David Hadley's Blog, page 102

The Selling of Tales

‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a story.’ The artisan stood back, admiring his own work.
‘What does it do?’
The artisan glanced up, thinking it was maybe the inbreeding, but – still – as his old dad always said, the customer is always right. ‘It is a series of events, written down.’
‘Oh.’ The (potential) customer leant closer, looking at the squiggles on the parchment. He’d had several expensive tutors, some of whom had strongly suggested he learn what these black squiggles represented. But he, (now, Duke) Farantzy, didn’t see the point. ‘Oh,’ he repeated. ‘What events?’
‘Well, this one is about a heroic knight,’ the artisan glanced at the (potential) customer’s dress and regalia. ‘A Duke....’
‘A Duke?’
‘Yes, a Duke.’ The artisan took a breath, he could always rewrite it before delivery, shove in a couple of references to dukes. ‘He journeys to save a princess from a dragon.’
‘Ooh, a princess, eh?’
‘Yes, a beautiful princess.’
‘How beautiful?’ The Duke made a gesture suggesting he was weighing a pair of grapefruit in his hands.
‘Oh, very beautiful.’ The artisan made a similar gesture suggesting he was weighing a pair of melons… watermelons. How he suffered for his art.
‘But… a dragon?’
‘Yes, a very brave… fearless Duke.’
‘And I… er… he kills the dragon?’
‘Well…. I wouldn’t want to give the end away.’
‘Oh?’ The Duke scratched his beard. ‘Then why have you written it all down?’
‘I… er…. To entertain… in the reading of it.’
It was the first time the Duke had ever heard the words ‘entertain’ and ‘read’ in the same sentence, at least one without any negative connotations.
‘The joy is in the reading, the unfolding of the tale.’
‘It is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, how strange. Couldn’t you just tell me if he gets off with the princess?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ Nowas not a word the Duke was used to hearing. His hand reached towards the pommel of his sword.
‘No,’ the artisan repeated hastily. ‘The joy of the tale is in the telling.’
‘What?’
The artisan sighed. This was turning into a long sale. ‘You share the tale with the characters in it, as it goes along; share their adventures, their trials, their mista… their misfortunes and triumphs. So by the time he gets to fight the dragon to rescue the princess you feel as though you are there with him. You share his every stroke of the sword, every thrust of the lance is yours as though you yourself are fighting the dragon.’
‘Eeek!’ The Duke blushed. ‘I mean, poor bloody dragon….’ He gripped the pommel tight. ‘Wouldn’t stand a chance, know what I mean?’
The artisan nodded. ‘Of course, sire.’
‘So why don’t you just tell me what happens in the end, save me the bother of having it read to… of me reading it?’
‘Like I said, sire, the joy is being in the tale yourself.’
‘Right.’
‘So, sire,’ shall I wrap it, have it delivered to your house?’
The Duke thought for a moment. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ll just wait for the DVD.’ He turned and left the shop.
The artisan watching the Duke stride away as he used several words, under his breath, he’d never used in any of his stories... yet.


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

Looking for Her

She was small, dark-haired and her eyes were in constant movement, watching everything and everyone around us. Her skin was a dark-brown, like finely polished wood. Later, when she undressed for me, I saw she had no tan lines. She’d never hidden any part of her body from the sun.
She led me away from the crowd, out beyond the edges of the town, out past the fields and back towards the woods.
‘I don’t want to be in the town,’ she said. An explanation that hid more than it revealed. As we walked away, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, watching for something. It was not until we left the last of the buildings and fields behind, and were inside the wood, that she relaxed.
‘Is someone looking for you?’ I asked.
She just laughed and looked back over her shoulder once more. She turned to face me. ‘Everybody is looking for me. You were looking for me.’
‘I found you.’
‘Did you?’ She laughed again and led me to a place at the side of the road. There was a break in the undergrowth. I would not have given it a second glance if I’d been riding through the woods. Beyond the road, behind the undergrowth there was a hidden path.
She tuned a few strides along the path and I saw a knife glint in the sunlight that found its way through the high trees. ‘This path is a secret.’
I nodded, my eyes fixed on the knife. ‘I know about secrets,’ I said. ‘I have too many of my own.’
She stared at me for a while and then put away her knife. She stepped towards me. I could smell something earthy, something wild about her as strong as the smell of wood smoke in her tangled hair. She grinned at me. ‘Come on then. Come with me and tell me all you secrets and I will show you mine.’
So I did… and later she did too.


