The Descent Of Micheal O'Dowd Chapter Two

A warehouse? Thought Maggie. What kind of weirdo lives in a warehouse? Maggie had received the call not half an hour ago. Had she envisioned the derelict state of the address she had been summoned to she probably wouldn't have come. Still she was here now and she'd be damned if she was going to waste her precious time by turning tail now.

The alley she'd just turned into was damp and smelled like wet socks, left too long between washer and drier. It was dark too. Of course it's dark she mused it was nearly midnight. She felt like a call girl in this horrid bleak place. I bet the cab driver thought I was a hooker she thought to herself.

To make matters even worse Maggie was lost. The directions, which had seemed so simple on the phone, just didn't seem to translate to the place in which she now stood. She rounded the block again and began her third circuit, when finally she saw the door.

A single buzzer, the colour of nicotine, adorned the steel door and without hesitation the young girl pressed it hard. It made a slight moaning sound like a creaky door in an old house and trembled slightly under her finger.

"Hello?" Said the voice from the phonecall.

"Hi its Maggie from the agency, you called earlier?" She replied into the rusty intercom.

"Yes! Yes! Come in, Come in," The little box blurted.

A split second later the sound of deadbolts being thrown heralded the opening of the steel door.

The Descent Of Micheal O'Dowd. By Neil D Campbell... Chapter One

Micheal O'Dowd was falling. This was not a new sensation for him, he'd been plumetting for as long as he could remember. His memory however was not what it once was and he couldn't exactly be sure how long his current descent had been in swing. He was certain of one thing though. Falling was supposed to be a vertical thing.

Micheal was absolutely certain that he'd seen the bridge he was falling over before. Not under, not past and not even from, no Mr O'Dowd was in the midst of tumbling over the Hammersmith bridge. A sudden sense of queasiness overtook him and he tried for a moment to find something to grab hold of as the great fairy lit bridge raced past him. Like one of those art student photos or cheap car adverts, where the lights blurred into one and all motion becomes just a haze of neon.

He was utterly sick of his current condition. So far today he'd plunged across most of central London. He'd dived along Hyde Park corner and plummeted past Buckingham Palace. He was not only tired of falling he was actually getting tired.

There comes a point in most good crisis', where despite one's own sense of mortal peril, exhaustion will nudge you into a good deal of slumber. Micheal O'Dowd was well beyond this point. Promptly he fell asleep.

While I'm waiting... Some more feedback from my editor and a new novel from scratch...

So... First the news... The Tramp Steamer is, as you may know, currently being proof read and edited by a colleague of mine. Its a big undertaking and the lovely lady in question is doing it on her own time and for gratis. Thus it would be unthinkable to rush her. I have had some feedback though and the latest snippet is my favourite to date. Here's the qoute.

"The book's a great read and I have to keep stopping myself from skipping to the end to find out what happens. It's a great story and well written any publisher would be mad not to put it into print."

After reading that I developed a sudden rosey glow which I seem to have some difficulty in shifting.

Impatience is one of my greatest virtues however and as such I have decided to start writing a brand new unrelated story exclusively here on my blog. I intend to write as often as possible in short bursts and from scratch. What follows next is anyone's guess...