Examples of Fiction: THE COMPASSIONATE GENTLEMEN

The Great War had just ended and veterans were enjoying their new found victory. Captain Jensen was overjoyed to see that on the chair facing the ocean, two men were seated on either side of ther taller companions.

"Shell shock," said the one in the white Panama hat.

Jensen, who was busy talking to his first mate, nodded.

"Any word on the London Waxworks robbery?" the mate asked.

"Yes. I have word from Scotland Yard that they might try to get away on the ship. We have everyone checking the cabins and the passenger's list.

The mate loosed his collar. "It's going to be a scorcher!" The captain agreeed that it was unusual for that time of year. They decided to go to the dining room.

An hour later, they returned. Shocked, he looked at the quartet. Were not the two in the center a little bit shorter and wider? Quickly, he sent for several burly seamen who surrounded the group.

"All right," said the captain, "turn around and stand up!"

The two on the end obeyed, causing the center figures to lurch forward, practically toppling into the ocean. As the seamen grabbed them, their hands became sticky with hot wax.

"The missing wax work dummies!"explained the captain and promptly placed the thieves in the brig.

Example of Fictiion: THE LETTER

he door hung open, swinging and knocking against the wooden floor, against the foot protruding from the room. Officer Ethan Clancey grasped the handle with a handkerchief and entered.

Mary's hair still had that silver glow and she still had that turquoise evening gown, but it now stained with dark red patches. The dark brown table still held her manuscript and the letter. Clancey took time to phone the coroner and his superior and blinked his eyes.

"The letter was gone!"

Yesterday at the pub, he was talking to his companions about Mrs. Phenni's trouble with the rental agency. Ethan tried to strain his mind, trying to think of someone listening with overly intentness. He knew that his friends just yawned and made suggestions about Ombudsmen, What about her relatives? Surely she has a son or daughter some place? If it were my mother, I'd…

Mary Phenni had a lot of trouble and now she was dead. The murderer apparently was someone she knew. No forced entry. Well that always is the case. Clancey went over the room again. The faded rose chenille cover and the white bleached pillows with the embroidered red carnations and dark green leaves covered the double sized bed. A pocket book with the name "Sweet Surrender" lay on the small round table. Its gaudy cover of a blonde woman being caressed by a dark hair hunk, contrasted with the pale gray finish of the antique furniture.

What do women see in this romantic stuff? Mary was a widow and her marriage was not much worse than most. Maybe her daughter gave it to her. He went into the kitchen. Mary had prepared her supper, a small tin of stew, a couple of potatoes and an attempt at a salad, that is, head lettuce, tomatoes, and French Dressing. No green onions. Then he remembered today was the fourteenth. She would be getting her pension check tomorrow.

Example of Fiction: LITTLE MURDERER

I knew mother was dead.

Now no one thinks that a little girl is capable of murder, but she is. I had watched my father time and again get that box off the shelf in the garage. I had watched my father put the powder in cracks and crevices around the house and had watched him put the chicken wire fence around so that Muffins, our cat did not go near.

Muffins was tiny, and not much good for anything. I think my parents were glad when she died. After all, I had to see if the powder worked. Mummy suffered a lot when she died, especially when she could not dial the phone. But I had watched television. I knew that if you pull out all the plugs in the wall, you couldn't dial out

My aunt is very cold to me. I heard that she was trying to reach mother on the day I killed her. I heard that she talked to the police. The rumor that daddy was let go makes me angry. Say why are they coming? They are supposed to take daddy to jail.

Example of Fiction: THE TAKEOVER

We were in this restaurant along the Trans Canada highway, eating unbuttered ham sandwiches, listening to farmers talk about their stock, and elderly women chat about Calgary. Suddenly a scrawny old woman snatched a gun from her purse and sprang on a table.

"I've had it," she screamed, frail arms holding the weapon, "Every year it's the same thing. Every year, our bus stops at this stupid restaurant a bus tour and every year we stop at this stupid restaurant and get the same crummy sandwiches at the same ridiculous prices!"

