Category Archives: Cerberus

Updates about Cerberus series of novels, featuring mind reading Detective Paul Calvin

Cerberus, Distribution

Back in action


It’s been a rough few months since March. A lot of profoundly distressing things have happened, including getting cleaning fluid on both hands which caused the skin on my fingers to break up. This halted typing for over three weeks with predictable consequences. For six weeks thereafter it was one wretched thing after another, meaning I didn’t write a word. Therefore all my good intentions lie shattered at my feet. Transatlantic travel and jet lag are not good for study or the creative writing process. Neither is multiple bereavement. Nor is being handed post mortem revelations about close family. None of which I intend to share on a public forum. Although I think I will miss my dog Amos most of all.

Today the clouds lift. Since we returned from the UK I’ve been working on the Kindle edition of “Head of the Beast”, cleaning up text errors and minor glitches in punctuation, even rewriting certain passages. Forcing myself to re read and rewrite until I thought my eyes were going to bleed. The story remains the same, but it reads much better. There’s also new cover art, which is one of the low resolution examples below. A volume of short fiction is forthcoming, which is a work in progress. Maybe in late November, maybe not. Recently the sound of self imposed deadlines whooshing overhead has been deafening. There’s a number of back catalogue stories I intend to include, including some published over ten years ago. Rewritten, extended and improved. No title as yet, but I have a number of possibles.

Artwork and poll for Kindle edition of the Paul Calvin supernatural sci-fi title ‘Head of the Beast’ below.

Head of the beast cover Version A
Head of the beast cover Version A

Head of the beast cover version B
Head of the beast cover version B

Cerberus

Heading those chapters


There’s been a trend for some time with TV shows for episodes given punnish titles intimating brief hints about the episode content. While with ‘Stars’ I went for the rather dry numerical convention like with a technical document. In the Cerberus series I’ve taken a leaf out of the TV playbook, and gone with the pun. Not so much in ‘Head of the Beast’, but definitely in ‘A Falling of Angels’. Three sample chapter headings being ‘Breaking the bad’, ‘The End of a Beginning’, and ‘Lloegr’ (Which means ‘England’ or more poetically ‘Lost Lands’ in Welsh). For an additional example, I’m currently writing a chapter entitled ‘Travelling in Hope class’ which starts to take my hero back to his beginning, and final confrontation with the current bad guys. Possibly. While pursued by another bunch of bad guys who have him pegged as a terrorist. Kind of.

It’s complicated. A lot of fun to write, but quite involved.

Cerberus

Characters I love to hate


Back deep in the narrative guts of ‘A falling of Angels’ at present. In order to add another layer, I’ve decided to expand the role of my mind reading detective characters current girlfriend. Because he’s made a nuisance of himself with the powers that be (as usual), he’s been suspended for a month this time, and since she has lost her job, they’ve gone on holiday together. While on holiday, and in response to exposing another clue about his past, his girlfriend demonstrates practical surveillance busting skills which solve several issues. Nothing out of character, rather using her known skill set to best advantage. Flirting with a sales assistant to distract, using her initiative.

In the days when I used to watch Doctor Who, the characters who used to annoy me most were the Doctors ‘Assistants’ who would, at a story critical juncture, scream, break a heel, get captured by the monster and be generally about as much use as a chocolate kettle. Just so the Doctor can leap into the Tardis and save them. The other kind were the über feminists who were oh so much better than everyone else. If you’re going to have a useful female character with a life longer than a single episode, you’ve got to flesh them out a bit. Let them kick a Cyberman so hard his batteries fall off, be smart enough to blind a Dalek by sticking masking tape over its silly monocular eyepiece, vent a villain out of the airlock occasionally without needing the Doctors sonic screwdriver sort of thing. A bit more than just a victim, but not so much they take over the show. In Doctor Who, my particular favourite remains (Predictably) Louise Jameson as Leela during Tom Baker’s sojourn as the Doctor.

