I'm Going To Talk To You About Women.

(Originally Titled - The Male Feminine.)

A friend of mine once made the observation of my writing that I am able to grasp female protagonists really well. It hadn't actually occurred to me that there was anything especially remarkable about this but on reflection, it is clear that as an author, I have gravitated towards strong women characters in my work.

In my first novel, The Hambledown Dream (2010), I conceived a grieving young lawyer, Sonya Llewellyn, a fiercely independent woman who is left to pick up the pieces after the death of her true love. Hers was a character study in grief based, in part on my observations of my paternal grandmother, who lost her husband to cancer after 48 years of marriage. In Gifts of the Peramangk (2012), I portrayed a complex Aboriginal matriarch in Virginia Delfey whose secret gift may or may not hold the key to her family's redemption. Here, I was influenced by my experiences as a community nurse, working with many Aboriginal families in the suburban fringes of Adelaide and noting how central and authoritative matriarchal figures are.

Casey Schillinge as portrayed by a stock photo.

In my 2016 psychological thriller, The Recipient, Casey Schillinge is a young heart transplant recipient who is introduced to us as her life hangs by a thread. At the eleventh hour, she is given a second chance of a donor heart. In the subsequent story, she is remade as a troubled young woman who sees her gift of this life saving heart as a curse that holds a dark secret. In this instance, there isn't so much a template for this particular character as there is an instinctual drive on my part to create a compelling female protagonist who, in the tradition of strong pop culture heroines like Ellen Ripley, Lisbeth Salander and, more recently, Imperator Furiosa, gets to kick some serious butt.

Australian actress Sophie Bloom was the inspiration for Isabelle Sampi in The Artisan Heart.

in my 2018 novel, The Artisan Heart, I returned to my romantic roots with a gentle tome about a brilliant paediatrician, Hayden Luschcombe, who - having lost everything after a tragic event - returns to his home town in the mountain country of Southern Australia. There he encounters Isabelle Sampi, a struggling single mother who is trying to resurrect a moribund bakery in the town of Walhalla whilst raising her hearing impaired daughter. Isabelle is introduced as another independent, no nonsense woman who is driven to succeed as a business woman and mother and has no time for matters of the heart. Her secret past makes her wary of men in particular, until the handsome and damaged young doctor arrives in town and gradually dismantles her defenses. The story starts out with Hayden as the protagonist, but I like to think that Isabelle becomes the protagonist by the end of it. 

Where does predilection to write female characters come from? As a male writer, I have tended to occupy a space that many would argue is not suited to me. Well, I can say that it was never a conscious "thing" where I said to myself - 'I'm going to break through a gender wall and shake things up'. 

It kinda just happened.

I simply enjoy writing women and, as my many readers have fed back to me over the years, they very much enjoy reading them, noting how fully realised, dynamic and believable they are.

The fact that I am a male writer who chooses to portray strong female characters doesn't make me unique but, I realise that it does place me into a fairly niche group - one that has been regarded with some antipathy in literary circles. 

In a 2013 article for The Hairpin, blogger Ester Bloom bemoaned the apparent inability of male writers to accurately portray female characters. "Far too often...when you open up a book by a male writer—even a good male writer, and occasionally even a great male writer—you encounter ladies who are a variation on one or more of four themes: virgin, whore, mother, bitch."

Ellen Ripley *is* Woman.

Bloom goes on to deride the mysoginistic tendencies of male authors in their depictions of women based on these four themes. Though, she does acknowledge some works where men have, sometimes, gotten it  right...almost.

Putting aside the healthy dose of snark contained in the article, it illustrates the kind of antipathy I hinted at; the suggestion that men can't possibly hope to accurately portray women in fiction.

I say bollocks.

I recounted to Australian romance author Georgina Penney on the Bookish Tarts Podcast, that in drawing my protagonists - regardless of who they are -  I am,first and foremost, drawn to their humanity and how that humanity serves the story I'm telling. What are their goals? What are their motivations for achieving those goals? How do those goals serve the story? These things happen regardless of gender. 

When it came to sketching the characters, having decided they were going to be women, I'm certainly not bound by arbitrary themes such those mentioned by Bloom - nor am I writing with an agenda. It comes down to observation.

My own observational skills are keen. I am inspired by human behaviour and interaction and I reflect on the people who have influenced and inspired me. It happens to be the case that a lot of those people are women.

Central among these are my partner, my mother and my two grandmothers. These are women who have nurtured me and guided me in life, who I have communicated with and learned from. There are the colleagues I have worked along side as an Intensive Care Nurse - often in high pressure situations requiring a special kind of resolve. And there are my writing colleagues - my publisher and editor, fellow writers and artisans with whom I collaborate with and learn from.  All of them are strong and independent women, filled with wonderful complexity and dynamism -from which I have mined enthusiastically for material.

Jean was as tough as Ellen Ripley...possibly tougher.

I admire and respect these women and they have enhanced my appreciation of what makes a strong, well drawn female character. It is perhaps, no accident that their character traits find their way into my fictional creations.

There isn't any great secret to writing character - be it male or female. The key ingredient to any character is an ability to imbue them with and convey genuine humanity, one that invests the reader in the protagonist's journey. As a writer, I see it as essential to be able to observe and accurately reflect that humanity.

