If anyone, God willing, is interested in reading my novel in another life, perhaps it's best not to read this blog post as it contains
spoilers. Ha... Spoiling my own novel which doesn't actually exist yet.
Somebody asked me about my novel recently and it gave me pause. As I've mentioned before I haven't been very good at making any further additions to it lately but I have been reworking scenes and imagining scenarios from different perspectives lately. I thought in order to clear the clutter from my head it would be a good idea to work out what my main thoughts are within my novel. Taking time to step back and reflect is the best thing to do sometimes.
In my day to day life I feel like in a lot of cases people around me tend to react to what is in front of them and perspective becomes a singularly focused beam which is more destructive than beneficial. I think the term I have fallen back on is 'not being able to see the forest for the trees'. I feel like a novel is a forest and I've been focusing on individual trees (I'm starting to feel a little embarrassed about this analogy) for far too long. I've created a mass of words and chapters (sort of, I've never been good at ending a scene) without trying to determine what the story is actually about.
When I went to my writing club one particularly pleasant evening, a fella there (who was a film student I think) asked me and a friend to come up with an elevator pitch. It meant describing your story in less than 11 seconds to an exec who wants to make your film. Snappy, to the point, deliberate! My friend and I got there in the end with some babbling between us but I think we were both keenly aware that our ideas and thoughts were larger than a boiled down tagline. (At least that's what I felt). It reminded me that a lot of messy ideas are all well and good but I wonder where I'm going with this.
Recently I've been thinking about what has influenced me. Where did this core idea come from? I'll get to the main idea of my novel shortly but I thought it would be nice to think about how I've come to this point. I've surprised even myself when my brain suddenly produced two indelible pieces of art which I hadn't thought of in a long time but then realised of course this is where everything started.
One of my favourite films, which had a mind-boggling impact on my brain as a young woman, was surprisingly
Naked by Mike Leigh. It was hard to get a hold of the DVD 15 years ago, especially before I had an Amazon Prime account, this was before they sold films like Trainspotting at HMV. I think me and my sister ended up getting a hold of special edition and there was a little post of David Thewlis' main character Johnny standing in inky darkness, only dull glowing orbs of streetlights illuminating him. Perhaps blu-tacking that to my ceiling had a bigger impact than I realised.
I was enamoured by the darkness of the film, the know-it all nihilism of the picaresque protagonist - all of those words were beyond my basic comprehension when watching the film as youthful teenager. I was just drawn in by the charismatic and ultimately despicable Johnny.
Then there was
Dead Like Me. This was something that was on Sky One back in 2003 (around the same time but perhaps before I saw Naked) and captured something in my imagination I had never experienced before. Bryan Fuller's preoccupation with death has influenced me throughout my formative years even though he continues to create projects and step away from them for his own reasons - usually creative control. The first 3 episodes have his trademarks all over them and then he left I think. There's an imperceptible gear change as the show settles into a more almost procedural approach. The introduction to the world of grim reapers is brutal and cruel and it had a lasting impact of me. As far as world-building goes I think Dead Like Me and Twin Peaks have the most fascinating pilots and I could watch them repeatedly and happily ignore the rest.
In Dead Like Me the protagonist is a recently deceased teenage girl with a bad attitude and distinct lack of social skills. Seeing a theme here? My fascination with the afterlife started in my early teens and this fed into my belief that death, much like life, is as mundane and cruel as anything else rather than a heavenly cloud of love.
It's only taken several hundred words but I guess now is as good a time as any to discuss what my novel is about. When people ask I produce my casual summation 'assassins, lady assassins who run a business together and kill people making it look like an accident'. But what's the thrust of the plot you ask? 'Well, the main one who actually kills people starts to fall apart'. That's it, that's all I've got.
The way it works is that I've created three distinct women who operate together in an arrangement. There is the Head - known also as Helen, a widower who has recently remarried who works at an accountancy firm and also manages the business finances. She has the least to do with the murder. She has a nice house in the suburbs, a couple of daughters, a waspish attitude.
Then we have the Face - who is actually called Sarah, a recent graduate in her 20s who is lacking in direction or ambition. She has a nice flat in the stylish part of town and a lot of well connected university acquaintances. She also has a white fluffy cat called Walter (which was a Breaking Bad reference I felt particularly smug about inserting one particularly silly day). She operates as someone who meets the 'clients' in fancy restaurants and discusses their desires. She discreetly records them and they will then tell her who they would like to be murdered. But in the first instance it looks like Sarah is simply a nervous escort offering her company to affluent men.