It’s what I hate about teen slasher movies. The helpless cheerleader stereotype who you know is going to get killed in the first few minutes because she can’t do anything but totter along on four inch heels and scream for help as the implausibly dressed villain stalks after her. Female (and male) characters need depth to be credible, otherwise they’re just yawn worthy. They have to be able to spring surprises now and again. Display hidden strengths. Not too many, and always in line with what we understand about them as people. Human enough to be fallible, but not so infallible as to lose their humanity. That’s what keeps me awake through a movie or book. By the same token, stereotypes induce almost instant somnolence.

Ergo; Marcy, who first appears as Paul Calvin’s slightly slutty waitress girlfriend from ‘Head of the beast’ develops into a better defined character in ‘A falling of Angels’. She does things only she could do for reasons which matter to her, and in addition we learn facts about her designed to make a male reader nod with respect, and a female reader identify with. Both have to do with her family. Layers upon layers, a personality built up as she (and he) drive the story forward. It’s added over eight thousand words to the MSS over the past three days, and they all stand up to scrutiny. Another twenty thousand words or so and I’ll have finished this particular volume in the series. Yippee.

Cerberus

Even in the quietest moments


Trying to move on with projects when your workplace is subject to unpredictable interruptions is difficult. So it has been for the past few months. Angie’s been panicking a bit over her Teaching History course exam, and I’ve found myself roped in to help with revision. All in all, what with new shifts, cuts in hours, hunting for a new day job, planning to move house, and a heap of other incidentals, finding the time to concentrate and write consistently has been at a premium. Even in the quietest moments there have been things clamouring for my attention, distracting from the job in hand. Next doors anti-social birds and my dogs habit of random fits of barking when there’s no-one there don’t exactly help. I don’t mind him calling me when there’s an issue, but barking at things which aren’t there, or a quarter mile away are not conducive to serious endeavour. So working on ‘A falling of Angels’ and ‘Darkness’ has proven quite an effort of late. Any sudden interruption sends my birds of thought fluttering off to the far reaches, and they’re a bugger to coax down from the rafters afterwards.

Normally speaking, when in a noisy environment, the human mind is rather good at filtering out the constant rivers of aural trash. When you’re in the ‘zone’ it’s like having headphones on, and the nervous hindbrain is lulled to a lower stress level, leaving the frontal lobes free to do the fine carpentry of narrative construction. Low flying aircraft noise, tugs in the narrows pulling log booms, gardening machinery, all these can fade into the background. Background music or documentaries help. But when the interruptions are random and unpredictable, the filters can’t work, and writing suffers.

It’s easy to write, any damn fool can string a sentence together and use a spell checker, but as good old Sam Clemens once noted, fiction has to make sense, real life doesn’t. You can’t just fling any old nonsense down on the page and hope it works. Within the framework of the narrative, premises must lead to conclusions, causality must be rigorously observed. Threads tied off. All that shizzle.

I do keep plot notes, I do try to write character traits down, but, and this is the big but; characters have to develop. They have to change with each major event or they simply become cardboard cutouts of stereotypes. Their humanity has to alter with each new challenge, just like with real people. Fixing them to a page can sometimes be akin to nailing jelly to the wall. Especially when inspiration keeps striking like random meteors. Those “Hey, what if?” thoughts constantly intrude. And if the story is changed, well nothing happens in isolation, everything has to be accounted for.

What is often not appreciated is how hard this is to do. At least for those of us who have real lives. Dogs to walk, day job to do, meals to cook, chores etc. Finding quiet time to let the consciousness roam without distraction and find answers to the many questions. Since Angie took her exam two days ago, the distractions are fewer, and I’m beginning to pick up the threads again. Yet again. Today I’ve sorted out a few gaping holes in the plot of ‘a falling of angels’, or at least nailed narrative planks over the worst of them, and I’m starting to write properly again.

