Author: simondgary

The extract below is from the opening of my current work-in-progress, which is tentatively entitled “The Winchester Carver.”

It tells the story of Crispin, a frankly hopeless young fisherman, who has an extraordinary talent for carving. The book recounts the tale of his journey, arrival, and subsequent work at the construction site of Winchester Cathedral.

I find the histories of the forgotten artisans have endless possibilities, don’t you? This is the start of my attempt, anyway. Onwards and upwards to draft three!

The boats lounged idly across the mudflats and, propped on their wooden elbows, cast creeping shadows over the pools that the absent tide had forgotten to reclaim.

Along the shoreline, in gawking pockets, huddled gaggles of geese, satisfied with their daily work. Wide-eyed with disdain, they glared at the undignified gulls that squawked and whooped with every dive. In the splishing of a white flash, the excitable feathered screechers plunged to pick off a careless crab or skating beastie of the meniscus.

But it was a blend of the drying mud, seaweed and salt that drifted on the shiftless air. It was that unmistakable aroma of a scape where land meets sea, but to the fisherman perched above on the grass banks, it was wholly unremarkable. They thought that the whole world smelled this way.

Alert yet flattening down the reeds, the men sat amid the toil of their ancient craft – most in a bed of nets, with a few engaged in other practical tasks.

“What are you taking home for tea, Bill?”

“Fish. You?”

“Ah, fish.”

The gentlemen nodded to one another and returned to their toil.

“I’ve just about had enough of fixing this net,” exclaimed Griff, drawing the thick net needle through his beard.

“Get the boy to do it.”

“Him?”

Crispin, whose gaze was now lifted from his work, brought it to rest on the back of his forebear, ears of the son now bent to the words of the father.

“He’s no fisherman, Bill. He goes green about the gills no sooner than he sits in the bows. Even in the calmest of seas. I just can’t fathom it.”

“Tis unfathomable, Griff.”

“I mean, I am a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, my father’s father was a fisherman. My father’s father even fished with Valbert.”

“Ah, Valbert! Now, there was a fisherman true.”

Crispin, words catching on the breeze of the upper bank, muttered under his breath, “The fish jumped in his boat.” Downbank, his father, continued with his harangue.

“They say the fish leapt into his boat of their own volition! He near enchanted them into his bag.”

“Ah, tis so.”

“May his legend be cherished,” said Griff. “And unsullied by unsuitable beginners.”

Crispin returned his attention to toil, the small blade removing a tiny morsel of wood that fluttered moth-like to the wind. It was done. Speaking no word and with silent steps, he crept forward and placed the trinket on the grass, upon which festooned his father’s nets. He did not wait but continued to walk away.

“What is this boy?”

“A charm. For good fortune. For the craft. May the fish leap into our boat.

The succulent ox meat had been a delicious repast that sat warm in the belly. At my behest, the shoulder blade had been etched, scored, and placed back into the fire.

The smoke of the flame and the long clay pipes coiled around the festoons of the tent, glowing red as the dusk fell. Scorching, the bone emitted loud, angry cracks, followed by seething hisses, as fissures began to form on the surface.

At a glance from the soothsayer, a helper, much in a similar state to the rest of us, crawled forward in Mongolian garb, tongs in hand, and, with a toothless grin, pulled the bone from the fire, placing it in a battered brass tray at the crossed feet of the diviner.

She was as ancient as the songs, a nomadic matriarch who had long followed the herd over snowscape and sky trail. Her hair, grey and thin, swayed like an anemone on a sea current, searching the blue-grey ether for the answer to her riddles.

Pearlescent eyes dipped and began to read the portents that the heat had drawn from behind the veil. My batman and I, lids drooping, both supped upon their noxious brew as the fortune-teller’s thin leathery skin was pulled taut, becoming almost translucent against a glowing skull.

“Ükhel!” she shrieked. “Ükhel! Ükhel!”

“What did she say?” I shouted, springing to my feet and grasping the aide by trembling shoulders. But I knew. Since being posted to that forsaken land, I had heard the word death on many occasions. Death was part of the quotidian rhythm of things, almost accepted, but today was not to be mine.

