Anne Brooks - The Heart’s Greater Silence Comment to Win

Yes, you read right!  The details are the bottom of the post.  

And now, with great pleasure, I give you Anne Brooks.

 

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The Heart’s Greater Silence started out a few years ago with the first scene floating round my head trying to find somewhere to settle. All I can see is a man, mid twenties or so, walking down a dark street in the shadows of London. I don’t know who he is, or where he’s going to. He’s alone. He’s bitter about what’s happened with the bloke he’s just left. The bloke he’s supposed to be with. I think he might be smoking and I don’t know his name yet.

If he does light up, it doesn’t last for long as the rain makes the cigarette go out, and he throws it away, treading it underfoot. Whatever’s happened, he thinks it’s typical and he deserves it. He walks down the shadow of the street and I follow him, uncertain how close I can get, then he turns the corner and he’s gone.

At this point there are three choices I can make: I can keep at his heels and find out where he’s going and if he’ll take me with him; or I can walk away, file the experience as interesting while it lasted but not worth further commitment; or I can file it away for mulling over and bringing out again.

Sometimes, however, the character makes the choice for me. This was one of those occasions. I didn’t even know his name, though I did know I couldn’t completely follow him right then – there were too many things going on in my life at the time, too many books to write or stories to edit. But the nameless man was too strong to be forgotten. So I filed him away for remembering and thinking about to see if he fit in with any of my other projects or if he deserved his own story.

I even at one time thought he might be Michael, the gay hooker and artist from my thriller, A Dangerous Man. But although they were similar in lots of ways, the circumstances and the feel of the walking man simply felt different.

It was only years later when I was trying to think of a story I could submit to Riptide Publishing that the man I’d imagined came back to me again. This time I knew he wasn’t someone from another of my stories. This time I knew his story was his own and I could discover both his name and his character by using the themes that had recently become important to me: religion; faith; love; and obsession.

So I started with that scene where he’s walking away from a man, someone he knows and cares for, and began to write the story of where, or who, he might be going towards. It was strange, but for the first time I can remember I started to write without knowing his name. And it didn’t matter. I knew he’d tell me when he was good and ready.

And he did. In a conversation with the man he was walking towards with all that overwhelming desire and reluctance in his blood, he finally tells me, and I know then there’ll be more to discover. Far more than one story can convey.

His name is Mark.

Okay everyone, 

Here are the guidelines from Anne about this blog tour.

She has one contest per stop - with the prize being a backlist ebook giveaway for one commenter.

She  also has a cumulative competition throughout the blog tour involving answering 3 questions from HGS - with the prize being 3 backlist ebooks for one commenter from the tour as a whole. The questions are

• (a) What item of his trade is Richard wearing when Mark sees him in church? 
• (b) When Craig discovers Mark and Richard together, what does he do just before leaving? 
• (c) What action does Mark take at the end of the story?

Also one signed cover flat and magnet for one commenter per stop - with this NOT being the winner of Item 1 (see above)

One gift certificate to be drawn at the end of the tour - with this NOT being the winner of Item 2 (see above).