Everyone Lies

The first part of this novella, Eveyone Lies, was published in StylusLit and can be found here, https://styluslit.com/fiction/everyone-lies/ .

Since then I’ve written two extra parts which I’ve combined into a novella of the same name. The three parts are: Eveyone Lies, All the Wrong Days and Matryoshka. Since the first part was published I've edited the complete work and made some changes to improve it.

The story is about Clare Benton and the days she loses. But it's also about time travellers and what a pain in the backside they can be and how they can affect your life.

People don’t lie away at night worrying about a missing day do they? Only what if it keeps happening? Well Clare thinks she’s losing her mind as it keeps happening again and again.

The Flower Woman's Child

London, England. The year is 1890, and Captain Sir Geoffrey Branxton, invalided out of the army due to a shoulder wound, finds himself no better occupation than to lower the level of the whisky decanter of his friend, Doctor Richard Argyle, while laying recumbent on the man’s couch.

That is until Countess Claritty Harkwood-Wallace hustles into Dr Argyle’s rooms like a storm front. In her wake a mother desperately seeing help to find her vanished child. Frustrated with a disinterested police force, Claritty prevails on Dr Argyle for help. But it is a reluctant Geoffrey Branxton who sets out on the strangest adventure of his life.

An Adventure that could affect the very destiny of mankind.

The Ghost of Gosford Hall

Claritty had hoped for some rest after the last adventure but her Uncle, her mother’s brother, Duke Adalbert Leslie Rowan Bradfield Cranston Castleray is troubled by a ghost, and so invites Clarrity to come and investigate. Clarrity brings her friends, Sir Geoffrey Braxton along.

Tommorrow's Not Promised

Five years ago, Jared, a synthetic soldier, was sent from the near future to find a “Doorway”, a portal to a planet somewhere in the galaxy.

This Doorway was given to the Inca by the “Doorspeople”, a space-going race, around the time of Pissarro and his Conquistadors. One of these Conquistadors, Alejandro Francisco Carcilabo, aware of the lust for gold and power of these men, warned the Inca to hide the Doorway.

Jarred teamed up with Dr Max Muxlow, an archaeologist, who had discovered a map made by Alejandro, which would lead them to the Doorway. But all did not go smoothly. Lyle Goedler, a CIA operative, in attempting to acquire the map, causes its destruction. With no purpose and no means of returning to the future, Jarred chose to spend the rest of his life hiding on a small farm in France.

But after five years, an attempt is made on his life and Jarred, knowing something has happened, Jared returns to New York to find Max has found clues to a second map. Joined by Dr Alison Reed, a linguist, Max follows Alejandro’s clues and travels to Italy. But the CIA is on their trail and captures them in Perugia. After reluctantly making a deal with Lyle, and with Alison’s help, they find the second map and travel to Peru.

Only things don’t go as planned. With the Doorway almost within reach, Max, jealous of the growing relationship between Alison and Jarred, causes Jared’s death. By the time they locate the Doorway in a cave, Alison and Lyle have begun to question their reasons for acquiring it. They decide to hide the Doorway again. But just as it shuts down, a grief-stricken Max rushes through. Now, with the Doorway closed, he has no way to return.

Lyle and a pregnant Alison, seal the Doorway again and return home.

The Light that Shines the Brightest

Allison and her daughter, Jessie, are just about wintery New York for Allison’s new job at a university in Los Angeles, California. They return home at the end of their last day before they leave only to find a woman cooking in their apartment. This woman is Josie, the latest in the Jarred series, with all of the original memories of Jarred.

Like Jarred, Josie has been sent into the past to locate the Doorway, tag it and then send for a ship from the future to take it back home. As Jarred was killed before reaching the Doorway, Josie has no knowledge of where it is. She has found Allison, and had assumed Allison, Lyle, Max and Malin had found it, Allison confirms this, telling Josie what happened.

Josie persuades Allison to help her find Lyle, but she knows where he is as they keep in contact, having lunch once a month. Lyle has become something of a godfather to Jessie. Allison thinks that Lyle works for an NGO, a not-for-profit organisation that provides hospital ships to poor countries or those in crisis. Lyle, with his bachelor of Management in Logistics and Supply runs the logistics for the ships. However, Josie knows the business is a front for the CIA.

Lyle is reluctant to leave his job and join Josie. While he’s no longer active in the CIA he believes he’s doing some good. However, feeling guilty about Max, and reasoning he only needs to go through, check Max is ok, then come back through the Doorway, he agrees.

