Religion

I have a friend from Thailand who has been going through a very tough time. He began his life in poverty, his parents, one a manual labourer, the other, a person not to be trusted or relied on. So he's never had it easy. But now in his mid twenties he's had some really personally devastating news and will need all his emotional strength and whatever money he has saved to get back on his feet.

I love Thailand and its people. I especially love their Buddhist ways of seeing the world. So peaceful and calm - I was never looking to adopt it for myself, but having lived in Indonesia, the most populace Muslim country on the planet and of course being born and raised in Christian countries, it was a religion that I'd come to admire.

Then my friend told me he was going to go and be a monk for a month and he was assured this would re-right his Karmic balance - and all it would cost him was about a year's pay. So I held my tongue because these are his beliefs and his religion. And sure enough, now some months later, when he's undergoing medical treatment and desperately short of money, I can't help but wonder how the consciences of those lovely peaceful calm monks spending all his money are going? I guess my views on religion will never change - man made for many reasons and something to be wary of.

Inner City - New Draft now uploaded.

I'm really pleased I went through again doing ANOTHER proof read for Inner City. I found the Epub reader best for this and finally the mistakes seemed to jump out at me. It actually felt really good to be finding the tiny little things that really don't make any difference to the story, but they really spoil the readers enjoyment. Anyway - it's done now and once again my respect for really good proof readers has gone up immeasurably.

Second Lizzy Ford who I found on Smashwords.com and is a fellow Indie Author, sent me an amazing check list for creating an online presence - Thanks so much. And if you're a fellow author you should send her a message and ask for it. Incredibly helpful - Thanks Lizzie.

So it's Sunday and still no-one's messaging me.

So here we are at Sunday again. I worked about 8 hours yesterday and did my whole gym, ride swim thing. Today is water polo - the team I play with - or at least train with. It's 3 hours of treading water and sprinting through water against guys who are really amazing water polo players.

I am fixing quite a few typos and grammar errors that got through on the current draft of INNER CITY. A bit embarrassing, but as I said I'm not a great proof reader at the best of times. Always get too carried away in the read and start skimming lines in a race to get to the next big moment instead of reading carefully. So sorry to the 1400 people who read it with them - although they are averaging about one every 400 words and most are strange floating commas, or a capital where it shouldn't be. So hopefully it hasn't stopped people enjoying the read.

If you're reading this - and I see the stats telling me people are - say hello. I'd love some of you to drop me a message. I don't bite. :)

Proof reader Needed!

I'm still finding mistakes in INNER CITY. So once again I'm working my way through the novel and trying to get it perfect. It's dawning on me just how important and specifically skilled a good proof reader is.

Last night I found a sentence with a word missing. Now I don't know how many times I've read through the thing - either the passage was the very last change/draft I made. Or my brain is filling in words that it expects to be there. I think this is more likely.   You know - 'A stitch in saves nine' - and the missing time amongst a full page of words is filled in by a hopeful brain. Anyway, I am going over it again. Hopefully I will get them all this time!

Second Thoughts

I'm having serious second thoughts about the last poem I put into Outrageous Rhymes - Lonely. It was the only 'moment' poem I put in. A poem written when I was having a moment about something. That one obviously about being on my own. Probably a new years eve where I had no-one to kiss or something equally as emo dramatic.

I had lots of those moment poems where I had vented emotion on paper instead of at whatever it was that upset me. A few at friends who did arsehole things as friends are want to do from time to time. And as I'm inclined to do arsehole things to others from time to time I find it better to write down a poem about whatever it is. Family gets a few - but not as many as they probably deserve - LOL. And annoying things in general that invade my personal world are the topic of most.

But I pretty much kept them out of the book because they're self indulgent crap. I just put that one in because I thought it wasn't so bad showing how vulnerable and pathetic I sometimes get. And as I said, now I'm having serious second thoughts.

If you find this and go to Smashwords and download Outrageous Rhymes and discover the poem 'Lonely' is missing. You'll know I pulled it. Thank me. If it's still in the copy you have - sorry.

More about me.

I really hate talking about myself, but I thought I'd do the talking by pictures for anyone who comes here to try and find out who I am and what I'm about.

Here goes.

