Tab
"Tab," Walter said, "put it on my tab."
"Can't do that," the bartender said, "you know that."
Walter reached in to his pocket and chucked some change, an empty packet of gum and a library card on to the bar. The bartender took the coins he wanted and placed them in the register. Walter scraped the remaining change, the gum packet and the library card back in to his palm and back into his pocket.
He took up the shot glass and ran his finger around the rim. He had the look of a starving man who had been given a fish instead of a net. He nursed the drink for a while before taking it down in one gulp.
"Two coffees," a tall man was suddenly standing next to him. He wore a long coat and handed over a ten pound note to pay for the drinks.
"What table are you at?" the bartender asked, "we'll bring it to you."
"I'll wait," the man said. He turned to Walter, "you are Walter Patterson."
"Who wants to know?"
"You are in some financial trouble. You were recommended by a friend of mine. This job stands to make you a very rich man. The other coffee is for you - we need you sober. Are you interested?"
Saturday 24 July 2010
Sunday 18 July 2010
Dictionary Stories 2010-07-21
Sabbath
It is strangle appropriate and in appropriate that this story is being written on Sunday. (That's assuming that I click the submit button today) Appropriate that today is the Sabbath for Christians. Of course technically this could count as work and so shouldn't be being done now.
I know that the title of this section is 'Dictionary Stories' but there are some words that simply do not call a story to my mind. So I will use this as a segue to talk about religion. I'm a Buddhist and recently have become a practicing Buddhist.
By this I mean that I say mantra every morning and try silent sitting. It is strange how difficult it can be to just sit in silence trying, though try might be a contradiction, to think of nothing. My mind is always a jumble of varies things - story ideas - what's for dinner and many other things. Plus the sound of the road outside my house can be quite distracting.
(Well what do you know? Its now Wednesday! Days go so fast!)
...but somewhere amongst all of that you somehow get to a moment of...I don't know what the word is. A moment of something and then suddenly the silent sitting seems to work.
I know that this post is long and rambling and has nothing to do with the title. I keep thinking of incorporating pictures into the blog but am not really ever sure of what - any ideas? Went to Ikea today and that doesn't seem a thing necessary to post.
It is strangle appropriate and in appropriate that this story is being written on Sunday. (That's assuming that I click the submit button today) Appropriate that today is the Sabbath for Christians. Of course technically this could count as work and so shouldn't be being done now.
I know that the title of this section is 'Dictionary Stories' but there are some words that simply do not call a story to my mind. So I will use this as a segue to talk about religion. I'm a Buddhist and recently have become a practicing Buddhist.
By this I mean that I say mantra every morning and try silent sitting. It is strange how difficult it can be to just sit in silence trying, though try might be a contradiction, to think of nothing. My mind is always a jumble of varies things - story ideas - what's for dinner and many other things. Plus the sound of the road outside my house can be quite distracting.
(Well what do you know? Its now Wednesday! Days go so fast!)
...but somewhere amongst all of that you somehow get to a moment of...I don't know what the word is. A moment of something and then suddenly the silent sitting seems to work.
I know that this post is long and rambling and has nothing to do with the title. I keep thinking of incorporating pictures into the blog but am not really ever sure of what - any ideas? Went to Ikea today and that doesn't seem a thing necessary to post.
Sunday 11 July 2010
Writer's Blog 2010-07-11
Well its been another month since I've posted here. Never seem to get to it, as I've said before and probably will say again, but the question is: Is their anybody there? Anybody but my brother reading this. If you exist leave a message ideas for a story that you'd like to see.
Writing is a strange old thing and I have found an interesting phenomenon recently - it is easier to be creative, in science fiction, the further from today you are writing. Let me show you what I mean. It depends when the story is set.
2110: We probably won't have FLT - we might have met aliens. (OK those might me contradictory) - probably have landed, if not have some sort of colony on mars.
