Novels

The Parrot Buyer was awful and contained all the errors of the typical first time writer, big words, unnecessary and inappropriate dialogue tags, passive voice, adjective pairs, excessive adverbs, showing instead of telling, no Point-of-View discipline; you name it, I did it.

However, when I finished it all those years ago, I thought I was about to become the next Greg Bear or Christopher Brookmyre. After many rejections, I realised that I had a long way to go to become a writer and, indeed, I am still on that journey, still learning, still honing my craft.

The Parrot Buyer is now safely stashed away in my basement. However, here is an excerpt, to show you what really bad writing looks like:

The sun warmed them through the windscreen, showering them in an intoxicating incandescence, a provocative buoyancy emanated from the calm of the river on their right and the assuasive green of the hills on their left.

A hill loomed between them and the power station chimney until it obscured the structure completely. The reprieve lasted only for a moment, though, until the road skirted the mound allowing the grey building to burst into full view.

The chimney was visible for miles but the main building was a sight saved for proximate travellers.  It appeared to have been constructed from a multitude of opaque glass panels which attempted to conceal a thicket of silvery grey piping.

The stabbing, sulphuric  maladour from a match nettled his nostrils and he screwed up his face, trying to focus through his watery eyes and the smoke that caused them. In the distance, about three miles further down the coast, he could see the spite of St. Columba's Parish Church, the largest church in Largs.

The girls had fallen silent, only breaking their quiescence to comment on the houses that now separated the road from the hill on their left. There was no malice in their voices, only a suspicious reverence. The type of people that probably lived in these abodes were alien to all of them.

He remembered the trip that he, Peter and Patrick had taken to Largs on their bikes. Now that was a story worth telling.

"Peter?" Peter climbed out of what looked like abyssal thoughts and looked at Samuel. "Do you remember that day we cycled to Largs?"

Peter grinned. "The one where Patrick............?" Samu7el nodded and cocked his head towards the rear. is friend sat up and, again, twisted around in his seat.

"You know Patrick, Jennifer?" Jen and Nicola dragged their advertance away from the Largs suburbia and looked at Peter. Jennifer nodded.

"Well, me and Sam and him cycled down here one day when we were about fifteen and hired out one of those wee motor boats."

"You know the wee wooden putt-putt ones that go about one mile an hour?" asked Sam into the rear view mirror. He saw Nicola nod.

They were now driving along Largs' front and Peter peered out into the river.

"See that buoy? The big black one," he asked. Everyone looked to their right and Samuel nearly drove into a lamp post.

"We steered the boat right up to that and dared Pat to write his name on it," laughed Peter.

"It's got a dead narrow ledge around it and metal handhold things," clarified Samuel.

"So while Patrick was clinging onto this thing with one hand and scraping his name with the other, we sailed the boat away!" The girls gave a slight look of shock and then smiled wickedly.

"It was dead funny," chortled Samuel. "He's hangin' on while the buoy's bobbin' around in the water and we're about a hundred yards away shoutin' abuse at him."

"You didn't leave him there, did you?" asked Nicola. Both boys burst into laughter.

"We were just about to go and pick him up," said Samuel between laughs, "and the engine packed in!" Now everyone in the car was laughing at the obvious implication.

"A guy came out from the shore in another boat to start the engine and Patrick had to shuffle around to the other side of the buoy and hide until he was gone. The guy didn't even notice that three guys had hired the boat and now there were only two," said Peter.

"He told us to go straight back to shore and the first thing we did was to sail out to the buoy to collect Patrick."

The road had taken them away from the waterfront and Samuel turned right into a cul-de-sac behind the bus station and parked the car. They walked awkwardly towards the pub, no one quite sure where they should position themselves. Samuel sidled up to Nicola as subtly as he could but kept a discourse open with Peter and Jennifer and was glad to escape to the bar when they entered the pub.

They found a seat and chatted for an hour before adjourning upstairs to the disco.

Samuel stayed on Cokes while everyone else got progressively drunker but Nicola proved to be good company. They chatted freely enough and danced regularly and Samuel discovered, to his surprise, that he was actually enjoying his blind-date.

Jennifer didn't dance once. In fact, she hardly drank either. As the evening progressed, the quieter she became, resisting Peter's and Samuel's requests t accompany them onto the dance floor.

A visit to the toilet allowed Samuel to reassess his opinion of Nicola. As he did, Peter joined him at a neighbouring urinal.

"So, what do you think?" he asked, clumsily unbuttoning his trousers.

"I don't know," answered Samuel. "She's kinda nice."

"She doesn't want to see you again," announced Peter.

 "What? How do you know that?" Samuel's voice was slightly wobbly from the shake rather than any emotion.

"She told Jennifer and Jennifer told me. She says you're nice but she doesny really fancy you."

Samuel frowned and wrenched his zip up. "Well, that's okay cos I don't fancy her either. She's a bit too fat for me." He thought for a moment and a sportive grin appeared. "I'm still going to try for my hole, though," he whispered into Peter's ear and returned to his date.

Paying for It, on the other hand, is the result of many hours spent writing, reviewing and re-writing. I've received criticism and advice from other aspiring writers, a few editors, agents and one published, successful author acquaintance who's input has had the greatest effect on how I view both my own writing abilities and my weaknesses.

So, here, I also offer an excerpt from Paying for It. I hope you can see the difference.

"Christ!" said Liz. "What happened to you?"

Nathalie hobbled past her into the living room and executed a controlled fall backwards onto the couch. 

Liz sat gingerly on the other end and examined Nat as if she was inspecting a car for damage after an accident. "Jesus, look at the state of you. I'm phoning an ambulance."