Oh, and women are really great.

DFA.

Why It Is Important To Be Creative.

I'm back with a post as part of my writers' group August blog chain challenge and, this month, the topic put to us was a question - Why is it important to be creative?

At first glance, the question appears fairly easy to answer doesn't it. 

However, I struggled to come up with an adequate answer and, for the longest time, I couldn't figure out why. It eventually struck me that I was trying to answer the question by looking outward - as though trying to impart reasons why anyone should be creative. But, that's the wrong way to tackle it. Creativity is a very personal thing and it can take so many different forms. The relationship one has with creativity is unique. It goes then, that any consideration of its importance requires that one look inward, rather than outward. So why is creativity important to me?

My love of writing began at an early age. I've often said my Grade 3 primary school teacher, Mrs. Furnell, was the individual who unlocked my creative streak during the creative writing sessions she used to run in class. Ever since then, my desire to create, to tell stories has been insatiable. It has become as much a part of me as breathing or walking.
  

As a Registered Nurse, having practiced for over 20 years in many clinical areas, I have been witness to the extremes of the human condition. A lot of these experiences have been positive - like Nursing newborns who need just a little bit of help at the beginning of their lives or Nursing various bumps and scrapes children have sustained on the sporting field or in the back yard. Things that can be fixed relatively easily. Through the tears and the worry of the patient and their family, there are often smiles and laughter and comradeship. Plenty can be fixed with a Zooper Dooper icy pole.

There have been a lot of other experiences though - like being present at traumatic presentations in the ED, like motor vehicle accidents, violent assaults - sometimes involving weapons, drug overdoses. Or in the ICU - Nursing complex disease processes, the extension of those ED presentations, children who have acquired virulent illnesses like meningococcal sespsis or have been diagnosed with cancer. Many of these cases survive and recover. Many of them do not. There have been catastrophic outcomes. There has been death. 

These experiences imprint on you and they do affect you.

Creativity in the form of writing has been a means to decompress, to escape the accumulated muck of that side of my life and engage with an art that is completely separate. Sometimes, I have written down vestiges of those clinical experiences simply as a means of trying to make sense of them, to remove their subjective effects from my mind and see them as objective experiences, which I can address, deconstruct and move on from. Sometimes, those experiences have found their way into my writing, which has been therapeutic in itself.

It's ironic isn't it. I've credited my Nursing as being an influence on my writing for this reason, but also because of the structure Nursing requires to practice effectively. Nursing involves an adherence to inquiry, to diagnosing, problem solving and crafting solutions. These tools are invaluable to me as writer as I sculpt stories using them in much the same way. So, while I write and create as a way to separate myself from my Nursing, my Nursing inevitably creeps across the fence.

Creativity is an antidote for a restless mind. I have a mind that is constantly working. I find it difficult to switch off. The world around me is such a vivid place and I often take in everything. I work it over, consider objects, smells, tastes, experiences. I ask myself questions, analyze, ponder. The noise in my head can, sometimes be deafening and it can be distressing. 

Writing is a means for me to unpack my mind and get things out so that I can become an observer of ideas, rather than a participant in them - does that make sense? Having a creative process, a method if you will, that is structured and coherent allows me to work ideas into a pre-existing project or catalog them for a future one. I've come to regard even the most disparate ideas as valuable. They are as tangible to me as a flower or a leaf, a Star Wars figurine or a piece of fruit.

Creativity, for me, is a means of maintaining mental well being as much as it is a satisfying pursuit of story telling. 

I'm sure I could explore other reasons why it is important, for me, to be creative but I think these two top the list. They represent the two greatest influences on me as a writer and also as a person. 

So, what about you? Why is it important for you to be creative? Let me know in the comments.

DFA. 

Adelaide - The Inspired City.

I'm trying something a little new this week. I'm a member of really lovely little writers group here in Adelaide that started as an informal forum on Facebook. We have since began having get togethers once a month in the flesh and I've been encouraged and inspired by the people I've met from the group. They are a diverse and really interesting bunch of people.

After our last meet-up, the group agreed to set a challenge for July in which we would choose a topic to blog about. The concensus fell upon the question - How has living in Adelaide inspired your writing and/or your job?

In all the years I've been posting to this blog and writing, I don't think I've ever explored this question publicly or privately so I'm actually pretty chuffed to be able to share it here for the first time.

Even after 20 years of living and working in the city of Adelaide, it remains to me, a city that hasn't quite revealed itself fully to me. I haven't gotten her full measure. Perhaps that's on me.

Like the Sting song, "An Englishman In New York", I feel like a "legal alien" here. I've actually lived here longer than I have in Victoria where I grew up, but I still feel like I don't belong. And yet, it's because of Adelaide - because of living here - that I achieved all that I have in terms of career and family and creativity. So, I am thankful to this place. It has inspired me.

