Chaz Brenchley

Below is a recent extract from Chaz'z blog:

Reading and writing and ... yeah, more writing

I like my Kindle more and more and more. Sometimes a gift is just exactly thoughtful, and just exactly timed; I shed books with one hand and acquire them with the other, and feel no guilt at all. It's all the fun of starting again, with none of the grief of having to.

Last night I read in it (I have decided: one reads in one's Kindle, not the thing itself. One doesn't read one's library, one reads one's book) in bed. Which was extremely comfortable,and the uniquely appalling pain in my neck this morning has nothing to do with that, no. (Nor of course anything to do with all this stupid stress that renders me mute and incapable and on the brink of terrible destructive rage, which I am not talking about in this post, no.)

Over the last three days I have written, gosh. Much. And am still not stopping, despite having the proof of House of Bells to check through this week also.

Here, have a clipping (from House of Bells, not the new stuff). We are in the 1960s, and in Soho:

...But here was Tarsier’s, all barrels and sawdust and bare wood. Here was Tony, perched as ever on a stool in the open window, exhibited to the street. Looking unfairly lovely, the dark tumble of his hair snaring the sunlight while the wide lapels of his jacket only showed off the breadth of his shoulders. Oozing self-content, that too. See me: here I am, the most fashionable man in London, waiting to eat oysters with the wickedest girl in England...
“You’re late,” he said, as she hoisted herself onto the high stool he had somehow kept for her despite the crush.
“Darling. Of course I’m late.” Sorry, Tony, sorry - but it was a rule now, never to apologise to anyone. She’d done too much of that, and it didn’t help at all. People liked to see you grovel, but that was all about punishment, not forgiveness. She’d been punished enough. She had that in writing, from a lord. “So were you, I expect.”
He grinned. “I was, but you win in the lateness stakes. I should know never to compete with a pro.”
Damn. She’d flinched at that, which made him twitch a little in his turn. Sometimes they played sensitivities like ping-pong. “Just a talented amateur,” she said quickly, as if it didn’t matter at all. Trying to cover up too late, as usual. “What shall we drink? Is it a Guinness day or a champagne day?”

Posted on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:16:30 GMT

To read more, or leave a comment, visit Chaz'z blog at desperance.livejournal.com.