Prodigal! - the eternal dilemma [Book Blurb Friday #26]

‘He’s one of ours ... and we should give him at least a second chance!’

Thus ended Bill Jenkins’ impassioned speech to the assembled villagers – forty-three of them, a 70% turnout.   Passion sufficient to swing the vote to 52:48 in support of his plan to take back the lad who, ten years ago, was jailed for the manslaughter of his own father.

Narrow, but his mother needed him:  would he care for her as he ought?

Too narrow for the girl on whom he’d fathered a daughter:  her father and three brothers had declared they’d see him in hell first.

The minister and the church congregation likewise flew in the face of compassion, declining to forgive, while without exception his former teachers were unanimous in offering practical help and a chance to prove himself – and even to clear his name.

Who wins – and is the result deserved?

[147 words]

Week #26’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and Lyn Obermoeller’s photograph,    Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  

http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

MudSpots

From the MuDJoB stable - MudSpots is a weekly challenge of writing up to 250 words to a prompt.
This is week five and the topic was 'Needful Things - give yourself a treat and check it out

from Saturday

Although it might be getting dark by the time we arrive on Saturday (and 'severe gales' are forecast for the weekend) this is where we'll be next week - the red-jumpered person on the pier is my husband (photo taken in 2005.)

It will be low key - walking through the flagstone town of Stromness, Pier Arts Centre, Tam's bookshop, Waterfront Gallery, and further afield, including, this trip, to Isbister - the Tomb of the Eagles - to see if they'd like to buy my book, 'Edge' which is inspired by there.

No posts while I am there but I hope to gather more material (more! - I've been gathering memories since 1981) at least for Language>Place> Carnival #10 - 'The Heart and Soul of the Cultural Landscape'

Penny pretends

“Penny Plain become Penny Coloured eh?   A definite improvement if I may say so!”  

Penny looked up at Eric McGarry, suppressing her desire to smirk, gloatingly, at him, and instead applied a mirror-rehearsed sequence of facial responses indicating in turn surprise, recognition and (hardest of all) flattered pleasure.    

Yes, he had noticed her bright pink jacket – he was meant to – as he had completely ignored, as also intended, her earlier neutral and anonymous appearances in these same auction rooms in the previous three weeks.   Originally she had hardly dared to believe it was possible for him to be so unobservant, but over the course of the five weeks she’d been following him around, she had realised that he had lost none of his self-important arrogance – viewed, in Venice, in her youthful ignorance, as cleverness and knowledge – and with a secret, and somewhat relieved, wriggle of delight, she realised that her task – Guido's second task  – was going to at least be easier and more satisfying to accomplish than she had at one time feared.

Eric McGarry makes a move

“What’s this?” he asked, confronting her where she stood in the angle of the building, a somewhat laboured bonhomie intended to cover his slight doubt that he had judged her correctly, his uncertainty that she’d recognise him, and that if she did, that she’d remember him kindly.   “Penny Plain become Penny Coloured eh?   A definite improvement if I may say so!”

Earlier, Eric McGarry, a man of many aliases, checking out the crowd for the dealers and fellow competitors, and ignoring the obvious first-timers, had spotted the woman in the vivid linen jacket, the strawberry pink singing out among the drab, eager-to-be-neutral grey and beige suits, and he’d taken a second look, not immediately certain which category she fell into – she certainly didn’t possess the bored nonchalance of the regular but neither did she have the eyes-everywhere excitement of the amateur.

He’d then been diverted, the usual hearty, lying, insincere greetings, on both sides, before, at the entry of the auctioneer, having to take his seat, but on the way he had given the woman, now stood at the back of the room, a second glance, and then a third ... was there something familiar about her?   He cleared his mind once the bidding started, concentrating, but was caught out a couple of times by the lot he wanted going, at the last minute, for a fraction more than he was prepared to bid, to someone else.   These things happened, now and then, but he needed to find out who it was ...  

In the interval, stood outside with a cigarette, keeping away from the others so as not to lose concentration, he had seen her again, in profile this time, looking up towards the sky, watching the wheeling of a flock of pigeons and suddenly, transported in an instant to St. Mark’s Square – Piazza San Marco – he had recognised her.   ‘Christ!’ he wondered to himself, ‘after all these years ...’   Quickly he retrieved what he knew of her:  shy, eager and biddable, she had been in love with Guido of course but Guido wasn’t interested in her type – too mousy by half.   But she’d obviously learnt something in the intervening years, got a bit more colourful, at least.   He doubted she was any less biddable, not from what he could remember of her, that sort didn’t change ... and the more he thought about it the more he could see a use for her now ... so noting that she was standing alone he had quickly extinguished his cigarette and gone over to speak to her.
[possible excerpt from 'Not wanted on Voyage']

Past Imperfect - Book Blurb Friday #24

It was the old, old story, often told – a time of war when future was uncertain, if not unlikely, when the need to experience Life, not to die not knowing became overwhelming.   And in the aftermath of war, for the victors, there was too much going on in the present to think of what had been, to wonder about consequences.

Anne Saddleworth, recently, stoically, widowed and in her mid-fifties was merely hanging a holiday on something as irrelevant as the pack of postcards she had long known about, which had been in an envelope with an Italian-English dictionary, belonging to her father.

Finding the town had not been difficult; finding a chain of bookshops with the un-Italian name of ‘Murgatroyd’ – her maiden name, her father’s name – most definitely had.

And difficulties compounded upon meeting the children of the triplets of the woman who had taught her father about Life.

Week #24’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and Sioux Roslawski’s evocative photograph,    Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book” 
http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

Book 6, Chapter 1

With a smile on her face she read the nineteen words of the final sentence, probably for the nineteenth time, and was, definitely for the nineteenth time. well pleased with it, despite the fact that the preceding 1440 words had been changed and changed again numerous times.   Mostly they had been added to, to clarify, using extra description, more precise adjectives, although, as always, the very first sentence, the one which was always the hook which lodged itself in her brain, which started the whole head-filling process, had hardly changed at all.   And starting from that first sentence, listening to the words her characters insisted on saying, putting herself in their places, remembering what had gone on before, the many and various interactions which had filled the previous four books, understanding how they felt towards each other, how they interacted, what emotions they would show, which conceal, she had arrived, unanticipated, at the last, because that was exactly what the man would say.

She pressed Ctrl and S, and then did it again, for luck, before reaching across to the wooden cup wherein lay her memory stick.   ‘Here we go again’ she thought.

[This was my response to the serendipitous four words of yesterday’s Thinking Ten prompt, read after I had done precisely this.]