Book one, Write to Kill, follows the misadventures of a debt ridden, budding author, who gets involved with London underground boss, Mad Dog Maddox. The author commits a heinous crime for money and then starts to write a book based on his experience.
Actors As Suggested By Readers
Book two, Write to Survive, finds the aspiring author, and his girlfriend Lisa, struggling to cope with the fallout from his actions. As Mad Dog Maddox lives up to his name, the couple must work as a team to survive his death threats.
Read the first chapter of Write To Survive
CCTV
THE train was motionless.
Unlike my state of mind.
Lisa and I were on the Jubilee line, underground, between St John’s Wood and Baker Street, the former home of the fictional Sherlock Holmes. I sincerely hoped a similarly astute detective wasn’t on my case. We’d been stalled and waiting, in a carriage dotted with disparate commuters, for a couple of minutes. It was eleven-fifteen. Forty-five minutes until the arranged meeting at noon with Jennifer, at her favourite spot, the Tower of London.
Earlier, before we’d even stepped out of the flat, I’d already received three messages from Mad Dog Maddox, threatening to call the police and to kill Lisa if I didn’t own up to his stepdaughter that I’d murdered his son-in-law. Her husband.
Being underground, with no signal, gave me some respite from him.
Lisa, sat to my left, in tight faded blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket, had been up all night, chain smoking whilst pacing the flat. Understandably she was ever so slightly on edge since I’d informed her that her life was on the line.
As the train started to move, an attractive young woman, blonde, mid-twenties, wearing a smart navy blue trouser suit, stood up and made her way over to the doors, leaving a Metro newspaper on her seat, which was directly opposite mine. I thought about picking up the paper to see if the story of my crime was still newsworthy. I decided against it. The morning news on the radio before we’d left the flat hadn’t mentioned the murder either, it seemed it was old news now, with no fresh developments such as an imminent arrest, much to my relief.
Had the investigation died down?
With no one immediately around us in the carriage now, I ventured conversation.
“You okay baby?” I asked Lisa.
“Am I okay? Really! Am I okay? What do you think?” The sarcasm was cutting. She leaned in to me to speak under her breath, right into my ear.
“Well, I’m just peachy! I mean, I used a murder weapon for making my lunch the other day, I slept with a dead man’s finger in the bedside table next to me, my boyfriend is a murderer, and now I’m on my way to meet the wife of the guy he murdered. And to top it all off, her stepfather wants to kill me. I’ve never been fucking better!”
“Babe, please keep your voice down, you don’t know who’s on the train.”
“Oh sorry, too loud for you?”
“You could say that.”
“They’ll be knocking on the door for you any day anyway. It’s going to be either the police taking you away in handcuffs, Mad Dog with a gun to my head or the loan sharks who want to put you in a wheelchair.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me, I know that, but you don’t have to shout about it. Oh, and thanks by the way.”
“Thanks for what?”
“For telling them yesterday that I’d moved away.”
“I don’t think they believed me. I did have other things on my mind.”
“Well, it did the job.”
“Why don’t you just pay them and get them off your back, you’ve got the money now after what you did.”
“I know what I did and I may need the money.”
“For what, running away?”
“Come on baby, I thought you were with me?”
“I am, but I did a lot of thinking last night.”
“And?”
“I can’t believe you’re so blasé about what you’ve done, about this, and, and writing a book about it, I mean come on.”
“Believe you me, I’m not blasé. I’m scared. Scared shitless. Terrified in fact. It’s not the bailiffs, the loan sharks or even Mad Dog Maddox, it’s being caught by the police. I can’t go to jail; I’m not cut out for it. And with the book, it’s a bit of an escape for me.”
“Escape? How can that be, you’re reliving every moment by writing about what you did.”
“What I mean is… fuck, I don’t know what I mean. It just helps me forget; I mean forget what I did for a moment okay, it’s about being an author, you know very well that is my dream.”
“Yes, I get that, but your dream of becoming an author has become a true living nightmare,” Lisa spelt out.
“I know that, but, you’ve got to admit, it makes an awesome read.”
“There you go again, being fucking blasé.”
“I’m not, I’m just….”
“I just don’t get it, why did you do it?”
“I’ve told you, the money, but if I could turn back time, I would. I just got caught up with a bad crowd and then it escalated to such an extent, it was too late to take a step back.”
“You could’ve told him that you didn’t want to do it,” Lisa continued.
“Like I’ve said, there was no chance. He’s not the type to accept that, anyway he would’ve cut my hands off.”
“But look, look at you now. Look at me. Look at us, for God’s sake.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
We sat in silence while I pondered the potential response to my next thought.
“There’s something else.”
“Jesus, what now?”
“CCTV.”
“What do you mean CCTV?”
“Well, I was thinking in bed last night, as I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeah, no sleep, tell me about it.”
“I know, I know, but it’s the CCTV. Cameras. I’m not sure, I’m just not sure if there were any on the road or surrounding areas that could have captured the moment.”
“The moment?”
“Yes, you know, the moment that I killed him.”
“Oh, my God, didn’t you look?” Lisa gasped.
“Keep your voice down. No, of course not. I’ve not done this before. I just….”
“I know what we’ve got to do, we, I mean you, you have to go back and check.”
“What, back to the murder scene?”
“Yes.”
“No way, no fucking way.”
“You have to,” Lisa raised her voice.
“Keep your voice down, people will hear.”
“Then what?”
“Let me think.”
“Huh! If only you had done a bit of thinking in the first place, before you got yourself into this bloody mess, and dragged me right in it.”
The train came to a halt again and when I looked up I saw we were at Westminster station where we had to change for the Circle line. I grabbed Lisa’s hand.
“We need to change here.”
Lisa snatched her hand away from mine as we alighted the train and walked in stony silence through the station towards the platform for the eastbound Circle line train.
Eight stops to Tower Hill.
As we stood on the crowded platform the sound of the approaching train would have drowned out any conversation had we actually been talking to one another at that point. Just then I felt the rush of air ahead of the train as it arrived.
“Come on, let’s get on,” I suggested, as I placed my hand behind Lisa, letting her get on first. I may be a murderer, but I was still a gentleman.
The train was unusually busy for this time of day, with every seat occupied. Standing behind a guy, who’s rucksack was slamming into me with every jolt of the train, I stared into the darkness of the tunnel. Even though it was November, I began to perspire, especially cooped up like sardines in a tin. I felt a drop of sweat fall from the back of my neck against the inside of my jacket collar.
And just then, I wondered if or when my collar would be felt by the Old Bill.
Once again our train was stalled, this time between Mansion House and Cannon Street. Fucking trains. I looked at Lisa. She looked at me. Her eyes were melancholic with shadows of exhaustion beneath. The guilt ran through me as the train began to move once again through the tunnel. The guy with the rucksack alighted at Monument.
Next stop, Tower Hill.
Write To Survive will be released soon!
Book three, Write to Live, set in New York, the final instalment, is currently being written.
![Break [DVD]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/717gBsunKqL._AC_SY445_.jpg)
