The Loneliness of a Long Distance Writer

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Writer

Writing is almost as much about ritual as it is about imagination, sweat and sheer willpower. You’ll find most writers have their own personal charms to get them in the zone. For some this can simply be a glass of wine, or a coffee with a chunky Kit-Kat, while others can’t get down to work without whale song piping from their speakers sometimes preceded by ten minutes of meditation, breathing exercises and yoga. Anything goes. It’s all about tricking the brain into opening up and spilling out those precious pearls of perfect prose. Um… alliteration can also be a useful tool.

To get the creative juices flowing, my own ritual revolves around a fusion of music and light. The light provided by four strategically placed Philips Hue globes, tweaked via the supplied app to give a soft focus fairy-grotto ambience. Candles or draped strings of coloured LEDs left over from Xmas work wonders, too. The music is basically whatever iTunes Playlist takes my fancy at the time. Add a glass of gin and a smoke to the mix and I fall into automatic writing mode. 

You think this sounds over the top? In that case I’m so glad I never mentioned the glass shelf positioned above my screen where a collection crystals and polished agates are aligned with geometric precision against a phalanx of collectable Zippo lighters, providing me with a focal point to gaze into infinity when considering the merits of the humble colon over the more elaborate semi-colon. 

So what happens when the writer gets uprooted from their cosy life-support pods and forced to work in unfamiliar surroundings? For the past six years I’ve been mostly working away from home, living out of a suitcase in a succession of bland and soulless hotel rooms. In theory there’s nothing stopping me getting on with whatever book I’m writing, but getting the magic to seamlessly flow from my fingertips to the screen when away from home isn’t so easy. 

Sure, I can stick on my headphones and drip-feed my favourite songs into my bloodstream. I can bring along a string of Xmas lights and drape them over my laptop. I can even keep myself supplied in gin - but there’s always something going on the background to distract and derail my normally dependable train of thought. 

Sometimes it’s an inconsiderate clown in the room upstairs Morris-dancing with wooden clogs. Other times it’s the badly hung curtains (six degrees off kilter, I checked with a spirit level app), or weird-shaped stains on the carpet (one definitely resembled a silhouette of Barbara Cartland). After this comes the unpredictable sound of flushing behind the bathroom wall or the hotel air con deciding to impersonate a B52 bomber. And that’s without going into how distracting it can be when the people through the wall decide to have mattress-busting noisy sex without first asking if I mind or not.

Now, instead of slavishly devoting myself to ensuring those pesky sub plots converge properly or trying to subtly drop in a red herring without it stinking up the place like a two-week-old kipper or simply determining a minor character’s fate (pause to check current body count), I find myself looking at Facebook and Twitter. Distractions within distractions, and minor character is getting impatient awaiting his fate as I procrastinate over a picture of a friend’s grilled prawn curry. 

I quickly decide to kill off minor character to cover up my own ragged attention span. Minor character isn’t happy and says he’ll be talking to his Union Rep. I now realise I’ve been hitting the gin too hard

I decide to go to bed and sleep. Tomorrow is always another day. I might even buy another Philips Hue globe. And a Zippo. It’s the alignment that’s important.

Bloody Scotland, Daphne Broon and Dead Hamsters

Bloody Scotland, Daphne Broon and Dead Hamsters

 

I’m lounging on the couch, nose buried deep in a book, reaching for yet another chocolate Hobnob when the phone rings. I snatch at it scattering crumbs. ‘Hello. Allan Watson speaking. Writer in Residence at your service.’ I’m the habit of using this snappy salutation in case a big publisher ever calls. However, even I know big publishers don’t normally mask their voice by holding a cloth over the mouthpiece.

‘Shut up and listen, you slag,’ rasps the voice. ‘We’ve got the dirt on you and no mistake.’

‘Who is this? And what dirt?’ 

‘Never mind who this is. We know all about you and Daphne Broon.’

‘Daphne Broon? You mean the frumpy and unattractive cartoon character from the Sunday Post?’

‘That’s the one. We have incriminating photographic evidence of your seedy hotel room romp. You’ve been caught in a Honeytrap. If you don’t want your wife and family to see these pictures, you’ll do exactly what we say.’

I’m totally confused at this point. ‘But Daphne Broon isn’t even real.’

The voice laughs down the phone. ‘The camera never lies. Check your email.’