Drawing my service revolver, I fulfilled the prophecy. Their lifeless bodies still haunt me, pray that this is my dying confession. I beg that forgiveness is mine.

The flash fiction that you are about to read is an elongated and reworked version of an even shorter tale I wrote a couple of years ago. I suspect I am trying to channel my inner “Inside No. 9” persona here – but see what you think. I give you “Ice Road to Houdan.”

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The road that tied Houdan to Faverolles often became impassable in the stony depths of winter.

It was especially so in the bitter months which called close on the year of 1867, and the children that slid between the two settlements, skimming to chattering rest, had decorated the treacherous land with rows of silent bonhommes des neige.

To walk past them at midnight, after a liberal libation of Pernod, was a thing plus troublant. All of the villagers commented upon it. The twelve sentinels. They appeared to loom over one with a menace that could send you toppling into the drift, drunk or no. The legend soon spread. La douzaine du diable.

There were those who refused to walk along that way after dark, claiming an evil had befallen the villages, and the icy creatures were somehow cursed, but such tales did not worry Old Patrice.

An elder of Faverolles, his favourite haunt was a café a few miles northeast of home, and it was his habit to walk there on a Saturday and spend the Sabbath in blissful recovery.

It was a Sunday that I passed back the other way, one early fresh snow-kissed morn. Treize. A thirteenth ice sculpture had joined its brethren, a coven with a new, demonic leader. The latest eerie creation was especially large, with a plump body packed hard by the cackling, breathy slaps of the nocturnal children.

As I passed, three ice-footed hens, white, speckled, and cluck flapping in their hunger and wide-eyed ire, pecked around the feet, seeking some rare and frozen prize below.

It took perhaps a week for the villagers to notice Old Patrice was missing, but it was nearer spring before they discovered the true horror of what happened to him, unthawed even as they lowered him to rest.

It has been a while since I posted on this blog.

My intention has always been to be a diligent blogger, posting weekly with new and interesting content, but this is not always possible, and I deeply admire those who manage to stick to this type of schedule!

However, I can share some news today that will at least serve as my note of excuse over the coming months!

I have a new work in progress.

This new novel will be a little like “Gone to the Dogs” and its prequel, “Thryke: The Man that Nobody Knew,” in as much as it will have both humorous and satirical elements – but there is one fundamental departure. While both of the aforementioned titles are set in the 20th century, my new work finds itself birthed in Medieval England.

I’m only just working out what this means in terms of the language and devices that I can employ because many of the turns of phrase that I would naturally write, particularly within dialogue, just would not have existed at the time!

My main character, Crispin, a young carver, comes from a village that the rest of Norman England has seemingly forgotten. This gives me an interesting tool, as I can exploit holes in his knowledge for comic effect. Is it possible he would not even know what a King was? If he did, he would definitely not know what the King looked like. This sort of loophole could easily be used to gently mock our modern age of celebrity.

I also like the idea of a carver – seeing the image that is already in the wood or simply chipping away to see what emerges.

I say that because I have no idea how this work will resolve itself.

I must admit, writer friends, that since I finished “Thryke”, I have been waiting for the next idea to emerge in a clash of cymbals, perfect and fully-formed. A couple of years on, and guess what, nothing happened! So when a kernel of an idea came into mind a month or two ago, I took the decision to go with it – even if I had no real idea of direction.

And this is where I find myself today.

I think I will post semi-regular updates here – if only as a sounding board for my own thoughts – but I would also love you to get involved via the comments section with your own views, experiences, and observations.

In the meantime, I have work to do, so toodles!

A recent trip to Cornwall was just what was needed to charge the batteries, both physically and creatively.

Cornwall, as you may know, is endlessly evocative, and stories hum along its rugged coastline – waiting to be caught in a salty breeze. Below is one such attempt. I hope you enjoy.

Timidly descending the worker-worn steps into the murk, the buoys are painted grey by twilight.

In boots and waterproofs, Billy Holroyd heads through the clanking masts towards the bow of The Minack Player, the beloved family boat. He hoists his bag upon his shoulder and, hunching, drags his father’s cap over his eyes.

