Kai

Writers' Group exercise. 10 minutes: Fact or fiction. Describe your first encounter with a celebrity.

He's all leather and tattoos. Red and green snakes entwine each arm. He's got a bottle of something - beer? - in one hand and a cigarette in the other. One booted foot taps to the faint rhythm of the warm-up band.  He wears a red bandanna around his head, a skull ring on one finger and a bar through his eyebrow. 

And he's smiling at me.

I glance around, convinced it's somebody else he's looking at. But for once I'm alone. Climbing that wall was hard, but it was worth it, given me access to a backstage yard of some kind. There are rubbish dumpers to one side and a couple of tatty camping chairs next to an upturned crate. My ankle hurts and I want to sit down.

But he's still smiling at me, still counting the beat of the drums inside. What's he doing out here anyway? They'll be on soon  - shouldn't he be rehearsing or something? 

Kai, his name is. I've loved him since I was nine, when I first saw a poster on the wall of the old theatre in town. I sold my laptop to pay for the coach fare and this ticket, lied to my mates and missed an afternoon of school to get here on time. And he's waiting for me, just like he promised.

My mum's going to kill me.

Mirror-prism

Writers' Group exercise. 10 minutes: The visitor. Who or what came to the house and what did they take, or leave? 

In the mirror. There. Quick. See it? No. Just shadows - reflections from the window-prisms, sunlight dancing in the early evening. The sun is low on the horizon, the sky is blood-orange and the reflections are strange in my mirror.

Put the light on. Bold halogen from the ceiling to crush prism-light with its harsh and unforgiving glare. In the mirror nothing changes. Still reflected rainbows pulse behind the glass.

Peer into the depths. What? What's there? Who's there? Shadows lengthen, indigo-blue-green sparkles out into the room.

Touch the glass. Cold; soft - yielding. Ripples from a pebble. Hand, arm, body. Life.

Step through.

What Somebody Wants

Writers' Group exercise. 10 minutes: Write the opening of a story/poem where a character wants something....

He heard the door click shut, a fraction of a second before something poked him in the flesh just below his left ear.

He froze, hands poised on the handle of the filing cabinet. "Can I help you?"

"I don't know," a voice replied. Male - an overweight smoker by the sound of his breathing. "Can you?"

"The club is closed."

"Don't seem to bother you much," the stranger replied.

"I work here."

"Oh? You have a problem with the lights, then?"

The thing in his neck jabbed harder. A gun? Probably. He sighed. "What is it you want?"

"The same as you, I suspect," said the stranger. "I'm just better prepared. Now open the drawer."

Nightwalkers

This evening's writing challenge - the green suitcase. 10 minutes. Go.

Nightwalkers. Always the nightwalkers.

I wait in the shadows for the right moment. When the cloud cover is absolute, when the Watch Guard are bored enough – cold enough – to light up cigarettes, their heads close together as they compare conquests, body-counts – whatever passes for kudos these days in the Guard.

But there are still the nightwalkers.

It’s impossible to hide from them completely. They see. They see everything. The spill-out from the ale-houses, the gamblers staking their world on the turn of a card. And me with my ratty bag, my battered green suitcase and the parrot on my shoulder; Charlie knows to keep quiet – I’ve trained him well.

It isn’t like they said it would be at all.

Presentations and Poetry

As I've posted elsewhere, I did a presentation at a networking event at work last week - theme Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone. Given that there was an audience of about 75 women (including senior management) and the other three speakers all spoke at length about work-related things, I was understandably terrified at talking about non-work-related things! So I gave them the journey of my life-in-crime (law enforcement, please), and how that maybe qualified me to write about it, or maybe just inspired me to make stuff up ...

As I also said, it's like stripping in public - not that'd I'd know, I hasten to add. Talking about work is exposing your intellect; talking about writing is about baring your soul. And talking about writing at work is blurring the lines uncomfortably.

Moving on, I wrote a poem yesterday! Yes, I did. I haven't written poetry since my angst-ridden teens, when I'd curl up in my bedroom with a notebook and biro, and rage in verse over the injustices of life. You know how it is. We've all done it.

So at last night's meeting of my local writers' group, the exercise was poetry. And here's the result. My first published poem! 8-10 lines on the theme A 2 am storm listened to from a bedroom slumber.

Tick, tick, tick - no tock?

I listen to the clock. No time

To wonder at the indoor sounds

As thunder echoes all around.

I slept too deep to hear the rain;

I hear it now - the pane vibrates

while lightning strikes. My body aches

For sleep again. Tick, tick, tick.

My God, I'm good, aren't I? :-)

Spring Senses

Use all five senses and write about spring. 10 minutes - go!

It's so close, I could touch it. At least I could if the window opened more than the inch or so required for "ventilation" - although really it's just to drop fag ends outside. But I like to stick my fingers out and touch the rain, or get my nose so close to the gap that I can smell and taste the weather. It's a better smell than body odour and boiled cabbage.

Freedom is something I can see through the glass, but always just out of reach. I can hear traffic sometimes, on a still night when the morons on the wing finally quit carping and curl up in something approaching sleep, tucked up under their dirty grey blankets with their dirty grey dreams. Cars in the distance, people travelling, arriving, living; without freedom, I simply exist.

But spring is somehow different. Always full of hope with the promise of summer just around the corner. I always stick my fingers out of my cell window when it rains in the spring.

So I don't do light and fluffy...

On Zombies and Electric Fences

My local writing group meets up once a month. At the start, we all do a writing exercise, usually suggested by one of the group members. Yesterday, we were inspired by a selection of small ads from the local papers: write for 10 minutes on one of them. Here's my effort - pretty much unedited, so I've no idea what it actually is...

Electric Fencing. Approx 1200m nearly new green tape, 3 used connectors and 5 unused connectors. £48

Electric fencing. Approx 1200m nearly new.

What does nearly new mean? It's either new or it isn't. For that matter, if it's not new it'd be used wouldn't it? And how do you use a fence? Climb it? Keep something in? Or keep something out?

You can't climb an electric fence anyway. Not one made of green tape. And when I think of an electric fence, I think of a prison - probably one on a post-apocalyptic planet somewhere. It'd be designed to keep the zombies out, wouldn't it? Green tape ain't gonna do that. You can't fry a zombie anyway - they're already dead and they don't care if they lose a toe or finger here or there.

The vamps though - they'd care. Stick a current up their arse and they'd light up like a nuclear reactor. That'd be fun to see on a dark night.

Listen up. This ain't fucking Twilight. You wanna survive here, you got to get to grips with electricity. And you ain't gonna do that buying fencing from the small ads.

Ho hum. I need to get out more, don't I?