WRITE NOW, I'M FINE

This story was born out of long clung to anger and resentment that resulted from something that happened to a loved one of mine that, even after writing this story to try to come to terms with it, is still no less potent.  THE SWEETMEAT HOUSE  Flora Reeves went to her room and closed the door behind her. Her mummy was sleeping again, and although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she would scream if Flora woke her up, and Flora hated it when her mummy screamed. Flora remembered a time when her mummy never screamed or yelled, when she would help her pull up her tights for school, lifting her off the ground. Flora remembered a time when her mummy used to wrap her sandwiches in rainbow striped wax paper, and how the smell of her lunch would waft up when she unwrapped it. Flora remembered when her mother used to read her stories every night before she went to sleep, doing different voices for each of the characters. But her mummy wasn’t the same anymore. She didn’t read, or pla...

 Very rarely for me do story ideas start with a concept rather than a plot or a character, but at the time I wrote Persistence, I was obsessed with the idea of non-linear storytelling, and once I tried to imagine what it would be like to literally go back and retrace your steps to solve your own mystery, I was off. This kind of storytelling isn't new, I know, but it was interesting to explore. PERSISTENCE  You can only bleed so much. You can only bleed so much. That just popped into my head and I don’t know why. I think someone’s here. My mouth tastes like salt and blood and barbecue sauce, and I don’t know why. I’m sure the sore on my hand must have bled more when I first started picking at it, whenever that was. Now it just weeps a little. You can only bleed so much, I suppose. I hate the heat. It makes everything stink like filth. The hole in the centre of the sore on my hand is really filthy. Really big, too. Too big to have nothing in it. I licked it because it looked li...

Well, this is it, the last three chapters of the story. I'm bothered by the endings of a few of my books, and this is one of them. I can't shake the feeling that I should've gone for a more of a balls-out, Sons of Anarchy vibe.  Chapter 17 I got to the hospital ten minutes before visitors hours were over. He wasn’t talking. He wasn’t smiling. He was laying right where I’d left him, letting machines eat, think, and breathe for him. And now I was going to talk for him. ‘Hey, handsome.’ I stroked his hair, wiped my hand on my jacket. ‘I was watching your favorite movie the other day. Remember when I woke up on the couch at two in the morning and found you sitting in front of the TV, legs crossed, totally mesmerized? I was terrified. It’s pretty tame as scary movies go, but it was still way too much for a kid who still needed me to cut his steak for him. I grabbed the remote from you, and you said “Please, Mommy, I want to see the hero rescue the girls.” I sat you down and expl...

 I've head it said that most writers are their own worst critics, and I have to say I definitely fall into that category. It's from this section of All Good Sons that I personally think I let the story get away from me a little bit; allowed myself to get carried away and let the plot descend into madness. Maybe I'm overthinking it, I don't know. Chapter Fourteen I put my phone in my bag and drove to Lulu’s place. She rented a downtown apartment on Wilshire , and I only half expected her to let me in when the doorman buzzed her. I didn’t have another plan. Her decorating scheme was a study in monochrome - everything from the sofas to the light switches was a shade of orange. I put on what I hoped was my warmest smile. She smiled right back. Oblivious. I noticed when she let me in that the TV wasn’t on. ‘I take it you haven’t seen the news?’ ‘I don’t watch a whole lot of TV.’ ‘On the internet?’ ‘Taking a break from it for a while. My P.A. answers all my emails anyway. Hav...

Chapter Twelve Daryl got out of the Dodge just as Joy drove off. She tooted her horn as she passed him. ‘How’d it go?’ ‘Nash was the ringleader. He and the other boys were hurting girls.’ I’ve never seen Daryl’s face turn whiter. ‘Was Grey…?’ ‘Of course not! He turned snitch as soon as he found out about it. They all got to him before he could get to the cops.’ ‘ All ? Including Lulu?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Why?’ ‘She thought Grey was cheating on her.’ ‘Have you talked to her?’ ‘Nash knows more than she does, and if I go anywhere near her I’m likely to bash her head in with her size six pumps.’ Lulu had become a very sought-after fashion model shortly after leaving school, having been discovered by a scout while partying at a night spot on Rodeo. ‘They get the snot kicked out of ‘em and she jets off to Paris for fashion week…doesn’t seem right to me.’ ‘I’ll keep her in my back pocket for now. In a couple of years time, when all this is over and she thinks she’s in the clear, then we’ll sit ourselve...

 Chapter Ten Dillon Bull was as quiet a kid as I’d ever met, but he wasn’t spineless like Tyler. His silence had a weight to it, laden with secrets to which I wasn’t privy and, until recently, didn’t wish to be. He wasn’t a frightening-looking boy – quite handsome, actually, in a doughy sort of way – but if you made it known that you were interested in what went on inside that titanium of skull of his, he would shoot you what I liked to call the Siberian Stare. The first time I found myself on the receiving end of that stare was an isolating experience. The boys were wrestling in the backyard, having just watched the ‘real’ thing on TV and, not being one of those mothers who subscribed to the Everything Is Dangerous theory, I settled down into a chair with a good book and monitored the situation rather than break it up. Dwarfing even the next tallest boy by at least four inches, Dillon was the competitor they saved for last. He was the ring-in, the gladiator who ducked under the ro...