These were taken when I was in kindergarten so I had to be 4 or 5. They were taken and appeared in the local paper and of all the kids I was chosen as the boy, a girl was also chosen - to be featured in these silly shots. I was chosen because I was blonde and beautiful - so I have to ask - what the hell happened! Talk about peaking too early!!!

See what I mean. This is me at boarding school, Geelong Grammar's Timbertop - aged 14. That was taken on my bed in the dorm room I shared with 13 other 14 year olds. Timbertop back then had no curtains on the dorm room, a hot water boiler you had to get up and stoke with fire at least 40 minutes before you could shower - with wood from the wood shed we had to chop and have ready. And it is up near Mansfield Victoria - well elevated at the base of Mt Timbertop and very cold in winter. The picture clearly shows how dedicated I was to study.

At 15 I swapped to a different school - here's me playing football at age 17.

At home - in the kitchen I renovated and built - wasn't sure I could do it as it required taking out walls. Did everything but the plumbing and electrics. Very proud of myself!

Showing off. Say no more.

And that brings us up to date... 2006 and 2011. Where did all those long blonde locks go?

Inner City - Short Stories and Rhymes

If you're a career writer then you know all about rejection. I must be close to a thousand over my career. Mostly I send off a letter, a script, a story, a few opening chapters to a novel - having followed all the guidelines I could find - or all the things I'd done on those times when I was successful - and simply never heard back.

Well over 50% of my efforts have met with nothing - which is the most frustrating rejection of all. Did they get it, did they read it? Who knows. I guess most of the other rejections take this form.

              Dear Scott,
                     Thank you for allowing us to read (Insert title here). Unfortunately.....(rejection excuse here).We wish you well with the project and your future career.
                Incredibly Sincerely,
                Miggins McGee (Secretary to the personal assistant of the person you sent it to)

            After 'unfortunately'.... you can insert:  The project is not for us right now. It is not something we would be looking for. It is similar to a project we have in development. It seemed long and would take more than a few minutes to read.
                       Please feel free to create your own and message me with them!!

                Of course, I'm not arrogant to ignore the fact that some of the many rejections I've had should have read.... Unfortunately it was a piece of shit/it needs further development/it was sloppy - were you in a rush? etc etc.

                       And no doubt some were. I've had just as many bad ideas as good I think and at the time I thought the story ideas were world beaters. Often I'd spend months, once years on a project before the fog cleared and I saw it for what it was - Yuk! Someone get the shovel. I don't know what it is about people, me included, that makes us unable to see something because we get attached to it. I find sticking something away and then coming back to it after at least 6 weeks does wonders. I also have, over many years, become much better at knowing my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. For some strange reason there's a disconnect between my left and right brains. When I'm creating it's all about the story - I split infinitives all over the place.  Lose my ability to spell or even more embarrassing, spell phonetically and sometimes really simple words. When I spotted that over and over again I realised something weird was going on.

                        When I stick something in a drawer and get back to it - those things stand out so clearly - if I can stop myself getting swept back into story mode that is - for me that's a hard thing with something like a novel. So these days I am never too quick to release something - I am just not skilled enough as an editor to edit something I'm still creatively engaged with.

Anyway - Inner City was written in 1999. I had my then agent send it out. But it was a raunchier sluttier version of the book I know have. And I don't think my agent liked it because he took forever, over 6 months, to send it to anyone and then I only ever saw one rejection letter.
"I liked this book, I liked it so much I took it to bed with me. So why am I know making you an offer...."
Maybe he only showed me that letter because it came so close - who will ever know. But I remember it word for word because it seemed to come so close. Just say no for goodness sakes!

So Inner City sat around for over ten years - forgotten. I wrote another novel - It's a boy. The story of my (now ex) partner and I raising his cousin who was involved with drugs and homeless. It's both funny and sad - how can you not laugh when a kid steals a gay man's Jean Paul Gualtier Cologne - pours it down the sink and makes a bong from the bottle! It almost got the boy killed! But no-one was interested in a non-fiction account of two guys raising a troubled thirteen year old homophobic boy. Into the files with you you go!

I did discuss this story with a producer who convinced me to turn it into a screenplay. That screenplay gained development money from the NSW Film and TV Office and was a finalist in the 2009 Southern California Film festival screenplay Comp - but it's a long way from being produced.

