Deleted scenes

I am the proud driver of a micro camper van. No bigger than a 6 seater MPV, it has a pop-up roof with a double bed, plus a sink, a gas hob, an electric fridge and some cupboards large enough to store a couple of biscuits. One of the cupboards is officially a ‘wardrobe’, though it has a big water pipe running through it that would prevent anything being hung in there anyway, besides which there’s no rail for hanging things on. And that brings me, via the most tortuous and tenuous link in the history of blogdom, to the chapter I edited today: Chapter 8, in which some hangings take place.

Chapter 8 is about a fifth of the way into the book. Ruby’s lover, Matt, is a political prisoner due to be executed, and despite Ruby’s close attachment to President Orlando he refuses to grant a pardon: the hangings are to proceed as planned. But this whole scene is vastly different to the one I originally penned in the late 1990s, which I called the ‘shark scene’. I have fond memories of that scene, but it was too unconvincing. One person read it and found it ‘hilarious’, which was something I badly needed to avoid in an archaeological thriller. The scene involved the President keeping a shark in his lake, and the executions were to involve throwing the prisoners into the lake to feed the shark. Yes, I know that smacks of early James Bond villains, but at least my character was aware of that and had even mentioned it. The President and his retinue all went out on unseaworthy boats to enjoy the spectacle, but the shark knocked their boat and President’s wife fell in the water. Someone then drained the lake via a sluice gate in order to save her, which resulted in the death of the shark. Turns out the President would have preferred to keep his shark alive than his wife and he was furious. This scene had to be replaced with the more realistic and less comical one that I edited today. I’ve kept a copy, though. Maybe it will get included in some bonus features one day?

Having survived the revised execution method (now by hanging) by means that I won’t reveal, Matt has another cool scene at the US Embassy. When I originally wrote that scene I envisaged a nice old colonial-style building into which anyone could walk and ask the nice receptionist if the ambassador could see them. Oh no. Not with an American Embassy, and certainly not in Guatemala. The US Embassy in Guatemala City turns out to be a heavily-guarded fortress, and I had to devise a whole new way to get Matt past the security. Then I had to rethink how to get him into the next bout of trouble I needed him to get into, but I think I have it all worked out now.

If the sun shines tomorrow I might take the micro camper van down to the beach with my laptop and do some writing on the pathetic little table it has in the back. Tomorrow’s scenes will be fun to work on. The next chapter contains the massive revelation of what the 12,000 year old relic actually is. This is something that was originally given away on page 1, and now it will be a quarter of the way into the story where its impact will be all the more powerful. It will be a shock for the reader as well as for Ruby – they will learn of the artefact’s purpose together, and that will propel them jointly into the next phase of the novel. It’s only right to make this revelation now. After all, it would be unfair to leave the reader hanging.