Hurdling ropes and chains with skill, only the knot in his stomach tells of the nervousness felt upon his first solo voyage. As father cannot earn the rent from his sick bed, the responsibility must fall upon Billy. There will be food on the table this coming night.

The engine rolls, rumbles and bubbles into life as ropes are flicked clear in serpiginous signatures of spray.

Slowly and with tongue-straining care, Billy edges the faithful vessel out into the harbour, chugging through the breakers and rolling out onto the dark of the brooding sea.

When the storm had abated and feeling a little better, Mr Holroyd, skipper of The Minack Player, wanders down to the portside to clear his lungs. The fleet, those vessels of his wily friends, are bobbing in the harbour. None had ventured forth that morning.

Saluting fellows fixing their pots, Holroyd bumbles past, hand trailing on the railing. He almost doesn’t recognise that The Player is absent until he has stared into its berth for a good ten minutes.

Holroyd dashes down the stone stair onto the pier, scratching his head and waving at the gap with disbelieving swirls.

“Alright, Jim?” asks red-bearded Tucker, coiling rope onto his arm.

“The Player? Have you seen The Player?”

Tucker shrugs and draws deeply on his final embers.

Holroyd turns quayward – wondering if his boat had somehow been spirited up into the fish market, but Billy’s bicycle chained to the lamp-post was all he could see.

Like many, I have recently been drawn into the world of Wordle, or the Wordle World, if you will. I started to see the game title popping up on my Facebook page, and, as I am rarely the first to find out about anything, I let it pass on.

Then I heard about the game in connection with the New York Times. Again, as something of a Luddite, I failed to investigate the phenomenon further – although the inventor was now something approaching a squillionaire, enabled to see across all space and time. All I could imagine was all the great inventions that I had undoubtedly thought up first, that somebody else got to market before me. These inventions include the MP3 player, peer to peer betting sites, and, I am pretty sure, the internal combustion engine.

When my nieces appeared with the games on their phones, I relented and began to look at what the Wordle Phenomenon was about. Determined that it should not become another “Homescapes”, I decided that it would not draw me in too deeply.

With that in mind, here is my contribution to opening gameplay and theory.

The art of winning at Wordle is not finding what the answer is, but finding what it is not. It can be seen as a series of experiments designed to test an evolving hypothesis about what letters are in the word and which position they occupy.

For the uninitiated, here is an overview of the rules of engagement.

Your task is to guess a random five-lettered word. If you remember the board game Mastermind, it is a bit like that, but with fewer coloured pegs to go up the hoover.

The first step is to type in a starting word. It can be anything and, if you are lucky, you will guess right first time once in a millennia. If this does occur, you do not suddenly have the gift; it was probably just the app feeling sorry for you, so don’t give up your day job to become a stage psychic.

This phenomenon has happened to me once, and still, the queue for readings, blessings and exorcisms extends halfway around the block. Whilst I accept the outpouring of adoration, the wizard’s hat is still a bit much.

But most of the time, you will be wrong – it is just a question of by how far.

If all of the letters in your guess remain grey, none of them appears in the solution. But this is still valuable data, as you now have a lot more idea about what the word is not – that is unless you opened with something like XYLEM, in which case your friends think you make life unreasonably tricky for yourself.

If any letters turn orange, you know they are in the word but are not currently in the correct position. This is excellent data, but not as cool as if they go green. In this case, the letter is correct and is in the right place.

Is it making sense? I hope so because I’m not typing it again.

A note on annotation.

In order to increase the notion of complexity and, therefore, the illusion of intellectual rigour, we will be applying the standard annotation of the Tirana Protocol. While the fashion seems to be favouring the Sao Paulo School, I have always felt the Tirana standardisation offered more in the way of veiling. Heaven forbid that we should use the actual colours, as described above. I think the following offers greater clarity and breadth of overall expression:

(YY): Letter correct and in the right place (Green in the colour system.)

(YN): Letter correct, but in the wrong place (Amber in the colour system.)

(N): Letter incorrect (Grey in the colour system.)

(N?): Come on, it was never going to be that.

(??): What were you thinking?

(*?): Lose all knowledge of English, and doubt everything you ever knew.

