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Sample 4
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 5
THE GRACE OF GOD
I decided one day that I wanted
to write an "important" story - meaning a tale that made
some kind of social point. Being a driver, and having had a
few near-misses in my time, I hooked on to the idea of a
road accident; one that involved the death of a pedestrian.
I tried to imagine the repercussions. The disgrace. The
social fall out. The arrest. The divorce. What I came up
with was this story. It was sent out half a dozen times or
so. Maybe more. I really have lost track. There was some
nice comments, and some criticism too. But that was all.
Later I decided that it was
weak. And later still I decided that it wasn't so weak. Now
I can't decide.
It's going out again soon on the
rejection carousel. Maybe I'll get lucky sometime.
Anyway, here's a small sample
from chapter four. I've got a newspaper man - an editor
actually - named Joe Goodwin who'll do pretty much anything
for a story.
If you like my writing style, maybe I
can help with your own project?
Chapter One
Thump.
Crunch.
You
had to hit the coke machine just right to get it to work properly,
and Joe Goodwin still hadn’t quite developed the knack. Everyone
else had. But with him, it was an art he was still longing to
acquire. He could have pointed a finger at anyone in the office and
growled; Hey, get me a coke, will you? And they would have
instantly snapped to attention. Especially today. But he wanted to
get it himself, to show them that he was one of them.
Even if he wasn’t.
He
gave the front panel another whack and — dumph! — a can of
toothrot rolled out into the stainless steel tray.
‘Why the hell doesn’t someone fix this bloody thing?’ he yelled,
lifting the perspex flap and taking the coke out. It was dented.
His
cokes always seemed to be dented.
He
spun round for an answer. There were six or seven people sat behind
computer screens. They were staring blankly at him. Silent. Guarded.
He wasn’t just the editor of the Lincoln Gazette, after all. He was
the editor-in-a-seriously-bad-mood and it was better to let him hiss
and steam a little until he cooled.
Joe
put the can to the side of his face and left it there for a moment.
It was cool, but not really cold. He put it against the other cheek
and closed his eyes searching for some inner vale of peace and
harmony. It was there somewhere, he knew. But each year it was
getting harder and harder to find.
Joe
Goodwin was legendary for his bad moods. Everything seemed to set
him off. Especially absenteeism. And poor spelling. And unchecked
facts. And split infinitives. And pretty much everything else.
But
today, he was in a filthy mood because the mad axe-man from head
office (as Joe was wont to call him) had left about an hour ago; the
same mad axe-man who’d told him point-blank that either he boosted
circulation significantly, or he was for it.
Out.
Finished.
The
mad axe-man didn’t say it quite in those words. He’d said it
in headofficespeak, a subtle corporate language that said
something completely different to what was actually heard. But the
meaning always came through loud and clear all the same.
Circulation up.
Or
fuck off.
It
was that simple.
Joe
carried the coke back to his desk, held it close to the bin and
jerked the ring-pull. A jet of gas and bubbles shot out and spilled
into the basket. He waited until it was finished and then put the
can to his lips.
It
was hot in the office again, and not only because the
air-conditioner was broken and the windows sealed. He took a long
swig and reminded himself that if head office would dig a little
deeper into its pocket and give him some more resources around
here—and fix the fucking air-conditioner— he might well be able to
do something about the circulation.
But
the company was cutting back these days. Had got their fingers badly
burned on some foreign media deal and were urgently plugging up all
the financial leaks. They were sacking people left, right and centre
and doing whatever else they could to improve cash flow. Why, just
last year he had fourteen people on those desks. Fourteen.
Now he was down to—he did a quick head count—six. Or seven if you
counted Betty who never seemed to do much anymore but clean her
keyboard and mouse and nip outside every fifteen minutes for a fag.
And Betty wouldn’t know a good story if Jesus Christ rode into the
office on a moped.
He saw that he was dripping coke and looked for a
tissue.
As he fished around the desk, a Kleenex appeared to
his right. Caroline Hamilton stood there, a consolatory look on her
face. He glanced up at her and automatically let fly a crooked grin.
He liked Caroline and wanted to sleep with her. She was witty and
feminine and good looking. And she wasn’t above hitching her skirt
every once in a while and fixing her suspenders.
And she could spell.
