ANARII IMAGE BOARD

Sites, descriptions etc - faces are 'types' not the actual people.

 

ANARII

ANARII

A SAMPLER:

The cave closed itself about him like a womb of cold stone, the colour of molasses. Somewhere, water dripped steadily.  In the dark, he touched the damp rock and recoiled, fumbling in his jacket for the torch. Gingerly, he began to edge forward, up the steep path illuminated by the small beam of light. He should have called out to Williams to let him know that someone was coming. Poor Williams, alone in the cave when the generator failed. He paused, listening, hoping to hear a voice, a cough, a sign that Williams was somewhere ahead of him. The cave was silent.

‘Williams, it's Dodd. Where are you? Come on Williams, stop messing about, where are you?’ 

He waited but only the faint echo of his own voice answered him. Slowly, he felt his way along the narrowing edge until he reached the gallery. The place stretched out to gloomy darkness at the farthest end. Out of that darkness, two great eyes regarded him with cold detachment. He gasped, then shook his head at his own stupidity. It was the painting, just the cave painting, now partially uncovered. How quickly the rational man disintegrates when faced with the darkness of a cave, especially this cave.

Something else caught the light of the torch, near the very edge of the gallery, where it dropped away fifty feet to the lower cave. It was Williams' Nikon, lying on its side without the lens cap. Fragments of ledge crumbled under him dust rising to settle on his trousers as he knelt cautiously beside it. Even before he shone the torch downwards, he suspected, he dreaded what he would see there. Williams' body was sprawled awkwardly on the cave floor where he had fallen when the lights went out.

Poor devil, and all to get a few more shots of the wall painting. Dodd began to retrace his way back to the lower level, hoping to find the photographer alive but unconscious. Suddenly, the hair on the back of his neck prickled. He stopped. 

Someone was in the gallery. He could sense them, almost feel their breath on his back. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He listened, but the only sound was the water dripping softly, a sleeper’s heartbeat, Williams had once called it.  He felt eyes watching him, cold, unfriendly eyes, coming out towards him from that clammy gloom. Malevolence was creeping towards him lifting dust motes in his torch beam. 

All thoughts of Williams left him. In panic, he dropped the camera and broke into a run. The uneven ground made him stumble and once, he almost joined Williams down below.  Somehow, he reached the iron grill at the cave entrance, throwing himself at it. 

It held firm, locked from the outside with the key gone. Behind him, in the darkness of the cave, came the sound of crumbling rock and the distant pounding of water.

 

THE PEAK DISTRICT

 At the request of one of my Twitter buddies, here is a map of the Peak District. It straddles four counties and has some of the best scenery in the country.

FEBRUARY ALREADY

SCATTERING - REVAMP

I can't believe we've already gobbled up January and today, on Valentine's Day, (well, it is in Australia) this is the first time I've opened my blog since December.

That's probably because I have been doing a lot of editing, a whole book's worth of editing. 

I felt something was wrong with 'Scattering' but it took SuperEd to realise why I was struggling. The first book in the trilogy, 'Harrowing' was written completely from my MC, Lexi's point of view. That worked fairly well when most of the action took place around her but 'Scattering' needed to encompass action in several locations.

Lexi was inevitably doing a lot of 'telling' and usually after the fact, often retold from people had been there. Added to that, I was 'filling in' with events at the farm, and not too interesting events either. The story was getting lost.

So, with one eye on how I would take it, SuperEd suggested that I rewrite the book in third person, adding the events being experienced by those who were actually there. This also gave me more scope to examine their emotions, showing their reactions and tightening up everything.

A month later and it's done! now it's waiting for SuperEd to check it out. I'm sure there will be rewrites but I am happier with the result. It also gives another dimension to the title. No only does it refer to the next stage in the growing/farming process but the focus is spread, scattered in several locations.