As a Nurse, I've experienced more variety as a clinician than I could have imagined when I first arrived here. While the medical community is small, Adelaide does punch above her weight in many medical specialities on the world stage and it is recognized as a leader in a number of fields. I've done and seen so much - particularly in the fields of Intensive Care where I have nursed premature lives at their most precarious and adults facing the most dire of diagnoses. I've had the privilege of meeting and falling in love with my wife and raising our two children in relative comfort, making our home in the city, close to the epicentre of culture and art and entertainment. And, as a writer, Adelaide has served as the setting for two of my four novels. In writing about Adelaide, I have been able to peel back the layers of this city and discover things about it that have been inspiring, illuminating and confronting.

I have delved into her recent past to observe and document stories of marginalized people, the powerful and influential and work-a-day people like myself - those of us who are trying to serve both ends of the "people spectrum". In creating the characters and situations that appear in my novels, I have drawn upon my experiences as a Nurse working in the community among Aboriginal Australians (as I did for Gifts of the Peramangk), among transplant recipients & intensive care patients (as I did for The Recipient & The Hambledown Dream) and among children experiencing the often overwhelming environment of the paediatric emergency department (as I did for The Artisan Heart). By portraying these clinical experiences into my writing, I've been able to lend a significant level of authenticity to my stories without neglecting the dramatic elements that make for good fiction.

Adelaide is a city of contrasting moods and aesthetics which rival any of the great cities of the world. Walking through her streets and among her architecture one can feel a classic European sensibility even as her soul beats with an Australian heart. There are these nooks and crannies along the cultural precinct of North Terrace, under the swaying boughs of plane trees and the monuments to notable figures from times past that are ripe with anecdotes. There is personality and sound and climate whose moods shift from the early morning as the sun climbs over the Adelaide Hills to the fading light of dusk as twilight falls across the city and the streets are bathed in the aritficial light from so many street lamps. The city is at once cosmopolitan and vibrant even as it remains sometimes stubbornly quaint and painfully conservative.

Adelaide inspires me and my storytelling because it is tactile and immediate. I have embedded myself in this place, observed her moods, her shades, her ebb and flow. The old maxim that says writers should write what they know remains evergreen in my estimation. The internet may have afforded me the ability to travel anywhere in the world without leaving the comfort of my office chair, but nothing can compare to being able to throw on my jacket, step out of my house and be in the place with all its attendant sights and smells and tastes and life.

As I said earlier, I have yet to get the full measure of this city. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps I'm not supposed to. I will continue to discover Adelaide for as long as I live.

And perhaps that's inspiring.

DFA.

Please visit the next blog in our group's chain "Adelaide - An Inspired Life For Writing" from Ryan Peck. 

The Involuntary Pause - Misadventures In Writing & Other Things.

I wasn't feeling it today.

Maybe it was because I'd indulged a little more than I'd planned to last night at the Pub when I was catching up with family. Maybe it was because it was such a lovely morning this morning and I found myself tending to my garden and lawns while listening to an ever enlightening episode of the Osher Günsberg podcast.

Whatever it was - I just couldn't engage my creative impulse today and, despite the eventual two hours I spent at my computer, my output wasn't good. I think I stared at my screen more than I did input anything of value. I'm struggling with the challenge of bringing two people together in a way that is gentle and convincing - and not soppy. So far, it has involved my protagonist, Hayden Luschcombe, helping my co-protagonist, Isabelle Sampi, with a blocked fuel line in her car and her showing him her bakehouse that she pretty much built herself. There's gotta be romance in there somewhere right.

It's a long story...

...And it's not easy.

Traditionally, I've been really hard on myself and overly criticized myself for not being productive. It's sonething that has caused me considerable distress - unnecessary distress. But I've slowly learned to accept that, sometimes, I'm simply not going to be able to tap into whatever it is that allows me to write freely and easily. When that happens, I've given myself permission to step away and disengage and it actually helps a lot. Of course, as with any learned behaviour - particularly those that have been learned over a long period of time - it's not easy to shake the anxiety and the tendency to be self critical. It takes effort to deprogram yourself and that can be pretty tiring. As I sit and I type this however, I'm okay...

...I think.

To contrast this with something completely opposite, something ratrathgroynd shaking has happened with The Recipient in the past couple of weeks. Back at the beginning of this month, my publisher wrote to advise me that The Recipient had been accepted for a Goodreads promotion that would see it be featured prominently at Goodreads as well as being included in a subscriber email mail-out.

Well, as the result of this promotion, The Recipient embarked on a rapid climb up the Amazon charts, peaking at a ranking of 735 a couple of weeks ago (out of several million titles) and it entered in the Top 100 across several fiction categories. It's since settled back into the mid 10,000 range as I write this but, it's selling at least a half dozen copies daily rather than say one or two copies a week. It's safe to say that I've never experienced anything like this and I'm kind of unsure how to see this. Further, I've just been informed that Amazon itself has selected The Recipient for its Kindle Monthly Deal mailout for November which has the potential to continue this run of high sales through its high visibility promotion. This includes prominent placement across the Amazon site as well as its social network.

In a word, I'm flabbergasted.

In the six years since my first novel, The Hambledown Dream, was published, I haven't had this level of exposure nor sales and it's a little hard to believe it's actually happening.

It's all a little bit of yin and yang today (is that right?)

Have you experienced something similar this past week? Let me know in the comments section below.

DFA.

The Writer's Emotional Investment.

