Xavier Leret

Zed follows C to the park. When C sits on a bench, in front of a manmade lake, Zed perches three benches down. Each day Zed changes the way he looks, being careful not put on clothes that would seem out of place, overly ostentatious or headline grabbing. Today he is wearing jogging trousers, and a plain white t-shirt with a sports logo over his heart. He only half watches C who sits quietly eating a home made sandwich of white bread, cheese, tomato and lettuce. Zed observes that the cheese is cheddar. Watching C Zed wonders whether C has prepared the food himself or his wife has done so. Zed suspects that it was the wife, though he has no evidence upon which to level his suspicions. Each morning of that week C has left his house at seven in the morning. Never has his wife come to the door to wave him off or suddenly call him back to remind him that he has forgotten his lunch or to kiss him or to mention that she loves him. There is no display of romance, no love note included with is repast.

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reading my story Turn The Porn On which has just been published in MIR8.
click me

Carlo closed his eyes and when he opened them there was a stunned silence. He was standing in a courtroom dock. It seemed to him that the place was built of cardboard. He looked out at the crowd sitting in the public galleries to either side and they looked back up at him.
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I have never been able to explain why I write. It is something that I have always done. I’m not sure if I write because I love it, because often the process is torture, not just for me but for those around me. I don’t remember choosing to write. I just wrote, not very well I might add. It was also not an easy thing for me to do, but I always approached it with a sense of discipline – actually I’m lying, I have no discipline. When I sit down to work I tend to spend a lot of time not doing anything. I call it hanging around waiting for the Big Bang. I do a lot of hanging around. The worst time is when I’ve gone to bed on a real high thinking about the next days work and where the story is going. I have amazing conversations with my characters and we drink a lot of wine. We discuss the narrative from all angles, the symbolism, the existential agenda, the resonance of meaning within the action – you name it, we talk about it. But the next morning nothing happens. All those great ideas vanished into the magic hat of my vanity. And then the doubt kicks in. Sometimes the doubt is so bad I leave stories alone for weeks on end. If I look at them – I hate them. I am inconsolable about my wretched lack of talent, overcome with self loathing. And then somehow I start again. And something amazing happens. I might trash what I wrote before – but this is liberating – OK, liberating when one has the benefit of hindsight. It took me five or six years to write Heaven Sent, nearly all the work I wrote in the first four years ended on a pyre. That wasn’t fun, all those false starts and blind alleys, though sometimes it was satisfying to edit great swathes of work in the same way that pulling a scab can feel great.

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Carlo had no idea what the film was about. His attention was captivated by Daizee who was sitting beside him engrossed in the movie, twisting her short hair with her finger and spooning popcorn into her mouth. She hardly noticed him, at least that was what he thought. Every time she laughed it brought a smile to his face.

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It went so well yesterday that I’m giving the novel away again. But only for one more day.

Just visit the link below quote the code and it is yours – and if you like it, please, just pass it on, its DRM free. And even if its not your cup of tea perhaps you might know someone who would appreciate it.

HEAVEN SENT by Xavier Leret

Mix together Romeo and Juliet with Bonnie and Clyde, then sprinkle it with Catcher In The Rye and you have Heaven Sent.

“an explosive, brilliant and breath taking novel”

“like Romeo and Juliet turned inside out.”

When Daizee crashes into the life of sixteen year old Carlo he veers off the good Catholic path his parents have carved for him and finds himself fighting to save a girl the rest of the world has both abandoned and abused. Caught between wreckage or redemption, Carlo soon realizes the world may not be as straight forward as he was taught and that real love takes more than a leap of faith.

”A wonderful coming-of-age story.”

“poetic, tragic, contemporary, riveting”

“a work of genius.”

Go to Smashwords & use code YN84H

p.s. Tis dark, bring a torch.

To make his point Carlo took Daizee to the top of the red-bricked Cabot Tower.

Bristol was laid out before them. To the left the Georgian buildings stood four stories tall and blended with the gray and straw rectangle cut outs of the twentieth century. Ahead of them the park gave way to the docks and the pristine business park with a paving courtyard and glass tall buildings which mirrored the hill and the bright sun in the sky and beyond that stood old converted warehouses and beyond that the city stretched out before a clear line divided it from the countryside beyond.