They travel to Peru, alone in the jungle they find the cave of the Doorway. Nothing has been disturbed. Josie pauses at the grave of Jarred, then the remove the rocks and enter. There is no need to move the Doorway out into the sun as Josie has some lights that will charge it. When the Doorway connects to the other world they go through and find Max.

What they discover next changes everything they thought they knew about the Doorspeople. And changes them.

Where the Street Sleepers Die

The bomb that was meant for Detective Chief Superintendent Ross Courtney but instead took his family not only destroyed his career but everything he had worked for. He’s now a homeless alcoholic using the bottle as his way out.

The Shadow of an Absent Man

Ross Courtney is back! With the loving help of his new wife, Helen, Ross now has a professional doctorate in Counselling, a great house in Manly, millions in the bank and a job caring for the emotional needs of an endless array of early 20’s magazine covers in an upmarket Psychiatric and Counselling practice. He’s back on top and should be the happiest man on earth.

A Reunion of Strangers

Ross Courtney is back in the circus again. A place he’d never thought he’d be. Working in the shadows Helen, his wife, as managed to secure him a slot as a Detective Inspector. The force, desperate for good cops, accepts him back with open arms. Ross, being Ross soon starts to climb the pole again. As the novel opens, he’s already a Detective Chief Inspector.

A Fond Remembered Country

Ross is now the ex-Police Commissioner, as, after 4 years in the job, he’s either done everything he needed to do or set in motion changes that will be implemented whether he’s there or not.

He misses some of the intimacy of the sessions he had with Helen. During the height of his time as Commissioner, and as her business took off, they had little time together, the only touch point being when she played with him.

Ross is now footloose and looking for his next challenge. There are plenty on offers, even overseas postings for the government – he’s interested in those but wants to be here for Bobby and the girls as they go through uni.

He’s troubled by his relationship with Helen. Once he realised what she was doing, trying to dominate and control him, he was concerned, but he’s seen changes in her that are deeply troubling.

Then an opportunity comes his way to once more use his skill. This comes in the shape of Penny Pay’ne’s dead client. The police say it was just a case of accidental overdose, but she disagrees. Getting Ross’s name from a friend in the ‘Community’ she persuades him, as if he needed persuasion, to investigate. Along the way he discovers bribery, corruption and a resolution to the widening gap between himself and Helen. In many ways, this is the last adventure Ross will ever take on.

The Winning of the Woman

Brad Caldwell is a good man, a decent man. All his ex-girlfriends and girls who are just friends agree. He’s a man who lends a shoulder to cry on, to complain about husbands and boyfriends and the job and everything.

And that is his problem. He can’t seem to move past the friend zone. Girls either become friends or dump him. For some reason he can’t fathom, his relationships with women never go very far, are never deep.

That is till he meets Edith Brenton. A woman, the type of which he’s never met before. She’s a tae-kwon-do black belt who could take him apart if she wanted too and he knows there is nothing he could do stop her. Yet, at the same time she is incredibly vulnerable. He comes to understand how vulnerable when, through his own carelessness and insensitivity, he destroys the relationship, just as he realises, she’s the only woman for him.

What can he do now?

Maybe join her at her own game?

The Sun Rose in the West that Day

The Sun Rose in the West that Day, is the third in the Alien Encounters collection. The other two are, Eight Nine: The First – a short story - and, For the Journey is Long and Our Lonely World is Lost – a short novella.

In the future humans land on the first habitable world ever discovered. The trip took them seventy-five years and when in orbit they discover cities. Upon landing they begin to explore and find there are still remnants of an advanced civilisation that has fallen.

In helping to restore the alien’s technology the humans are faced with a choice: Change, abandon humanities war like ways, or be removed from a world they feel now is their home.

What do they do?

For Our Journey is Long, And Our Lonely World is Lost.

They have travelled from a brutal world, barely within the ‘Goldilocks’ zone and bathed in hard radiation from a fierce sun.

They had travelled in a generation ship because they had barely reached space when they learnt their world would soon go nova.

They found a new world. After thousands of generations of travel locked in their metal world, with their resources almost exhausted, they came within reach of their new home.

Only to discover a civilisation has risen. A violent race of people that revels in war and destruction.

Having no concept of war, having no choice but to land on this world. Their only advantage is they are more advanced. So, what do they do? What would you do?