I've somehow worked myself up into an emotional state this afternoon. 

In my continuing development of my latest work in progress, I've been working on the back story of my central character, Hayden Luschcombe, that involves a falling out with his father Russell that remains unresolved at the beginning of the story. 

See, Hayden's mother Lavinia died around four years before the events in the story, having suffered from ovarian cancer. His father Russell, who devoted himself to being her sole carer, died about a year later - ostensibly from a broken heart. During his mother's illness, Hayden made many trips over to Walhalla from Adelaide but often had difficulties in getting away from his demanding job in a hospital's emergency department to be with his parents and help with his mother's care.

When Lavinia's illness took a turn for the worse and Russell warned Hayden that there was much time left, Hayden tried to get a flight over but, due to circumstances at work and, possibly, some intransigence from his unsympathetic wife, he didn't make it in time. Lavinia died before Hayden got to her bedside.

Russell, in his grief, turned on Hayden and, I guess, blamed him for not being there at the last moments of his mother's life. This developed into a rift between father and son that went unresolved. When Russell died a year later, father and son never reconciled and so Hayden is left to live with guilt and regret. This is part of the reason why Hayden appears as something of an introvert at the beginning of the story and doesn't find it easy to mix with others.

Family dynamics can be really complex when cancer visits a loved one and relationships are often strained. Sometimes they can break. I was reminded of this, this afternoon as I sat trying to flesh out this aspect of the story and I couldn't help but feeling an overwhelming sadness as I considered how I am going to incorporate this back story into the main story. Part of Hayden's journey will involve him 'reconciling' with his father in a posthumous sense and I have an idea about how that will play out but getting to that point requires a bit of work. And it's not easy. 

When considering weighty issues such as these, it's inevitable that I become emotionally invested in these characters and these situations. It's a little surprising just how invested one can become. I'm not gonna lie, it's more affecting than I anticipated.

Do you find the same thing happens to you? Do you find yourself being affected by the situations you place you characters in? Tell me in the comments section below.

DFA.

The Tangential Author.

I go off on tangents.

A lot. 

Having the kind of mind that just won't quit is both a blessing and a curse. This past week, it has been a blessing. 

I think.

I began the week strong, in a writing sense, and I found myself advancing the tendrils of my current work in progress forward. It was really satisfying. I tend to work in a linear fashion but often I'll get bursts of inspiration that will have me going back in the time line of a given story in order to add nuance to earlier scenes or help me to clarify things that I was struggling with in those earlier parts of the story. Or, I'll go off on tangents. 

Big tangents.

So, I arrived at a scene in which my protagonist, Hayden Luschcombe, had identified a problem with a motor vehicle owned by my other protagonist, Isabelle Sampi - simply by hearing the sound of the engine. Let's just say that Hayden has savant qualities. He declares that the problem with Isabelle's van (she's a Baker/small business owner by the way) is a blocked fuel line and he offers to help her fix the problem until she can get it properly appraised by a qualified mechanic. They live in the mountains of Victoria, Australia in a town that is far from a mechanic.

(I'm shipping these two.)

This presented two problems for me. One - I am not a mechanic. I know a little bit about cars that will help me out of a jam but that's about it. Two - what homespun, ridiculous-but-effective method could I come up with to unblock a fuel line of a 2011 Holden Combo commercial van.

Here's where the tangents kick off. I started by researching the basics of modern motor vehicle fuel systems. What they comprise of, how they pass fuel from the tank to the engine, what the ingredient of modern fuels contain and what scenarios contribute to the blocking of a fuel system. I learned quite a bit from this exploration although a lot of it went quite over my head.

Once I had the anatomy and physiology of a modern motor vehicle fuel system worked out, I progressed to coming up with a homemade method for unblocking a fuel line. Now, as I write this, I'm still trying to nut this one out. See, a fuel line is essentially, a metal reinforced rubber hose which is capable of getting clogged up with a number of impurities from motor fuel. And there are any number of solvents out there that are capable of unblocking said hose. But, for the purpose of my story, it has to be home made and it has to sound - on the surface at least - totally ridiculous. At the moment, I have three ingredients that could be employed, either singularly or perhaps in combination - bicarb soda, citric acid and vinegar. 

I probably need to sound out an actual mechanic as well but, given I still have major problems with my voice, I'm reluctant to introduce myself to people I've not met before. 

I'll work it out I'm sure but if you have any suggestions or know a motor mechanic who can offer up a suggestion, please do point them in this direction. 

#

On the subject of my voice - I know it's been a while since I've spoken about it here but things aren't really progressing in that regard. It's painful to attempt vocalization and when I do, I have this over sensitive gag reflex that kicks in. On a full stomach, it is not pretty. I've lost a few meals because of it, so I avoid it as much as possible. 

It's depressing. 

As someone who enjoys conversation, to not be able to engage in it is isolating. I recently attended a family party and it was a stark experience. I found myself sitting quietly in a corner, observing others rather than being in amongst them. I mean, contributing a handful of nods here and there isn't really very engaging. And the totally acceptable noise level at a party make broken speech impossible so...yeah...

It's still a work in progress but I fear, at this point, there isn't much work left that I can do.

Here's a lovely piece of irony for you though. 

