Writing - Gestation of a thriller

Some writers believe that all those piles of writing ideas that had not been translated into either short stories or books should be ditched. There’s sense in that – tidying up, clearing the wheat from the chaff.

However, some ideas require time to gestate and may be worth holding onto - for years. I have several examples of retaining ideas that have ultimately paid dividends; here’s one.

When I was training in the RN in 1971, our group spent an evening round the mess table and set up a Ouija session, using a tumbler and placed in a circle pieces of paper with the alphabet and numbers on them. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, nothing intelligible resulted. Then I proposed that the gobbledegook was in code. And an idea formed. The message would be transmitted by a psychic spy, Tana Standish.

But, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem to be gibberish.

By the time Keith Tyson deciphered the first paragraph, he felt sick inside.

Unsmiling narrow mouth beneath a salt-and-pepper moustache, Jock stubbed out half-smoked cigarettes repeatedly. He was a bag of nerves since his last mission. It was plain on his face that he knew this astral message was very bad.

At last Tyson put down the pencil and raised his grey eyes. His expression was solemn. “It’s from Tana,” he said. “They’ve got her.”

Alan Swann’s face lost most of its colour as he leaned forward. He queried softly, “Where?”

“Czechoslovakia.” (p174)

That was the set-up. So I wrote a 2,000-word short story entitled ‘The Ouija Message’. Even though by then I’d sold a number of action-adventure stories, this one didn’t find a home. In retrospect, I realised that the story needed more space. I embarked on writing a book – same title – and it stretched to a modest 50,000 words.

At that time (1974) publishers were not averse to commenting on submissions. Robert Hale was not keen on the psychic elements but said ‘the work is up to publication standard and indeed better than many that are published’. So that was encouraging. Alas, a good number of rejections of Ouija followed and time passed and life-work tended to get in the way. I continued to have reasonable successes with short story and article sales, and wrote other books, thrillers and fantasy, but didn’t sell any of those novels either.

Time passed. As it does. Then, in 2007 I dug out a one-line idea – ‘He was dressed entirely in black. Black because he was in mourning. Mourning the men he had killed.’ I decided to write a western! That same year I sold the resultant book to Hale, and five more followed before they went out of business. At the same time, I had success with the Harry Bowling Prize, winning an award with the first chapters of a crime novel. While, sadly, I didn’t get agent representation, the success spurred me on to finish that crime book and it was accepted by a new publisher, Libros, under the title Pain Wears No Mask; (Libros went out of business but now the book is available as The Bread of Tears). On the back of these two successes, I revisited The Ouija Message and, thanks to all those years of writing experience, vastly improved the book to the extent that it ran to 80,000 words and it was accepted by Libros in 2008. That book spawned two more adventures and I’m busy writing the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy series. Since my breakthrough in 2007 I’ve had 37 books published.

The moral of all this? Never give up on your writing ideas. Believe in yourself. And if you keep writing, you keep improving.

 

Note: The Tana Standish books are: Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978); Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979); Mission: Falklands (Argentina, 1982) – work in progress.

Writing – word-count – progress

From time to time, we hear writers talking about how many words they’ve written ‘today’. 

Some writers say that a book has taken months or even years to write. But in all probability it hasn’t. The writer wasn’t spending all hours on that book. The work was interrupted by ‘life’ – family, friends, work that pays the bills, holidays, and a multitude of other commitments that get in the way.

Writing a novel, I feel, is work, not play. Enjoyable work, granted. But it should be treated the same as ‘work’. 

The normal working day consists of eight hours. Yes, I’m sure that many writers spend eight hours in any particular day working on their book – that is, thinking, researching, juggling words and phrases, tweaking, and even writing new material.

For quite a while now, I’ve advocated that it’s helpful to keep a record of progress, and one of the ways to do that is by using a spreadsheet.

I write in ‘sessions’ – they may be for an hour, 2 hours, or even 30 minutes. I record each time period session. When the sessions add up to 8 hours, I call that a ‘day’.

For interest, I’ve looked back on my latest work, The Khyber Chronicle, which has just hit 45,000 words (about 35,000 to go!)

