Monday - Lucy

I hope to resume my commentary on the characters of The Scorpian Visitant tomorrow. But time does not permit today.

Today I feel very humble at the response I have had to 'Switch' and sincerely offer my thanks to all those who have taken the trouble to download.

Monday has seen me back in the day job 8 till 4. On arriving home, I started Ch. 2 of the second Lucy Harlow story 'TV Torment'.

The way I write is by propelling pencil on the white lined paper of a wire bound book. I choose a pencil that doesn't break continually for pressure. Once I've written the scene, I ten finger type it onto the hard drive of one of my Dell laptops. I currently have a new Inspiron with core I3 processor, 3 Gb ram, 320 Gb hard drive, and an older less specced Inpiron 1525. I am using the new one now, but the keyboard took a bit of getting used to after four years or so on the 1525. Once written I revise the scene twice and then leave it. I've done 1000 words tonight, which I am comfortable with. I get a bit suspicious when I do an awful lot of words. Words are like babies they only come into the world when they are ready. In short, you can move a story on with 500 - 1000 words a day.

I was going to save this for another day. But now I'm typing I'll let you in on it.

TV Torment is based upon an experience I didn't have. My parents, younger brother, and I spent a week's holiday one July in the North Wales resort of Llandudno. It was a wretched week, the weather being cold, wet and windy throughout. The holiday flat  we stayed in was the rear half of a semi detached house under the Great Orme - a big seaside cliff. The front of the house was occupied by the landlady - a widow of about sixty. The lady greeted us with a rather startled look, that seemed to say 'do you really want to come in.' It was lashing down so we were only too glad to cross her threshold. Once inside, we were shown to a flat with fittings and furnishings from a bygone age, possibly from when our landlady was a young bride. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and downstairs a kitchen and TV lounge with a folding bed. The landlady, who occupied the front of the house, seemed very keen for one of us to occupy the folding bed. But my mother would not hear of it.

We got on with our holiday. The wind howled around the Great Orme outside our flat. The small window in our bathroom did not have a catch and clacked constantly in the wind, the din filling the house. My father closed the door in the lounge to shut out the racket as we gathered around the black and white TV at around nine in the evenings, after braving the blustery seaside town.

One evening, while the steely haired newsreader was delivering the nine o'clock news my father turned to my mother and said 'did your hear that?' My mother nodded and said, 'the heavy breathing?' They both looked hard at the TV screen and saw no respiratory distress from the healthy fifty something gent reading the news. But my parents say to this day that the sound of laboured breathing relentlessly issued from the TV - but only during the news bulletin. They insist the landlady knew the lounge was haunted with the spirit of her husband and perhaps she wanted someone to keep him company at night.

Me? I heard absolutely nothing, except the news and the wretched bathroom window clacking in the wind.

But the incident gave me the idea for the second Lucy Harlow tale, which is about our heroine solving the murder of several young women in Cambridgeshire.



Regards and best wishes


Saul