I returned to work a while back and it has been good, even though I've been essentially mute.

One of the first patients I nursed on my return was a young woman who had a large, malignant brain tumor removed. In the immediate aftermath of her surgery, she was doing okay but she unexpectedly had a bleed that rendered her unconscious and she was in a coma for a long time. Gradually she recovered her consciousness but she was mute - really only able to communicate with her eyes and broken hand gestures. 

I was allocated to her and it became a great partnership because we both developed a method of communication with each other that transcended speech. She made it possible for me to nurse despite my impediment and that gave me a much appreciated boost in confidence.

She can speak now. She's actually doing very well and we now have a kind of running joke that she got her speech back faster than I did. 

It's heart warming you know. 

I can take *something* from this situation. 

DFA.

Breaking Bread.

Recently, I have come to the realization that I have an obsession with bread making. I pour over the mixture of a dough in the same way Walter White pours over an ice recipe in his meth lab. It's all-consuming. 

In many ways, bread making as akin to the writing process. It requires planning - sometimes detailed, other times not so much, the introduction of elements/ingredients and a balancing of those to achieve a workable structure and it requires refinement, editing and checking.

And of course, like writing, bread making conjures a whole gamut of emotions. From the exhilarating highs when I open the lid of my Panasonic SD-250 bread maker at the end of a 4 hour cycle and find the most perfectly formed dome of my lovingly concocted loaf. To the utter despair of finding a catastrophically collapsed, genetic aberration that has suffered from bad yeast or too much water.

Panasonic SD-250 Bread maker. 

Home bread making is a fraught passion - and I am hopelessly addicted to it. 

I have refined the genr... I mean a particular recipe - a german grain/white hybrid to the point now where I can put together the ingredients with my eyes shut. 1.25 table spoons yeast, 2.5 cups Laucke brand german grain flour, 1 cup Laucke plain bread flour, 390mls of filtered water - (it must be filtered water because, hey - I live in Adelaide after all). Set the machine for a four hour cycle and let the magic happen. 

And after several months of following this idiot proof recipe, I'm ready to expand my repertoire and start tackling more ambitious concoctions. Being the shameless self promoter that I am, I would like to receive praise in another endeavor and my family can only stroke my ego so much. 

The Laucke Flour Mill Company is a South Australian company - nay, an institution in this state and they are my go-to for quality flour. Their bread flours are highly regarded and used by both professional bakers and home enthusiasts. They also have a great website that has a growing repository of recipes from the company itself as well as contributors. I'm keen to try them all of course but, for the moment, one in particular, has caught my notice  - an almond and dried fig loaf. It looks divine and I think I have the confidence now to try it. 

Image Copyright © Laucke Flour Mills. Laucke's wholemeal almond and fig loaf. 

One of the issues I have encountered in my bread making journey is that of storage. Up until recently, I was storing my loaves either in a plastic shopping bag or a freezer bag on the kitchen bench so that it is always in easy reach. This however, is not the ideal storage medium for a loaf. Laucke bread flour contains no preservative agents therefore they recommend consuming baked loaves within 24 hours. My aim is to keep my loaves fresh for as much as several days - so they can be used for school lunches, breakfasts and meal accompaniments. Also, home bread making can be a costly exercise if one is constantly churning out loaves. 

What I have found though, is that after the first 24 hours, there's a significant degradation in the freshness of a loaf - even stored as air tightly as possible. As the days pass, this degradation accelerates and I have even noticed the beginnings of mold after day five or six. Laucke recommends storage in calico bag or a bread box. 

Where longer storage is required, Laucke recommends cutting the bread into slices and storing in the freezer. I've never been a fan of freezer storage for bread, even for short periods. There's just something about the artificial environment of a freezer that I can't quite accept. We're dealing with a delicate food item here. I've gotten a hold of a calico bag and I'm going to try that this week. I'm hoping that will enhance the preservation of my loaf but I'm open to suggestions if you have them.

What have your storage experiences been with home cooked bread? What kind of flour do you prefer? Have you found a fail safe method of storage and how long have you been able to maintain the freshness of your loaves? I'd love to read your comments and experiences.

I am a hopeless devotee of bread making. Like writing, bread making requires a skillful hand, some imagination, a constant tweaking of ingredients in order to achieve a cohesive structure and a little faith in yourself. 

The ultimate story is yet to be told...

DFA. 

Empty.

Some days, I'll sit before the keyboard and nothing will come. Nothing will happen. 

I'll look at what I have before me, so far and I'll think to myself - "what on earth is this bullshit I have written?"

I'm sitting here now, trapped in this dilemma. 

I hate it. 

I hate feeling like I can't move forward. I've done everything to avoid it recently. Filled my life with the demands of family, health - or lack thereof.

Today the house is empty and I have all the space I need to create. But I can't do it.

I've ironed the clothes. I've washed the dishes. I've made all the beds. I go back to the keyboard and sit there and look at it and just think - 

"Bullshit!" 

I am a fraud. 

I am empty. 

DFA. 

Man.

Interior, House, Morning.