So, schoolboy probability tells me that there must be an optimum starting word containing all of the five most-used letters in the English language. I went online to find out what these letters might be, only to be confronted by a list of ten.

Here are the top ten, in order: E T A O I N S R H L D

From this, I derive my opening word – which is STARE. If I play this consistently, I will be right first time once every 28.73 years.

Let’s begin a game, which I  will be playing live.

Attempt 1: STARE

Result 1: S(N); T(N); A(YN); R(N); E(N).

Well, this is heinous – no S, T, R, or E? What manner of witchcraft is this? I’d really like to try some other vowels, plus some of the other common consonants. I also need to re-position the A. Ah! I have an idea.

Attempt 2: AMINO

Result 2: A(YN); M(N); I(YN); N(N); O(N) (*?)

From here, I am struggling a bit. I want to try CHAIR or CHAIN, but I know the A doesn’t go there, and there is no N or R. I am willing to “burn” a turn to check for the presence of the CH. I have a think.

(A “burn” is a turn that you know is wrong – but you’re just looking the do something, anything!)

I decide to “burn”, knowing there is no S, but I’m trying to test other letters and pin down the position of the A and I combo.

Attempt 3: BASIC

Result 3: B(N); A(YN); S(N); I(YN); C(N) (**??)

I’m thinking this must be a very obscure word, only used in remote, English-speaking areas of Patagonia. However, I know that the A occupies one of the last two positions.

I begin substitution. Substitution is when you blindly substitute in every letter left on your keyboard with the hope of uncovering something. Hope being the operative term. I’m hoping to find a word that has A in position 4 and I in position 2 – all without using letters I know are wrong.

Nevertheless – in desperation, I try a test/burn combo again.

Attempt 4: FINAL

Result 4: F(N); I(YY); N(N); A(YN); L(N)

Still not great, but this is what we know – our quarry looks like _I_ _ A. And here, all my previous knowledge of the language breaks down. I revert to substitution. Simultaneously, I wonder if the two middle spaces are a double-letter.

And that’s it! But surely Wordle would not be evil enough to roll out a double z? I test for it.

Attempt 5: PIZZA

Result 5: P(YY); I(YY); Z(YY); Z(YY); A(YY). – Winner!

Pizza? Pizza? Pizza? Are you having a chuckle? One Z would be bad enough, but two? Next to each other?

I slope away, silently fuming. While I am victorious, I feel it was only a pyrrhic victory. But I know I will be back later, battling the letter, permutations and combinations.

But this is the life of the Wordleist – tough, unrelenting, and ultimately made up of a series of fiver-lettered words, even if some of them are relatively obscuring. Perhaps my new opening word should be ZINGY. I don’t know.

Don’t say you were not warned. Toodles and happy grappling. At least I know what I don’t want for tea.

If you’re familiar with me from one persona, welcome to my other online presence! For the first time, I am writing a piece of content that will appear simultaneously on both my fiction author and business improvement professional websites. It feels like an exciting experiment – so let’s see how it works out! I hope you enjoy the below.

Occasionally, in online spaces, such as Twitter, someone will ask about audiobooks. The query might be framed similarly to the following:

“Does it count as reading a book if you listen to it as an audio piece?”

I have to say that it is an interesting question and one that I would like to think about across the span of both my blogs.

The first problematic term is, of course, “read.” I think that we can get around this one quite easily. In the past, “reading” the book was the only way to extract the author’s intent so that you could find the space to ponder it.

Because, depending on what you are reading, the experience comes to life in the space between reading sessions. This is where you genuinely internalise the work. So, firstly, if we argue that a book is enhanced through the act of thought between exposures, does it matter in what format those exposures are?

In this multi-media age, perhaps it would be more accurate to ask, “Does it matter how I experience a piece of content?” But this question is still wanting because it only conveys half of the relevant information. The piece that is missing is one of intent.

So let’s look, in turn, from the different intents that I have experienced.

In my professional life, I am constantly looking to learn about improvement and how people interact with progress. However, if I am truthful, I do sometimes find it challenging to find the time to sit down and read. In this event, the ability to leverage my commute to and from work by listening to an audiobook presents a golden opportunity. In this case, I intend to gain knowledge and understanding. We will return to the question of whether this is an effective strategy shortly.

