All proceeds from the book go towards the victims of the devastating floods that hit Pakistan in August 2010. Paul Anderson, Jodi Cleghorn, Laura Eno, Annie Evett, Emma Newman and Benjamin Solah all have stories in the anthology – that’s 10% of the anthology represented by Chinese Whisperings authors!

Details about the book follow, and a link to purchase the book is at the bottom of the post.

Look at the image on the cover of this book.

A man and a boy knee-deep in water. Father and son? Uncle and nephew? Teacher and pupil? Or perhaps just a kid, lost, tagging on to an adult in the hope that he will be taken somewhere safe, dry?

They are wading away from the light into the darkness and gloom. The unknown. Fear. Hunger. Disease. But they are also wading towards you. They can’t ask for your help. You must choose to give it.

A simple way of doing that is to buy this book. Proceeds go to helping the victims of the Pakistan floods.

Now please take one more look at the cover. And remember, they can’t ask…

50 Stories for Pakistan features work by the following authors: Robert J. McCarter, Joanne Fox, Erik Svehaug, Susan Lanigan, Anne Mullane, Lisa Ricard Claro, R.J. Newlyn, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Martin Webster, Jonathan Pinnock, Trevor Belshaw, Julia Bohanna, Iain Pattison, Laura Eno, Dave Clark, Pam Howes, Alun Williams, Annie Evett, Jennifer Stakes, Rebecca Emin, Marjorie Tolchard, Marit Meredith, Paul Malone, Ewan Lawrie, Jarred McGinnis, Alex Tomlin, Gail Richards, Benjamin Solah, Ruchira Mandal, Alyson Hilbourne, Ramon Collins, Darren Lee, Riaz Ali, Nasim Marie Jafry, Heather Parker, Shazia Bibi, Andrew Parrott, Brigid O’Connor, Rob Innis, Tony Williams, Annemarie Neary, Emma Newman, Robert Long, Beryl Brown, Vanessa Couchman, Joanna Campbell, Sylvia Petter, Rosemary Hayes, Paul Anderson, and Alice Turner.

The introduction was written by award-winning author, Vanessa Gebbie.

This book was edited by a dedicated team of volunteers: Amy Burns, Nick Daws, Claudine Lazar, Jayne Howarth, Dan Powell, Jodi Cleghorn, Danny Gillan, Laurie Brassard, David Robinson, Maureen Vincent-Northam, Gillian Best, and P. J. Kaiser.

50 Stories for Pakistan

Helping the victims of the floods

Produced by www.bigbadmedia.com

Book Preview

“Where you going?”

“Airport.”

The taxi does a u-turn, headlights cutting a swathe through the fog. I close my eyes and hope the driver refrains from assaulting me with a one-way discussion of whatever the shock jocks are polluting the airwaves with this week. I need this ride to unwind and rest in safety.

Exhaustion ebbs and flows with sea-sickness motions. I look at the window, distracting myself from the bone-shattering tiredness, thinking of the future rather than the past.

My mind wanders to the comfort of the scuffed Doc Martens and how good they feel after two years in designer shoes; Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo and Dior, as dictated by the role of Keely Jackson, personal assistant to John Hildebrand Junior, CEO of Pangaean Airlines. The last pair I wore, and hopefully I will ever wear, abandoned in JJ’s bedroom. The rest lined up with military precision, in Keely Jackson’s overpriced studio apartment.

A place I’ll gratefully never set foot in again.

I wonder if JJ will find the Dior platforms? The housekeeper certainly won’t. Her only act of defiance is to not vacuum under his bed.

JJ insisted I keep the platforms on, bending me over his dressing table, one hand jammed between my shoulder blades, the other hand grabbing at my hip bone, his fingers digging into the tender hollow. It replays behind my eyelids, his face looming in and out of the mirror with the rhythmic pounding, grinning with narcissistic delight.

Sex which pushes boundaries is something I’ve always sought, but there was nothing to relish about sex with JJ. I only got off because I knew the man with his head buried between my thighs stood to lose his family’s most prized possession… to me. That, and only that, allowed me to orgasm, howling and writhing in genuine ecstasy.

I faked it from that point on, my body obeying, subservient, while I disassociated. In this fashion two years of sexual fantasies unravelled for JJ, his hidden cameras throughout his penthouse capturing every minute and nuance of his brutality.

Hours on, in the bosom of a heavy sedative, JJ slept, his perfect mouth slack, a silver line of saliva pooling on the silk pillow case. I corrupted the security system, disabling the cameras, wiping the archives and backups. Dressed in one of JJ’s business suits, with his trade mark black fedora pulled low over my forehead I unlocked the safe and took what I’d been waiting two years for.

With a single upmarket department-store bag in hand, I slipped out the fire escape to the car waiting below.