Cerberus, General musings

Shaking off the negativity


Lot of negative waves at home and day job at present. Angie’s under pressure with a total change of work system and practices, which has a knock on. I’ve been acting as her ‘receptionist’ and fending off some of the time hogs to let her get back in control of her workload. This has eaten into creative writing time.

Walked into evening shift yesterday afternoon to be told we had to be nursemaided off the premises by ‘Security’ from now on because some whack job has been threatening other staff. No idea why, we’re one of the least offensive and most people friendly organisations I’ve ever come across. The problem is; Whack job, obviously what is called a ‘borderline personality’ has extended his threat to everyone else who works in our little office. Our Executive Director is very upset, and I can’t recall the first time I ever heard her swear, but I heard her curse last night. As for the rest of the staff, they’re rattled, which has a bit of a knock-on effect all round.

For myself, I don’t react well to being threatened, even by proxy. Never have. Not unnaturally the hackles go up and get in the way of everything else. I’m usually pretty well controlled, but where petty bullies are concerned I have a tendency to go straight into combat mode. Which rather impacts on the rest of life. Left alone, the stress and anger stains and corrodes the creative impulse. Gets in the way.

As part of a coping strategy, my own anger at being under unjustified threat has been faced down and held up to richly deserved ridicule. This morning I took a time out to corner my own red beast, give him a richly deserved spanking and tell him to play nice. To mind his own business until he’s really needed. Writing about it helps. As for whack job, there’s a handy little article on borderline personalities in the October 2013 issue of Psychology Today, which is getting yet another read through.

Thinking about the threat situation dispassionately, there’s some extra material here. A rich seam of narrative to be mined and refined. In ‘Falling’ my hero has to break up with a slightly goofy and predatory girlfriend, and I think I’ve just found the key to unlock that story element. Where their relationship starts out as a ‘no strings’ kind of deal, it morphs, as these situations are wont to do, into a morass of suspicion and jealousy, which will no doubt end with my hero getting slung out of a very cosy gaff. Well, who’d have thunk it? An extra story layer. Well I never. Inspiration comes from the strangest quarters. My irony meter just went into overload.

Today I am also looking at the ‘Freemen on the Land’ movement, watching videos, examining their philosophy. listening to what they say. Looking at what their opponents say. The reason for this interest, an iteration of their philosophy is putting in an appearance in ‘A Falling of Angels’ where the ‘Freemen’ find themselves as an organising factor in a massive refugee camp. Literally creating their own parallel society, and at the same time both helping and hindering my mind reading detective in his hunt for the killers. However, that’s enough of a giveaway for the moment.

Cerberus

Breaking the impasse


After this mornings little bout of head meets wall, I’ve picked up the baton with ‘A falling of Angels’ with my lead character getting into hot water over his unorthodox methods. It’s filling in the gaps in the main storyline nicely, while rounding out some of the backstory and one of the secondary characters. My lead villain is about to get involved, pulling strings in the background to make my heroes life a little more complicated and full of incident.

It might all be a red herring plotwise, but on the other hand, if you let the cat out of the bag too early, where’s the suspense?

Cerberus

Rewriting and structuring


I’m always willing to learn more about the art of storytelling. This has led me to re-examine what I’ve written so far on ‘A Falling of Angels’. My heroes relationships are intertwined with his character development, but also with the tangled web of his investigations into the corruption that allows murderers to remain unmolested. If they have the right connections. That and their shadowy supplier and master, whose motives will remain unclear. Right up into the planned volume “Shifting States”.

One story thread is about Paul Calvins relationship with another, similarly afflicted and brain damaged character, and how he assists her recovery. The problem was that key story elements were the wrong way round. Well perhaps ‘wrong’ isn’t the right word. Out of sequence? That’s probably more like it. That’s what was getting in the way. I kept stalling on story threads and couldn’t move the larger narrative forward.