Back during lockdown, I became quite nostalgic for some of the books I had read during my childhood. I was much more of an active reader back then and am old enough not to have had my golden years interrupted by the pull of a games console. On the days when we weren’t at the park, playing football from dawn til dusk, my mind was more often inside something like “The Lord of the Rings” or similar.

One author that had a huge impact on me was the remarkable Roald Dahl. People just don’t seem to live lives like his anymore. He was a fighter pilot, spy, inventor, and beloved author. As a teenager, I pored over stories like “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and the darker yarns in “The Tales of the Unexpected.” To my delight, I was also given a relatively thin tome, called simply “Roald Dahl”, written by Chris Powling. I devoured it – learning about the extraordinary life of one of my heroes. Even while writing this, I found it on the shelf behind me and flicked through the foxing pages. It is still a great treasure to me.

But back to the article in hand.

One of Dahl’s novels that always haunted me was “Danny, the Champion of the World”, published in 1975. For me, it is just beautiful and evocative. The reds, golds, and greens of the woodland seep into every page. Colour, aroma, texture and feeling is everywhere. I wish I could write something close, and it was very much in mind when I wrote the childhood scenes in my second novel, “Thryke: The Man That Nobody Knew.”

Isolated from the world, I wanted to see if I could recapture the magic. I downloaded the audiobook, and over the following evenings, I delighted in listening as a form of bedtime story. I will not lie; I loved every second. In interacting with this audiobook, my intent was escapism, entertainment, and nostalgia. The audio version of the novel adequately achieved all of these things, as I could just close my eyes and let the words flow through me.

But, one intentional aspect that was missing from my reacquaintance with “Danny, the Champion of the World” was understanding. Had I been listening to a complex murder mystery, my need for understanding would have undoubtedly been greater. This is one area where the physical book has a considerable advantage over its audio cousin. Books, whether on paper or e-reader, are much easier to review. It is easy to forget just how much we do skip back in the process of reading any document or piece of work, particularly when the level of complexity of the material is high.

This draws back into focus the question I asked about listening to professional or fact-dense texts. How much of it am I really taking in? Alternatively, we could ask, how much do we take in when reading? My understanding of the Pareto principle would lead me to assume it is roughly 20%. Perhaps this is why some textbooks repeat, add, and draw a series of upturned cones around a few central themes? Review loops are built in to address the fact that many of us don’t quite get things the first time around. I would certainly put myself in that group.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that audiobooks are a very important medium. And let’s be clear, they are not new. It is just that today I do not need to carry around a box of cassette tapes or compact discs. Maybe I have to consider that there is an element of nostalgia colouring how I am thinking about this. I love books.

When studying English Literature in college, I recall that we were actively encouraged to mark important passages in pencil so that we might refer to them later. I was horrified! To me, the paper book was sacrosanct! One simply could not mark it in any way. I still regard books with a similar level of piety. The thought of throwing one away upsets me, and the idea of buying one pleases me. The impact on the number of books that I own should be obvious. Secretly, I think it drives my partner to despair.

But before we close, let’s consider one more aspect where we can champion the audiobook. I have authored books in both fiction and non-fiction and have also produced audio material in both genres, some of which can be found on YouTube.

Audiobooks are very adept at revealing a pleasing cadence and texture in delivery. Not only, I would argue, do they make us better writers, but they also make us better presenters. If we, too, in both our spoken and written word, can better modulate with more attractive colour and timbre, our messages can become much more emotive and memorable.

In this sense, audio texts can help calibrate our ear, helping us to write and speak musically. Sometimes it is not what is written or said but how it is delivered. In this way, as content consumers, our experience of the media is enhanced, and we are more closely aligned to our intent, whether that be learning, understanding, or just sheer joy.