2210: The 2200s are where Babylon 5 is set (2258-2262) will we have that level of technology?
2310: The century of TNG and such. They have all sorts of wacky technologies we can conceive of today - How do the transporters work? Very well thank you.
Can't think of a sci-fi set in the twenty-fifth century. Just looked it up - Buck Rogers - but I know nothing about it.
2510: The approximate setting of Firefly. No aliens of FLT but they do have artificial gravity. But then Firefly, though a great series don't get me wrong, isn't about being in space as such.
So across these centuries different authors have had different ideas of the future. Some are just telling a story. So science doesn't matter at all. JMS however has said that B5 is an achieved future - its part of the idea.
Roddenberry wasn't the best of writers, sorry, but conceived an excellent universe. Star Trek was always more about the people than the science. That to presents problems as a writer. Do you take the US, or Royal, Navy and put them in space, traditions, ranks and everything or do you not?
For some reason the year 2344 called to me as the setting for my science fiction. But we know a lot now - whats possible and what isn't possible. Some how the twenty-four century feels to me like a time where one has to consider the real world.
Somehow a story set in the year 3000 feels like you could have all the freedom you could want. Its far enough away that modern ideas have transformed. Military ranks for one thing. I've been devising a list of ranks for my stories military trying to make it smiler to today. But all the nations I've researched have their own ideas and most seem to make sense on some level.
There are no answers to how to write science fiction. Setting a story in 3000 has its own problems. Will the shopping mall in our town still exist for instance or will it just all be ordered online.
Of course none of us will know but one thing all science fictions seem to have in common is that for some things they are way off, i.e there is no hint of us developing warp drive by the end of the century - but they can also be off in the other direction. We have better data storage devices that the...
"Enterprise...1 7 0 1, no bloody A,B,C or D," Montgomery Scott - Relics
Writing is a strange old thing and I have found an interesting phenomenon recently - it is easier to be creative, in science fiction, the further from today you are writing. Let me show you what I mean. It depends when the story is set.
2110: We probably won't have FLT - we might have met aliens. (OK those might me contradictory) - probably have landed, if not have some sort of colony on mars.
2210: The 2200s are where Babylon 5 is set (2258-2262) will we have that level of technology?
2310: The century of TNG and such. They have all sorts of wacky technologies we can conceive of today - How do the transporters work? Very well thank you.
Can't think of a sci-fi set in the twenty-fifth century. Just looked it up - Buck Rogers - but I know nothing about it.
2510: The approximate setting of Firefly. No aliens of FLT but they do have artificial gravity. But then Firefly, though a great series don't get me wrong, isn't about being in space as such.
So across these centuries different authors have had different ideas of the future. Some are just telling a story. So science doesn't matter at all. JMS however has said that B5 is an achieved future - its part of the idea.
Roddenberry wasn't the best of writers, sorry, but conceived an excellent universe. Star Trek was always more about the people than the science. That to presents problems as a writer. Do you take the US, or Royal, Navy and put them in space, traditions, ranks and everything or do you not?
For some reason the year 2344 called to me as the setting for my science fiction. But we know a lot now - whats possible and what isn't possible. Some how the twenty-four century feels to me like a time where one has to consider the real world.
Somehow a story set in the year 3000 feels like you could have all the freedom you could want. Its far enough away that modern ideas have transformed. Military ranks for one thing. I've been devising a list of ranks for my stories military trying to make it smiler to today. But all the nations I've researched have their own ideas and most seem to make sense on some level.
There are no answers to how to write science fiction. Setting a story in 3000 has its own problems. Will the shopping mall in our town still exist for instance or will it just all be ordered online.
Of course none of us will know but one thing all science fictions seem to have in common is that for some things they are way off, i.e there is no hint of us developing warp drive by the end of the century - but they can also be off in the other direction. We have better data storage devices that the...
"Enterprise...1 7 0 1, no bloody A,B,C or D," Montgomery Scott - Relics
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