And didn’t split infinitives.
Often.
‘Put you through the ringer again, huh?’ she said,
her silky, dark brown hair smelling of apples this morning.
‘You were here,’ said Joe. He took the tissue, nodded
his thanks and started mopping up.
‘Wasn’t listening,’ she told him, knowing that he
knew that that wasn’t true at all.
Everyone
was listening, even though at the time they were all
clustered around the photocopier at the far end of the room to help
spare his embarrassment. But the office wasn’t that big. And
besides, the mad axe-man had spoke loud enough for everyone else to
know that their jobs were also on the line.
‘They want circulation up,’ he said, pointing towards
heaven and taking another swig, ‘or I’m out.’
‘They always want circulation up, Joe.’
‘Of course they do. But it’s more serious this time.
We’re down sixteen percent on last month and advertising are
squealing about it.’
‘Sixteen percent? That can’t be right.’
‘Tell that to the mad axe-man. He’s got the figures.’
‘He’s lying.’
‘He’s got the power.’
Caroline Hamilton, just twenty-three years old, but
the best reporter Joe had seen in his fifteen years in the
business—okay, the second best (but she had better
legs)—perched herself on the edge of his desk and began reading his
private memos.
‘It’s been a slack time, Joe,’ she said, not caring
that he was watching what she was doing. ‘Can’t manufacture the
news.’
There was an ironic gleam in her eyes as she said
that. They both knew that that was exactly what you did do
when there wasn’t any bona fide stories around. You invented them.
If there wasn’t any windfall lying around on the surface, you went
digging in the dirt and looked for something sleazy and juicy. And
even in rural Lincolnshire, there was always some of that.
Councillors screwing each others wives and husbands, for instance.
Policemen fabricating evidence. Prominent businessmen putting hits
on each other. Child pornography rings. Men biting dogs. Small
earthquakes. Alien abductions.
It was all out there if you just knew who to ask and
what buttons to press.
Joe Goodwin, aged forty-seven, had done it all
himself. He hadn’t always been an editor. Once upon a time he’d been
human. He’d learned his trade down south, in Cambridgeshire, and had
gravitated north. Most people, he knew, went way south, to London.
To the big nationals. But Joe Goodwin had always been essentially a
small town reporter. A rural newspaperman.
Sherlock Holmes was right, he believed. Cities
weren’t the place for real crime. It was out here that most
of the true villainy took place, here in these wide open spaces.
Besides, he suffered from chronic asthma and couldn’t
really handle cities any longer. So it was the country for him, and
he’d been doing okay until round about last year when everything
started to slide.
First, the paper had been sued for libelling a local
businessman and had been forced to settle out of Court. The worst of
it wasn’t that it had cost them £50,000. The worst of it was that
what they’d printed was true. Only, when it came time to show
the evidence to a judge, it wasn’t there in the files any longer.
Joe Goodwin never did find out who the bastard was who’d done that.
But he had his suspicions.
And then Martin Pepper died, and that was
news. Martin Pepper had been with the paper since it started back in
1963. Martin Pepper practically was the paper and had his own
gossip column: TELL IT TO MARTIN.
Martin Pepper had been godfather to Joe’s first born
and could drink a glass of water whilst doing a great impersonation
of John Wayne—and there wasn’t many men you could say that about.
Pepper wasn’t so much a good newspaperman in the
conventional sense, mind. But he did have good instincts and usually
smelled the smoke of “lies, deceit and buggery” long before anyone
else did.
He would often say something like; ‘There’s something
fishy going on down there, Joe.’
And Joe would promptly send his best guy, or gal,
down there to check it out. Nine times out of ten, Pepper was right.
The other time, he was only probably right.
And then there was a series of corporate disasters.
First arson (officially just an accidental fire, but it was arson
alright). Then his best junior report left to work on a monthly car
magazine. Then they’d put in the new computer system and nothing had
worked properly since. And then the company had got ambitious and
fell on its face. And they way they made it sound, it was all his
fault.
‘You’ve got a circulation problem down here,’ the mad
axe-man had told Joe just an hour ago. Not we’ve got a
circulation, but you’ve got a circulation problem. It was
always that way. Our success, but your failure. ‘So
what are you going to do about it?’
