He hurled the plastic bottle at the fence. Harry ran to retrieve it. Dropping the trophy on the ground next to Gus, the dog lay down, paws touching scuffed leather. Gus squatted beside him, ruffled his course black fur, then brushed away a slobbering tongue.
“It’s okay mate. You don’t have to lick me to death.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth as Gus tweaked his dog’s ear. “You can’t work out what the hell’s going on, can you? Don’t worry, I can’t either, but let’s have breakfast and we might feel better.”
The generator started up when he switched the kettle on. Automatically he took two bowls from the dresser and placed them on the table.
Like barbed wire, pain wrapped around his heart. “Why, Amy?” He shoved the second bowl back in the cupboard.
Kenny Rogers, crooning about the girl who found another man, made him want to turn the country radio station off, but the news was about to start. His stomach rumbled, reminding him how little he had eaten the previous day. Nutrigrain, milk and honey; Gus filled his bowl and gave Harry a handful of dog biscuits.
Bombs dropped on Syria; refugees crushed trying to board trains to Germany; fires out of control in California; former priest arrested for molesting boys in 1978.
“Makes my problems seem almost irrelevant.”
The kettle was boiling as Gus got up to make coffee. Amy collected the cups; seven all together, from places they visited on their trip to Tasmania. The blue one, decorated with a rooster, was Gus’s favourite; bigger than the rest and without the flowers, hearts and lovey-dovey words that covered the others.
He was about to stir two teaspoons of sugar into his cup when the local news came on.
“A damaged Harley Davidson was found by a passing motorist at two o’clock this morning. It had run off the road, probably due to severe storms last night. A man and his female passenger were taken to the Geraldton Hospital.”
This short story was published in a collection called Timber, in 2018. Some of you might have read it, but for those who haven’t, I’ve decided to post it here in serial form over the next two weeks.
There are no pictures. I hope my words paint the scene and the actions for you.
As a writer, I sit alone at my computer, imaging people in situations and creating lives and stories around those imaginings. Most of my characters remain stuck, unloved and unknown, inside this laptop. I think they all belong on pages in books, so on the rare occasions when others judge my stories as worthy of publishing, I get madly excited and want to broadcast my words to the world immediately.
However, that wouldn’t be fair to the publishers who hope you and many other readers, would pay for the joy of reading all the stories in the collections like Timber. Stringybark Publishing does a great job, encouraging writers like me.
I’d really love to know what you think of the story so far and please come back next Saturday, the 19th September, for more.
Here is part one of:
One Week To Harvest
Grey clouds tumbled overhead, like waves in a stormy sea. Ripened wheat danced in the paddock.
From the doorway of his shed Gus watched the motor bike – a Harley Davidson, its shiny black metal splattered with mud. His ears throbbed at each rev of the throttle; the pain was nothing compared with the agony gripping his heart like the thrust of a sword, forge fired, cutting deep and searing flesh.
Amy didn’t wave, didn’t even look back, just wrapped her arms around the object of her passion and buried her face in his leather jacket.
Drops of rain mingled with his tears as Gus turned away. Inside the shed that was meant to be their temporary home, Amy’s bras and panties, normally scattered on chairs, the floor, their bed, were glaringly absent. In the corner where she sat to write her stories, the desk he’d made from a she-oak felled on their land, looked pristine. Devoid of laptop, printer, books and paper, the photo of him and her, taken on their honeymoon, stood out as a solitary reminder.
Harry, his black coat dripping, wandered into the shed. Doggy eyes sought answers from his master. He had followed the bike, bearing Amy, as far as the gate. His tail normally wagged so fast it knocked cups off the coffee table. Now it drooped, leaving a wet trail on the floor.
“Come here, fella.” Gus sat on the couch and patted his knee. “It’s just you and me, mate. You don’t know what she sees in that fucking mongrel either, do you?”
Man and dog ate alone that night—two tins taken from the unpacked box of groceries. Gus warmed his Irish stew in the frying pan that he and Amy bought when they moved in together. Harry sniffed at the contents of his metal bowl. Outside, rain continued pounding on the tin roof and gurgling down the pipes that fed into a tank, several metres away.
The bed was cold; empty and cold. White sheets were unforgiving as Gus lay down, his right arm automatically reaching for the warmth of Amy’s body. Gentle tears turned to wracking sobs, their sound blocking out the rustle on the other side of the bed. Never permitted, Harry crept in beside his master. Together they survived that first night.
At sunrise Gus crawled out from a tangle of sheets, pillows and doona. Harry was waiting by the door, tail wagging intermittently, as if he wasn’t sure such behaviour was appropriate, but a new day awaited and he was eager to be outside, exploring its possibilities.
“Okay, fella. You can go for a run. I’m having breakfast first.” Gus opened the door and let his dog out before stumbling back to the clothes rack where, until yesterday, three floral dresses and a rainbow rack of t-shirts were jammed in alongside his collection of shirts and jeans. Black, grey and navy appeared more depressing than convenient without the contrast of Amy’s wardrobe. He pushed coat hangers along the bar in an effort to close the gap.
Harry was back, snuffling at the door, when Gus walked out to fill the water bottle from the tank.
“Shit.”
In every direction, as far as he could see, ripened wheat lay prostrate in the paddocks.