Finally we have the last piece of the trifecta. I've always struggled with names, names give ownership over something, they hedge them in. A name is a powerful tool to control something - whether it's your child, or your pet, even your car or a particularly useful set of garden shears. By naming something you give it an anchor and there's a familiarity in that. I read somewhere 'to name her is to tame her'. Even code names or allusions seem to lessen 'Her' impact. I've just taken to using pronouns. It's 'Her' or 'She'. She cast of her identity many years ago. She has a scar across her neck disconnecting her head from her heart (I swear I had this idea before Seven Psychopaths... Oh well). She is the actual assassin. She engages with a mark and kills them and makes their death look like an unfortunate accident. Whether it's a slip in the bath, a drug overdose, a tumble down the stairs or in one particularly awful scene I wrote, She steals someone's keys and watches them die of hypothermia in their garden on a winter evening. She carries a gun but she only has the one and She has never shot anyone with it. It has a pearl handle and it is inherited from a former associate. She threatens people with it and that's about it.
I came up with various names for her for a while, the main one was the 'Hand' in line with the Face and the Head but that felt like something from a Marvel comic. Then it was the 'Shadow' but that was played out. I also tried something more poetic and the 'Gossamer Ghost' was a brief and swiftly shut down idea.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fourth main character. Donovan is a rich boy from the upper circles of society who has somehow stumbled into the assassin character's web. Bless him, he's completely besotted with her. He's a puppy who will do anything for her and with minimal manipulation will assist her in causing the death of people he might even know personally. His father is a high powered adviser for people in government. He's charismatic and essentially a lad, the definition of masculine privilege but to be honest he has such a pleasant charm I can't help but enjoy his company.
Finally Old Cass or Cassandra Calvert. Aged battleaxe, ahem, fading actor. A massive influence on our assassin character who she plucked from the gutter and took under her wing to her apartments in the Quad. Initially Cass treated Her like a stray cat she had adopted letting her out of the house in the morning and letting her back in on the evening. Cass would display Her to friends who she entertained at lavish meals. 'Look at this homeless person I have taken in and cared for!' A common pretence between the women was to claim that the girl was a mute so she wouldn't have to speak, the scar on her neck was evidence enough of this. In the end Old Cass would end up 'whoring' the girl out to her friends but not the way you would expect. More on that later.
Then there's the most important thing which I have grappled with endlessly for many years now. The setting. Any story worth it's salt has an indelible setting which informs the story as much as the characters operating within it. I couldn't bare to try and write about somewhere real because the anal side of me insisted on making everything real and everything true. I needed a big metropolis but I'm a small town girl in the UK where we don't really have that kind of world. London is the closest analogue to the place I've created. It's not quite the world of sprawling skyscrapers and inky back alleys for the noir feeling I was going for but it works.
I called the city Apogeum, it's the apex and I pretty much have implied that this world is set in the not too distant future where London has essentially changed it's name. The main difference between my world and reality is that I have created a walled city within the centre of this massive capital hub city in the country. It's a pedestrianised 'Quadrangle' or 'Quad' depending on my mood. There are 4 watchtowers and entrances with large walls erected around it. This sector of the city contains the Houses of Parliament and political centres, it also has the main homes of the Royal Family and the most important sites of historical importance. Probably a good time to mention that Donovan's dad was a spin doctor/key player in the creation and follow through of this expensive and frankly insane project. He greased a lot of palms and gained the favour of a lot of powerful people by pushing the legislation through and effectively creating a wall between the haves and have nots.
This was subconsciously influenced by current affairs and the idea that this essential part of the country was protected from attack by outside influences. The people in power advised that this would be rolled out to the other large cities within the country but I tried to explain (with my limited vocabulary) that due to the implication of local councils bickering about where the boundaries would lie in each city and lack of funding from the central government that this had not been initiated elsewhere at the time. The implication was that it had been stymied by those in power as it wasn't seen as essential to the people outside of the capital. I'm such a cynic though.
Apogeum does not end with the Quad, there are districts situated around this which feed into it. Mainly the 'Financial District' where a lot of the action takes place - mostly skyscrapers and fancy apartments there and that's where Sarah and Donovan live. Then there's the 'Commercial' district. And some suburban areas. It wouldn't be London without a river and there's a classy section of suburbia based on the river known as 'The Bend' where all the posh people live who aren't able to find residences in the Quad.
