Distractions
Hitman dominoes and being bedded by Warren Beatty
As I mentioned, we are engaged in a massive clear out, culling 30 years’ worth of stuff so we can live lighter at our new abode. It’s going pretty well: furniture surplus to requirements has been sold or donated, we’ve made 10 trips to the tip, the van full to the gunnels, and dozens of sacks of stuff have been delivered to different charity shops. But today I hit a stumbling block. My ideas file.
Every writer has one, don’t they? Probably digitally curated nowadays. But when I started to keep one, newspapers weren’t available online. If I found an interesting article, something I thought might evolve into a story or be developed in a character or included in a scene, I cut out the piece and flung it into a big cardboard box file.
Today I opened up that file, intending to bin the contents, but 3 hours later I was still sitting there reading.
I found some fascinating stuff, like a story of 6 hitmen jailed for 5 years each though none of them committed the assassination. Hitman 1 was hired by a Chinese businessman to take out a rival. He hired Hitman 2 to do the deed instead. 2 hired 3, 3 hired, 4 and so on, domino effect, until Hitman number 6 ‘fessed up to the intended victim. So, the intriguing question for me, still today, is: why did no-one want that job? What was the nature of the assignment or the victim, or of this particular group of assassins? Definitely a thriller there, with farcical possibilities.
Then there was an interview with Warren Beatty’s lovers. If you are a Millennial, or a Gen Z Zoomer, you may not know that he was the Helluva Handsome Hollywood actor and producer, known as much for his award-winning roles as for his sexual ardour. “Warren was a fantastic lover,” said an interviewee who remained anonymous. “A great technician. But being in bed with him was the loneliest thing. He wasn’t really there.” As a writer, I thought, why would a character devote such effort to a pastime so emotionally meaningless? Was it a case of a character confusing needs and wants? (Always good for tension and to show the character’s development.) What might his unresolved wants have been? Beatty is now 87 and still married to Anette Benning, my side-tracking internet dive revealed. (I’m an admirer of hers. Did you see her in NYAD?) They have four children. I think the want question is answered; I was able to ditch that article.
But what about this one? A woman’s 10-day old baby was lost in a house fire. She escaped with her older children. 10 years later, at a birthday party, she sees a little girl who looks just like her children. So strong is her conviction that they are related that she convinces the police to investigate and sure enough, DNA shows that is her lost daughter, whose body was never found, who was actually stolen by the woman who set the fire to conceal her crime. I keep imagining the birthday party scene. It’s definitely where I’d start the novel, wouldn’t you?
Anyway, as you a see, the Ideas file has been a major distraction. I’ve managed to cull few papers from it and my head is spinning stories instead of concentrating on Purge and Pack. I won’t be writing any of those stories or characters, so if they spark something for you, let me know; I’d love to read it.
Meanwhile, on to the business of the day, Chapter 14 of Kalahari Passage which I’m serialising to fund a school feeding scheme in Namibia.
Chapter 14
Koba gains more insight into the group, agrees to a move, and gives up on Mannie.
Koba was used to silence, to hearing only the voices in her head, sometimes for days at a time. It was difficult to adapt to the din of communal conversation in her new world. And she found she was seldom alone in the Ju|’hoan camp.
No one was. People ate together, sat together, slept together. They hunted in pairs with practised companions and the women foraged in groups. They clustered shoulder to shoulder when making things, like sifting mats or ostrich eggshell necklaces, and sat, crossing their ankles over one another’s legs without discomfort.
But today, for once, she was alone, the only person up, so far. She stirred a sleepy fire into life to boil water for baobab-nut coffee, a special treat she intended for her adopted grandmother. Old Zuma, like most of the women and even the children, was having a lie-in. She supposed the departure of the hunters at sunrise had woken everyone prematurely, as it did her. This was the time then to catch up on sleep. But Koba wanted to relish having only birdsong to disturb the vast Kalahari silence.