So I’m spending the next day of two restructuring what’s been written so far. I liken this part of the writing process to editing and cutting a movie or TV show. All the scenes have been shot in mostly the right order (Well, kind of), now it’s time to shuffle elements around and hunt down continuity errors. The idea being to bring out an improved product. Threads need to be unpicked and rewoven. Fortunately this is at a relatively early stage of the game, so there’s only 30,000 words to patch into a better constructed tale.

I do a lot of episodic writing. I get an idea, put together a story, and then the fragment goes into file while I work on something else. Then at a later date it’s pulled out of the file, reworked, rewritten; and if it seems any good, completed. If not the story sits on file until I can find a use for the idea. It’s not as though I’m working under any deadlines, apart from those I impose on myself.

Cerberus

A Falling of Angels plotline


After recent current events, I’ve decided to revise the plot for the forthcoming Paul Calvin story, ‘A Falling of Angels’.

Rogue Government security operatives are indulging in wholesale theft and market manipulation driving money markets into chaos. Using their universal data access these unaccountables are committing massive stock / money market fraud and information theft.

One time security service consultant and serving Police Officer Paul Calvin, now an outsider, tries to investigate the thefts as they affect those around him. At every turn in his enquiries he is rebuffed. In the process he is discredited, even arrested. After which he escapes, narrowly dodging assassination, and with the help of an informer become friend hacks into the data centre and thwarts the thieves by turning the monitoring software in upon itself. Administration implicated.

Simple plot. Hero wins the day. Love triumphant. Bad guys arrested (But to his frustration, given light sentences). Suspense element; who was behind them?

It’s got the lot; Killer drones, renegade Police telepath on the side of justice. Serious insider bad guys who seem untouchable. I like it. 30,000 words down, 50,000 to go.

Cerberus, General musings

The problem with writing dystopian sci-fi


Writing as I do about possible dystopian futures, it’s a bit of a shock to the system when reality crowds in.  Either my perception has shifted, or there is something very deeply wrong around my old home.

From when I was last here two years ago, Stratford upon Avon is definitely looking careworn.  Which is kind of odd for a major UK tourist destination.   Whilst Waterside by the Theatres is as tidy as ever,  grass in the other public parks and places we visited last night is either uncut or a little frayed round the edges.  Flower beds not as well-tended as I recall.  The little triangle of park between Grove Road and Rother Street was a case in point.   Almost everywhere there’s an air of neglect and cutbacks.  Five stores in Wood Street alone empty and up for rent.  Quite a number of changes in tenancies.  I counted at least four Estate Agents Offices closed down and moved on in Sheep and Ely Street.  And everywhere the pale ubiquitous dysfunctionality of CCTV and Wind Turbines.  Cameras, cameras everywhere, yet not a one to see.  I was half expecting some tattered old man to lurch up to me and recount a dire tale about shooting Albatrosses, or at least a pigeon, and being cast into the outer reaches of society.  To languish undying in a living purgatory for the great sin of hubris.

In some ways I’m reminded of the decline I observed in the 1970’s.  The party is over, and someone has to start collecting the glasses, recycling the bottles, cleaning the toilets, and giving the old place a damn good airing.

Angie and I dropped by the Kingfisher fish and chip shop in Ely Street, bought two portions of fish and chips, one of which was too much for us, so we donated the untouched other to a guy begging on the Tramway Bridge.  It should have been hot enough, and either he was a pretty good actor or that boy looked cold.  Having backpacked the Cornish coast path during the late 1980’s I’m no stranger to a cold, damp English June.  Yet there’s a sensation of a chill in the air, perhaps even the soul, that won’t quite go away.

My brother is always telling me that despite the difficulties we face making a new life away from home, we made the right choice to get out of the UK when we did, and from what I’ve seen to date, certainly the old place looks in need of a good tidy and scrub.  Nanaimo may be part North American strip mall, but City Hall does spend taxpayer dollar on infrastructure, and there aren’t half the potholes in the roads that I’ve had my teeth jarred with today.   Quite frankly I find myself more than a little shocked at the condition of the motorways and major A roads.  There must be a booming trade in fixing car and truck suspensions.