“Domestic or international, Miss?”

The question pulls me back to the present. The driver’s eyes meet mine above the tacky pine tree deodoriser swinging from the rear vision mirror.

“International, please.”

My body protests when I stretch, but I push aside the pain. I don’t regret cow-tailing to JJ’s sadism, every second worth the agony.

Skin heals.

Plastic surgery removes scar tissue.

He fucked Keely Jackson’s body, and I’m not her now. In the end, JJ was the one fucked, good and proper.

***

It is 6:05am when the taxi eases into the chaos of the drop-off zone. Sleep-deprived travellers tumble into the cold, hitting the ground just ahead of me, clutching luggage and staggering towards the automatic doors.

A group of people gather to the left of the doors, out of place in the human tide. Heavy coat collars turned up. Words hang midair in white frosty clouds. None have luggage. A few stamp their feet. My heart skips until I see the flash of a familiar uniform and remember the strike by a rival airline.

“Bloody unions,” the taxi-driver mutters. “You flying with them?”

I shake my head and concentrate on finding the correct change, then worry about moving myself and the suitcase out of the cab.

Out in the cold, I let the pain fall from my body, winding my scarf around my neck to keep out the chill and prying eyes. I’m early. With time to spare, I haul the suitcase to the smoking area, pull a packet of tobacco from my pocket and roll a cigarette. I hate smoking but it is a good excuse to kill time without being obvious.

The striking employees wait for breakfast TV cameras to arrive to provide sensationalised fodder for the brain-dead masses. I stretch the life of the rollie, knowing I won’t inadvertently be in a back ground shot broadcast into millions of homes. As the cameras arrive, I grind the butt into the ground, bend stiffly to retrieve it and bin it with the tobacco and matches.

Inside a leather backpack I find a bottle of bergamot body-spray and a packet of mints. I mist the air around me and pop a mint into my mouth. The intense citrus scent settles on me and the transition from Keely Jackson to Medae Newman is complete. I swing the backpack over a shoulder and pick up the suit case, walk as casually as possible toward the automatic doors sucking away the last bitter traces of nicotine and the last two years.

The line up at the check-in counter is twice the length now. Fifteen minutes and one cigarette is all it takes to be in the best position in the queue. When it is busiest, people pay you and your luggage only the briefest attention. Checking in becomes a production line with a smile and a personalised tick list of all the dangerous goods you are not carrying. X-ray security behind the scenes keeps everything moving to avoid a delay.

The line coils six times through the temporary barricades, squeezing the most people possible into the small space. I join the line behind a woman carrying an over sized garment bag arguing loudly on an iPhone with someone named ‘Louise’. Her bag is big and heavy enough to be transporting a dead body, though if she’s trying to hide anything she’s making a sham of it. Further ahead, two nondescript businessmen with slip-on shoes and equally unremarkable black laptop bags. One is whistling in between taking verbal swipes at his travelling companion.

Every few minutes the queue moves, like an anaconda devouring a large mammal. My body recognises the check-in two-step and shifts to accommodate the new beat. Down-up-shuffle-shuffle-down-up. The brainless repetition relaxes me.

When it is time to move again, my hand lingers atop the suitcase after I place it down. I’m not usually attached to things, but both the case and contents represent significant investments of time and patience.

Rising to the top of my profession didn’t happen by being impulsive. Everything is done slowly, incrementally. Luck plays no part. It all comes down to planning and patience. The fact it took me two years to steal from the Hildebrands is testament to my ability to wait.

You could say I was born a thief, though I didn’t officially steal until I turned nineteen. Anyone can learn to crack a safe, disable a security system or hotwire a car. Anyone, with a reasonable level of intelligence has the ability to learn to hack the internet, procure illegal identity papers, master another language or charm the unsuspecting. Few, though, have the patience required. That’s what separates those in prison from those of us still plying our trade.

Given the opportunity, I’d happily stand in a check-in line for hours. People-watching in an airport never raises suspicions. Plus, people in transit often let their masks slide, exposing sides usually hidden in everyday life.

Medae Newman hit my radar wile waiting in line, playing airport bingo to pass the time. Travelling as Keely Jackson, to take up the position with JJ, she checked in ahead of me. She wore a long, classic-cut suede coat, with old jeans and a soft white shirt, red hair cut short and choppy. A very old leather suit case stood by her side. Her perfume attracted my attention first. I guessed Estee Lauder’s Sunflowers, one of the squares on my airport bingo card.

Of course, I have no idea if she’d been christened Medae. I wheeled my Samsonite suitcase past her, hearing the clerk greet her as Ms Newman. That’s when I realised the Sunflowers square on the bingo card could not be marked off; she was wearing bergamot oil.