"Hold it," said the waitress, "we don't allow weapons here. We're Canadians."

"Well I am not. I am from the good old USA. and can hold any d— weapon I please. So there, sweetie!"

The waitress rushed to the phone, but tripped over the orthopedic shoes of another pensioner who struck her umbrella, saying "take that, take that,"

The patrons made a rush to the door. Who knows farmers could be that speedy? We enjoyed the spectacle. You see,we are not allowed to carry guns. The government is afraid we will admit a mad dog killer into our house, show him our gun collection, and the drawer where we kept our bullets. I would not be surprised if they figured we would show the felons whose place to rob and "I won't tell the RCMP about you if you take care of Mr. So and So. He's been a pain in my existence!"

The Americans do not have that problem. The only people not allowed to carry guns are criminals, and insane person and that old lady looked pretty sane to me.

Yes, there she was, five foot nothing in a white straw hat, reading glasses, a pink rose printed rayon dress, a pale rose cardigan,and a large white vinyl purse with "San Francisco" on it, sallow face, white hair, and holding a forty five automatic

Yup, if I were the manager of this establishment, I would be scared too. I saw him scurrying around the back, trying to make it to the back door, which were blocked with various boxes of toilet paper.

When the police arrived and hauled the senior citizens off, we figured that justice had taken a back turn until the next day. As we put our bags in the car, we happened to glance at the headlines in the local paper.

Health Department Closes Down Restaurant. Dead Cats found in Back. Old Lady a Hero!

Example of my Fiction: RETRIBUTION

He shoot through the broken window at the car lights. Dozens of squad cars as well as several red trucks surrounded the area. Farmers with shotguns cursed at him, giving vent to what they would do, if the law would allow it.

What they had in mind was not very pleasant.

Oh I have been such a fool!

Gregory ran to the back door, but the vicious pit bull snarled at him, straining against its chain.

I should have keep the family alive!

He touched the blood stain on the hardwood floor, now turning a dark brown and recalled the child's innocent face before he plunged his knife into her chest.

Poor baby! I am so expert! He did not want to waste a bullet on her, like he did on her parents.

The moon was become clearer. Gregory spotted the sniper on the roof top over the shadows. He knew that he would never get out alive.

"You can't get me, copper!" he yelled, adding a few four-letter words for emphasis. He swallowed the remaining slice of chocolate cake on the dining room table, wiping his ice stained fingers on the yellow patterned tablecloth.

Carefully, Gregory removed the bullet, and burped.

He then started towards the front door. He could make it! He could, but then the pit bull was at the front, mouth slathering, clawing at the flimsy wood door. Gregory knew that in just a second, it would be over.

Someone yelled, "Let's wait until the dog finishes him. It'll save the taxpayers some needless expense!"

As the dog broke its chains and sprang, Gregory heard a vicious laugh from outside mingled with his screams.

Borrowing

Sometimes a writer admires a character written by another author that he wants to mention that character or make reference in his story. Perhaps you want to make a phrase like "As I waited for the light to change, I saw that scuffy detective talking to that famous police psychologist. The latter had not changed his raincoat for weeks." Pretty sneaky way to mention Columbo. You are not saying who he is, but anyone who watches the series knows who you are referring to.

Unfortunately your character would have no idea who that scuffy guy in the raincoat is. He would probably think he was a bum.

Now suppose you want your character to say that he saw Spiderman crawling up a wall. After all, you read that comic book and you saw this man poking out the apartment window, looking up.

If it were reality and Spiderman was crawling up a wall, your character may have seen it so many times that he would have not taken any notice.

All right, you decided to be bold and write a story about a widow of a police detective suspected of corruption asking a detective of a famous writer who lives in the same town as you to investigate. Now suppose it was in November 1998. Unfortunately the famous writer wrote a story of the same time period, but he had not sent it to the publisher yet. In this, the detective of the famous writer is in Ireland, investigating the mysterious death of a relative and he left in October 1988 and is spending the Christmas holidays there as well.

