The rain pelted down in constant and orderly lines, filling every hole, every space it came into contact with. This felt like end-of-the-world weather. I focussed on one section of the garden which seemed to have sunk quicker than anywhere else. Ringlets of raindrops in the dirty brown water were constantly renewing themselves. A few stray strands of grass were attempting to resist, but every second they were being forced down by relentless raindrops, and it was only so long before they would disappear under the weight of the water. A blackbird had somehow managed to spot a worm in one of the only patches of grass left relatively unscathed by the maelstrom, and the worm was doing the dance of the almost dead, its two halves spiralling around like two armless drunks. The bird had already managed to cut it in two and it was now considering which one to go for first. That decision was about to be narrowed down considerably, because just then the light from the street lamp, which always seemed brighter than the sun, disappeared for a split second, almost like a camera flash going off. The bird of prey that I’d seen hovering around Briar Lane for the past week had finally found something worth diving for. In one clean and graceful motion she landed right behind the blackbird (it jumped in shock and tried to cover it up by swiftly flying off) and gripped what seemed to be a shrew in its beak.
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Short Stories
As soon as my laptop decides to start working again I’m going to post a couple of short stories on here. One of them is called ‘The Ice Cream Obligation’ based on a real life experience when an ice cream man asked me to watch his van whilst he nipped to the toilet. The other one is called ‘Silk Over Fire’, and it’s a far more serious affair I’m afraid. Tragedy, death and all that.
Bright Future Sequel News
As you may or may not know, I’ve been playing around with the idea of extending the story of Bright Future into a trilogy of books. Well, today I came up with an idea for a name for the series: The Future Delusion Trilogy. I quite like it, and if you’ve read Bright Future you’ll know that that works on at least a couple of levels. Let me know what you think.
New/Old Project
I’m going to be starting/continuing work on another long term project very soon. An early teen book called The Badger Helper Watcher. It’s the one I was working on before A Fifth Visitor, but I’d been writing it for so long I needed a break from it, which is where the Scrooge sequel came in. The Badger Helper Watcher (or BHW for short) is about a couple of kids called Sam and Sally who live in a town where everyone gets whatever they want on a Friday. Sam is new to the town and finds it and the townsfolk quite odd. They both start to uncover the truth of it all and decide that change is needed.
I started writing it just as the internet (or more specifically, internet shopping) was taking off, and it’s a kind of cautionary tale which by 2020 has proved me right. It needs a bit of tweaking and modernising, but now that we’ve had some time apart, I think it’s time for me and BHW to resolve our differences and get our story out there. Oh yeah – it’s part of a planned trilogy, so there’ll be a couple of loose threads dangling by the end. Keep checking this site and my Facebook page for updates. Ta ta for now.
Positive Feedback
It was such a good feeling to finally get my first full length novel (A Fifth Visitor: Or How Scrooge Kept Christmas) out there this last Christmas. I’ve had some great feedback so far, so hopefully that will translate into a few reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Happy New Year to you anyway.
JOHN D. PAYNE IS WRITING 