Next I wrote a novel, The Bride Wore Cocaine. This was a tough birth and I paid $500 dollars to get it professionally reviewed. The review basically read - Yuk! I mean - it was a violent kick to the you know where. It was the worst critique of anything ever.
"This doesn't work. You begin with a murder but never solve it, you should make this a murder mystery....."
At the time I accepted the book was crap and let it be forgotten as well. I was working overseas, living in places that spoke little English and were minus 30 degrees in winter - locking me away. I wrote poems and short stories in my spare time. I drank lots of vodka to try and fit in with the locals (Do not do this! Ever. Poles and Russian are better vodka drinkers than.... Just don't - especially the women. Dangerous!)

Then I wrote a miniseries that people raved about but no-one wanted to produce because it was a period drama. It had a great director wanting to direct, a producer - it was ready to go and based on a true story. and While heads of Network drama actually rang me - OMG! - they rang to let me know it truly had been considered and unfortunately..... (See above).

But one of those TV drama people said it would make a great novel. So I began writing. And at 80 pages sent it off and so far so good. I have some interest.... enough to ask for more at least. So we will see... but it does mean I have 75% of a new novel to write.

But I also let those interested know I'd written other novels. They didn't care - didn't want to read any part. Inner City usually meets rejection with - "we are not interested in Science Fiction." I personally think there is a disconnect between the people who are most usually in the publishing business vetting manuscripts and Science Fiction. These are not fans!

It's a boy is about Gay people so it either received those wrinkles around the nose and an "Oooooh!" or "There's no market for that." Really - the pink dollar has disappeared. The group with the single biggest percentage of disposable income.... how about we tape an 'E' inside every cover?

And finally The Bride Wore Cocaine - Interest Zero. It is an evil little piece of pop culture that parties on crystal meth all night long and cheats with every little biscuit that looks in its direction. It is a very naughty novel. So no from the publishers.

But it got me thinking again about self publishing. I started by putting a novel on a blog like this one and over a thousand people have visited in just over three months. Inner City Blog Then I found Smashwords. Beautiful beautiful Smashwords. So over the past months - Since about February, I have re-edited everything and re-read it. And that critique I got for 'Bride' - it's by far the best thing I've written. The structure may drop a few people off because it's written in a parallel linear narrative four years apart. But there's a good reason for this - and I think it works. So rasberry to you critique person! And I'm looking forward to it being read by others to see what they think.

So that's the story of why and how I suddenly burst onto Smashwords. It isn't like Lizzy Ford who is writing up a storm (Check out her blog here Guerrilla Wordfare if you want to see a determined kick arse approach to getting yourself noticed and accepted as a working writer. wow! I took notes from her approach!)

I am simply polishing and uploading the last ten years of my writing life. All done in isolation. Read before smashwords by about 3 people and now over night being read by thousands!  I will eventually put a price on some of it (Never the rhymes - they're just silly doodles!!!) - but If I can get to 10,000 or so downloads with something - then I feel $1.99 wouldn't be asking too much.

So I hope people like what they're reading. The poems I figured - what the hell. Some were written in Poland, Russia, London, Indonesia, Paris and some back home in Oz. But what good are they sitting never read by anyone.... that's why even they got bundled up and put online to be read. There were a dozen or so more, but those were either too private(embarrassing) or too emo(Embarrassing) to be read by anyone but me. LOL

And happy Queens Birthday to everyone! Nothing but respects Lizzy!

Oi! Lizzie - Where can I read Scott's Writing?

Don't get me started with religion!

A JERUSALEM rabbinical court has condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago. The large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.

Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises. One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.

Seriously!???? I don't even know where to start with this.... How could they believe this, and even if they did, isn't being placed in the body of a dog enough of a sentence? I mean really - does this cute little poochy look like a lawyer to you?

Is the saying 'Chinese whisper' racist?

Yesterday my local paper reported  a story from Bejing where a young toddler had fallen from a building and become wedged behind an airconditioner. And then someone made a funny comment and then it was misunderstood or trolled for response and it was on. Don't you love the internet? Just like the safety of being locked inside the shell of your car where you can yell and shout at all the other idiot drivers who are refusing to give you a perfect run to wherever you're going.