‘What I’m going to do about it is deal with it,’ Joe
had replied with more confidence than he felt.
‘That’s very nice to hear, Joe,’ the mad axe-man
said. ‘And how exactly do you propose doing that?’
‘Simple. I’m going to go down to Lincoln Cathedral
and put a bomb under the altar. Then I’m going to rape and murder
all my staff—except Betty. I’m just going to murder her. And then
I’m going home to gas my wife and kids, and I’m going to give the
paper an exclusive.’
‘Well try and get it done this week,’ the mad axe-man
said, smiling at Joe the way a vulture smiles at a man digging in
the desert for water. ‘Because they’re on my back too.’
Which was probably true. The company, it seemed at
times, wasn’t really in the business of publishing at all. It was in
the GETTING ON PEOPLE’S BACKS business. It existed merely to come up
with new and highly imaginative ways of making people feel small and
useless. That was its whole raison d’fucking’etre.
‘Relax,’ Joe said. ‘Something will come up.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I’ll make it come up.’
‘Well I sincerely hope you do, Joe,’ the mad axe-man
told him. ‘Because—’ meaningful pause, ‘ — these are very trying
times and we’re not getting any younger.’
Meaning: You’ll be out on
your ear, and at your age — and without a good reference from us
—you’ll be lucky to get a job driving a news van.
Caroline was saying something to him, he realised. He
took his head from his hands and looked up.
‘Huh?’
‘I said, “So what’s the plan, Batman?”’.
Batman sat back and swilled some more coke. The he
banged the can down on the desk.
‘What we need,’ he said, wiping his mouth again with
the Kleenex, ‘is something
big. No, not just big. Something that will bring the
community together and put us right at the centre.’
‘A campaign?’
‘You got it.’
Caroline folded her arms and gave her tits a boost.
Elsewhere in the office, eyes and ears were openly listening in
through the office door. Joe didn’t care. They were journalists—or
were supposed to be—and it was their business to listen in.
He said, ‘What have we got in the sleaze file at the
moment?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. Everyone’s been behaving themselves lately,
it seems.’
‘Even Councillor—’
‘Even him,’ said Caroline, interrupting.
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Same here, which is why Adam’s out now having a good
snoop around.’
‘Adam,’ repeated Joe, shaking his head.
‘Adam’s a good journalist,’ Caroline said, looking
more than mildly defensive.
Joe glanced up at her and wondered if she was
confusing being a good journalist with being a good lay, because it
was common knowledge that Caroline and Adam Parks (who was married
with one child) weren’t above a little sleaze themselves after
office hours.
Personally, he didn’t care too much. People were
people and did what they had to do. And without them, he’d be out of
a job. Only, if people were going to have sex on the photocopier,
they ought to make sure they take all the copies from the
tray when they’ve finished.
‘Wasn’t my arse, Joe,’ Caroline had insisted. ‘And if
you say otherwise, I’ll sue.’
‘Sue? For what? For slander?’
‘No, for mental cruelty. There’s no way that my rear
end is that big. I should talk to Betty if I was you.’
And there was no way that Joe was going to stand
there discussing Betty’s gluteus maximus, or any other relevant part
of her anatomy. So the jury was still out.
‘What we need,’ he said, now closing his eyes and
projecting his thoughts on an inner screen, ‘is a good, down to
earth, human story. A story of ordinary, everyday people, but one
that has—’
‘National implications,’ interjected Caroline.
Joe snapped his eyes open. They were glowing.
‘Exactly. Something that gets the local juices
flowing and has ramifications that reach right down to Whitehall.’
‘Like Prime
Minister’s Love Child DISCOVERED in Boston White Slavery Ring?’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Joe, now getting up and
reaching for his coat. ‘You get started on that. I’m going out.’
‘Out where?’
‘To get a story. You’re in the chair.’
‘You sure you’ve still got what it takes, Joe?’
teased Caroline, sliding quickly into his seat and looking perfectly
at home there.
‘Meet me at the photocopier at, say, ten o’clock this
evening and we’ll find out,’ he said, pitching his voice at the
sub-decency level so that only she could hear.
Caroline raised her eyebrows at that and looked
shocked.
But
not all that shocked.
If you're interested, you can
find some more samples of my novels at:
www.michael-oneill-fiction.co.uk.
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