For the last 5 days of work (that is, 5 x 8-hour sessions), the word-count came out thus:

Day     word-count

1          5895

2          4816

3          5189

4          4975

5          8231

I go into this aspect of calculating word-count on pp18-19 in Write a Western in 30 Days – with plenty of bullet points! (Suitable for not only writers of westerns, but writers of all genre fiction). There are a few good reasons to apply this method. It isn’t the only method, it may not be the best, but it works for me.

Naturally, writing the requisite number of words is only the beginning. Then comes the self-edit, the checks for logic, plot holes, lack of description and all the rest. But getting the words down in the first place is the most important part. Something to build on, to hone thereafter.

Good luck!

Tana Standish, psychic spy - 01

I’m pleased to announce that Crooked Cat Publishing have accepted my first two Tana Standish chronicles.

 

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval Lieutenant and eventually joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences. The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), both of which have been previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. The next two adventures are planned; these are: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), half-completed, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).

 

The timeline for Tana’s secret service career is shown below:

The Singapore Signal – 1965 – (Tana’s first mission)

The Naples Note - 1966

The Izmir Intelligence - 1967

The Odessa Objective – 1968

The Pilsen Portfolio– 1968

The Karachi Code - 1970

The Elba Errand – 1971

The Gibraltar Gathering - 1972

The Mombasa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

The Peking Profile – 1976

The Bulawayo Bulletin – Jan 1977

The Mogadishu Memorandum – Jul 1977

The Cairo Codicil – Dec 1977

The Tehran Text - 1978

The Khyber Chronicle – 1979-1980

The Caldera Cryptogram – 1980-1982

The Savannah Statement - 1983

The Dingli Disclosure – 1984 (Malta)

The Malaga Missive – 1985

The Oslo Observation - 1985

 

More disclosures from the secret annals soon!

Recurrent images: beginnings and echoes

Using a leitmotif in your fiction can provide an added dimension. This is a recurrent idea or image. Indeed, there may be several different leitmotifs in the novel.

In my series of novels about Tana Standish, psychic spy of the Cold War, I begin each book with similar imagery. This serves a number of purposes – it thrusts the reader directly into the action and it reveals something about the characters involved, for example.

The first two books are out of print and seeking a new publisher; the third is a work in progress, with more to follow in time.

The Prague Papers - ONE: Prelude

Czechoslovakia, August, 1968

Six Soviet officers stood on the balcony overlooking St. Wenceslas Square and the definition through the sniper-scope was so good that Tana Standish could detect the black-heads round their noses and the blood-shot eyes that testified to late-night celebrating with alcohol. She had ten 7.5mm rounds, more than enough to kill all of them. 

            Tana had a steady grip but there was no risk of weapon-shake anyway as the new Giat F1 rifle rested on its bipod on the window-sill. She had also made sure that, as this weapon was fresh from the French production-line, it could not be traced back to England.            

            Dressed in his brown-grey greatcoat with bright red lapel flashes, General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky cocked his head to the left while he listened attentively to his commanders. He was thick-set, with small dark eyes and a pug nose whose nostrils bristled with hair.

            Try as she might, she could not detect any thoughts from the officers. But she was able to lip-read. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, since the invasion had gone well, with only a few Czech and Slovak deaths. Vodka had indeed flowed last night.

            As one of the main architects of the offensive, Pavlovsky would have the honour to die first. She levelled the cross-hairs on the general’s forehead, just between the close-set eyes.

            For God’s sake, don’t! Along with the words that she snatched from Laco’s tumbling thoughts came a familiar dull ache at the back of her neck. Her mouth went very dry. Tana lifted her finger away from the trigger and felt cold sweat start its trail down the side of her brow.

            She turned her head as, seconds later, Laco unlocked the apartment door and rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

            ‘Thank God I caught you in time!’ he gasped, eyes staring at the rifle on its stand.

            ‘We agreed,’ Tana said evenly, ‘if we got the opportunity, it was too good to pass up.’ Out of the corner of her eye she watched the Soviet officers. They weren’t going anywhere. Two of them were pointing down into the street, where a car was on fire.          

            Laco heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘We intercepted a radio message.’ He rested his back against the wall by the door and slowly sank down on his haunches, head in his hands. ‘They said there will be reprisals if we kill any of their officers.’

            ‘If I was one of the other ranks,’ she said, ‘I’d be a bit upset about that.’ But it wasn’t a joking matter. Reprisal was not a nice word in Czechoslovakia.