Anyway - it got me thinking about what kicked the whole thing off. There are various terms we use for things that we probably never slow down to really think about. I've grown up knowing the term Chinese whisper - first as a party game where you whisper to the next person and they whisper on down the line and then you reveal the message that has ended up and the message that began - only to fall about laughing because the phrase 'particularly nasty weather' has been tortured through retelling and has ended up 'tickle your arse with a feather'. And then as I got older to realise how the saying came about.

In Australia, the Chinese have been part of our country since they flocked here in the 1850's to join the huge Victorian gold rush. In fact my first boss was Chinese and I remember asking him once when his family arrived - and in his very broad Aussie accent he said, "5 generations ago."

Now I don't know if the term 'Chinese Whsiper' comes from the gold fields where a message left with a Chinaman who barely spoke English would be passed on as something different, or if the term has come from elsewhere. I know in other countries the practise/game is called 'Telephone" - a far better and less controversial title. But is the term Chinese Whisper racist? Does it infer more than a struggle with language - a comment on intelligence? If so then it's definitely racist, but for me it goes into the politically correct - too hard basket. The readers in the newspaper certainly got stuck in and divided into the 'yes it does' and the 'no it doesn't' camps.

My call is that I don't think it is a term that signals a racist attitude, but it may infer one unwittingly. And for that reason - I'm going to take it out of my vocabulary and start calling that game 'Telephone'. Because the last thing I would ever want to be accused of is being a racist. So from now on when I give information to someone and they get what I say totally arse backwards, I will say it's just like playing telephone...... stupid Indian call centres!

New Releases coming soon!

So here's the new book cover and back cover to Inner City.

Scott Norton on Smashwords

I'm about to release more onto Smashwords.com. Probably three separate releases over the next few months. 3 Surprising Shorts - 3 short stories with a  twist. And a collection of poems that have been festering in my computer hard drive for years. And they aren't great art - they range from ridiculous kids poems suited to a Sesame Street on magic mushrooms type show. (If anyone's old enough to remember 'The Electric Company' who had brilliant people like Tom Lehrer writing for them - then some are in that vain, trying to approach his greatness.)

Others are just doodles, some serious and some about serious things, but not so serious in style, like:

GAY MARRIAGE

The sanctity of marriage is the new topic de jour

 Anyone can do it, doesn’t matter, rich or poor

It’s a sacred oath to God that shouldn’t be ignored

Unlike other oaths to God that make us kind of bored.

But don’t let those gay folk reach the altar

They wouldn’t know their fingers from their ring

They’d decorate the church in gaudy colours

And they’d all be booking Elton John to sing!

Marriage is a union, till death tears you apart,

Unless you’re young, you rushed a bit or needed a green card

The ring, the dress, the spot-lit vows, it’s all that we adore,

And I should know, the records show, I’ve done it twice before!

But don’t let those gay types reach the alter

It’s reserved for those who understand the vows

The church is not a toy, like a priest’s young altar boy,

It’s entirely there to join the men and fraus.

The other release is something I wrote just after Inner City - about 10 years ago - a factual account of raising a 13 year-old street kid. All will be free so keep checking when they come online and enjoy with me the drugs, the violence, the 11 suspensions, 3 expulsions and two arrests that made that period of my life so memorable.

The final two Novels I've been working on are also on their way. The Bride Wore Cocaine has been entered in an award for unpublished work and they stipulate it can't be published - even online until judged. Shame because I really think it came up well. It's probably close to something Bret Easton Ellis might write, in subject anyway - about a young man brought up in a protected middle class environment who meets and falls for a girl who shows him the world. The trouble is, like many people who experience something they like for the first time, he likes it too much and goes way too far. His girlfriend actually turns out to be the hero of the piece which is something I didn't even realise until I'd finished writing it - but that's one of the things I love about writing - especially when things work and characters drive themselves. Here's a taste - with very little context other than - Bailey has been given a Xanax for the first time by his girlfriend who is trying to help him over feeling guilty - although she doesn't know the extent of his guilt or just how serious his transgression is:

They both sat and traded gentle conversation as they ate. It didn’t take Bailey long to bring up the one thing he’d been thinking about all day.

“They brought the machine back today.”

 “And?”

“Nothing wrong with it. They replaced some wires as a precaution, but that was it. Daryl nodded as she ate the last of her vegetables.