The couple are vibrant. Early 30’s, professional. The Wife is dressed in a smart,  sexy business suit. A cup of coffee is in her hand as she rushes about, getting a few scraps of breakfast in before she goes off to work. The Infant sits in a high chair, spoon in hand fumbling with a bowl of cereal. Most of the cereal is on his face. The Man – his day off - still in his pyjama bottoms and navy Tee, quietly putting together a salad for his wife into a smart container.

The Wife gathers her handbag, cell phone, checks her lipstick. She kisses The Man on the cheek and hands him a piece of paper, a list of things to do. She kisses her infant son. Then she is off and out the door. 

It is The Man and The Infant now - together.

Interior, House, Morning.

The Man washes and dries the dishes, makes the bed and The Infant's cot, vacuums, puts a load of washing on. The Man and The Infant shower - splash, splash. Giggling and laughter, cuddles and kisses. The Man dresses - jeans, light shirt, a trendy jacket. The Infant -  a cute outfit. Bright, long sleeved tee, jeans, smart shoes and hat. The Man prepares the nappy bag, a lunch for The Infant, the stroller. Packs it all in the car - a smart European sedan. He straps the baby in, gathers the list and puts it in his pocket. Then they are off, The Man and son ready to embrace the day.

Interior/Exterior, The Car, Morning.

The Man, driving along, feels light and happy, singing along to the car stereo. The Infant is giggling with glee in his seat in back waving his arms about trying to imitate The Man.

Exterior, Shopping Precinct Car-Park, Mid Morning.

The Man pulls into the child friendly parking bay. He is impressed. Lots of space here. Man gets out and opens the rear door. His son smiles broadly.

“Oi!!”

The voice comes from behind. The Man lurches up, hitting his head on the inside of the car door opening. He sees stars. Then he sees a angry woman. A mother and child - a daughter clutching a doll. The woman is waving her arms, pointing at him accusingly, then at the sign denoting the child friendly space. She swears, she spits.

“Who do you think you are?! This is not for you! You don’t belong here!”

The Man stares at her, shocked. His head throbs. The woman continues to berate him. The Man stands to one side revealing his son, sitting in the baby seat looking at her with a wide eyed smile. The woman falls silent. She hesitates, then abruptly marches off, her daughter trailing behind her.

The Man, shakes his head as he watches her go. He rubs the spot where he hit his head, then turns to The Infant with a pained smile.

image credit: babycenter.com

Interior, Grocery Store, Day.

The Man negotiates the grocery aisle pushing the stroller with one hand, holding a basket in the other. He checks the items off the list. He feels better - feels good that this task is almost done. He scans the shelves for a particular item. He thinks of his wife. He loves her. His next culinary masterpiece lies in the ingredients he purchases here. He doesn’t want to let her down.

“Oi!!”

The Man turns abruptly, straining his neck. An obese couple is right behind him. The Husband - wearing a grubby woollen sweater, his hairy stomach bulging out from underneath his pants. The Wife – a sour face, too much make-up, sweating under arms. Both of them glare at The Man with contempt.

“What are you doing? Day dreaming?! You wanna move out of the bloody way?!”

The Husband butts his trolley into the backs of The Man’s ankles, grunting as if trying to push The Man aside. The Man quickly tries to move the stroller into the middle of the aisle, fumbling with the basket. The obese couple barge their way through. The Man up-ends the basket, it’s contents spilling everywhere, glass jars smashing on the tiled floor The couple don’t even stop but snicker as they glance back.

“He doesn’t belong here.”

The Man tries to manoeuvre out of the way as more trolleys approach from either end of the aisle. A shop assistant approaches, an angry look on her face, armed with a mop and bucket.

“Oi!! You’ll have to pay for those!”

Suddenly from beside The Man, the son plucks a jar of gherkins from the shelf, knocking two accompanying jars which smash to the floor. The shop assistant glares at The Man.

“...And those.”

The son giggles with delight.

Interior, Shopping Centre, Day.

The son is crying, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. A smell rises. The Man screws up his nose but he smiles at his son. His neck still hurts, as does the lump on his head. The Man sees the sign for the bathroom.

Relieved, he angles the stroller towards the Men’s toilets.

“Oi!!”

The Man jumps and swings his head around, straining the other side of his neck. A curmudgeonly old janitor is there. He shakes his head. The Man hesitates, looks at the janitor quizzically. The janitor raises his hand and points a gnarled finger towards another door with a sign denoting the baby change room. The door opens and a woman emerges with a baby hanging from a harness. She regards The Man with disinterest. The Man angles the stroller towards the closing door as the woman brushes past him.

Inside, The Man is confronted by a group of women. Some sitting, breast feeding, some standing at the change tables, removing soiled nappies, replacing them with fresh, clean ones. They are chatting, laughing. They fall silent as The Man enters, struggling with the stroller and the fat shopping bags hanging from it. He offers a polite smile. The women turn away, whispering to each other.

“He doesn’t belong here.”

Strangely, that affects him more than the fat couple from the grocery store or the mother in the car park. He finds a corner away from the others. He changes his sons nappy in silence. The women continue whispering. He can hear them. As he lifts his refreshed son from the change table and deposits him back into the stroller, The Man glances at the women. Their whispers stop and they look away.

The Man feels that twinge of embarrassment again and he hastily exits.