Not to be perturbed, you make your character be related to an action hero of another famous writer. This hero in the writer's last novel was getting close to a certain young lady and there were hints of marriage. Okay the writer may have intended to make the character married but his audience would not accept this for now. And for reality's sake, would not the hero's employer's order him to fake his wife or his own's death, make a different identity like he was in the import business, etc. And would not those who hired this action hero make sure that any real marriage of his was kept secret, perhaps a fake one in his place, along with a cover story? Why if your character was related to this borrowed character, he would probably think that his father was a business traveler, salesperson, et cetera. Why he may think his father died, divorced, or a bum who left mother and I penniless.

All right you decide to mention that your character was in the same area when something happened, perhaps the action hero was chasing someone (okay Chinese Communist agent) and there was a big fight. You decide to play safe by mentioning not the city or state but it was "near Macey's around Christmas 1985". You researched and know that the author wrote a story called, "Danger Christmas". But your character would probably have been approached by the government, CIA, or whomever hired the action hero to keep quiet in the interest of national security

The safest way to reference a borrowed character would be at a distance, a character who could be but you are not sure, mention being at a certain restaurant when the action hero was getting in trouble with the waiter - "I hope this is not what happened the last time I was here. The waiter seemed to be arguing with this customer. Who? I don't know. He looked like military or something.

This is probably the safest way to write about the danger of using characters borrowed from other authors than to say "You would violate copyright and you would probably not get the author's permission.

REASONS WRITERS DO THINGS

No one has explained why a writer must take a certain amount of time each day other than, "it is a job like any other, if you were going to the office every day, you would spend eight hours, etc." But writing is not like any other job. No one has told me the reason why I have to increase my vocabulary to at least a grade twelve university level other than,"you do not want to sound childish." No one has told me why I should not let my family or friends read my work and critique it. No one has told me why I should keep all my writing books, and other equipment in the same room and have a private room or time to practice my craft. So I think I had better explain why.

You need a writing space with your equipment, books, et cetera on hand, because if you have your books, for instance, downstairs, everytime you run to get that obscure reference book, you lose valuable writing time. You also save on leg power. Someone may take your absence as an okay for them to get on the computer and play a game.

Your vocabulary has to be more than looking up in a dictionary because you have to know the nuances of the word in such a way that they became second nature. It does, also, make people respect you and expect more than a story of your tragic life when your father locked you in the closet even though he never did those things and was the nicest man in your city.

You need a certain amount of time because you must see at least a page or several paragraphs completed, not only a sentence. In connection, you should have a particular time period, preferably an hour at least, with no interruptions because if someone bugs you during your alloted writing period,you cannot concentrate because you are thinking that any moment now the phone will ring, the husband will want to play his game, the dog has to go out, and so forth. In other words, eventually you expect to be interrupted. It is sort of like those rechargeable batteries. If you stop too soon, the battery life decreases and you wind up writing, "See Dick Run." instead of "As I entered the room, I observed Mrs. Marvin, her head attached in a rather strange angle and her eyes glazed over — knowing that someone in the house had killed her, I immediately phoned the police, et cetera, et cetera.

You do not let friends critique your work, because they have different tastes in writing and that reflect on their judgements. In other words, they are asking, "why does she or he write about this lovely family and how they got to America?" "I love Romances." and fail to see if you used the passive voice a little too often, the hero in your story suddenly changed his name in mid stream from Barney to Howard, or other blunders.

You do not let family critique your work, because they confuse your writing with whatever you did wrong and have seen you on your bad days.

You only tell that you are writing, not the exact detail of plot, city, or name because in the first case, you might, say, suddenly decide to change to science fiction and would you not be embarrassed!

You do not give a copy to your friend because she may be a helpfuL aunt. What a helpful aunt does is to show the copy to as many of her friends as possible. (She is glad to meet a real writer ) Eventually it may wind up being stolen by an unscrupulous person masquerading as a friend who says, "Oh I am not interested" and then steals it from the coffee table, dresser drawer, and has it published under his or her own name.

As for me, I got sick and tired of people asking, "Why do you need this and could you not get, et cetera, et cetera." I thus to write it down. Hope that satisfies everyone.