“So you have no reason to feel guilty. He obviously stuck his hand somewhere stupid, while the power was still on and …” She got up and took the plates away without finishing her sentence. She piled them by the sink and took some ice cream from the fridge. Bailey could see she was going to a lot of effort to make him feel better and while appreciated, he didn’t feel he deserved it.

“You don't have to do this you know?”

“I know,” Daryl said. “Here. Take this.”  Daryl split a pill in half and held one portion between her thumb and forefinger, ready to drop into Bailey’s palm.

“What is it?”

“Xanax. I’ll run a hot bath for you. You’ll love it.”

He took the pill and popped it in his mouth without hesitation.

“Where did you get it?”

“My doctor. I told her I had anxiety attacks.”

“You lied to your doctor?”

“I feel anxious sometimes.”

“But they’re not attacks.”

“How do you know? Maybe I just tolerate them better than most people. ”

Bailey had experimented with very few drugs before he met Daryl, but these few experiences had been ridiculously innocent events, more a teenage rite of passage than any real exploration. Drinking spectacularly bad mixers before heading to the local teenage dance clubs run by police or church youth groups were a regular event. He smoked his first cigarette in the laneway behind his parent’s house when only twelve, certain at any minute some local neighbourhood patrol would sweep him up and report back to his parents. In high school and then at university he smoked dope without loving or hating it, but he’d always drawn the line short of anything else. And then along came Daryl. And he trusted her enough to try anything she suggested. Now she was giving him something new to explore and she promised a ride that would only slow him down and leave him sleeping peacefully. It sounded perfect, just what Bailey needed to help his guilty mind relax.

The bath was warm. It had candles flickering at each corner and the bath salts had turned the water aqua blue. When Bailey lowered himself in he found a rolled towel at his head and the music from outside the bathroom was light and soothing. He drifted in stasis trying to gauge if the pill was working.

He couldn’t notice a difference until he began to float at the very top of the water. His body had never been so light before.

Every problem he had drifted away like dirt from his pores. He thought of work. It didn’t matter; Simon Pearce – un-noteworthy; his stalled career – unimportant. The only thing that really mattered was Daryl and he had her, and this bath, that was important too, and Xanax, lovely wonderful soft and woolly Xanax.

 

The door inched open and Daryl’s head poked into the room.

“How’s it going?”

“Okay,” Bailey said trying not to let Daryl know how completely brilliant he thought both she and Xanax were.

“Do you feel nice and fuzzy?”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Are you almost done?” She asked.

This caught Bailey by surprise.

“I thought you might be ready for bed?”

“I just got in.” 

Daryl laughed. Her half tablet had done what she promised. It took away Bailey’s stress, his worries and his evening.

“Try two hours.”

She helped Bailey from the bath. He stood motionless cupping his arms to his chest as she wrapped a towel around him like he was a little boy in need of maternal care. He leant forward and snuggled his nose into the crease of her neck and came close to falling asleep.

“No you don’t. Wait until you’re in bed for that.”

“You’re coming too, aren’t you?” Bailey’s hands wandered out from under the towel and began exploring Daryl as she did her best to dry him off.

“Of course,” Daryl said. Bailey took this as a cue to plant a kiss. He missed his target as Daryl shoved him playfully away, unravelling the towel as she did and leaving him naked in the hall outside the bathroom. He quickly walked to the bed and disappeared between the fresh sheets.

Daryl drained the bath, blew out the candles and went to turn the CD player off.

“You were in there so long I’ll have to help you get all the wrinkles out.” 

Daryl kicked off her shoes and slipped her t-shirt over her head. Bailey didn’t move.

“Bailey?”

He was dead to the world, lost in a deep sound sleep. Daryl was left horny and alone. She had a seventy-kilogram bed warmer without any of the truly useful attachments working. It took her some time to get her mind to drift towards sleep, but once she had, she and Bailey spooned close together and hardly moved for the next few hours.

Bailey’s mind went to war with the Xanax as it tried to remove all his worries from recent events. As each hour passed the battle was waning towards the mind and the finger of guilt began to tickle Bailey again.

Suddenly, he was back in the bath, but far from alone. Sitting opposite him was Christ, a long greasy beard floating on top of the water, the hairiness of a Middle Eastern hippie who believed in sharing everything, even baths.