Today I want to tell you about last Saturday, when I joined eight of my writing friends at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writing Centre in Greenmount, to write A Book In A Day. This is a competition to raise funds for children’s cancer research. It’s a group writing project, with usually 8 – 10 people who come together for one day (twelve hours only) to produce a book, including illustrations, to be read by children aged about 10 -16. The books are given to the children in hospitals, but anyone can procure and read them. Each group nominates a day to suit them between 1st June and usually 31 August, but this year it’s September. The parameters are different for each group. No-one can pre-plan or try to guess the situation, issue or characters as this is not permitted until 8am on the selected morning.
As this is a fund raising venture as well as a fun activity, we all donated monies towards our entry. I’m hoping that, once you’ve read about our day, you might want to also participate in sponsoring our team for WABIAD. (WA Book in a Day)To get to the sponsorship page for our group, TNGers, click on this https://writeabookinaday.com/team-sponsorship/?id=86 or copy and paste the link. You can then scroll down to fill in your details and donation amount. All the money goes to the Children’s Cancer Research. A big thank you from all the children you’ll be helping, and from us.
Armed with food—fruit and biscuits for morning tea, soup and crunchy breads for lunch, home-made brownies and other nibbles for afternoon sustenance and the promise of a home cooked Indian feast for dinner, plus liquid refreshments to help celebrate our success—we arrived at our venue well before 8am. We brought laptops, cords, USB ports, paper and pens to make notes and anything else we might need for a full-on day of writing. Our skilled artist came laden with paints and pencils, pots and paper, ready to create hilarious renditions of characters and situations as the rest of us developed our ideas.
On the dot of 8, coffee, tea or chocolate beverages to hand, we were given our clues. This year’s competition hasn’t finished yet, so I’d better not broadcast ours, but I can tell you what we had to write about last year, to give you an idea of what’s required.
A Piano Tuner
In 2019 our characters were a piano tuner, a dentist and a necklace (we always have one non-human character). The setting was a motorway and the issue was the discovery of magic powers. Creating a story suitable for 10 to mid-teens is a challenge. Setting it on a motorway had several of us tearing our hair out. No swearing allowed in the publication either.
A dentist, Ivor Hinkleburger
Each year we also have five words to be included anywhere in the story, block letters making it easy for the readers to find. Community, skipped, magic, canvas and sings appeared with little effort.
This year, with our characters, the setting and the issue noted, our first task was to decide boy, girl, man, woman, age, names, appearances and the fun part – who will be the baddy? Setting and issue already decided for us, we found it fairly easy to fill in the details of who, where, when how and why. The discussion got quite heated, with nine enthusiastic participants keen to contribute ideas. Our group leader had the task of noting suggestions on the white board. As we needed to get around to the actual writing as soon as possible, this part of the process was a bit messy. Fortunately this year our leader was calm, organised and a quick writer. Unfortunately, his handwriting was often difficult to decipher, but he didn’t mind repeating himself, several times.
Eight of us were there to write, so the story was broken up into eight chapters. We then chose which chapter we wanted to create. This method works quite well, except that it’s easy to miss some vital bit of information that needs to be in your chosen chapter, or, as often happens, the information is repeated in the previous or following chapter.
We had an added problem this year. One of our most enthusiastic members was recovering from major surgery and couldn’t be with us. Face book Messenger to the rescue; he was able to participate in the initial discussions, although with limited understanding of all the conversations the exercise proved a wee bit frustrating for all.
Once a big chunk of writing was done, around lunch time, each participant read out what they had written so far. The omissions and double-ups were obvious. After lunch—everyone enjoyed the soup, many returned to the pot for seconds, and much of the bread and butter disappeared—bodies moved around tables, paragraphs were removed, inappropriate representations swapped for agreed replacements and generally, solutions were found that helped the story to flow.
Our ninth member is an artist as well as a writer. Without her illustrations our stories would lack the necessary sparkle. She worked on a separate, long table at the head of the room and visited each of us to discuss details about the way we imagined characters and scenes. Hair—long, short, curly, blonde, grey etc. Facial features—eye colour, head shape, facial hair? Is the character smiley, grumpy, studious, etc? Are the characters fat, thin, tall, short? Clothes—style to portray the character. And of course we all had to remember those details in our section of the story. We’re so lucky to have a talented artist on our team. Her illustrations were often hilarious and always perfect.
Our leader had to write his chapter as well as edit all of ours as we finished, plus scan the pictures and story, in correct order, to come up with our finished book by 8pm. Writers had finished by about 7pm and the last illustration just needed to dry before being scanned, closer to the deadline.
Cameras and phones captured appropriate images of diligent creators, bottles were opened (and our leader was still working) while we dragged out the last of our creativity for funny reviews and a synopsis for the back cover. Coming up with a suitable name for our story required several sips of wine for most of us and (thank goodness) a stroke of genius from our youngest member.
There were cheers all round as the finished book was sent off, via the internet, well within the time limit. Now we just have to wait for at least a month, until judgement day.
We believe we have produced a winner and I hope you will want to purchase a copy or three. They make great Christmas presents for children in that 10 – 16 age group.
If you are prepared to add to our financial donation, you can sponsor us by clicking on this link, https://writeabookinaday.com/team-sponsorship/?id=86 or if that doesn’t work, copy and paste it to connect to WA Book in a Day. The TNGers sponsorship page should appear. Scroll down to fill in your details and donation. Many thanks from us, the organisers and the children.
When we get the results of the competition I will let you know.