So, in drawing these threads together, I am sure that the audiobook can be impactful, in much the same way as reading the same material can be. True, it is more difficult to go back and review, but I wonder if we lose much of the subtlety anyway. Maybe the optimum learning mix is to listen to the audio and follow in the book simultaneously – but this buffers us up against the remainder of our senses. The fullest experiences engage all of our senses, touch and smell included. This is why we learn best by doing. Book learning is great, but exposure out in the world is exquisite. No, perhaps in this way, the audiobook is best when we just want to switch the world off for a bit and escape into a reality of someone else’s creation. Here, the audiobook has that other distinct advantage. We can close our eyes and give our imaginations full rein, at least for a while.

Now that is something that we all need, isn’t it?

For a man that runs a website called www.simongaryauthor.com, I’ve done precious little writing lately.

In fact, I haven’t written for a while.

In a sense, this post is something of a self-rollicking, a public kick up the bum designed to drive myself to some sort of action. Action is, after all, the one thing that defines writing. Very few of the great novels have miraculously written themselves to the best of my knowledge.

I have self-published two novels. First came “Gone to the Dogs,” a black comedy telling the story of a fictional sitcom. At the time, I was pretty pleased with it. The novel used the same monologue style as one of my favourite works, “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not fit to sweep up Faulkner’s pencil shavings, but the idea of gradually revealing a story through the reported reminiscences of different characters has always appealed. “Gone to the Dogs” was both my homage and, I hope, reasonable attempt.

I followed this up, around two years later, with “Thryke – The Man that Nobody Knew.” This book was essentially a prequel to “Gone to the Dogs.” Cornelius Thryke was my portrait of one of those actors who found real success late in life, perhaps in the style of an Arthur Lowe, who found fame in “Coronation Street” and the much-loved “Dad’s Army.”

It was the pomposity that Lowe so wonderfully brought to the role of Captain Mainwaring that I imbued Cornelius Thryke in “Gone to the Dogs.” But in the follow-up, I found myself wanting to explain how he got that way, and the result is a book of which I am proud. Some passages, in particular, where you can sense were written in a state of flow.

So, having finished these two projects, I sat back for a bit. My new desire was to write a book that would define me, the one that would allow me to break through, hopefully into traditional publishing. With a couple of novels under my belt, I felt sure that my subsequent work would represent another progression – and a noticeable improvement on its predecessors. All I needed was an idea – and I wanted that idea to arrive fully formed and perfect.

Only it didn’t.

No idea came. I stopped being a writer.

Let’s change the angle of the story for a bit. In m real life – my non-writery one – I am a student of lean manufacturing and business methods. I still have a lot to learn in this field, so my spare-time reading is primarily based on technical books by other lean teachers. However, as my understanding has deepened, I have moved away from learning about continuous improvement techniques and become very interested in people.

I have read several books dealing with psychology and the working of the human mind. I always find them fascinating and humbling at the same time. It’s quite cathartic to realise that your mind is no different from anyone else’s, however much we writers doth protest otherwise.

One thing that I have also recently got back into is leveraging my morning commute by listening to audiobooks. My journeys to and from work offer almost two hours a day when I could be learning something useful. One audiobook that I have recently finished is “Black Box Thinking” by Matthew Syed. In it, he reacquainted me with an idea that I am certainly familiar with via my professional life – the concept of the lean start-up. In essence, the approach is simple. Try something, fail fast, learn fast, and adapt. I use this approach a lot in my working life, but for some reason, I had, until now, not made the connection to my writing hobby.

But what is that connection? It strikes me that I should stop waiting for the perfect idea to arrive but should attempt the “million monkeys, million typewriters” approach.

I should just write.

I guess it is something akin to going to the gym. If you don’t exercise, you won’t make any gains and get stronger. Similarly, if you don’t write, you won’t make the neural connections and come up with the start of something. It seems to make sense, doesn’t it?

So that is what I am going to do. I will reduce the level of random variation down to finite levels by writing about themes where I have an interest. One of these themes is luck. In a world of seven billion people, normal distribution tells me there must be a small handful of supernaturally lucky people. What would their lives be like? Would tragedy necessarily counter and balance the joy?

So there is the idea. Write regularly, build up my concept connecting fitness, and see what pops out at the other end. No more waiting for the idea that may not come. I’m off into the long grass with a pointy stick and a pith helmet to go and find it.

Watch this space – I may well report back my progress here. Wish me luck. Toodles!