Bailey couldn’t hide his male curiosity, given the company, and he stole a quick glance at the Messiah’s jewels. He was cut, but no surprise there. Jesus noticed and closed his legs slightly.

“What are you doing here?” Bailey asked.

Jesus hardly looked up. He was facing a personal crisis of his own, his travel wafers had spilled and now floated on the water.

“Fuck off.”

“Excuse me?”

Christ chased a really soggy wafer and tried to trap it under the water. He used stealth to bring his hand from underneath and grab it by closing his palm slowly. The wafer wanted to escape like a raft, riding the water around it, but Jesus lived up to his hype, he was good in the wet.

“Are you okay?” Bailey asked.

“Not really.”

“Are you upset with me, because of what I did?”

“No.”

“Then why so angry?”

“They nailed me to a fucking cross!” Jesus said, holding up a hand and letting the water drain through the hole in his palm for affect. The wafer he’d just caught escaped with it. He rolled his eyes in frustration and hit the water hard sending a wave splashing onto the floor.

“Fuck!”

Bailey had expected Christ to be a sweet and forgiving man, but people always expect understanding when it’s someone else who’s done the suffering.

Bailey jumped slightly as a toe brushed his scrotum.

“You should cut your nails,” he said, trying to be understanding of a man who only ever wore sandals.

“You think I want to be here?” Christ asked.

“I’m not sure.” Bailey didn’t know what else to say. He decided to change the subject to avoid any further awkwardness.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?”

Jesus stopped what he was doing and glared at Bailey with disbelief.

“Do I look psychic?”

A stunned Bailey watched his bath-mate catch the last of his floating wafers and put them in a silver tin. It was a pathetic site. Wafers are a lot of things, but they’re not waterproof.

“Will I go to heaven?” Bailey asked, still trying to discover if the soggy prophet knew his fate.

For the first time Jesus stopped and looked at Bailey as if he mattered. Bailey thought he heard angels singing and with the acoustics in the bathroom they sounded really good.

“Yes,” Christ said in his best phone voice. It was deep enough to send small ripples across the surface of the water. Bailey had never felt more relieved in all his life. But it was short lived.

“If there was a heaven!”

Bailey’s bewildered expression forced Jesus to repeat the revelation.

“There is no heaven,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? There is no heaven.”

Bailey tried not to look confused, but it wasn’t easy given he was in the middle of a delusional dream which placed him in a warm bath entwined in the legs of Christ.

“If there’s no heaven, why do so many people believe in it?” Bailey was almost certain Jesus was having him on.

“Because people are stupid. It’s a philosophical concept that I tried to explain metaphorically. The moment I said the words ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, those without the means to accept the statement as a conceptual idea began searching for it like it was real estate. And they’ve never stopped.”

Bailey sat quietly, waiting for the punch line delivered by a master showman. Jesus sat waiting, even for him, timing was everything, but there was no tag coming. Finally Bailey spoke.

“So, there’s no heaven?”

The face of the Son of God registered pity towards Bailey.

“You’re not that quick, are you?”

Bailey shrugged off the insult as being from an unimportant source and did his best to show intelligence by expanding the proposition.

“If there’s no heaven, we can do what we want, without any moral implications? It doesn’t matter if something’s good or bad?”

“That’s up to you. Everything’s where it should be,” Christ said, pointing to his temple. “Good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell. You want to see them, look in a mirror.”

Bailey thought about this as Jesus soaped up his jewels with an organic soap left by Daryl as a display rather than a functional cleanser. It was part of her overall aesthetic giving the bathroom a sophisticated air. The soaps were matched by clear plastic bags of potpourri laid like mines around the edge of the bath.

“What the fuck is this?” Christ said, as the soap disintegrated in his hand.

“It’s organic soap.”

“It’s leaving little bits of shit all over me!”

“That’s oatmeal,” Bailey said, trying to ignore such a selfish complaint and bring the conversation back to him.

“Who’s the dumb son of a bitch who thought sticking oatmeal in soap was a good idea?!”

Bailey had the feeling Jesus wasn’t giving him his full attention. He pressed on regardless.

“You’re trying to make me feel guilty and own up, aren’t you?”

