Nothing but time

October already? Like Alice's rabbit - I'm Late! I'm Late!

Okay the (few) highlights first...

My story Ease of the Midnight Visit - a ghost story that's more thought provoking than scary - was published in Short and Twisted 2010 (Celapene Press, AUS) in June and, I think, that copies are still available for purchase at Celepane Press. My story is the last in the book and I'm taking this as 'saving the best for last'. Submissions are now open for Short and Twisted 2011 and I'm going to see if I can't go for two years in a row. We'll see...

Long Live the King! has had another outing, this time in Twisted Tongue (UK) Issue16. For some reason I really like the main charcter of this story, Vince Card/Charlie King, to such a degree that I have continued it beyond the orginal 2500 words or so, and it's now out to about 9000 words. Could it possibly be a novella or novel I hear you ask. I'm hoping so and have done a mountain of research on the D.E.A. and  the mafia, including wading through Selwyn Raab's 800 page Five Families. Fascinating but I wouldn't try to read it again. So much detail, it did my head in.

I've also knocked out a couple of good short stories, Everett - featuring a character so annoying that I can't help loving him, and Live to Ride - a story I will admit was directly inspired by the recent reposts in the media of the  'Lemontree Passage Ghost'. I also have written a story called A Friend Like Bob to see how far I could take what was essentially a one line joke. 1500 words, apparently. Don't expect to see it published - ever.

I've also kept myself busy reading about 20 - 30 real crime novels as research. They are fascinating but stightly horrifing, not just what some people are capable of doing to other people, but in the fact that chance and dumb luck seem to solve more crime than any amount of so called 'traditional policing'. I constantlly wonder how anyone is ever caught at all.

Anyway...I won't leave it as long next time...promise

What's that? My lesson from the past?

Back in the 80's, more than twenty years ago, I worked in property finance, when it was still like the wild west, and slick cowboys rode into town and rode out just as fast, some with their ill gotten gains, some with their tails between their legs.

I was introduced to one on those cowboys once, we'll call him 'Sneaky Pete' to avoid any law suits. Sneaky Pete was a wheeler and dealer, a man with a smile on his face all the time. But Sneaky Pete wore a black hat and I was warned. 'Don't be fooled and don't get to close. He's bad business.'

Later on, in the nineties, I saw 'Sneaky Pete' again. He was spruiking his latest idea, and quiet respected people were being photographed with him, but then it all feel through and Sneaky Pete disappeared again.

Imagine my surprise when I turned on the news this week and saw 'Sneaky Pete', slightly older, rounder and with grey hair, telling the media that he couldn't talk about the current case invovling hundreds of thousands of dollars that shouldn't have gone missing.

The lesson. A leopard never changes it's spots.

Cheers