On the other hand, the people seem more resilient, and one gets the impression of a desperately cheerful ‘Keep calm and carry on’ zeitgeist in places like Truro, St Austell, Bath and Stratford.  What I’m certain of is this; times are hard, and getting harder.  The part living nightmare of Paul Calvin’s mid 21st century England is closer at hand than I’m really happy with.  It’s one thing to write about decline and decay, but to see it happening right in front of you is another matter.

Cerberus, Stars Trilogy

Ready to release the latest versions


Of late I’ve been in obsessive compulsive mode; ironing out errors, formatting and editing, proofing and polishing my prose. Apart from being bloody hard work, it has also been exhausting to the point where my brain doesn’t know where my body is going. I can function; but like with the sleep deprivation I suffered last year, the signs of strain are unmistakeable.

Notwithstanding the above, what I call ‘Sky’ the first of the Stars Trilogy is now re released as an eBook. Checked, edited, proofed, re edited, spell checked and reformatted. The basic story structure remains the same, but all those irritating clunky sentences have been hammered into something a little more elegant. A much better product. First reports back from my test readers are encouraging. It’s been submitted to the iBookstore and Barnes & Noble Databases. A Kobo version will follow in a week or two when I’m rested. Not sure about Amazon. I’ll wait a while and see how the distribution works out.

Price is CAD$4.99. UK GBP 3.80. That’s fair. Considering Traditional publishers are charging Ten or more bucks per eBook, I think it’s bloody good value for all the work I’ve put in. Links will go into the ‘published works’ page by tonight, Pacific Standard time.

The second volume, ‘Falling’ although three thousand words shorter, was never as rough cut as the first. Ergo, there is less work involved in bringing it up to scratch. The release of the updated and improved ‘Falling’ will follow shortly as an eBook. All the old print to order versions, with all their myriad faults have been ‘retired’. Better, cleaner, more well formatted versions will shortly be available. The same will happen with all my other Novellas, short stories and Paul Calvin novels. Over the next year I intend to throw a lot of mud at the wall. See what sticks.

Self publishing is truly a steep learning curve, and we all leave skid marks on those unexpected corners. Projects end up nose down in the ditch, and require more than a metaphorical winch and Turtle wax to put back in good working order. Doesn’t mean they’re no good, it just means a little more work is needed. Fortunately there’s scope and opportunity to do that.

‘Darkness’, the third volume of the Stars trilogy remains a troublesome work in progress. It is hard to keep the main story on track. There are so many probability chains to follow I’m currently finding it too easy to run up any one of the many blind narrative alleys. Like a Minoan Labyrinth, I know where the end should be and am equipped to slay the Minotaur, but I’m still not quite sure how to get to my desired conclusion.

The UK trip looms ever closer, and I’m viewing it with mixed feelings. I’ll be passing through Truro, Bristol, Stratford, Claverdon, and a few other of my old stamping grounds. As well as popping over to Ireland and the Hague. Catch up on news of the old places. Peoplewatch. See family. Openly wonder at how crowded and congested it is. Take my own cream into coffee shops because ‘Head office’ has decreed their outlets will not serve cream in case they get sued for clogging the nations already stress-hardened arteries.

I’ve amused myself in the Stars and Cerberus series poking a little fun at all these demands for bans and regulation on everything remotely pleasurable. One of the questions I repeatedly pose is; what would it be like to live in a world where wine and beer are strictly rationed, and spirits, tobacco, chocolate and meat are completely banned? Where the only permitted protein in the public diet is derived from blocks of ‘Go-Quarn’, a Tofu like substance, promoted as part of a ‘healthy vegetarian diet’. Which is derived from leftover humans – look up ‘Soylent Green’. Did I say I’ve got a dark sense of humour?

That’s all for now. Off to the day job.