I play airport bingo to pass the time, not find my next identity. The card is always the same and under normal circumstances, no identity is considered assumable. Medae Newman was an anomaly—the trick of her perfume.

It has been a long time since I last filled a bingo card. Scanning the check-in queue I feel lucky.

Six ahead of me is the disgruntled corporate type, his body trying to escape the ill-fitting, pin-striped suit. He’s the overworked executive of a company too cheap to fly him business class, who spends the entire flight thumping away on a laptop, using the paper napkin supplied with the meal to mop his brow, the ectoplasmic flow of fat from his side breaching the arm rest delineating your seat from his.

Several families stand around mountains of luggage, hissing commands at restless children. After a time I find the woman travelling alone with the over-active child. He’s dressed in a Thomas the Tank Engine parka and trying to swing from the industrial tape separating her part of the line from mine. He’s the kid who’ll want to say hello to you from the seat in front, a small snotty face popping up between the head rests.

I see several likely students and finally locate one with a lip piercing and purple foils, oblivious to anyone beyond Charlaine Harris’s Dead Before Dawn and her iPod.

Moving on, a couple at the head of the line can’t stop kissing. In the middle of the line, a woman in a sky-blue rain coat tries desperately to put distance between her and the guy who shoved through the line to join her half an hour earlier.

The line shifts forwards, and I’m one, two coils closer to the end.

I smell Sunflowers, spy a purple Samsonite suitcase and then a fake alligator one.

I round another bend. And another.

A bald man. A woman who thinks she’s beautiful.

A Canadian Flag sewn on a backpack.

I’m close to the head of the line and filled with the thrill of finishing the first bingo card in years.

A commotion to the rear of the line distracts me. A crowd of dishevelled men in matching blazers try to push their way through the line, an airport representative between them and passenger revolt. They’re not the type of traveller I’m interested in.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Jazz wafts my direction compliments of a male flight attendant stopping to chat to a brunette clerk.

BINGO!

And I’m the head of the line.

“Good morning,” the same brunette says motioning me to her counter, the tail end of laughter clinging to her face as the male flight attendant walks away with a list in hand. She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Travelling through to Paris this morning, Ms Newman?”

I nod, putting my backpack on the counter to look for my passport and travel documents. Once I’ve handed them over, I ease the suitcase onto the conveyor belt. The digital numbers on the counter stop at 32kg.

“Spot on.” The brunette prints a baggage tag and sticks it around the wooden handle, then loops on a weight warning. “You don’t see many cases like this.”

“Family heirloom,” I say, trying not to pay the suitcase more attention than it warrants. “My great-grandmother was an artist too.”

She nods her head in an absent way born of repetition rather than interest and runs through the list of things I’m forbidden to transport.

“I don’t have any of those,” I say, waiting for her to hand over my boarding pass. The conveyor belt lurches to life, taking my case and the Hildebrands’ painting from me. My heart picks up pace watching it disappear. For the first time this morning I relax and smile.

“Boarding through Gate 46 at 7:45am.” She hands me my boarding pass. “Please clear customs as soon as possible to enable you to board on time. Have a safe trip and thank you for flying Pangaean Airlines.”

“Thank you,” I say, with a little too much emphasis on the ‘you’, euphoria flooding my system. I put my travel documents in a secure inner pocket, my hand brushing the cover of the diary as I do. Hidden in the safe with the painting, I can only speculate on its contents until I find a quiet place to sit and read.

I zip the backpack and look up. Suits cut through the swarm of passengers on the concourse, headed straight for the Pangaean counters. The one heading the pack wears fashionable glasses and a well cut jacket, leading with an open ID wallet. Adrenalin surges through me and I search for an escape route, the space between him and me closing.

The easiest is off to the left, through First Class check-in, from there, a clear path to the taxis, but I hesitate, and it is not just the thought of abandoning the suitcase. Something is amiss.

He pushes past me, standing at the counter I’ve just vacated waiting for his posse to file over the baggage scales and behind the counters before stepping up, raising a hand for silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. As the representative of Rourke International Administrators and Liquidators, I regret to inform you that as of 6:30am Pangaean Airlines was put into involuntary administration. All operations are now suspended. All Pangaean Airline flights, including this one, are cancelled. Anyone still wishing to travel today will need to find an alternate airline.”

“All Pangaean Airline assets are under the control of Rourke International as administrators. Checked-in luggage will be held by the administrators pending inspection to ascertain they are not assets of the company. We expect to begin returning luggage in the next 24 hours. Your cooperation in this regard is appreciated.”

Beyond him the main baggage conveyor jerks to a stop and I freeze. Those behind me still have their luggage.

XXX

You can also download the Prologue as an ePub or mobi file to enjoy at your leisure.

Let’s see if we can provide a late surge and push him across the finish line in first place – Vote for Richard!