I grab my iPad and find an email from an unknown sender. There’s a very graphic illustration of me and Daphne naked and romping on a bed. The caricature of me is actually sort of flattering. I say to my tormentor, ‘That’s just a stupid drawing. I’m hanging up.’

‘No, wait!’ he splutters. ‘There’s more.’

I sigh and wonder what other crazy stuff this lunatic has to accuse me of. Carnal capers with Keyhole Kate? Dominatrix sessions with Pansy Potter the Strongman’s Daughter? However, his next words send a chill down my spine.

‘We know about the hamster.’

My own voice is now a dry croak. ‘You can’t possibly know about…’

The voice sneers in a cruel fashion. ‘Nibbles? Your daughter’s beloved hamster that you electrocuted?’

‘That was an accident,’ I wail.

‘So you say, but who’ll believe you?’

Outside my window the off-key chimes of an ice-cream van warble through the air allowing me to flashback into the past.

Fifteen years ago my daughter did indeed own a hamster called Nibbles. Over the course of a weekend two events occurred that at the time I’d no idea were connected. The first was Nibbles escaping and going AWOL. The second was me attempting to make toast and having trouble with the ignition switch on the gas cooker. Took me at least half a dozen tries before it finally clicked and fired up the grill.

After a full week Nibbles still hadn’t resurfaced and there was a distinct odour of decaying rodent hovering in the kitchen. The smell was strongest beside the cooker and I thought Nibbles might have expired beneath the floorboards. I hauled the cooker out, removed the boards where the pipes came up and stuck my head under. No Nibbles. And not even a whiff of dead hamster. Getting to my feet my nose came under assault yet again and I realised Nibbles was inside the cooker. 

Half an hour later I’d dismantled the appliance and there, bloated and rank on a nexus of wiring directly above the ignition switch was the dead hamster. Only then did I remember hitting that ignition switch time after time, unaware I was zapping Nibbles with 240v with each deadly jab of my finger. Yes, I finally got my breakfast, but at the expense of a beloved family pet whose own status was now, erm… toast.

The ice cream van backfires and drives off and I’m once again back in the present. I thought I would take the tale of Nibble’s tragic demise to my own grave, but somehow this stranger on the phone had unearthed my dark secret. I could be ruined if this went public. 

‘What do you want?’ I ask the mysterious caller. ‘Money? I’m a poor writer. Ever since I lost my paper round things have been a bit tight financially.’

The caller laughs again. ‘What I want you to do is turn up at the Albert Halls in Stirling on Saturday 22^nd at 14:45 p.m.’

‘Then what?’

‘You’ve been chosen as a Crime in the Spotlight new writer for Bloody Scotland and will have three minutes to sell your book Heart Swarm and do a short reading before Chris Brookmyer takes the stage. After the event you get to sign books while sitting on a very small chair. Got that?’

‘Um… yeah, fine. I’d love to. Thanks.’

The caller sounds very angry. ‘What do you mean you’d love to? Why didn’t you say so in the first place and not have me waste my precious time threatening you?’

‘But… but…’ I try to explain, but the caller has already hung up. I sit there a while longer feeling shell-shocked. Me appearing at the Albert Halls as Brookmyre’s warm-up act? Things were definitely looking up. I decide to have another cup of tea and a chocolate Hobnob. I call out, ‘Daphne! Get in here.’

Daphne Broon wearing only a silk negligee appears in the kitchen doorway demurely holding a tray with tea and biscuits. She strikes an alluring pose, the bare flesh of her legs like pale suet puddings in the soft late-afternoon light.

‘So what’s all this about you being a Honeytrap?’ I say.

Finally - it's here! Wasp Latitudes - Book Two in the DI Harlan series. Here's the blurb.

Against a background of brutal attacks on people and property by a rag-tag group of homeless men whom the media quickly dub Berserkers, DI Will Harlan is juggling with a head-in-a-bucket patricide, a lethal wife-swapping session, a sex-tape scandal involving the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - and perhaps most discomfiting of all - a spate of late night phone calls from his favourite serial killer, Howie Danks.

As the wife-swapping investigation spirals into a glut of cold-blooded slayings carried out by a mysterious pair of killers known as the Wasp Queen and the Priest, Harlan has to look into the past where a cold case may contain uncomfortable answers. But it’s in the present where the real danger lies as he follows a twisted path of mind control and madness leading to a cruel land some call the Wasp Latitudes.

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