Shouts From Down Under

Excerpt taster; hopefully demonstration

Below is an excerpt from the last chapter in my novel The Children Cloud.

I want to demonstrate a few things i've been blahing on about in this blog.

As you can see, I've tried to use negative expressions, words and little incidents to put even the reader in a bad mood, and set up some sort of uneasy tension that even by the end of this extract, hasn't been alleviated at all. This is ramping up to a false climax I was talking about.

If you don't have a clue what I'm on about, just click back an entry or two in this blog and you can update yourself. Hope you don't fall asleep. I'm not a teacher and don't really know much of this stuff I talk a lot about, but I'm enjoying so much having a go at it, and yakking on about it. So, right or wrong, I'll plough ahead.

A point I want to make with this, is that sometimes you don't need a lot of research, or terminology to bring a scene to realness.
Yes, there's a lot of research I have to do, and permissions and stuff to work out, something that I have punch ups with myself over, let alone anyone else. What to do, what not to do. To say stuff youse all and publish it "SO SUE ME" or do it carefully.

Well, whatever happens with it all, we can enjoy the rough-outs of it and the quick writing of it here. We can enjoy the discussions of it. And maybe that's like the guy playing the musical instrument. He enjoys the performance most of all.


15 The Police

They awoke late, and Charlie discovered it was Saturday. Somewhere he'd lost track of the day and date.

This morning he'd even had to think for a couple of seconds, to remember his own name.

This morning, Carly tried to cheer the other's up by serving their breakfast alfresco style, sliding the glass panels right back into the wall channels to allow the sun to do the awakening. Wouldn't be long and the day would be too hot.

Charlie and Ben grumbled about the toast not being quite right, Fleur didn't like poached eggs, and Tameka knocked over her OJ.

It wasn't even Carly's best morning, when she sliced her finger opening a can of mango juice.

"If you'd just use the proper opener." Charlie spoke thick mumbles, his lips and tongue dry as chips. He couldn't be bothered to look up at the electric can opening gadget, screwed to the wall.

"I hate them. They never do it properly. I'd much rather use the standard old manual opener you get for two dollars from the supermarket." Carly was a traditional cook and nothing late model, or modern, was any good. She liked the old Sunbeam Mix-Master, preferred to use brown paper to line cake tins, and refused the aerosol cans to spray anti-stick coatings on pans. She did it with some butter and scraps of old cake tin lining paper. You can keep your Teflon, Thanks

They were sluggishly tucking into their cereal and some flour topped slices of Carly's special ploughman's hot buttered toast, Ben chomping on some bacon (he didn't like eggs), when Mr Richardson phoned Charlie. He was only a few feet away, at their front door. But he wanted to give them a heads up.

"Guys...Guys!" He whispered into his phone.
"Janine's going to answer the door out the front here. It's the police. You better make sure your hatches are bolted, or whatever it is you guys do out the back there. They don't look happy. Some of these men are in black suits. Pfft. Talk about cliche movie type blokes. We'll tell them to try you at your shop door entrance. Oh, and send Tameka back in here will you? No need for her to be involved, OK?"
Mr Richardson hung up on a very unhappy looking set of Quadruplets. Tameka refused to go anywhere.

"I'm with you guys, right or wrong. It's no time to sneak off like a coward!" She fired up, but Charlie had other ideas.

"Tam, your dad's right. Loyalty's one thing, but this could mean a jail term for us. Seriously. You'll be more help on the outside."

They turned on some lights in the shop and waited. Fleur had closed and locked the Bunker door on her way to bed, after The Cloud's last stand, so no one would be looking there for anything incriminating.

Loud knocking.

"Is this Everything Computers? Sorry, we have to ask you that formally. You are...your full names please?"
The policewoman waved her badge, and a half dozen others in uniform trooped into the shop front counter area. Charlie and Ben opened up doors to allow them access into the restaurant.

"Yes, that's us for sure." Charlie said firmly. If there was something to be said, he'd stand here and say it. Ben introduced each of them. Two men in suits, as Mr Richardson had described, stayed outside near their cars talking into phones.

Hope you enjoyed this snippet!

It's probably 2500 words until the end of the book, so I better pack some action into this lot eh?

Sparky