TW3 (remember that?)

TW3 - Friday night, allowed to stay up late despite not entirely understanding the satire of Willie Rushton, not sure whether or not David Frost was a pain and loving the husky break in Millicent Martin's voice, but knowing that this was something new and shocking.

But I'm more referring to the past week - a scratchy week of grey cold, lots of reading (a Good Thing mostly) and bloody editing.  Sometimes editing feels good, improvements flow and you know things can only get better, but last week that 'are you sure you're not overwriting, losing the freshness?' question kept asking itself.   Over both novels, which are at the same stage, despite having been begun six months or so apart.

The reading has been mixed:  three fast-paced, violent, noir, damaged hero crime novels (Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Ray Banks), all superbly written but a factor in my mild dissatisfaction with what I've written (and no I do not want to emulate but in admiring one can't help but measure).  Frances Fyfield, more thriller than crime but much more 'English', and Tessa Hadley were equally enjoyable. 
[N.B. do click on the top five book covers in  montage in the right hand column for more information]

But yesterday I joined a group called WriteWords which promises much, provided I make the effort to participate.
This week's Prediction prompts are eldritch, manse and aristocracy, with the addition of syzgy if I fancy it.   Not sure how Tao and Carrion Jack, or John Pettinger and Raptor are going to manage those (The story so far can be read on Pages, above.)

Definition - a favourite drabble

Over at John Xero's 101 Fiction today, one of my favourite Prediction pieces

Tao returns from Rhodes - latest 2 episodes

Tao thinks he may have been too hasty
Kick a corpse to life and you’ll inevitably disturb carrion.  
Tao knew this but had believed those who abhorred the trappings of authority were like to have at least a minimal grasp of underworld allegiance.
Nevertheless, introduced, with a tug at his sleeve by the fledging like-to-be-gallows-bird who’d brought him here, he questioned his own sanity in evoking the man whose name in desperation he’d used to instigate his rescue.
A man whose gaze silently persuaded him to say he carried letters he’d be willing to sell on,  before assuring, ‘No reason to be reticent here, Mathias, all is known.’

Tao meets his match
Even as Tao recalled the dagger concealed within his sleeve, the man produced and waved it: a death-dealing crucifix.
‘Think that again and ‘twill be you who die.  So long as I’ve the letters you stole in Lisbon I’ll stay reticent about your many crimes.  The Englishman in Dublin did not require them?’
‘He would not pay.’
‘Hmm, I heard he did.  Certainly, I shall not.’ 
Snake-smiling eyes watched Tao forge his features to neutrality, ‘Not, at least, until you’ve dealt with Carrion Jack.’
‘Dealt?’
’He has a thing of mine.’
‘You want it back?’
‘Not now she’s been used.’

prompt words on this week's Prediction are: 'carrion', 'sleeve',' reticent'