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Charlie's newsletter
Jun. 22nd, 2018 09:33 amToday (to be specific, the day I’m drafting this) is the longest day of the year. Have any of you been casting off all your kit and dancing round a local stone circle? Or have you kept on your woolly vests and been sensible? These questions are, of course, rhetorical. I’m off on part one of our summer holidays soon and, being a Brit, I have packed for every variation of weather short of snow. Mind you, I can remember it snowing in June 1975 so maybe I need to cater for that too!
News
I've come bearing gifts for Midsummer but only at present as an exclusive to newsletter subscribers. I'll be posting it at my free fiction page later in the year. It features Jonty and Orlando, Athens, Midsummer’s day, not to mention familiar characters from both Lessons in Desire and Lessons in Temptation with a heap of silliness thrown in. I hope you'll enjoy it.
This week is the last chance – at present – to win a framed print from the Cover? Art! exhibition (which I’ll be happy to post to anywhere in the known universe). To enter, comment here. Winner to be drawn 30th June.
Preparation for UK Meet is starting to ramp up – that’s the next event I have on my panels/book fair horizon. It’s a brilliant weekend and if you’d like to learn more about it, please feel free to pick my brains, such as they are.
I usually bung in an excerpt and this time I’m going for something clerical and unusually serious, for me. This is from Don’t Kiss the Vicar.
It had felt an abnormally long and tiring day, but maybe that was the result of having time off midweek. Thursday had just become another Monday. Steve felt shattered by the time he came home, and his hand had bothered him since mid-afternoon. He resisted the temptation to defy the nurse’s instructions and take a look at the wound; an infection was all he needed at this point.
A pile of post was on the doormat, encouragingly little of it in brown envelopes and one with a proper stamp. A Canadian one, he realised with a sinking heart. This would be Andrew, giving him an update on how great life was the other side of the pond. He could have told that from the neat hand, even if the postmark and stamp hadn’t given the game away.
He’d put it to one side, then read it later through gritted teeth. Or maybe with a gin and tonic in his hand, trying to work out whether everything Andrew said was true or if the grass wasn’t quite as green as it was being depicted. Two years since they’d spilt up; how that time had flown by. And, while it had healed some of the worst of the hurt, there were days the break-up still stabbed like a knife into his heart.
He should get over things and make a new life, like Andrew seemed to have done. People got together, they split, they moved on, so why couldn’t Steve Dexter find a new bloke? Discuss. There was an exam question to tax any mind.
He put the letter to one side, picking up a white envelope, clearly delivered by hand and with his name printed on it. Probably just an estate agent asking if he wanted to sell his “highly desirable property.” There’d been a spate of those recently. He was about to put that to one side as well, but something made him open it.
Steve,
I write confidentially, as I am concerned about you and your lifestyle.
I recently heard that you’d been in a sexual relationship with a man, although I understand he is no longer living in this country.
An invisible twenty stone lock forward head butted Steve in the solar plexus, sending him plummeting down on the sofa. He should screw the letter up right away, or run it through the shredder, rather than give whoever this sick weirdo was the satisfaction of reading the rest of his or her message. That would have been the sensible thing to do, but he couldn’t do it.
You know that it’s wrong. The Old Testament tells us it’s an abomination.
“The Old Testament frowns on plenty of stuff we all do every day, including you, Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous,” Steve said aloud. The feeling of sickness turned to anger as his hackles rose at the hypocrisy. Levitican pick and mix, we haz it.
And finally - last year hollyers. Hope the sky is as blue this time.
Charlie
News
I've come bearing gifts for Midsummer but only at present as an exclusive to newsletter subscribers. I'll be posting it at my free fiction page later in the year. It features Jonty and Orlando, Athens, Midsummer’s day, not to mention familiar characters from both Lessons in Desire and Lessons in Temptation with a heap of silliness thrown in. I hope you'll enjoy it.
This week is the last chance – at present – to win a framed print from the Cover? Art! exhibition (which I’ll be happy to post to anywhere in the known universe). To enter, comment here. Winner to be drawn 30th June.
Preparation for UK Meet is starting to ramp up – that’s the next event I have on my panels/book fair horizon. It’s a brilliant weekend and if you’d like to learn more about it, please feel free to pick my brains, such as they are.
I usually bung in an excerpt and this time I’m going for something clerical and unusually serious, for me. This is from Don’t Kiss the Vicar.
It had felt an abnormally long and tiring day, but maybe that was the result of having time off midweek. Thursday had just become another Monday. Steve felt shattered by the time he came home, and his hand had bothered him since mid-afternoon. He resisted the temptation to defy the nurse’s instructions and take a look at the wound; an infection was all he needed at this point.
A pile of post was on the doormat, encouragingly little of it in brown envelopes and one with a proper stamp. A Canadian one, he realised with a sinking heart. This would be Andrew, giving him an update on how great life was the other side of the pond. He could have told that from the neat hand, even if the postmark and stamp hadn’t given the game away.
He’d put it to one side, then read it later through gritted teeth. Or maybe with a gin and tonic in his hand, trying to work out whether everything Andrew said was true or if the grass wasn’t quite as green as it was being depicted. Two years since they’d spilt up; how that time had flown by. And, while it had healed some of the worst of the hurt, there were days the break-up still stabbed like a knife into his heart.
He should get over things and make a new life, like Andrew seemed to have done. People got together, they split, they moved on, so why couldn’t Steve Dexter find a new bloke? Discuss. There was an exam question to tax any mind.
He put the letter to one side, picking up a white envelope, clearly delivered by hand and with his name printed on it. Probably just an estate agent asking if he wanted to sell his “highly desirable property.” There’d been a spate of those recently. He was about to put that to one side as well, but something made him open it.
Steve,
I write confidentially, as I am concerned about you and your lifestyle.
I recently heard that you’d been in a sexual relationship with a man, although I understand he is no longer living in this country.
An invisible twenty stone lock forward head butted Steve in the solar plexus, sending him plummeting down on the sofa. He should screw the letter up right away, or run it through the shredder, rather than give whoever this sick weirdo was the satisfaction of reading the rest of his or her message. That would have been the sensible thing to do, but he couldn’t do it.
You know that it’s wrong. The Old Testament tells us it’s an abomination.
“The Old Testament frowns on plenty of stuff we all do every day, including you, Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous,” Steve said aloud. The feeling of sickness turned to anger as his hackles rose at the hypocrisy. Levitican pick and mix, we haz it.
And finally - last year hollyers. Hope the sky is as blue this time.
Charlie