“No,” Jesus said as he hunted down more oatmeal clinging to the hairs on his chest.

“I know you are,” Bailey said defiantly. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

Christ looked at Bailey with incredible intensity and lent forward. Bailey couldn’t tell if the lean from Jesus was to emphasis what was about to be said or to pick a stubborn piece of oatmeal out of his ass. Both tasks were managed at the same time, hardly a miracle, but still impressive.

“Listen carefully. No-one cares about you. There are so many things going on in this world that are so much more important than you, no-one’s ever going to notice anything you do.”

Suddenly Bailey sat up and called out. He’d taken the covers with him leaving Daryl open to the air. She woke with concern.

“What’s wrong?”

Bailey looked around. He took a moment to orientate himself. He looked at the room, then the bed and then Daryl, then he calmed down.

“I was dreaming.”

“You okay?”

Bailey nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t. He just wasn’t ready to talk about his cleansing religious experience.

And that brings me up to date to the piece that is my current work in progress. It's a labour of love 25 years in the making - not that I've been writing it that long - but that's how long I've had the pieces of the story. It took me many years and many false starts to get to where I am, and in 2010 it was written into a minis series that attracted a really world class director - Peter Andrikidis. At least he loved the script so much he read it in a day and called me, letting me know if we got funding he'd be happy to direct. Does anyone have a spare 15 million?

Anyway, one of the Networks who said a period piece made the budget for a 4 hour mini series prohibitive, thought it would make a great novel - so that's what I'm doing with it and I'm now 100+ pages down and have sent the first 8- pages around and I'm happy to say I have already had some initial interest. Again - stay tuned for developments.

Sport and inspiration

I love sports and always have. I've just watched Rory McIlroy win the US Open golf championship and once again I get to connect with emotions that give me the smallest part of a vicarious victory.

How great to see a young man with a huge lead in the Masters a couple of months before, only to blow it on the last day with an 80, put that horror behind him and rise above to win the very next major. Inspirational stuff! Most people, certainly me, would be crushed by that. But here he is once again coming into the final round with a huge lead and the pressure of that blow up fresh in everyone's mind and the very first question journalists lead with since that tournament, and not only didn't he not blow up, he surged ahead with one of the best rounds of the day. Ah, sport - what would I do without you?

Now all we need is Tiger back to his best and see them head to head shooting the lights out. All I can do is hope.

Thanks to RoryMcilroyfan5000 - great clip!

Hello!

Hello and welcome to the blog of Scott Norton. I'll keep adding updates about books coming out and hopefully use this to post other writing and get to chat and interact with anyone who's read something and would like to chat about it.

So far Inner City has been out at Smashwords for about three months and is downloading much quicker than I ever imagine it would. To my first two reviewers - Musette and Andrey, thank you so much for taking the time and I'm really glad you like what you read.

The novel was originally online at a blog: innercity.blogspot.com

After about 3 months I deleted all but the first ten chapters and directed everyone to Smashwords. It's just too hard to know who is checking out the blog to read and who is just having a sticky beak.

For those who have asked what TV I worked on, especially those overseas.... I was the original scenarist (Writer/Story Producer/Show Runner) on Poland's Na Wspolnej. 2011 is Na Wspolnej's ninth year on air and they have now gone well over 1000 episodes.

Here's a clip of the cast being as professional as ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGUqs9wdFMg

But if you want to see something really worthwhile - here's another show from Poland a friend let me know about. The guys in Ireland have taken it and dubbed it making it completely surreal and hysterical!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr5MYwqA8rk

Last week I was rung by Sony about working for them overseas. I have itchy feet and would love another overseas adventure - so stay tuned!

I should also mention a few people who I hired and trained as writers in various countries who have now gone on to great heights.
Joko Anwar was my head writer in Indonesia on a show called - Belahan Hati for RCTI.
He once told me he was so broke at the time he couldn't afford a prayer mat so he would pray on an old newspaper. One day as he bowed down to the paper he had chosen he spotted my ad - 'Writers wanted to work in Television'. The rest is history!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joko_Anwar

From Poland Wojek Nerkowski recently won a Polish TV award for best writer on a new television show. Na Wspolnej was his first show.

Say hello if you want to chat. I am lucky to have friends from all over the world and I'm always happy for more.