My recurrent refrain (because the majority of my characters live outside of this bubble) is that the 'air is different' in the 'cage' or the 'Quad'. Then the idea developed that was it to keep the dangerous people or to keep them pegged in? Oooooh! I'm getting tired now...
The idea was that the women who operate their business by approaching rich selfish people (usually men, but not exclusively) who ask them to dispose of nuisance people. They request a pretty large fee to do so but the business is booming. They operate with an air of discretion and a remarkable success rate. Obviously that they are still running and a known secret in the upper echelons of society is quite a feat in and of itself. Sarah is the most beautiful woman in the room and people are charmed by her insouciance. She ingratiates herself (at first she's pretty shy and rubbish at this) and learns what people want and who is irritated by who. Sarah is the queen of manipulation and she has a deep streak of self-loathing regarding this. Sarah started out as a young delicate girl who indulges in this world of deception and dead inevitably becoming a cog in the machine.
At the end of the day you're either in with these terrible people or you're out in the cold. Where the air is different, the world is a little warmer and more elegant. Is it worth selling your soul?
Which brings us to Her. How did she come to be? She was adopted by Old Cass from the street - that was a fun chapter I doubt I will ever change. She lived in the Quad for a few years with Cass. Then Cass heard about an old friend who had recently died but he had committed suicide. A recent law had been passed -‘Declarations of Presumptive Deceased Act of 2019’. (I'm aware it makes no sense.) The Act dictated that those who were evidenced not to cost the tax payer due to ailing health or excessive care requirements would be exempt from paying a large portion of their Inheritance Tax bill as calculated as of the date of death. Her old friend's very clever accountants managed to circumvent the IHT with their wicked ways. I'm under no illusion it would be so easy to say - suicide = free pass but that's the environment it created. Obviously the law does not explicitly state this and it takes some clever accountants who can parse out the fine print to manipulate this legislation.
Side note - I worked in the Bereavement Team at a big bank and Inheritance Tax bills can be pretty ridiculous depending on your assets when you die. I recall reading into it and people moaning a lot about how you get taxed on everything when you're alive and then you get taxed even more when you die. It was fascinating. I came up with the above legal loophole and big surprise shortly after the 'Dementia Tax' scandal occurred burying Theresa May's assumed majority in her snap election (there were many other contributing factors but her perspective was clearly lacking.)
Anyhoo, Cass saw an opportunity and went for it. She began to use this tale of her friend ending his life allowing his family to receive the full amount owed to them on his death. Cass, as an actor and a well-connected and admired woman, used her charisma and connections and began to convince acquaintances to consider this option. It's not something discussed in polite society of course but Cass managed to get away with this picking off her weaker friends. Because she came up with this idea cash was discreetly sent her way in thanks in 'off the books' payments. To ensure these people went through with their agreed scheme Cass sent the girl she had picked up off the streets to sit with these people in their final moments. Cass considered staying with them herself but chickened out.
Our main assassin would lay in bed with these soon to be deceased pensioners and lie awake as they passed away. Of course in my twisted humour, I framed these past encounters to appear as Cass pimping out the girl to old wrinkly people (men and women). In the morning She would crawl out of bed and sneak out of the lavish rooms quietly as the old people lay motionless in their beds. She would describe it to someone at a later point as lying perfectly still and waiting for it to be over, the assumptions being more salacious than the reality. After observing death for quite some time and receiving bundles of cash which She stored in a biscuit tin this inevitably caused some damage to the girl.
One evening the girl encountered a 'client' who had changed their mind and did not wish to go ahead with their planned evening. She thought nothing of it and left him to his own devices. Cass lost her mind in a rage and was terrified that the person, who was fully aware of the deal and what Cass was doing, could potentially tell others about what she was doing. Cass gave Her a gun with a pearl encrusted handle and told her that it was her responsibility to ensure that the 'deal was done'.
How to create an assassin ladies and gentleman. How do I come up with these things?
She then gradually pulled away from Cass mainly because Cass ran out of people to manipulate and lost interest in their partnership. She then encountered Helen. Helen who was sobbing over a cheating husband and a shattered life. She did what she could to help in the only way she figured she knew how. Helen's husband was found strapped into his car which had crashed off a bridge with his lover in the back seat a couple of weeks later.
She approached Helen and tried to apologise with a biscuit tin of money but Helen instead saw an opportunity and this was how the business was born.
