making a sound!
I immediately became conscious of the silent car and I was even in the act of raising my eyes from the book I was reading when I realised what had happened.
A few weeks ago, men came, driving huge machines. Transporters arrived bearing even larger machines and deposited them onto this stretch of road. Barriers and signs followed and, quietly and efficiently, the road was closed off. Then machine and man set to work.
First they ripped away the surface of the road and carried it off to an unknown fate in lorries designed for that purpose. Then they tidied up the edges of the road before moving onto the final stage of their plan: they resurfaced the road!
The new tarmac was finer than the previous grade and the surface was (and is) smooth enough to skate on. I really hope that the cars passing don’t take that as an invitation when the colder weather arrives and rain freezes on the surface. There’s a roundabout and a school just down the road; both being really good reasons for cars to slow down.
For now, though, the only phenomenon the new ultra-smooth surface of the road creates is that it makes cars disappear. They vanish from my auditory radar and cause my eyes to pause, fractionally as they skip across the words of my book.
Still, it’s nice. Despite disconcerting my mind briefly and interrupting my reading minisculy, it’s nice that the road is quiet. If only it could happen more often and in more places. We don’t need a pandemic to cut down on the din from the traffic, we just need better roads. Perhaps now we’ve exited Afghanistan, a little more of the national budget can be diverted to this end.
Silent lanes of traffic. Who’s with me!
I have a writing voice. It’s more staccato than my talking voice. More like a machine gun than a hose pipe. I write like that when I want to say things quickly but without using the niceties of long sentences and explanations. Married life is sometimes like a long explanation that no-one understands. Let me try to tell you about it in short words.
We’d had an argument. All our tiffs are about the same thing: nothing. Leastwise, that’s how it seems to me. One of us, usually me, says something curt and the other reacts. Then it escalates. Neither one of us is good at backing down or admitting that we might, just might, be even a teensy-weensy bit wrong. I know that I can stop the arguments dead by admitting that I am wrong, but I’m a bit of nutter when it comes to things like that. And besides, I’m not always wrong. In fact, neither of us is. In reality our life is a play put on by the gods to entertain themselves between bouts of gentle creation and gouts of destruction and fiery war.
So, yeah, like I said – we’d had an argument and it hadn’t ended well and so I stormed out of the house and into the car and roared off down the road to Tesco.
People in charge of huge chunks of metal on wheels should not get in them and roar off down the road when they’re in the grip of blinding rage. Nor should they decide to get petrol or anything thing else that involves being around people and inflammable liquids. But remember that I’m someone who can’t admit to being wrong and most of what follows will become absolutely explicable and not entirely uninteresting in that light.
There was one pump open and two cars gunning towards it. I’d got to the forecourt first and so it should have been my spot. He didn’t agree. I could tell he didn’t agree from the way he stuck the nose of his gas-guzzling, four-wheeled, ecology-damaging, global-warming, curse-word of a vehicle in front of my modestly proportioned car. Just looking at his face told me that he was insane. He was gesticulating with his hands elbows and fingers even as he steered his curse-word of a garbage-truck in front of mine, inching ever closer to the pump and further away from sanity. I was having none of it. Before he could react, I slammed my vehicle into reverse, screamed backwards at 666 mph whilst pulling my steering into full-lock. I watched his mouth fall open as he tracked my progress across the forecourt, too surprised to even move forward the couple of feet it would have taken to make his triumph complete. By the time he realised what I was up to, it was too late. For him.
My screeching, wild-eyed path, by the time I was done with a couple of breathtakingly beautiful hand-brake turns on the slippery tarmac of the petrol station, had taken me all the way around the petrol pump and slotted my car, steaming with pride and proprietary skill into the space next to the only free petrol pump, directly in front of my arch-enemy.
I got out, and gave him a cheery smile filled with love.
He got the hint, stabbed the air with a couple of cheeky fingers and exited the fray.
And the gods threw roses onto the stage whilst applauding and stamping their feet in wild and tumultuous abandon.
The End.
So I did. And it was actually quite nice. And we kept it up until Morden, even though my stop was Elephant and Castle and his was Tooting Bec. And yes, reader, I married him.
