To Write...

I love writing (although you wouldn't know it by the lack up updates on this site!)

Rearranging the 26 letters, a space and half a dozen punctuation marks into what is essentially telepathy...I love it.

I've just finished the skeleton of a novel; the story from a to z. It's a story of a guy (name: Matt Daly) that's roughly in my line of work (mobile communications) who gets wrapped up in local (SE Asia and Australia) Islam-o-fanatic activities more than he'd like to. **I** think it's pretty good, but it's also pretty bare. In a couple of weeks I'll go over it again and add colour and atmosphere. I guess right now it's a very detailed 50,000 word outline. A very plot driven outline

To keep the writing bug fed I'm writing some short stories that are more character driven.

About 18 years ago I was working for a Northern Virginian (Arlington) based consulting company and was on a crap project in Philadelphia. We had to do extremely detailed drive testing of Comcast's network as a precursor to them (I think) removing spectrum for their new-fangled digital offering.

Well, I, and an engineer from Jersey named Rich (with an accent right out of the Sopranos) were driving SE Philly between midnight and 5 am, measuring signal strength and driving by heavily populated crack house stoops. We had the discussion about what to do if somebody jumped in front of him -- he was driving, I was collecting the data (run the f$cker over), discussed movies (few in common) and great character names. I mentioned a large blowhard I knew back in Canada named Eamon, mixed it with Nevil Shute and came up with the delightfully corny name, Eamonn Shute (Aim and shoot -- get it?)

That name stuck with me. Over the intervening years Eamonn became a large Irish expat, living large in Miami off the proceeds of the Irish lottery. Because he is a genus (of course) he uses his very sharp observational skills to help his friends that seem to find themselves always falling into one scrape or another.

Kind of like an early day mentalist.

Anywho, while the Matt Daly story steeps in my subconscious (I need to add colour describing both Gurkha's and the history of the SAS, btw, so some research is needed) I'm writing a shortie where Eamonn Shute aids a friend accused of killing the spoiled son of a recently former business partner of the accused (3-iron to the head, on the beach, by the groundskeeper).

My ideal world is one where I get paid enough to write what I want to write so I can do this full time.

Fingers crossed.