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Will was alone, his ear to the door, the pain beyond it near splitting the wood. He heard the doctor issue orders and pushed himself away from the door as the Nurse, whose face and hands were covered in blood, dashed out of the bedroom to call for hot water. The sight of the blood made him shudder. Through the door he could see his wife lying pale and exhausted on the bed. The doctor was by her side talking, though she was barely able to listen. The whites of her eyes showed, her face contorted and then her whole body buckled in agony. Her scream wrenched the nurse back.
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I was on my phone to my Toots, when this body splat and cracked on the floor beside me. Fuck I, it made me jump and I dropped my phone. It chipped the plastic a bit, but the screen was fine and Toots was still there. I said, Fuck.

What? Toots said.

Like totally fucking dead.

Who is?

Fuck I.

What?

I looked up at the sky. He like must have, I said. Fuck me.

What?

He must have. He must have. Fuck it, got to go.

Rufus, talk to me.

Got to go, Toots.

I hung up, looked at the dead kid. There was blood and brains oozing out of a crack in his head. And I thought, oh fuck it, switched the phone into camera mode, and started snapping away. I got down onto my knees to get close ups. I had to lie down to get the pics of his face, what was left of it.

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I wrote this originally as a guest post for the blog vvb32 reads. When you get a mo you should out Velvet’s blog, its really great. But for now, I shall hand you over to Daisy Byatt.

DAIZEE: Orright Mistur Writers, I got you’s owt ere ta tawk a bit abowt dis ere book you’s az written, an I ziz in.

XAVIER: That’s right Daizee.

DAIZEE: Ets nice ere ain’t et, looken owt over dat sea. You’s don’t mind climben up dis tower, et woz a bit of a wey up?

XAVIER: I don’t mind at all Daizee.

DAIZEE: Dat moon, Mistur Writers, etz like a jewel in some tart’s ear, an dem stars ez like flicked up gizzum.

XAVIER: Well I guess that’s one way of describing it.

DAIZEE: I’m fucken wiv ya Mistur Writers. So whir’s dis book come from den?

XAVIER: I began it about six years ago.

DAIZEE: Woz I en et bak den?

XAVIER: Yes. You and Carlo. I began it with Carlo and you appeared pretty quickly. When you appeared I knew what the book was going to be about.

DAIZEE: Ev you’s new wot et woz abowt, why de fuck did et take you’s so long ta write et?

XAVIER: To begin with I wrote pages of prose without dialogue. I tried to change the tone of the prose to fit either your voice or that of Carlo’s. I was floundering really, wanting to describe what was in your head and his, whilst also trying to create a story. I kept getting stuck. And I had other things that needed to be written. I wrote a couple of plays, directed a couple of plays and wrote and directed two movies. There was two or three years when I didn’t touch the book. It was always there though, on the back of mind. There was a couple of times when I wanted to give up entirely.

DAIZEE: Why didn’t you’s?

XAVIER: You wouldn’t let me. You were always there. Everyday of that six years you spoke to me.

DAIZEE: I knowz et.

XAVIER: You needed your story to be told and I wanted to tell it. I wanted to tell the world that you’re not a lost cause that whatever happens you are someone worth fighting for. That so often kids like you are thrown on the scrap heap. My mother once worked in this secure unit and she told me this story of a girl who’s dad sold her to sailors from out the back of his van when she was just three years old.

DAIZEE: Dat be I.

XAVIER: Yes, that be you. Well the model for you. I don’t know what happened to that girl, but I’ve always worried about her.

DAIZEE: So who’s Carlo den?

XAVIER: Carlo is the kid that I never was. I never had the guts that he has, to do what he does, for you. Like him I had a very religious background and like him I fought against it. I still do. I might be an atheist but I still battle with many of the questions that Carlo battles with. I can’t get over the way the world is.

DAIZEE: How fucked up et ez?

XAVIER: The way people are.

DAIZEE: I knows et.

XAVIER: Yeah, you do.

DAIZEE: So why’s you got I to tawk like you’s as – I mean like dis funnee spellin an dat.

XAVIER: It’s your accent Daizee. You’re from Bristol and Bristolian is like another language and I really wanted to capture that. I didn’t always write you like this, but I always heard you like this. I love the way it looks on the page, too. It makes you stand out. I know it is hard for the reader to read, certainly at first, I suspect that it makes the reader judge you too – like the other characters in the book. It makes your journey with the reader all the more real and in turn all the more powerful. And I hope transformative.

DAIZEE: Carlo doesn’t see me like that.

XAVIER: Carlo loves you.

DAIZEE: Yah tis troo.

XAVIER: Yes, Daizee, it is true.

DAIZEE: Dat moon.

XAVIER: What about it?

DAIZEE: Et ain’t wot I sed et woz.

XAVIER: No?

DAIZEE: Etz like your eye wotchen over I, when I’s wiv Carlo.

XAVIER: Is it?

DAIZEE: Yah, tis troo.