Of the various projects hereabouts, the oldest started when I was drinking at the Grand View, engaging in whimsical character assassination in the company, among others, of the late John Lester. As a diversion from more serious topics of conversation, the discussion frequently turned to the consequences should Lester achieve his long-held ambition to take out the Lotto. Being of a speculative nature, I began to suggest various likely scenarios, some of which found their way into Dirty Work At The Crossroads. While there isn’t that much actual Dirty Work at the old Crossroads Motel per se, the title gives the possibility of sequels about Desperate Days, Dire Deeds or Damnable Degeneracy.
Readers familiar with the various individuals who frequented that establishment at the time may notice similarities between some of those individuals and characters in this work of fiction. The most notable of those was, of course, the late Lester. Unlike Gordon Jeffrey, Lester went to his grave with his lifelong ambition of winning the Lotto entirely unfulfilled. Unlike David Herston, I have also failed in that quest. I haven’t bought a motel with a view of converting it into a place of residence either.
All the characters and events in the story are tailored to fit the requirements of the plot line and should in no way be regarded as having any basis in actual reality. Issues surrounding characterisation are discussed at length in On Conception, Characterization and Consistency.
As far as the story itself is concerned, it is available in several formats. There’s an iPad-friendly iBooks version in Hughesy’s iBooks, along with the same thing is PDF format. You can also read it here, section by section through your standard web browser.
Whichever way you go, the story is available as a whole, or you can get it section by section.
The First Bit introduces the whole thing and takes the story from David Herston’s arrival in the coastal North Queensland town of Denison to the point in the story where he and his partner in crime succeed in taking out the big one in a Saturday night Lotto draw.
Setting Things Up takes the story from the point where Herston and Jeffrey have collected their fortune to their return from an overseas jaunt.
Things Get Complicated carries on from the point where Herston and Jeffrey return from an overseas jaunt to the stage where complicated matters are in desperate need of resolution.
Sorting Things Out is, predictably, where the issues that developed over the preceding sections find themselves more or less sorted out.