Daily archives: September 1, 2010


Tiger- Part Fourteen

It was coming up to the next deadline for a call in. Jed checked his gun for the tenth time in as many minutes. He wasn’t about to use it unless absolutely necessary. Bloodshed would be so hard to explain, and as he didn’t have a suppressor, so much harder to keep quiet. At the table by the window Terence checked a far more useful weapon. He popped a battery pack from the charger and swapped out the perfectly good one which had been in the taser he’d been issued. Across from Terence, William was doing stretches, limbering up the large frame which had been born for rugger but had adapted surprisingly well to a mix of martial arts. When it came time to enter the room these two would do the violent work. The fourth member of the team was Vanessa, lounging in front of the receiver on the dressing table, garish Skullcandy hi-fi quality headphones blocking out any external noise and indifference shielding her from the smell of three tense men in a warm closed room.

Jed took his phone into the bathroom. With no adjoining wall to the room they were watching there was less chance of being heard by the subjects. He speed dialled Irwin’s number, and listened to it ring and ring. Was this a good sign? Was Irwin too busy saving hostages to pick up his phone? Or had something gone wrong?

Vanessa clicked her fingers to get Jed’s attention. When he walked over she held out the plain, and far less comfortable, standard issue headphones which had come with the listening equipment.

Notes Well, the first draft of Tiger is finished and I have sent it to a couple of people who foolishly agreed to proofread and continuity check for me. I’ve decided that the published version will have bonus features, much like a DVD. Exactly what these are I haven’t yet decided, but there will probably be two versions of the tale in the ebook file. One will just be the prose, the other will have links to authorial comments, maps, photos and maybe web pages with further information. The Kindle can browse, but it won’t be so good for photographic content because the screen is greyscale. However, other readers shouldn’t have this problem.

Skullcandy headphones are wonderful, garish things. My employers sell them, but I haven’t yet been able to do a test of a pair to see how good they are. I gave Vanessa a pair as much because they do an Agent range as anything else.