freedom costs money

This is a format which I have shamelessly stolen from Osbert Lancaster's Scene Changes: Great Houses of Fiction Revisited. It's really an excellent book that's worth seeking out, though I think it may be out of print now.

Here is yet more of The Family Plot, which seems to be following the usual pattern of everything that I write, that is, far far too many people followed by a lack of direction from which I escape by having someone chloroform the main character. Some of it has already, I think, appeared on here, but most of it is freshly laid today.

(I took this in a different direction. I think it works. It's all entering the realm of cheesy anime pilot episode but I don't think that's necesasrily a bad thing.)

‘Obviously not honey,’ thought Gray grimly, closing the book. He didn’t need to look at the pages that followed to know that they would be empty. He shifted his weight awkwardly and wondered whether to call his sergeant; a secret dojo was certainly something that should be brought to his attention. If his sergeant and the others walked in now, they’d think he’d been holding out on them. He folded the sheaf of papers, stuffed them into his last empty inside pocket and blew three short blasts on his whistle.

I have no idea what all this is about. It just sort of came to me. It's like an amalgam of lots of different bits of ideas and God only knows if it'll ever go anywhere. Still, here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

Oh my God there's more. When will it end? Where is it all going? Does anyone know what I've done with the car keys? These questions and more I put to you, dear reader, although really it's only the car key one I'm bothered about.

The tape of the only remaining interview with evil supervillain Fitzpatrick Zloty; taken just before his cell roof collapsed on him with the aid of some strategic door slamming around the prison complex.

Here's the third chapter (probably) of The Family Plot. It's all gone a bit wierd and I can't really say whether it's alright or not. I seem to have got a bit wrapped up in my own dreams and it's not entirely unautobiographical. Comments would be most welcome because it's a new style for me and I'm not at all sure about it. Cash donations also welcome, as usual.

Yet more from The Family Plot to tantalise you. Can you bear it? Can you? Oh. Right. Here it is anyway.

Breakfast in the middle of the solar night in an empty dining room over a nightclub would take some getting used to, thought Alistair as he blearily stirred his egg and eyed the sagging Christmas decorations – Christmas was another problem. He had begun, heretically, to long for the time when the cycle of decimal daytime once again coincided with solar daytime: he was tired of going to bed during the day and going about his business during the night. He had begun, just very recently, to imagine that some system of decimal time geared around natural daylight, with time-zones like the present system, might be a wiser idea than a worldwide system that ignored it. Certainly, a worldwide system would prevent the London businessman from losing minutes wondering whether or not his associate in Shanghai was awake or not, but if the man in Shanghai was awake in the darkness and thoroughly baffled by it all then surely more minutes would be lost to yawning and staring into space than would be lost to wondering whether people on the other side of the world were awake or asleep. He made a note of the problem on his little pad to think about it later (calling it the Yawn Factor), and also of another problem that had occurred to him: the Artificial Light Factor. The Artificial Light Factor dealt with the problem that if a system of International Decimal Time was devised that put the entire world in one time zone (which, in Alistair’s opinion, was the only sensible way to do it) then half the world would be awake when there wasn’t any sunlight. That would mean that energy consumption would almost certainly (well, pretty damn certainly, but Alistair didn’t want to face it) rise dramatically, which was a pain considering the whole plan was supposed to improve efficiency. He speculated very briefly on the feasibility of some sort of system of mirrors in space and then ate his sausages.

Here we have skeleton of the first attack at the first chapter of my new unputdownable international superselling Booker prize-winning wonder-novel, The Family Plot. Oh yes, here it is. This is only the begininng. The begininng of a horrible and terrifying journey through my head (as if there would be any other kind). Yes! This, now I'm on the Creative Writng thing, can also be classed as Useful Work Towards My Degree. See those two little avian corpses there? Yes. Two birds with one stone, mateys. I'm going to have some wine, now.

This is supposed to help me to fathom the plot of The Family Plot, but now that I look at it it seems only to make things even more confusing. Comments, questions, cash donations are all welcome.