Interior, Shopping Centre, Day.

His son babbles cheerily as The Man pushes the stroller. Son looks up at his father with a loving smile. The Man looks down upon his son, managing only a wan smile in return.

Interior, Food Hall, Day.

Balancing a tray with a coffee and a sandwich, The Man searches for a place to sit down. The son is crying, hungry. There is a parents area with wide spaces between the tables. The Man heads towards there. He spies an empty table and he moves towards it. A trio of women armed with strollers of their own cut in front of him, disregarding him and secure the table for themselves. The Man just stares. One of the women stare back at him.

“What?!”

The Man turns away and finds another table on the edge of the parents area. Again he struggles. He sets the tray down, spilling some of his coffee onto the sandwich. The baby is screaming now. Mothers across from him glare. Some are breast feeding their babies. The Man looks at them blankly, sees their breasts. His eyes widen. They turn away in disgust. The Man turns back to his child. He feeds his son, settles him down. His son drops off to sleep. The Man turns to his coffee. He raises it to his lips. It is cold. He sets it down and turns to the sodden sandwich. There is a fly on it. The Man’s heart sinks.

Interior, Shopping Centre, Afternoon.

The Man walks slowly. His son sleeps. The items on the list are checked off now - thankfully. He looks through the window of a toy store. Sees Lego sets on display. He remembers his childhood. He sees an electronic games shop. He played a lot of games before he was married. He is drawn into the store. The games have become more advanced. The Man examines the system requirements on the spine of one of the PC games. Way too advanced for me now, he thinks wistfully.

“Oi!!”

The Man spins around. Feels something pop in his left knee. A young, arrogant looking store assistant is coming towards him, pointing an accusing finger.

“Your kid is pissing on the merchandise!!”

The Man looks down. His son is awake and has, somehow, removed his jeans and his nappy. A thin stream of urine arcs perfectly across the space between the stroller and the display shelf splashing across a game title.

“You’re gonna have to pay for that!”

The store assistant rips the contaminated title off the shelf and shoves it into The Man's chest.

“What are you doing bringing a kid in here anyway?!? You don’t belong here!!”

The Man stares blankly at the young store assistant. His head drops. A lump rises in his throat.

The store assistant, suddenly appears uncomfortable. He backs away from The Man. 

This guy is gonna cry, he thinks regretfully.

“Hey...it’s no big deal. We’ve...got a special on that game right now anyway.”

The Man fishes his wallet from out of his jeans, opens it up and takes out a hundred dollar note. He shoves it into the chest of the store assistant. The Man leaves the store in silence, his son chewing on the corner of the game’s cover.

Exterior, Shopping Precinct Car-Park, Afternoon.

The Man secures his son into the baby seat, packs the stroller away. The group of mothers from the baby change room are coming towards him, chatting and gossiping. They fall silent as they pass. He turns away, prepares to open the door of the car. He looks up and sees the mother who confronted him earlier. She is still dragging her daughter along like a rag doll, swearing at her to hurry up. She looks up at The Man and scowls. As The Man secures his seat belt and starts the car he looks through the windshield he spies the elderly janitor standing on the pavement nearby. He looks at the old timer, their eyes meet. The elderly man smiles - a smile of empathy, of understanding. He raises a gnarled, old hand, flips a jaunty salute and winks. The Man nods respectfully.

Exterior/Interior, Car, Late Afternoon.

The Man drives home in silence. The car stereo is silent. The son babbles quietly to himself.

Interior, Kitchen, Late Afternoon.

The Man unpacks the grocery items onto the kitchen bench. His wife arrives home. The son, who is sitting in his high chair, squeals with delight. She races to him, arms outstretched, wraps her baby in a enthusiastic embrace, smothering him in kisses. She turns to her husband, her Man and plants a loving kiss on his cheek. He smiles faintly, bows his head.

“I am so happy to see you both again,” she says.

The Man gazes wearily at his wife.

“You belong here,” she says to him. “You belong with me and our baby.”

She embraces her husband with a more passionate kiss then draws back.

“You look tired. Why don’t you go have a shower? I’ll take over for a while, I’ll pour us a glass of wine.”

The Man nods silently, then turns away slowly. She watches him go, a look of concern in her eyes.

Interior, Bedroom, Evening.

He sits on the edge of the bed. He cups his hands together and rests them in his lap. The lump on his head throbs. His neck is sore. His knee clicks each time he moves it. He gazes through the window, through the street light beyond. A single tear forms at the edge of his right eye, it swells in size...

...Then trickles down his cheek.


DFA.

Copyright © 2014, Hambledown Road Imprints & Dean Mayes. Not to be reproduced without the prior permission of the copyright holder. 

Feast

The recliner chair sits in the middle of a sparse living room, its moth eaten fabric dirty with age and neglect. A small, wooden block sticks out from one corner of the chair, having been employed to prop up one of its broken legs. From behind, one could be forgiven for thinking that this chair is the sole occupant of the room - a forlorn relic, long overdue for the rubbish dump, yet it remains in use. The living room is dark, colourless - the drab grey of a tenement flat. Long shadows, cast by fading light through Venetian blinds project like gnarled fingers into the crevices of the musty room. The air is stale, filled with strange odours. A layer of dust coats everything.

