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I'm revisiting the beginning of my current writing project. The narrative voice is set up here, and while both the main character and the tone of the story go through some heavy changes later, he's still the one who, unreliably and perhaps not always likeably, dominates the telling and filters his world for the reader.
On my Word document, these are pages 1-11 of a total 197.
I guess I am ready for some feedback on it. I'm trying to get the main hook of the story in quickly, and keep up a fast pace. Rereading it, I wonder if it could be tighter.
It's very much open to redrafting, but I still feel fairly close to it, so I hope nobody's going to put me off carrying on with this thing.
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I was thirty-five – the same age as Batman – when Rick Shine died and I was reborn into a different life. This is the story of my secret origin.
I go by the name Jack Freeman. I’m a cultural studies academic, which makes me a solid researcher and close analyst. That made me a good detective. It also means I’ve read a lot of books and seen a lot of films, and I get easily bored with stories. So if you trust me, let’s cut to the chase and move fast. Let’s cut to the crime as quick as we can.
Come with me from my office to the caff, where they’re holding a meeting about Rick’s death. You know what makes me laugh: in novels where they get the main character to look in a mirror, just so they can describe his face! And the kicker is, we’re going down in the lift, which is lined with mirrors, so I always get depressed about myself for three minutes. It’s top-lit, hollowing out my face and making my hair look thin. Who do I look like? Imagine David Bowie’s ugly younger brother. Lean, sneery, clicking down the corridors in Chelsea boots and Autograph suit.
Out of the elevator. The halls are empty now. During the day you have to swerve around groups of hoody kids and mini-gangsters doing business on their mobiles, chatting up girls and sullenly swaying to ipod tunes. Those are our students. And they dare give me a dirty look when I push past them! What else do you need to know? I’ll tell you when we’re in there.
Yeah, this is a high class institution alright, just like the prospectus says: you can tell by the way we hold faculty meetings in the caff. I weave to the back and slide in next to Denny Vaughan, my office-mate. Who does Vaughan look like? Imagine a middle-aged version of the Crazy Frog. Cropped head, sunken eyes, rubbery lips. He teaches poetry, or he did before they closed that programme down. Couldn’t just sack him of course, so they’ve got him doing admissions and pushing paper around.
The only other people who are going to matter for the moment are the blond geezer in the tan leather flight jacket with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, a German (did I have to tell you?) called Karl Brennan; and that dude at the front who looks like, I don’t know… imagine Pinocchio as a grown man, with a nose-job. His skin’s like wood coated with Ronseal, and he moves like someone’s jerking strings. That’s our head of dept, Ken Truman. He talks like a Disney-robot version of John F. Kennedy.
“The, ah, the press release… that we’re, ah, releasing… to the press… will give all the necessary, uh, de-tails… about this unfortunate event.”
Christ! I can’t transcribe everything Truman says this faithfully. Do you get the idea? Hold on.
“Rick, ah, did, have, unfortunately, a hereditary disease of the… I believe of the kidney? ...and it is that, that malfunction of this organ, that led to his, ah, his, this most unfortunate event on Saturday evening.”
There’s an audible shaking of heads and a sceptical sucking of breath. Vaughan turns to me, baring his brown, worn-down teeth.
“What you reckon, man? Gotta be a cover up?”
Vaughan’s got this habit of talking in sing-song, with question marks lifting the end of the wrong sentences. But you count yourself lucky if he answers you in English, instead of some hepcat jazz chat he invents.
“You saying it was an overdose.” I’ve heard this story already, of course; it’s 4pm on Monday so the rumour’s probably gone round every staffroom on campus by now. Students will still be in the dark, but that won’t last long either.
“He was on the seeds and the fizz?”
Seeds is Vaughan’s pointless slang for ecstasy. You pick up this nonsense when you share a room with him and go for beers together twice a week.
“I wasn’t on the scene, man.” I’m doing the jive talk now… it’s rubbing off on me. “I’m like the one person here who didn’t go to the launch.”
“What, you didn’t know?” Vaughan starts this low, annoying chuckle. “You didn’t know he was on the fizzy snow? His organs must have gone supernova.”
“You actually see him snorting it on Saturday?” I ask, and there’s a reason for the question, but we’re interrupted by someone leaning over our table. Rupert Callow plants his hands in front of us.
“Gents.”
“Alright, Rupert.” I’ll give you one of my quick briefings on Rupert: he looks like…you know Allan Quartermain in the old adventure films? No, bit obscure for you. Think of Derren Brown off telly. Little ginger goatee, wry face; teaches anthropology and goes down caves in his spare time. Like me, he wears suits, but he proves he’s not a sell-out by teaming them with amulet-on-a-string necklaces and a rough-stitched leather satchel.
“So…,” says Rupert softly. “Do we think it’s a cover-up?”
* * *
Cut! Let’s get out of here. The front of the University of South London’s Main Building has three sets of automatic doors in a row, like a run of airlocks. I love automatic doors, don’t you? You ever do that thing where you pretend you’re a Jedi Knight, opening them with a brisk command-gesture? No? …Just me, then.
Back on the streets with Vaughan and Callow behind me; although of course, there’s not much difference between the streets and the university, between town and gown, in a place like this. Same huddle of hoodies, knots and clumps of yout’ to swerve around or face off against. It’s not as though those auto-doors are sealing off a safe academic space from the hard world of work; almost all our students hold down part-time jobs, and of course they’re also paying customers. Some of them even cheek you that they’re paying your wages.
New Cross, cultural capital of South-East London! The scent of petrol and jerk chicken. Pasty single mums sitting on bus-stop walls, taking tins and frozen food back for tea. African geezers in 1970s suits, clutching Bibles. Brothas outside the barber shop, waiting to get their hair shaved in new patterns. Hard-nut crackers with complexions like strawberry yogurt, sucking Marlboro Lights. A lone Rasta wandering the traffic roundabouts singing to himself. And three white fellas carrying rucksacks and satchels, deciding where to drink.
