One of the many problems that comes with being a fiction writer is having new ideas for stories that pop into your mind on a frequent basis. You can note them down and file them away, but a few of them keep gnawing away at you.
At present, I am editing my new novel The Fragment from The Shroud and am about a quarter of the way through, but I also have three novella ideas bubbling away. I suspect I will publish all three eventually, unless some hotshot agent with better contacts than Jeffrey Epstein taps me up and gets all of my works printed by an international publishing house for a 6-figure initial sum (Ed — dream on buddy. And is this an appropriate wisecrack to be making on this platform?).
The basic plots are as follows:
— The Suspended Fourth. I have dipped my toe in the water with this one. 163 words! It is about a guitarist (solo artist) who gets kidnapped by a madman. The ransom is simple. The guitarist must teach the madman how to play a song, then he can be set free. Satirical. Maybe.
— A story about a monk who is given permission to be a hermit by his Abbot back in the 1950s. Then a new abbot drags him out of there in the 2000s maybe. Or 2010s. The story would cover his time in his little hermit house out in the countryside somewhere and then his shock at discovering all the changes that have take place in the world and his own monastery. This might be straight down-the-line. No quips. Dark. A bit like where it will be set. In the North York Moors. Bleak, as I tell the wife and mother-in-law. They agree with me, secretly.
— A possible tragicomedy about someone who works for a super top secret government agency, that not even most of the government and their staff know about. The agency sets up things such as false flag events, to start wars. It also infiltrates and topples governments that are not aligned with its (and its masters’) plans/desires. And other such shenanigans. The story will probably run over a short time period. The protagonist will be trying to orchestrate a false flag event from some secret underground bunker. At the same time, however, his wife is calling him every so often, interrupting proceedings to talk to him about their son, who is in trouble with the police for some reason.
This final tale is one that conspiracy theorists around the world would find affinity with.
Am I a conspiracy theorist? Maybe. Maybe not. The very term is a loaded one. It lumps someone in with flat-earthers, lizard people who rule over us but are able to hide their reptilian features as they move amongst us.
What I will say is that I am naturally suspicious of a lot of things. I don’t know why (Ed — ask a psychiatrist, if you can even get one to talk to you).
In my novella Through Open Doors, Mr. Deardsley is convinced that his daughters and a social worker are plotting to get him into a care home so that he can be killed there. Is he wrong to think that? Maybe.
Conspiracies certainly exist. From the top to the bottom of our society, I would say. To conspire is to plan something secretly in order to cause harm, do something wrong or illegal, or to generally work outside the normal “rules” that we have as societies.
When I was 11, I think, I was in a fairy tight friendship group with three other boys in my school. For some reason, one day, one of the boys decided that three of us had to ditch one of our friends. We talked about it behind his back. And we hatched a plan. We stopped playing with him. We stopped talking to him. I don’t even know why we did it. That’s maybe the worst thing. I just went along with it. I feel bad about it to this day. It still causes me to feel shame. It must have been awful for our former friend. He soon made friends with other schoolchildren, but it left a very bad taste in my mouth. But I was too weak and pathetic and moronic to wake up and realise that what we were doing was wrong at the time. But I went along for the easy ride. I wanted my friends to like me. Now of course, I know that real friends don’t do that and people with a little backbone stand up for what they think is right. OK, when you’re 11 life is a little different, I get that, but it was still wrong to do what we did. We conspired against our friend and it was a disgusting thing to do. (Ed — Alright, alright, get the violins out. Not exactly the same as World War I being started by a mysterious network of freemasons who wanted to overturn European society now, is it?)
Sportsmen and women have over the years been involved in intricate doping rings, designed to give them an unfair advantage over their opponents. Many sporting events/games/tournaments have had some shady results that are probably down to some betting conspiracy. Criminal gangs, from tinpot ones, to huge Mafioso-type organisations, are conspiring all the time. Revolutionaries for the past few centuries have forever been hiding in candle-lit hovels and plotting how to topple their governments and set up their own regimes. And legitimate government agencies have spied on their enemies, infiltrated their structures and worked to steer them in what they believe is a favourable direction. I even read something recently about the CIA being involved in the JFK assassination and new evidence discrediting the Lee Harvey Oswald lone gunman thesis (Ed — sure it wasn’t the LIZARDS that transported JFK to Area 51 so that he could hang out with E.T.?)
It’s all there, out in the open. The question is, are there some nefarious plans taking place as I write that we don’t know about at all?
There could be.
As Mulder told Scully in the X-files TV show “Trust no one”.
Progress report:
Well, I’ve sort of given that to you already haven’t I? In other news, the Christmas tree was down WAY before 2nd February. I don’t want to talk about it.
Take it easy. And thanks for reading.