An ageing television set sits on a rickety cabinet before the chair, casting garish light that clashes with the shadows across the water stained walls of the flat. The television's volume is muted. The only sound at all comes from a small mantle clock that sits on a thin shelf above a gas fired heater. Its steady tick-tock, announces the passing of time with surety.

In the recliner, a man of an indeterminate age is slouched over and fast asleep. Hiss glasses, reflecting the imagery from the television screen, sit at a precarious angle on the edge of his nose. His silvery hair, matted with grease is combed severely to one side. Flakes of dandruff are sprinkled across the shoulders of his tartan dressing gown. A small globule of saliva clings by a glistening filament from the edge of his mouth. It threatens to fall and soak into the collar of his pyjamas. A newspaper, held in his slackened grip lies across his chest. Several pages have fallen and lie at his feet.

Canstock Photos.

The hands of the mantle clock tick over to the hour and its mechanism whirs to life. The clock chimes six times into the darkness of the room, loud enough to wake the man from his slumber. He flinches in the chair. Arms flail and he tosses the newspaper into the air; its pages taking flight all around him, before floating gracefully downward and settling on the floor and on the man's face. Disoriented, he swats angrily at the newsprint, bucking in the recliner until he frees himself of his paper enemy, then he slumps back, weary from his exertions. He looks around the living room, fumbling for his glasses with arthritic hands.

He tries to remember what he was doing before he'd drifted off to sleep. Very little, evidently. He'd woken early but hadn't bothered changing out of his pyjamas. Nor had he yesterday...or the day before. Lifting an arm, he catches the musky scent of his body odour and screws up his face at the smell.realises he has barely moved from his chair since this morning. The only exception was the short journey he'd made from the chair to the kitchen several hours ago to retrieve a frozen dinner from the refrigerator, which he had set on the bench to thaw. He'd returned to the chair, sat down with his newspaper and turned on the ancient television set. It is the exact same routine that he has observed every day...for what feels like years.

There is little incentive to do anything else. He is years into a retirement that he has never, really come to grips with. He knows no-one any more. His friends are long gone. His family are living too far away and are too disinterested in him to care. 

He is a forgotten soul, lost in the multitude of square windows of the tenement...

DFA.

To read the full version of "Feast", contact Dean today to receive the ebook by email. 

Photo Credit: Damon Hart-Davis

"Feast" is Copyright © 2013, Hambledown Road Imprints & Dean Mayes.

All I Need Is An Idea...

I have gone to great lengths in the pursuit of an idea - especially when those ideas strike me at the most inopportune times.

It has been when I've been changing a soiled nappy (diaper) in the parenting room of a major department store and I am up to my elbows in doo-doo. There is never a pen or piece of paper handy. My kid has chewed whatever scraps are available like a tobacco plantation worker chews tobacco or, quite possibly the only pen or pencil or crayon available to me.

It's happened when I've been stuck in the pea-soup thickness of rush hour traffic and suddenly, a brilliant and random idea will crackle in my mind like the proverbial bolt of lightning. An idea so brilliant, I quickly descend into a miasma of desperation when I realize I have left my phone at home or that the pen I have dutifully left in the glove compartment has suffered akin to cerebrovascular event and haemorrhaged ink all over the discarded shopping dockets and scraps of paper that routinely get shoved in there. Desperation quickly evolves into panic. I need to pee. 

image copyright © universal pictures.

Desperate times have called for desperate measures.

I have resorted to scribbling on nappies (diapers) with whatever implement I can fashion from inside the baby carry bag. I have even gone as far as considering the contents of the soiled nappy (diaper) as an option...

In the end, you'd be surprised how effective a chewed up crayon can be on the front of a Dora the Explorer printed nappy (diaper).

In the case of the traffic jam, I've wound down my car window and sought the attention of the driver adjacent to me. Waving my arms in a messianic attempt to see if they have a pen or pencil and a scrap of paper does present some risks and mostly, I've been looked at like a whacko. Although I will say that, on at least one occasion, it has worked. I have secured a pen and paper from the woman in the car opposite...and her phone number.

Where the availability of my fellow countrymen or women has been found wanting, there is the chance of my locating a public phone booth - even though these are rapidly disappearing. I have devised an ingenious system whereby I will call my home phone from said public phone booth and leave a message with my idea verbally sprayed all over it. I'll follow up this message with a plea to my wife, begging her not to erase the message until I've transcribed it. When I first did this, she definitely used thought I was coo-coo magoos and there were some inadvertent deletions of these, quite animated, voice messages that would border on the insane. But - with any sort of abberhent  behaviour that goes on for long enough - now she kinda lets me run with it.

It does provide an endless source of entertainment for my children who regard the whole thing with fits of giggles when it does happen.

"Muuu-umm! Daddy's being cray-cray again!"

Well kids - well may you say that now. But wait until Daddy's ridiculously famous and you're being chauffer driven to school by our personal driver. You won't be laughing at Daddy then will ya. Huh? Huh??

So. What inopportune times have brilliant ideas come to you? Where were you and were you caught short with nary a crayon or a used diaper (nappy) in sight?

Tell me your experiences.

DFA.