Writing tips

The plot thickens

Choosing a
literary agent

Query letters

Inspire me!

But they rejected me!

Manuscript critique

5 minute fiction fix

Proof reading

Crème de la Crime

An interview with
Zoë Sharp

An interview with
Darley Anderson

Back to the top

Home

Sample 3  

Sample 1         Sample 2         Sample 4         Sample 5

EXIT POINT
 

I wrote this novel a couple of years ago. It's a low-key tale about a down-at-heel pilot who gets involved in a terrorist plot to murder some politicians, etc. It was never intended as a big 'breakthrough' novel, which is perhaps why it's still looking for a home. But it gives you some idea of my style. If you want to make it big in fiction, you have to be a little mercenary and write exactly what the market wants - which might mean putting a heavy lid on your personal style and your favourite story ideas and joining the big conservative dots, at least until you've made a name for yourself.
     Anyway, if you like what you read, maybe I can help you with some problems with your own novel. All feedback welcome.

Chapter One

It was one of those grey, miserable, washed-out September afternoons.  It had rained heavily in the night, much of it inside the hangar where I had an AeroMotion Twin engine stripped on the bench and covered with a tarpaulin. Beside the bench was a pool of water about the size and shape of the Mediterranean.
     I'd been meaning to fix the roof for the past couple of months. I'd also been meaning to somehow earn the money and find the enthusiasm to do it.
     Both, however, had been in short supply.
     It had been a bad year. A bad two years actually. I started Garrick Aviation three summers back largely with borrowed money and the promise of a fat contract from a new geological outfit that needed a cost-effective way of carrying out ground surveys.
     I put on my best suit and went up to London and made a solid pitch for the job and screwed the price to the bottom. It looked good. On paper. But it ended before it even started when the company went bust. I should have cut my losses. That would have been the smart move. But I've never been that smart. Also, I'm a stubborn bastard.
     It's a damning combination.
     So I borrowed some more money, dug myself deeper and adopted a D-Day landing mentality. Fortunately, I soon picked up some overspill work from a local aviation outfit which tided me over for a bit. And then, unexpectedly, they merged with another company and restructured and that was that.
     No work.
     Something else will come along, I told myself. A good looking bloke like me with a cost-effective helicopter for hire will always turn up something. Crop spraying. Joy rides. Emergency organ deliveries. Or ordinary air freight.
     There are a hundred ways.
     Or so I thought before reality took a bite and the finance company repossessed the chopper. Now I was seriously in the red and couldn't see any way out of it.
     I was mulling over all this that afternoon as I sat in my office wrestling with my accounts and contemplating my next leap into that great commercial abyss. There was a letter from my accountant pinned to the board above the phone. He'd long since stopped trying to advise me on what to do next. He was now simply sending me headed notepaper with the single word TWIT! scrawled in marker pen.
     He was right, of course. Accountants are always right. But he was also wrong. There was a future here if I just hung on. I was sure of it. It was just a question of out waiting the bastards. And when they finally realised that I wasn't going to go away, that Reasonably Honest Joe Garrick was in for the long haul, they'd start bringing me some proper jobs.
     Perseverance. That's always the key.
     Anyway, I was sat there that afternoon at my desk counting the paper pennies and wearing out the window and scratching my chin and wondering whether it was time to invest in a new razor and maybe a clean set of overalls when I saw the car approach.
     It was about half a mile away and zig-zagging around the perimeter road clearly trying to avoid the bigger potholes. Instantly I took my feet off the desk and got ready to slam the door and hide. I'd already had two debt collectors visit me that week and it was only Wednesday. But then I saw that this car wasn't the usual cash collection cart.
     At first I thought it was an old Bentley. It was metallic blue and had that long, unruffled, elegant Bentley poise. But as it got closer I recognised it as a Bristol, which made me relax and put my feet back on the desk and scratch my jaw some more.
     This looked more like a customer. You get a nose for that sort of thing. And the best way to frighten away a new customer is to look desperate. So I picked up an old magazine and wiggled my mouth around a bit to get the creases out and raked my hair forward in the way I used to do when I was a kid and wanted to look nonchalant.
     At the T-junction, where the old WW2 control tower used to stand until it fell down in a storm last year, the Bristol paused. I saw the front wheels of the car turn ever-so-slightly away, and for a moment thought he was going to turn left towards Mitch Mitchell's place.
Mitchell - a sullen, bitter, foul-mouthed old git in his late sixties - had been both a commercial and personal thorn in my side since the beginning. The day after I moved in, he came around to check me out.    He had a good snoop. Saw how I was equipped. Asked about fifty indiscreet questions. Told me half a dozen stories of recent business doom and gloom in the aviation world. And left.
     The following week he phoned me up and told me not to get too comfortable. Ten days later he called and asked if I was still there. Then the verbal abuse started and I began getting all kinds of unlikely junk mail and enquiries from estate agents and pizza deliveries and suchlike.
     One Friday afternoon I got fed up with it. So I called him up and asked what his problem was and he told me, more or less point blank, that this airfield wasn't big enough for the both of us.
     'Don't you mean the eighteen of us?' I asked, mildly.
     'Never you bleedin' mind them,' he said. 'It's you I'm talking about. And you're taking my business.'
     'I haven't had any business yet. So how can I be taking yours?'
     'I've seen your advert,' he continued, oblivious to what I was telling him.
     In Flight magazine, he meant. About four lines of text and a phone number.
     'Well I've seen yours.'
     'Yeah? Well mine was there first.'
     I should have just left it alone, but I said, 'Look, ever heard of free enterprise, Mr Mitchell?'
     'Ever heard of a punch up the effin' bracket?' he came back.
     So I hung up.
     Then he filled my door locks with superglue.

If you're interested, you can find some more samples of my novels at: www.michael-oneill-fiction.co.uk.