            She drew the lace curtain across the window, concealing the weapon.

            Kneeling beside Laco, Tana gently took his hands in hers. She understood. He was only nineteen and he didn’t want another Lidice on his conscience. ‘One day, we’ll beat them,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

FR1 rifle - Wikipedia commons

 

The Tehran Transcript – ONE: HEART

Friday, September 8, 1978

Iran
Dressed in his sinister black SAVAK uniform, Captain Hassan Mokhtarian looked every inch the evil man he was. A man who deserved to die.

            Tana Standish could see him quite clearly through the telescopic sight, even making allowances for the poor light as dusk descended over Tehran and the city’s surrounding mountains, turning the overshadowing snow-capped cone of Mount Damavand a delicate shade of mauve. At least today the city smog didn’t obscure the peak of the volcano which still belched out sulphurous fumes from time to time and killed the odd stray sheep.

            Hassan exuded an air of danger with his pitted complexion and deep-set ebony eyes under a prominent forehead ridge. While SAVAK was a civilian organisation, many of its officers were military men and they relished wearing a uniform which instilled fear in the population.

            Standing in the open doorway of his villa, he exhaled smoke through his nostrils and dropped the Marlboro cigarette to the lightly coloured marble-tiled step, grinding it under the toe of his boot. His eyes glinted, as if he took pleasure in the destruction of even small things.

Hassan smiled as he closed the door behind him and stepped down to the waiting limousine with its bullet-proof smoked-glass windows. The government driver opened the door.

            Going to fat, his black silk shirt taut against his stomach, Hassan paused, one shining boot in the vehicle, and glanced back at the window to the right of the entrance. His wife Rosa waved.

            He had excelled himself with the Koofteh Berenji. The balls of meat had been filled with barberries, walnuts and fried onions. They were delicious. Normally, Rosa arranged for the chief maid to buy their meat for the chef, but on this occasion he’d insisted they take from the freezer the most recent gift from headquarters.

            Rosa allowed his odd whim – it was about once a month, he supposed, that he dictated what they ate and actually cooked it himself. It just depended on the quality of the source. He joked that it made him stronger, more capable of doing the Shah’s work, and of course the chef got a day off into the bargain.

            Now he grinned broadly at the memory and he experienced a thrilling shiver down his spine. Hassan wondered what Rosa would say if she realised the ground meat they’d eaten was the heart of Savak Hoveyda, a particularly recalcitrant activist for “people’s rights”.

            He used his big nicotine-stained fingers to brush back the oiled hair from his forehead, gave Rosa a cursory wave and, abruptly, his heart lurched and his normally emotionless features contorted in distress, deep furrows appearing in his prominent forehead, and his eyes screwed tight as sudden intense pain assailed his hands. It was as if his fingernails were being pulled out by the same pincers his men had used on Hoveyda, the same he had planned to use tonight on the anonymous Mojahedin woman.

            Shaking violently, Hassan staggered back and fortunately his driver caught him before he could fall on the hard marble steps.

 

Tears streamed down Tana’s face and dampened the black cotton material of her chador as she watched Hassan Mokhtarian stumble backwards into his driver’s arms. The optical telescopic sight – the Mauser SP66 had no obscuring iron sights - provided her with a very detailed picture of her target’s sudden facial transformation.

            It wasn’t enough, though. It never would be, she thought, the familiar taste of iron in her dry mouth.

            Thought-transference was something quite alien to the self-satisfied torturer of the Shah’s Security and Intelligence Service, SAVAK. It pained her as much this time as it had when she’d received the psychic echoes from her friend Savak Hoveyda – so ironically did they give their security and intelligence service the acronym which was a common Persian name!

Mauser SP66 rifle - Wikipedia commons

The Khyber Code – ONE: HERAT

Wednesday, February 14, 1979
Afghanistan
Cross-hairs of the telescopic sight centred on the man’s creased forehead, just below his brown and grey woollen hat. Steadying the weapon, Clayton tried calming the anger and disgust that threshed in his body. He needed a quick, clean shot. Stop breathing, squeeze the trigger. Now!

            The stock of the Mannlicher-Carcano carbine thudded into his shoulder as the gun’s report bounced off the hills. The 6.5mm calibre bullet made a bloody mess of the man’s head, splattering blood over his long-sleeved astrakhan coat. A lifeless hand dropped the curved knife.

