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[IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT]

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["Time is a very elastic thing, Watson. It has the strange property of contracting itself into minutes when one is fascinated, and of expanding itself into hours when one is bored." - Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Speckled Band’

I do hope it won’t take you hours to read this book – Author]

Series or subtitle, title, author, publication. Page is middle aligned.

[It Was a Dark and Stormy Night]

[Ripping Time]

By [John Chapman]

[2023]

Copyright page. This page is bottom aligned

[John Chapman] has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright ©[2023 John Chapman]

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

This ebook is not available as a PDF file which is an unsatisfactory format for reading ebooks. If you are reading this in PDF format, then you are reading an illicit copy.

[This book uses UK English, so expect words like ‘favourite’, ‘colour’ and ‘metre’, temperatures in Celsius and expressions such as ‘I put it in my car boot’… but then… I may use US spelling and expressions.

Oh well – you’ll see.]

For fiction, this page is normally blank. In other cases, it would be a Contents page. Contents pages must be an even number of pages but if that causes a blank page, then add an epigraph or dedication on the blank page as follows

["If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Joseph Goebbels Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany

I’ve been told by one of the characters in this story that you won’t believe this. However, enough will stick in minds for it to trigger an idea. That alone will cause the founding of TACO – the Time Agency Chronoclasm Organisation which controls time travel.]

Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night.

Huh! What sort of story beginning is that? I’d better explain. You see I’m an author and, I’ve always been told, that you never start a story with a cliché expression such as ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ Neither do you start a story by describing the weather. No one, with any sense, starts with that line. So that’s why I wrote it and, in any case, – it was a dark and stormy night. At least it was getting dark because the streetlights were on, and it was decidedly stormy because the rain didn’t quite fall upwards. There was no thunder or lightning though, so I supposed that’s what made the guy I was watching try to use his umbrella to shelter from the rain. You’d have thought he would have known better. I’d already watched it invert twice in the wind and been mildly amused by his struggles to put it right again. It’s easy to be amused when you’re not the person getting drenched and almost blown off the pavement.

Suddenly it happened.

[Oh God – here I go again. There are some words that just shouldn’t be written in a story and ‘suddenly’ is one of them].

Well, it was sudden! The window rattled with a very [another word authors shouldn’t write] loud bang as the inverted lightning conductor the guy held fulfilled a purpose for which it was never intended. He collapsed in a smoking pile on the pavement.

I took about thirty seconds to get down the stairs from my apartment and hadn’t even finished calling the emergency services before I reached him. I was astonished to find him sitting up, looking around blankly. “Are you ok?” I asked.

“I don’t understand. What happened? Where am I?”

“You were struck by lightning. I was watching the storm. You’re incredibly lucky to be alive.”

“You mean incredibly unlucky to be hit. More to the point where am I? Who am I?”

“You don’t remember who you are? Look, I’d better call you an ambulance if you’ve lost your memory. Are you burnt? With that much power going through you, you must be.”

“I feel OK – just a bit jittery and…,” he said with a grin, “…I’m pretty sure my name isn’t Anne Ambulance. Don’t call for help. I don’t want to go to a hospital. I don’t know why, but there’s some reason I shouldn’t.”

“Well, at least come inside out of this rain. We’re both soaked.”

Just [never to be written word number three] as I helped him to his feet, the storm reminded us with another loud bang of its presence, so we both decided not to hang around longer.

Five minutes later we were seated in my living room, in front of the gas fire, drying ourselves as best we could with towels while the kettle boiled for coffee. My guest who wasn’t Anne, clad in a dry shirt and a pair of jeans of mine was examining his partially melted umbrella, his ruined glove, jacket, trousers and left shoe each of which bore carbonized stripes where the lightening had tracked down to the ground. [Hmm. That last sentence was definitely a ‘run-on sentence’. I may need to change that.]

“So have you remembered your name yet?”

“Not yet, but I know who I am. You probably know me as Jack the Ripper.”

End chapters with a page break.

Incidentally if you want to read the rest of this very short story, it’s available in a collection at https://books2read.com/tat

From The Author

Example -first keep their interest

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ stories. I don’t normally write short stories, but I had to write this one. The series title came from the first line of an old (1830) book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, ‘Paul Clifford’ and which is often satirised by Snoopy. You see him sitting on his kennel typing in the first line of his book, ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ You’ve probably never heard of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, but he was a very successful author in his day and was the person who coined the sayings ‘The pen is mightier than the sword,’ ‘the great unwashed’, and ‘pursuit of the almighty dollar’. In later life he became a politician. I promise I won’t follow his example.

Now make requests

If you enjoyed the stories then please… help me out by leaving a quick review on the website you got them from, at Goodreads or talk to your friends about them on social media. The greatest problem authors face today is their book being lost amongst the millions of other books published. Personal recommendations are the very best way of countering this.

Will there be more of the short stories? Probably but since it took me eight years to complete the last one – Time Flies, I won’t make any promises. Feel free to join my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/G1YvL and I’ll let you know when new stories come out.

Tell about website and other books

The other books, which I co-author are much more serious and a lot longer. You can get details of the other books I’ve written or helped with at my website. https://avestedinterest.info They are available from your favourite e-book retailers in a variety of formats. The first one is free, a lot longer, and deals with how the human race became immortal. It’s a kind of romantic technothriller/science fiction/mystery. There are nine books in the series so far, over 3,000 pages and a million words.

A Vested Interest Series by John and Shelia Chapman

The A Vested Interest series is available from e-book retailers. Find all the books and where to get them at our website https://avestedinterest.info.

Book One – Immortality Gene - Donna Rigden leaves the USA and joins Triplet International, in the UK. Utilizing her genetic skills, she attempts to extend human lifespan - the first step of Sir Richard’s long-term plan to save all life on earth. This first book is available as a free download.

Book Two – Dark Secrets – The Triplet family has a secret, hidden from the world, since 1099.

Book Three – No Secrets - Things seem to be going well for Sam, but he has a secret. John Liu has a secret also. Sir Richard? He had a secret lover, who kept secrets from him.

Book Four – Stones, Stars and Solutions – Since the time of the Crusades, in their possession, the Triplet family has had an encrypted document. It was written in thirteen different languages, from all over the world, at a time, when it was impossible, for the author, to have knowledge of all thirteen languages.

Book Five – Leap of Faith – A passageway appears in the complex, with a doorway to an unknown destination. It takes a leap of faith to find where it leads.

Book Six – Regret and Retribution – Every choice leads to an outcome, but what if the wrong choice is made?

Book Seven – Consequences – Make the wrong choice and there are consequences. How are the Triplets to know, which choice is the wrong one?

Book Eight – Ashes to Ashes – After the wrong person was allowed into the complex, death strikes. Have the Triplets unleashed a devil?

Book Nine – Dust to Dust – Will Donna find Christine in time, or will the seed of Bitah, once again, rise from the ashes?

The Blood of the Rainbow, paranormal romance series by my wife, Shelia Chapman. This series can be regarded as a prequal to the A Vested Interest series.

Blood of the Rainbow I – Raging Storm – Chance brought Jared Thundercloud and Sara Foster together, will destiny force them apart? You can download the ebook free.

Blood of the Rainbow II – Roses and Regret – Will fate give Jared another chance with his perfect match?

Blood of the Rainbow III – Choice and Change - Can Jared live with the choices he made, for his perfect match?

Enjoy

John Chapman