Two new chapters for you to enjoy

Hello, my one or two readers. I have updated both of my stories, each with a new chapter.

That story with a cat in it

That story with a cat in it has a new chapter – “In Which Much Tea is Consumed“. I noticed that the chapter navigation for this story is broken. I am working on that.

Reading time is going to be between 10 and 15 minutes.

This chapter has had some really good feedback from the writers at Thanet Creative Writers. One of the fun parts of that feedback was asking people to guess who they think the character Dave is based on. Everyone has a different idea about who it is based on which tells me that this is a believable character. It is probably quite fortunate that no one sees themselves in Dave. Who’d want to?

The truth is, just between me you and the whole internet, Dave is an amalgam of character traits from different situations and different people. I added in some research based on women talking about creepy things guys do and say and I use that extensively to really make him an over-the-top unlikeable character I could use as the butt of the jokes.

His name, likewise, was built up from a whole bunch of ideas running arround my unconscious mind. He started life as Dave the sh*tty friend and his name has not morphed much past that.

Dave is a character study on how not to behave arround women.

Legend

Also out today is Chapter three of Legend. Mermaid’s purse continues the story of Malial and his quest to save his family from an evil lord.

Reading time is 4 to 6 minutes

This is the chapter where I draw on a lifetime of having lived by the sea. Although very little would fit in two sides of A4 (every chapter of Legend is exactly 2 sides of A4) everything about the chapter is based in fact, except the bits that are about magic.

For example, mermaid’s purse is something you can find readily on the beach. They are actually the egg sack of small sharks but they look like a kind of seaweed. Where I live in Thanet, they are pretty common.

Lexicon

In the second chapter of “that story with a cat in it” I use the phrase “oversized cabooched monkey”. This is the first and last time I am likely to ever use that phrase and almost everyone asks me “what does that mean”?

I am sorry to say that I was showing off when I rote that. Cabooched is a heraldry term meaning shown without a neck. I was getting at the point that Santa looks like he has no neck.

Yes, there is a good chance that I will go back and change that later. Especially if some publisher wants to pick this up for print.

What do you think?

When you have read both stories and are up to date come back here and leave me a comment letting me know what you liked, loved, hated, or whatever.