            As the echo of his shot died, Clayton levered the bolt, feeding another cartridge into the breech, and fired again.

 

Not too many minutes earlier, Clayton had been on foot, gingerly leading his horse down the rocky scree slope towards the village. Although it was cold, he wore tough hide sandals, as did all tribesmen in the mountains. His disguise required it, since he was liable to pray five times a day and that meant preceding his devotions with ablutions of cold water on the back of the neck and feet. Few devout Afghans could be bothered with lace-up boots, they took too long to remove. He wore chalwar kameez, a wool hat and a black leather patch over his left eye. His pattu was slung over his back.

            He was about an hour early to pick up young Sher, his helper and guide, who reckoned that he’d found a buried ancient minaret just two days’ ride away.

            He stopped, noticing a gathering of men and a young woman outside an adobe house on the edge of the village. Two horses were standing idle by a hitching rail. Further down the village street, people watched furtively from windows and doorways, heads hooded, only their eyes visible.

            Clayton lifted the false eye-patch to get a better view of the group. Their body language indicated that something was amiss.

            Old instinct kicked in. Withdrawing the rifle from its leather boot under his woollen saddle-cloth, he sat back on the slope and rested his elbow on his knee and studied the group through the telescopic sight.

            Sher was being restrained by two stocky villagers with bushy black beards. A young woman was being held by two more men. Her shawl had been pulled away and her big brown eyes stared fearfully at the tall bearded man in the astrakhan coat. Clayton recognised him – he was Sher’s father, Asad Sattar.

            Clayton was too far away to hear what was being said, but he could read Asad’s lips, translating from the tribe’s Pashtu language: ‘You bring shame to my house, Nura!’

            ‘No, father, it is not like that!’

            ‘I have been informed that you dare to gaze with lust on an unworthy man!’

            ‘No, it is Ramin, he is jealous, he wants me but I don’t want him!’

            ‘What you want is of no consequence! You dishonour me and all your family!’

            ‘No, father,’ Sher objected, ‘that is not true!’

            Asad cuffed his son with the back of his big hand. ‘Silence, boy, or I shall cut out your tongue!’ Asad turned back to his daughter. ‘For your transgression, I shall pluck your eyes out and cast you into the wilderness!’

            Asad moved shockingly fast, pulling his curved knife from its belt sheath and flicking its point at Nura’s left eye.

            Clayton’s stomach lurched as the girl screamed. Sher’s eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t cry out; like all young Afghan men, he was stoic in adversity for he had learned not to cry even if seriously hurt. Clayton steadied his arm and hands, aimed and shot Asad in the head. It was bad enough that anyone would do that to another human being, but for a father to be so brutal beggared belief. He knew all about the medieval practice of Islamic honour killings, but he’d never witnessed any; usually, they occurred behind closed doors. Girls as young as nine were sold or wed to old men and death while giving birth was commonplace.

            Trembling with after-shock, Clayton fired again. This second shot pierced the shoulder of the man on Nura’s left. His third shattered the kneecap of one of the men restraining Sher. Only seconds had elapsed and in that time the remaining men let go of the two youngsters and, helping their wounded comrades, turned and hurried towards the house. For an archaeologist, Clayton thought, he was a pretty good shot. The quality of the rifle helped, he supposed; nothing to brag about, the same type was used in the assassination of President Kennedy.

            Quick-wittedly, Sher spotted Clayton, waved briefly then ran over to his wailing sister who was crouched on the ground, hands covering her face. He grabbed her arm and tugged; reluctantly, she stood, covering one eye with a hand. They ran to the horses and Sher swung into the saddle and hauled his sister up behind him. In seconds, the pair was racing in Clayton’s direction, abandoning their home and village and family forever.

            Sher drew the horse beside Clayton; his sister hugged him tight, burying her face against Sher’s jacket.

            Clayton sheathed the rifle and swung into the saddle. ‘We must lose the pursuit, my friends,’ he shouted, pointing towards the village.

            Sher glanced over his shoulder, past the bowed head of his sobbing sister. Already, four horsemen were riding out of the village, furs flying out behind them, each brandishing long-barrelled jezails; sun glinted on the muskets’ elaborate lattices of mother-of-pearl.