"What, you think somebody attacked me with a roll of gauze? I've already been to Casualty," said Nathalie with a violent gesture towards the neat bandage around her thigh. She looked down at her legs, one wrapped in white bandage, the other in black nylon, and at the expansive blood stains on her clothes. Liz's reaction was understandable. Nat pulled a little cracked mirror in a pink frame out of her bag and held it close to the dark punch-blusher bruise and runaway mascara on her face. Sure enough, she had achieved the 'battered whore' look. Alice Cooper with a fanny.

Liz diverted from the phone to the cold glow of the electric fire's fake embers without any loss of urgency. She switched on one of the two dark bars and returned to Nat's side.

"What happened to you?" she asked again, softer this time.

Nathalie lowered the mirror to her good lap; the black lap.

"Stanley knife," she said over the irregular crackling of the electric bar.

The gravity of Nat's words lifted Liz's hand to her mouth. 

"Did you go back out? Was it a punter?"

Nat didn't want to talk about herself. "No. It's nothing. Doesn't matter."

"What? You turn up on my doorstep in the middle of the night with a stabbed leg and seven shades of shite knocked out of you and then tell me it doesn't matter!" Liz sat back and tied her bony arms in a knot across her chest. "So what happens now? Do we have a cup of tea and talk about the weather?"

"It's pissing down." The bar in the fire teased with a matt cherry undertone and Nat, transfixed by its slow change also folded her arms and hunched against a sudden chill. 

Liz scowled. "Were you out with her?"

"Her." Nat surprised herself by smiling, only briefly. "No. No, I wasn't out with her."

"You look cold. I'll put the kettle on."

Liz disappeared into the kitchen and Nat returned her attention to the electric fire. The bar radiated heat but, in the orange glow, the second bar lay neglected by Liz's frugality, a lifeless sibling.

Nat thought of Bernie, a cold shell discarded in the rubble of her assault. Their relationship had been brief but yet so strong, their companionship building a mutual resilience against the psychological scolds of their profession. As far as she could tell, Nat had been Bernie's only friend. She had never spoken of other acquaintances and when Nat had asked her about family, she'd always made some daft joke by way of diversion. She'd once mentioned her father but refused to elaborate beyond 'a retarded person mentally equal or inferior to a child two years old'; she really loved that little dictionary.

Even Liz hadn't been willing to show her kindness, preferring instead to hide behind sarcasm and derision, most of which was beyond Bernie's intellect. Since that first night, when Nat had given Bernie a ten minute apprenticeship in prostitution and, in the process, cemented their friendship, Liz had disapproved, even though Nat had been careful not to let the friendship infringe on their working relationship. Bernie had lived by her own means and always staunchly refused any financial help. All she ever wanted Nat to be was a friend.

Nat needed to tell someone about the young girl, lying dead in a dingy flat in Glasgow. She needed to tell Liz because Liz was the only other person who had known Bernie. She wasn't expecting sympathy but hoped to find some solace.

Liz returned with two mugs, handed one to Nat and then chose the detachment of one of the single seats.

"She's dead," said Nat.

"Who?"

Nat's grip tightened on the hot mug. "She is dead."

Liz's face sagged in one smooth movement and her mouth fell into a gape. 

"Bernadette dead," she said and Nat was perplexed by her tone, not questioning as if in need of confirmation or even mockingly sceptical in true Liz-style but flatter, not like her at all. It was surprisingly solemn but there was something else there, the slightest resonance of inevitability.

Liz lifted her mug, sipped quickly, and lowered it. She repeated this a number of times. Nat wondered if her pallid reaction was honest shock or a mask to hide her apathy.

"You must be devastated," she said finally, moving back to her original position on the sofa. "Tell me what happened."

Nat relayed the night's events, monotone, from the moment she found Bernie's body to her arrival at Liz's door. "The hospital said I should stay with someone tonight. Didn't want to be on my own, anyway."

Liz shook her head with tiny, nervous jerks. "But why did you do this to your leg?"

"I helped kill her."

"How can you say that? You were the best friend she ever had. You did everything for that wee lassie."

"If she'd never met me she would be alive now."  

"Well, maybe. I did try to warn you about her."

Nat's voice deepened. "You did, didn't you?"

"But I still don't understand why you had to go and do this," said Liz, glancing down at the bandage. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that my best friend in the world has been beaten to death by some prick, probably because she wasn't willing to sell her dignity along with her body or maybe because he couldn't get it up. I was thinking that her death is a total waste and the people responsible have to be punished. I was thinking that I've damned myself into this and deserve the punishment." Nat patted her lap and they both winced. "This is nothing compared to the pain she must have felt."

"So do you feel better now, mutilating yourself?"

"This isn't a headache. I'm not absolved! Do you think I can just carry on as normal?"

Liz put a hand on Nat's shoulder. "You need to carry on. You can't grieve forever."

"Where did you get that, out of an episode of Howard's Way? What's next, you tell me she would have wanted me to get on with my life? What do you know, you patronising cow, you despised her!"

Liz's smile lost its compassion and she moved her hand from Nat's shoulder to the nape of her neck. "Okay, if you'd rather feel pain, that's fine." She snatched a fistful of hair and twisted it tight in her hand. Nat thrust her lower jaw forward and hissed air through her nostrils but made no effort to release herself. "How's this?"

Nat's head nodded against Liz's trembling grip. "That's it, jealous bitch. Now you understand."

Liz softened her grip and stroked Nat's chaotic hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I don't know why I did that."

"I deserved it."

"Don't talk like that. Look, we'll get through this, you and me."

Nat pulled her head away from Liz's strokes. "She was my friend."

 "You've still got me. We're still partners," said Liz. It was almost a question.

"I want that bastard to feel pain," said Nat, eyes straining sideways at her partner.

Liz sighed. "You'll never find him."

"The police will, but."

"In a perfect world."

"It'll never be a perfect world," said Nat.