Drew Payne
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Everything posted by Drew Payne
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Liam needs really good and professional mental health care but he's not going to find it here. He's in the criminal justice system and everything is gearing up to his trial, not his wellbeing. Loughton is sympathetic but that is part of his way to get his assessment done. He's not the only healthcare professional who does this.
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That was another thing I wanted to include here, that a psychological/psychiatric assessment is only as good as the practitioner. An assessment is only as good as the clinician doing it. I am also fascinated about how one action can have so many consequences, but what was the motivation behind that action.
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That night, Liam didn’t go home. Instead, they took him to a Children’s Home, Rokeby House, were he stayed until his trial. He kind of liked Rokeby House: there were nine other kids there and they all seemed to have their own problems, which they would often act out in public, demanding the attention of the staff there and allowing him to just be left alone. Also, he didn’t have to go to school - he could just sit up in his room and read whatever books he could find. The down side of life t
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This is what I wanted to write about here. Liam has committed a crime, for whatever reason, but that is where he has lost control of everything. He's now caught up in the Criminal Justice system, and the police, lawyers, social workers and psychiatrists will all take over his life. He is lost and all because of one, bad decision. When I was plotting this story, Liam's mother leapt off the page to me. She had to be as cold and selfish as she is, otherwise Liam won't have fallen into this terrible situation. As Miss James said, "And maybe if you cared about your son more, we wouldn’t be in this mess!" And that's me telling off one of my characters.
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There are people who can see him for who he is, though here they are very outnumbered. Of course, if his mother wasn't such a selfish cow then would he be in this mess?
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They drove Liam to the police station in a police car, him sat on the backseat between Miss James and another police officer, a woman. He didn’t watch any of their journey there. He barely knew where he was being taken. He just sat there and stared at the back of one of the policeman’s head, the one who was driving. The man had surprisingly red hair which was cut into short bristles at the back of his neck. At the police station, two policemen - one portly and old, his black hair streaked t
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Spoilers, spoilers... Liam did one, very stupid thing because he had no one there to support and help him. Now he has been sucked into the Criminal Justice System. If his mother had stood up for him, if his school had reacted to the bullying he was suffering, if Rhys Clarke had been kicked out of school, if... if... if... I also wanted to write about how easy it is for things to go so seriously wrong.
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That's the problem with bad decisions, things get worse and worse. At least people listen to Miss James.
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Mr Bowley dragged Liam at almost a run into the science block and into the first empty classroom there, all the while pulling at his arm and increasing the pain in his shoulder. Mr Bowley threw Liam down onto an empty chair and then stood over him. Mr Bowley shouted down at him, demanding to know why Liam had done it, Mr Bowley’s face red with anger and beads of sweat breaking out across it. Liam reacted in the only way he knew how to, he remained silent, stared down at the floor and waited for
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That was what I wanted to describe here. With a sharp knife, knife crime is very easy and doesn't require a lot of strength, and that's why it’s so dangerous. The human body can be so strong and yet so fragile too. But I never write about violence without consequences.
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That's the problem with bad decisions, they can happen in seconds.
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It was a Wednesday morning, Liam’s first lesson had been English with Rhys Clarke sitting behind him. Just the thought of it had made him shake with fear - he couldn’t even face stepping inside the classroom. Instead he’d turned around and walked away. He’d kept walking and walking. He walked right out of the school’s back entrance. He kept on walking until he reached home. There he let himself in with his key and spent the rest of the day watching television, alone and safe there. He didn’
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Thanks Marty. It's still a story I am rather proud of because I turned an argument against platitudes into a narrative story.
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I wrote this story, originally, over twenty years ago. It was the first time I wrote a narrator/central character who I didn't like. I challenge myself to create an unsympathetic character and to my surprise I was able to.
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Thank you but we have to thank the lovely Russell Tovey for this story. He gave me the inspiration for it
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csr July's CSR Feature: Stories Written on Lined Paper by Drew Payne
Drew Payne commented on Cia's blog entry in Gay Authors News
Thank you for that, feedback like this keeps me writing. At present I'm posting chapters of a long story called The World Out There, it is a dark story but that is nothing unusual for me. I am also writing new and re-writing old short stories and I'll create a new collection on GA later this year. GA has given me such support and feedback as a writer. This year I found the confidence to publish a collection of stories on Amazon. -
Thank you, this is one of the themes I am writing about here, the de-humanising effect of bullying. But the big theme here is the story behind the headlines, who is the person and what has led them to take the actions that they do.
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As the great Professor River Song said, "Spoilers sweetie." This story does take a long journey to get Liam from bullied school boy to nineteen year old left alone in a rundown B&B hotel. I am writing chapter twenty-one and I'm probably about halfway through. (Though Rhys Clarke is modelled on the shit who bullied me at school)
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I really can't say. I am going to write an afterword to this story, when I finish it, about what led me to write this story.
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Unfortunately he isn't alone. Bullying isn't "character building". The way we still ignore or excuse school bullying revolts me.
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Again Liam looked around himself. His room was quiet. He couldn’t hear any of the other residents in the B&B hostel, not even an occasional raised voice or music playing loudly somewhere. But this room was barely furnished. It had that old single bed pushed up against one wall with its mattress that his body sank into every night. Pushed against the opposite wall was a wooden table. Next to that was the tatty old armchair he was sat on. It had a high and curved back and high solid arms: some
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Thank you. That's high praise.
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That's what I wanted. This is about the story behind the headlines. I don't want to say anymore because it'll give away far too much of the coming plot.
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I promise we will learn more but this is a slow drip story. I don't present the whole of Liam's story in the first page, but that is so much my style of writing. I am glad people are enjoying this story, if that's the right word. I wanted to explore Liam's personality and how events affected it.
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Liam glanced up at his room’s door which was still firmly closed and locked. It was held closed by a black, metal lock which Donna had quickly shown him how to double-lock it… and he always did. It was double-locked now. The door itself was wooden with two recessed panels, one at eye height and one at knee height. It had once been painted bright- gloss white, but over the years, that had faded to a dull cream, streaked with dirt and grease. The door was as old and neglected as the rest of the ro
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