            ‘Let’s go!’ Clayton said, urging his horse up the scree. An experienced young horseman, Sher followed, his sister clinging to him as if for dear life. Seven days from now, I had promised to be in Herat, Clayton fumed. Now, I may spend all that time eluding those damnable tribesmen!

            About an hour later, they entered a narrow defile and he halted his mount. ‘Sher, find me a place where I can transmit a message to Herat.’ His radio was concealed in several hollow sections of his saddle.

            The youngster nodded, his tone serious: ‘Yes, Greystock,’ using one of Clayton’s aliases. He signed for Clayton to follow him as he led his horse to the east.

Me at the gate (baab) to the Khyber Pass (1969)

***

Until I find a publisher for the series, I probably won’t finish Khyber (it’s one-third written already, however, and fully plotted).

 

The Far Pavilions - an epic novel

First published in 1978, this monumental epic sold ¼-million in hardback alone; paperback sales, especially after the TV series, soared. Justifiably, despite the less than attractive cover from Penguin.  Though written in a completely different style, I feel it can be set alongside Paul Scott’s magisterial Raj Quartet. Set in India during the time of the British Raj, M.M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions tells the story of Englishman Ashton Pelham-Martyn from birth in the 1850s, through the Indian Mutiny until the Second Afghan War, 1879.

Due to its scale, the story has to be told from an omniscient point of view. Yet individuals are strongly drawn and felt. This book has been likened to the Gone with the Wind of the North-West Frontier, and the comparison isn’t far off the mark. Although it’s a love story, it’s much more besides. It doesn’t pull any punches where brutality in all forms is encountered during these violent times. It depicts bravery, generosity, cruelty, honour, devoutness, passion, heroism and self-sacrifice.

The title comes from the Dur Khaima mountains, the Far Pavilions, with Tarakalas, the ‘Star Tower’, catching the first rays of the sunrise. Somewhere near was a fabulous valley dreamed of by Ashton’s surrogate mother, Sita, somewhere to live in peace and contentment without violence, prejudice and greed…

We know that politicians don’t seem to read history or learn from it. A year after this book was published, the USSR effectively invaded Afghanistan.  Ashton says, ‘The Afghans may be a murderous lot of ruffians with an unenviable reputation for treachery and ruthlessness, but no one has ever denied their courage; or been able to make them do anything they don’t like doing. And they don’t like being dictated to or ruled by foreigners – any foreigners!’ It applied in 1979 and, to all intents and purposes, it applies now.

It was fascinating to read of places such as Murree, Jamrud fort, Peshawar, Islamabad – all part of India at the time. In 1969, I went to these places when they were in West Pakistan, as well as the Khyber Pass, from where we looked over the plain of Kabul. (See my reminiscences of that visit ‘The Navy Lark up the Khyber’ pp142-151 in Under the Queen’s Colours, ‘voices from the Forces 1952-2012’ by Penny Legg).

 
In places, Kaye’s writing is exquisite, as are the sentiments and characterisations. A few brief examples: As an old sage remarks, ‘I know well that hearts are not like hired servants who can be hidden to do what we desire of them. They stay or go as they will, and we can neither hold nor prevent them. The gods know that I have lost and regained mine a dozen times. For which I have cause to be grateful, for my father lost his once only: to my mother. After she died he was never more than the shell of a man.’

‘The black stallion’s body and his own were one, and his blood sang in rhythm with the pounding hooves as the air fled past them and the ground flowed away beneath them as smoothly as a river.’

‘Below him a belt of scree fell steeply away down a gully that was bright with moonlight, and on either hand the bare hillsides swept upwards to shoulder a sky like a sheet of tarnished steel.’

An observer’s description of Ashton – ‘…the vulnerability of that thin, reckless face, the sensitive mouth that accorded so ill with the firm obstinate chin, and the purposeful line of the black eyebrows that were at odds with a brow and temples that would have better fitted a poet or a dreamer than a soldier.’  Whoever cast Ben Cross in the role got it very right indeed.

 

Here's a bookmark I made for the book...

 

When I closed this tome of 960 pages of tightly packed text, I felt slightly bereft. I seemed to live with many of these characters, and watched them grow older, live – and die – and now it was over, finished.

At the back, there are two pages of author’s notes providing relevant real-life happenings used in the narrative plus a useful 2-page glossary of Indian words and phrases.