There’s three pubs in the area; four if you count Brick City, the four-storey club slabbed in black paint like it’s encrusted in centuries of soot. We don’t count Brick City; not at 5pm on a Monday. That leaves the Jack Knife, where someone got shot last month; the Alchemy, which is like walking into a Mafia basement; and the Rosie, a damply peeling little dive. We head for the Rosie.
“Why didn’t you turn up to the launch?” asks Callow, supping. “You’re usually around for free food and drink.”
“Yeah, that’s how much I hated the guy,” I sneer. “He wasn’t even worth the wine and sarnies.”
“You felt that strongly about him? What did he ever do to you?”
“Ah… he didn’t do anything. It was just him, man. Just him being was enough.”
Callow shakes his head sagely. “For a golden boy, he had a lot of enemies.”
Yeah, what was it with Shine? He was charming, gentlemanly… gracious in his fame. Though he’d skyrocketed to success as a cult studs celeb, one of the youngest media dons in the country – telly appearances every other week, articles in the broadsheets – he still hung around in our dingy little department. Each year we’d have to put up with Truman thanking him and raising a toast to Rick for not leaving the university, and Rick would give it some spiel about how we weren’t just workmates, but true mates. But he couldn’t help the way Truman built him up as the local hero.
So what was it about Shine? Was I jealous of him? Just cause I’d only published one book (Darknight Detectives: Narrative and the Superhero Genre… think there are still a few thousand available for 10 pence on Amazon if you fancy a read) while Rick sailed off on study leave or international jaunts and had each year’s new publication reviewed by Mark Kermode. Just cause Rick still looked like a New York indie-band frontman, all blonde quiff and artfully skewed ties, and took lucky student-cuties out to private tutorials. Just cause he was living with Libby, who deserved way better. Just cause he had a promotion to Readership guaranteed him this year, at only 33.
Yeah, OK, I was jealous of him.
“You see that jerry’s face, man,” Vaughan was muttering over his Stella. “Looked like he’d just lost World War Two.”
“He means Brennan.” I have to annotate for Callow, cause he’s got a different office and isn’t so immersed in the old Denny-jive.
“Ah, yes. Well, Karl’ll be next in the running for the Readership, won’t he? Lucky break for him, with Rick out of the way.”
“He didn’t look grateful for it,” I point out. “He looked gutted. Hey, either of you actually see Rick hoovering up the coke and pills, on Saturday?”
“You think I had to see him dosing up, man? You think I don’t know the symptoms?” Vaughan, having sucked down a pint in five minutes, is already getting loosely threatening. “He was waving his paws about like this.”
I look at him through squinty eyes for a few seconds, then hide the view with my pint. Watching a forty-something academic dancing with his hands in the air is painful.
“I think it’s pretty much common knowledge, Jack,” Callow reckons. “Sarah spoke to Libby on Sunday. The official cause of death is always going to be kidney failure, as far as Truman and the press are concerned… but the cause of the failure was, you know…” He raises his eyebrows. “Unorthodox substances.”
“You sure, though? Either of you see him taking any pills or doing any lines?”
“You saying his lula’s a liar, man?” Vaughan interrupts, always eager to stir. “He just told you his birdy knows the score… that ain’t good enough?”
“Yeah, sure. No offence, Rupe.”
“None taken.” Rupert rises, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Gents…”
He nods and he’s gone.
“Look, mate,” I say to Vaughan, drawing him in and trying to tame him with a lower, softer voice. “You want to know why I was asking all that?”
“You think I don’t know?” Vaughan starts, scornfully outraged. “What, you think I don’t know why you were asking?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Go ahead, if you know. You tell me.”
He runs out of steam, settles… and shrugs.
“You don’t know why I was asking, then.” Childishly, I push it home.
”Course I don’t know! You think I know why you’d ask that?”
“Okay.” I sigh, and lean closer. “You know I stopped going to Shine’s launch parties. But I was there at his thirtieth birthday, alright. And he made an oath, man… he swore there, in front of all his close mates and Libby, that he wasn’t gonna touch the drugs anymore.”
“He doesn’t give a stuff about Libby,” Vaughan scoffs.
“Well.” I have to concede that one. “Yeah. But he was serious. Look, let me put it this way. How do you think Rick Shine got where he is, while you and me are slaving on the admin and teaching? How d’you think he got the international five star hotels, the telly specials…”
“Luck, man.”
“Yeah… some of it’s luck. But he was dedicated. He was driven. He didn’t get all that by taking it easy. His fame came at a price, man, it came through sacrifice.”
I’m really powering on the rhetoric and rhymes, and the voodoo’s working on Vaughan, making him nod. I keep up my rap.
“He was smart, yeah. He was a charmer. But he worked for it. He used to spend his summers sitting indoors, churning out the next book. Where were you and me over the summer?”
Vaughan has a think, then the goggle-eyes widen. “Up the Whitby clubs, man, pulling those gothic birdies.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Was that good or bad?” Vaughan asks. This is the closest he comes to a catchphrase; it’s as if he really doesn’t know and needs it confirmed one way or the other.
“It was, you know, it was funny.” He nods, appeased. “But did either of us publish one word on Dracula fandom, as a result of that research trip?” Vaughan smirks. “I rest my case.”
“Alright, man… so what’s your point?”
“My point is, I can’t believe he went back on the drugs for just that one night, after staying clean for three years. And if he didn’t do it through choice, and he really did overdose, then someone spiked him. Now, what you got to ask yourself is this. Who’d want to spike Richard Shine?” |
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