There are little clusters around London and Brisbane, so you kind of have to zoom in to get the full effect. Poor Tina is all by herself out there.

Note: none of the markers are intended to indicate specific addresses…merely cities of residence.

View Chinese Whisperings Authors in a larger map

The following preview has been rated “A” for “Awesome Anthology”…

The video trailer was created by our own Tina Hunter – thanks Tina!

Cyrus has been described as the male Oprah. He has a radio and television show, an internationally recognized book club and has a bi-monthly arts and entertainment magazine.

We are incredibly excited that Cyrus invited us to appear on his show, and hope that as many of you as possible can listen in.

Please do spread the word. The link to the show page is here. I believe you can listen to the show live from that page, but if not, you can certainly listen by going to the main page:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/conversationslive.

If you can’t listen live, you can visit the Conversations LIVE blog to listen to on demand episodes either as a stream or download them.

The show goes out on Friday 5th February at 8pm Eastern Standard Time (that’s the East Coast of the USA for those who don’t know).

As we are an international bunch of authors, with an international group of followers, we’ve prepared a list of local times for the live show:

Friday, 5th February 2010
Pacific Standard Time: 5pm
Mountain Standard Time: 6pm
Central Standard Time: 7pm
Eastern Standard Time: 8pm

Saturday, 6th February 2010
Greenwich Mean Time: 1am
Central European Time: 2am
South African Standard Time: 3am
Indian Standard Time: 6.30am
Australian Western Standard Time: 9am
Australian Eastern Standard Time: 11am
Australian Eastern Daylight Time: 12noon
New Zealand Daylight Time: 2pm

This should cover all the major cities from where we get visits to the site. If I haven’t mentioned your local timezone by name, then I apologise, but hopefully you can work out your local time from the above!

We hope you join us for what should be a stimulating discussion.
8pm EST, 7PM CST, 6pm MST, 5pm PST
1am GMT, 2am CET
11am AEST, 12noon ADST

(Incidentally, Emma has her own anthology fresh out, the wonderfully titled From Dark Places. You can buy it now from Smashwords now.)

Heike has this to say about The Red Book:

Chinese Whisperings are 10 stories about 10 different people. The twist in this collection is that each new story takes a minor character from the story before and makes him or her into the main character. The whole thing works extremely well. It is not a novel in chapters, and therefore slightly disconcerting when you meet the person or persons from the story before in a completely different setting. But it works wonderfully…

You can read the entire review here. My favourite quote is “they all make your spine tingle”, which may just make it as a cover blurb for the paperback!

Despite this, Dan’s history of literary deconstruction left us as editors both excited and trepidatious when he let us know he’d be writing a review. There is nothing like having your work picked apart by someone who pulls no punches and seemingly manages to shine the light in the dark spots you missed. Paul suggested some ‘panic pills’ to ease the pain.

Dan has this to say:

What is perhaps most striking about The Red Book is the fact that, on finishing the final tale, it leaves the reader with a desire to return to the beginning and experience the various threads of plot and character again, certain that a second read will unlock deeper complexities of connection.

Dan’s review is thorough, looking at the anthology as a whole and as individual stories. You can read the review in its entirety here.

As a deal sweetener we threw in The Red Book Reversed which is a special edition, electronic copy of the anthology told backwards – thus major characters bleed into the background, becoming minor characters from story to story.

It came about after an editorial bungle which saw a new writer come on board while Paul and I were both away from home. When I sent through the stories I didn’t think to say which order the stories actually ran in. When I returned home there were some questions waiting for me in my inbox about how the stories went together – one character seemed out of place.

I realised, the stories had been read out of order – but it gave Paul and I the spark of an idea – what would happen if you read the stories backwards? Would a new and unique narrative emerge?

You can decide.

The Red Book Reversed has a unique front cover and an afterword which doesn’t appear anywhere else. It is worth owning a copy just for the afterword alone.

For those of you who missed out on winning a copy last year, there are two copies left to go to new Twitter followers.

While there is a lot to say, in a rather disjointed fashion, none of it is really appropriate to dedicate a blog post to – much better suited to twittering. We recommend for at least the next month you follow our comings and goings  there. If you do you’ll see some sweet tasters of what is to come in 2010 – from narrative arcs, new whizz fangled literary dilemmas for our writers, a brand new direction for the anthology and sneak peak as to who our new 12 writers will be.

You can also follow Paul @panderson1979 and Jodi @JodiCleghorn for more insights into the behind the scenes working of Chinese Whisperings. We can be quite amusing to ‘watch’ in the early hours of the morning – especially when we’re line editing via Skype. Or so we’ve been told.

Tweet us and say hello!

As a sweetener – we’ll send the first five new followers the limited edition electronic Red Book Reversed (yes it is almost finalised and ready for distribution!)