Cerberus

Work in progress; excerpts posted


In the Cerberus Conspiracy pages, I’ve decided to post the first two chapters from my work in progress ‘A falling of Angels’. I’m fairly happy with the chapters as they stand and the word pictures they paint. Paul Calvin, Ben Wallace, Fat Mary and Jed Carter feel right as characters living in a crumbling society, riding the razors edge between anarchy and stability. Link is here.

As matters stand I’m still only about a third of the way through the story, with a lot of ground to cover. Gang wars, the role of a shadowy corporate in societal breakdown, more on the Freemen, blackmail, and pleasure seekers made into techno zombies. Plenty of juicy filling and not too much in the way of bread for padding. So far so good. Well, I like it even if no one else does.

I’ve also added the first chapter from the ‘Shifting States’ MSS on a sub page of the Cerberus Conspiracy tab, which has been work in progress for just under ten years.

Cerberus

Progress happens in the oddest places #WritersBlock


Day off from the day job yesterday, and for a change took my laptop with me on our tour around town to the Museum, Angie’s Pilates class and the best coffee shop in town. Putting the earbuds in and playing some of my favourite tunes meant I could pound the keypad to my hearts content undisturbed, managing to almost crack the 2000 word mark in the latest Cerberus story “A falling of Angels”.

The current storyline has my mind reading hero hunting down a child molester in the middle of a massive refugee camp on the site of Bristols old Avonmouth docks. He is also looking for a lead to a cold blooded murder and the source of a menace which could bring mayhem to the streets. It’s coming along nicely.

One of the themes I constantly find myself returning to within the Cerberus series is exploring the nature of human consciousness, and putting forward the postulation that our minds have a Quantum level effect upon our surroundings. Not physically, but at the level of phantasms, shadows on the background of space / time. Back in 1972 there was an early TV play written by Nigel Neale called ‘The Stone tape‘ which was generated on the premise of strong emotional events imprinting themselves upon physical objects, like stone. My take on the theme is this; in the process of existence we imprint our minds / memories / desires upon the very fabric of the universe, which is where my notion of the supernatural comes from. Strong baseline emotional events, fear, love etc leave the longest lasting impressions, like the victims of nuclear explosions leaving shadows on walls and ground. Even certain strong personality types leave a mark. Some are merely images, others like GIFs, some like computer games. All depend upon how driven the individual was who left the marks.

Is this concept true or false? Some say that because stories of the psychic world are purely subjective, the answer has to be a firm and unequivocal no. For myself I have no idea, but that doesn’t stop me exploring the concepts and mud wrestling with them. If nothing else it’s provided me with much good material.

Cerberus

Writing well, but very slowly #WritersBlock


Work proceeds on the next of the Cerberus series of stories; ‘A Falling of Angels’. It’s also going very slowly. The story is at an interesting point; in the middle of a refugee camp down at the old Avonmouth docks in Bristol, England. I’ve successfully introduced the ‘Freemen’, a cult of surprisingly orderly anarchist-like monk characters very loosely based on the ‘Freemen on the land’ ideology. As far as the story goes, they work beautifully. Quality is high. The trouble is, writing is such an effort at the moment. Finding the time to relax into the tale is proving difficult.

Paid work is currently more full than part time. Angie, having taken over my office, is now sitting in front of me in the kitchen working leaving me no place to settle and buckle down to some good old fashioned keyboard pounding. The baking is therapeutic, but when you’re deep in the throes of narrative, the last thing you want is someone (no matter how much you love them) asking questions about what your tax position is, or a hundred different non writing related queries.

Writing is nothing unless it can be done, and if it is not being done then all the mental effort behind it gets wasted. I need to concentrate in order to work, but I’m finding it difficult to do so,and I don’t want to make an issue of my objections and thus provoke domestic discord. Which would bring all writing activity to a dead stop for months.

What is a man to do? No wonder it drives so many to drink.