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

The Swordsman

‘So,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘Is that it?’
‘Er… it must be the weather. It has been a bit cold.’
‘What has that got to do with it?’
He looked down at his sword. ‘It is a well-known fact that metal shrinks in cold weather.’
‘Really?’
He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. He shifted his feet and put his sword away. ‘I’ll be getting a bigger one soon,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes?’ She leant back against the low stone wall behind her, half-sitting on it and raised her leg to push herself onto the top of the wall. She sat on the wall with one foot resting up on it, her hands over her knee and her chin resting on the backs of her hands. ‘Do you wish you had a bigger one?’
‘Well,’ he could feel the heat in his neck spreading upwards. She was not looking at the size of his scabbard. He stopped himself turning away from her, or clasping his hands over his groin. ‘I have no complaints.’
‘But you do want a bigger one… need a bigger one?’
‘I….’ He looked around for some way out of this.
She laughed. ‘You’re new to the city aren’t you?’
‘Y… yes…. Is it that obvious?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’ She smiled, warmly this time and shifted her position, signalling for him to sit on the wall beside her.
He sat.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Just some village… days away.’
‘Oh, what was it called?’
‘What?’
‘Your village… what is its name?’
‘I don’t know… it was just home… the village. None of us ever thought of giving it a name.’ He sighed. ‘It was the only place I knew. I was happy there.’
‘So why did you leave?’
‘The foreigners… the invaders…. They came one day… and… well… the village is no longer there.’
She looked at him. ‘Come on,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘I have a home… not much of one, but I’ll take you there.’
‘Why?’
She looked at him, head cocked to one side. ‘Let’s just say every sword needs a scabbard, shall we?’


Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

New Kindle Novel Out Now: Juggling Balls

Juggling Balls available here (UK) or here (US)Special Low Launch Price: £0.77/$0.99
Martin Laws hates mysteries. 
So why has someone sent him a bag of juggling balls? 
Why has he no memory of buying a new computer?
Why has that new computer decided Martin needs to go shopping?
Why does a hairstylist he's never met before keep saluting him?
Most of all, why are so many Elvis impersonators trying to kill him?
Juggling Balls - a science fiction comedy featuring time travel, mind control implants and a future religion that claims an Elvis Presley clone as its saviour. 
Oh, and an interplanetary terraced house.
Juggling Balls available here (UK) or here (US)Special Low Launch Price: £0.77/$0.99

[Other Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US).]

Britain's Best-Known Solo Yachtswoman

Topsail Spinnaker is these days probably Britain's best-known solo yachtswoman. Only last year she completed spectacular solo journey where she sailed all the way across one of Birmingham's widest canals. A journey that took almost an hour. Now she is all set to – sometime in the next few years - attempt the task of sailing along a canal lengthways, possibly for several hundred yards.
Of course, Spinnaker began her solo sailing career mainly because those who had seen her sailing abilities always had something else to do on the days she asked them to go out sailing with her. Not only that, her local coastguard and the local RNLI crew both banned her from any attempt at sailing out to sea. This did prevent her attempt to sail solo from Tenby to Caldey Island in what would've been a world's first for someone with as little sailing ability as Spinnaker. As her own proud mother once said, referring to Spinnaker's childhood exploits, Spinnaker 'couldn't even sail a boat in her bath without it sinking'.
It was only after the teenage Spinnaker first took driving lessons and ended up parking her instructor's car in the Irish sea that it was suggested that Spinnaker could have a natural seafaring aptitude.
Although, as some have pointed out Spinnaker does have a rare talent amongst solo yachtswomen of having an innate sense of direction when sailing. The only drawback being that direction is usually downwards.
Consequently, Spinnaker's sponsors and backers – mainly deep-sea salvage companies and wetsuit manufacturers – decided that perhaps Spinnaker's true gift lay in inland sailing. An area not usually associated with solo yachting and thus one – they felt – she could make her own. It would, they felt, also keep the rescue helicopters in base long enough for a much needed refit after her last seventeen attempts to get a yacht out of Tenby harbour without it disappearing under her.
Still, though after her circumnavigation of the UK's canal system next year there is talk of Spinnaker's name appearing in the New Year's Honours List. Mainly in recognition of her services to the maritime salvage industry. That is, of course, if she can manage to reach Buckingham Palace after crossing the Thames in London without drowning.


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US).]

In the Rain

Moments came and went. They fell out of the ordinary time, falling like rain from a passing cloud. Sometimes it was unwelcome rain, like a cold winter day when the hard wind blew the icy rain into her face. Clara could only put her head down and plough on into it, hoping it would soon pass and she would be back in the warm again.
Other times, those moments fell like the rain after a long dry, hot spell and there was nothing sweeter than standing out in that moment and letting it all wash over her.
Clara was there, in such a dry place, a long hot dry spell in her life. She felt each day as an endless trudge through a desert of possibility. Everywhere she looked, the same featureless expanse of emptiness surrounded her. Every step Clara took, left her no closer to anything she could recognise as some way out of her current predicament.
Her job was dull and poorly paid. Her friends were all growing away from her, falling into new lives that left Clara behind. All doing things she could not do, going to places she could not afford, meeting people she did not want to like. She hadn't had much luck with men and couldn’t see that changing.
She needed some rain to pour down on her desert life and bring it into bloom, fill up her dry cracked river beds with fresh flowing water again. But all she could see was the same nothingness ahead as she’d already trudged through.
Then, one morning, a morning much like any other, she was stumbling to work down a dull quiet street when her foot struck something hard. She looked down and saw a book, kicked open, with its pages fluttering in the slight breeze. Bending down she looked at the book.
Looking closer, she saw her own name on a few of the pages fluttering past. She looked around, seeing no-one and picked up the book.
As she glanced at the pages, flicking through them, she noticed slowly at first drops of rain falling on the pages.
She looked up to see a solitary cloud in the blue sky, the first rain for weeks.


Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

The Seasons of Forever

It takes the time we share and twists it into something new. There was a time when this was a summer lasting for as long as we could see. It was a summer stretching beyond our beach to where the sea reaches out to meet the sky. We never thought our summer could ever feel these colder winds of autumn. We never thought the trees up on the climbing headland would ever fade from green to these browns, reds and golds of our darkening narrower days.
Now we turn away from that sea that stretched away before us. We turn back from this beach, towards the forests and fields that lie between our fading summer and the winter that waits for us deep inland. The time of coldness is coming and we can feel it in the winds that blow around us.
You turn away in the night, chasing your dreams across a bed suddenly grown big. A space I cannot reach across to close, even if I wanted to, even if I knew how.
Outside, the nights grow ever longer. The wind blows and the rain falls like those tears you cry whenever you think I cannot see or know.
Our summer has been too long though. I know the sound of your tears and I know nothing remains here for either of us. Except the slow journey from this summer we thought would never end back inland to our endless winter.


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

Writer's Block

I turned.
Then I wished I hadn't.
There was a man, standing there in the doorway behind me. He had a gun in his hand.
I raised my hands.
'What are you doing?' he said.
'You've got a gun.'
'And?' He looked down at the pistol in his hand. It was a big one. The sort that Clint Eastwood would point at a street punk.
'And you are pointing it at me.'
'Oh, sorry.' He lowered the gun, but remained standing in the doorway.
'But... well, what's going on?'
'You... you're writing that story.' He nodded towards the computer on the desk.
'Well... yes. But what's that got to do with you?' I remembered about the gun. 'If you don't mind me asking?'
'It's that Raymond Chandler thing.'
'What Raymond Chandler thing?'
'Don't you know?'
I shook my head.
'But you are the writer?' He spoke as though it was something every writer should know. But, if he was so bloody smart then he'd know that writers don't know much at all, about anything. That's why there is Google.
'What do you mean?'
'Well, that story....' He pointed with the gun towards the computer. 'You are having trouble with it, aren't you?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Well, Raymond Chandler said once: When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.' He shrugged. 'So here I am.'
'Ah, right.'
'What?'
'I'm not entirely sure that is what he meant.'
'Oh.' The man slumped. 'Should I go then?'
'Yes. I think that would probably be for the best.'
'Oh, right.' He turned. 'Bye.'
'Bye.' I said. 'Oh... one thing...?'
He turned back eagerly. 'Yes?'
'How did you know I was having problems?'
'Oh, your muse told me.' He trudged off down the hallway. 'Bye, again.'
'Bye,' I called, but he'd already gone.


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US).]

One That Size

‘But, look….’
She turned.
I could tell she was impressed.

‘It’s not often you see one that size, not these days.’ She took a step back towards me. ‘Can I touch it?’
I hesitated.
‘Oh, go on….’ She licked her lips. ‘Please?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘After all, we hardly know each other.’
‘It would be…’ she said, edging closer to me and looking up into my eyes. ‘A way of us getting to know each other better.’
I nodded, suddenly feeling much warmer. I could feel the heat of her body and smell her perfume… an expensive one. I breathed deeply and my senses were full of her.
‘Let me touch it… please.’ She looked up at me, longing in her eyes.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You do know that just about now there is a twist in the narrative that reveals the joke that is the whole point of this story?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in quite a few stories like this before. In fact, if you do the research you’ll see that I’m one of this author’s stock characters.’
‘So you do realise that this sexual overtone, the euphemistic speech will turn out to have nothing to do with sex after all, in the end?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But, in the meantime…?’
‘What?’
‘Give us a feel of your cock.’


[Books by David Hadley are available  here  (UK) or  here  (US)]

Something for the Weekend: Free Kindle Short Story: An Undulation of a Shadow’s Edge

FREE Short Story
An Undulation of a Shadow’s Edge
Available FREEfor the Kindle here (UK) or here (US) for the next 5 days.
Short story: 7,500 words (approx)
Dark creatures writhe in the city’s shadows, Claire has seen them and seen their hungry eyes watching her… and waiting.
Claire avoids the darkness and the shadows of the city’s nights because she knows what lurks there.
That was until the night she saw Henry, standing in the darkest shadows watching her, wanting her as much as she wants him. But he is as unwilling to leave the dark as Claire is to enter it.
Will Claire save Henry before the shadows and darkness consume him and he is lost to the darkness forever?
Available FREEfor the Kindle here (UK) or here (US) for the next 5 days.